For some days after the ball Cynthia seemed languid, and was very silent. Molly, who had promised herself fully as much enjoyment in talking over the past gaiety with Cynthia as in the evening itself, was disappointed when she found that all conversation on the subject was rather evaded than encouraged. Mrs. Gibson, it is true, was ready to go over the ground as many times as any one liked; but her words were always like ready-made clothes, and never fitted individual thoughts. Anybody might have used them, and, with a change of proper names, they might have served to describe any ball. She repeatedly used the same language in speaking about it, till Molly knew the sentences and their sequence even to irritation.

‘Ah! Mr. Osborne, you should have been there! I said to myself many a time how you really should have been there — you and, your brother of course.’

‘I thought of you very often during the evening!’

‘Did you? Now that I call very kind of you. Cynthia, darling! Do you hear what Mr. Osborne Hamley was saying?’ as Cynthia came into the room just then. ‘He thought of us all on the evening of the ball.’

‘He did better than merely remember us then,’ said Cynthia, with her soft slow smile. ‘We owe him thanks for those beautiful flowers, mamma.’

‘Oh!’ said Osborne, ‘you must not thank me exclusively. I believe it was my thought, but Roger took all the trouble of it.’

‘I consider the thought as everything,’ said Mrs. Gibson. ‘Thought is spiritual, while action is merely material.’

This fine sentence took the speaker herself by surprise; and in such conversation as was then going on, it is not necessary to accurately define the meaning of everything that is said.

‘I’m afraid the flowers were too late to be of much use though,’ continued Osborne. ‘I met Preston the next morning, and of course we talked about the ball. I was sorry to find he had been beforehand with us,’

‘He only sent one nosegay, and that was for Cynthia,’ said Molly, looking up from her work. ‘And it did not come till after we had received the flowers from Hamley.’ Molly caught a sight of Cynthia’s face before she bent down again to her sewing. It was scarlet in colour, and there was a flash of anger in her eyes. Both she and her mother hastened to speak as soon as Molly had finished, but Cynthia’s voice was choked with passion, and Mrs. Gibson had the word.

‘Mr. Preston’s bouquet was just one of those formal affairs any one can buy at a nursery-garden, which always strike me as having no sentiment in them. I would far rather have two or three lilies of the valley gathered for me by a person I like, than the most expensive bouquet that could be bought!’

‘Mr. Preston had no business to speak as if he had forestalled you,’ said Cynthia. ‘It came just as we were ready to go, and I put it into the fire directly.’

‘Cynthia, my dear love!’ said Mrs. Gibson (who had never heard of the fate of the flowers until now), ‘what an idea of yourself you will give to Mr. Osborne Hamley; but to be sure, I can quite understand it. You inherit my feeling — my prejudice — sentimental I grant, against bought flowers.’

Cynthia was silent for a moment; then she said, ‘I used some of your flowers, Mr. Hamley, to dress Molly’s hair. It was a great temptation, for the colour so exactly matched her coral ornaments; but I believe she thought it treacherous to disturb the arrangement, so I ought to take all the blame on myself.’

‘The arrangement was my brother’s, as I told you; but I am sure he would have preferred seeing them in Miss Gibson’s hair rather than in the blazing fire. Mr. Preston comes far the worst off.’ Osborne was rather amused at the whole affair, and would have liked to probe Cynthia’s motives a little farther. He did not hear Molly saying in as soft a voice as if she were talking to herself, ‘I wore mine just as they were sent,’ for Mrs. Gibson came in with a total change of subject.

‘Speaking of lilies of the valley, is it true that they grow wild in Hurst Wood? It is not the season for them to be in flower yet; but when it is, I think we must take a walk there — with our luncheon in a basket — a little picnic in fact. You’ll join us, won’t you?’ turning to Osborne. ‘I think it’s a charming plan! You could ride to Hollingford and put up your horse here, and we would have a long day in the woods and all come home to dinner — dinner with a basket of lilies in the middle of the table!’

‘I should like it very much,’ said Osborne; ‘but I may not be at home. Roger is more likely to be here, I believe, at that time — a month hence.’ He was thinking of the visit to London to sell his poems, and the run down to Winchester which he anticipated afterwards — the end of May had been the period fixed for this pleasure for some time, not merely in his own mind, but in writing to his wife.

‘Oh, but you must be with us! We must wait for Mr. Osborne Hamley, must not we, Cynthia?’

‘I’m afraid the lilies won’t wait,’ replied Cynthia.

‘Well, then, we must put it off till dog-rose and honeysuckle time. You will be at home then, won’t you? or does the London season present too many attractions?’

‘I don’t exactly know when dog-roses are in flower!’

‘Not know, and you a poet? Don’t you remember the lines —

‘“It was the time of roses,
We plucked them as we passed?”’

‘Yes; but that doesn’t specify the time of year that is the time of roses; and I believe my movements are guided more by the lunar calendar than the floral. You had better take my brother for your companion; he is practical in his love of flowers, I am only theoretical.’

‘Does that fine word “theoretical” imply that you are ignorant?’ asked Cynthia.

‘Of course we shall be happy to see your brother; but why can’t we have you too? I confess to a little timidity in the presence of one so deep and learned as your brother is from all accounts. Give me a little charming ignorance, if we must call it by that hard word.’

Osborne bowed. It was very pleasant to him to be petted and flattered, even though he knew all the time that it was only flattery. It was an agreeable contrast to the home that was so dismal to him, to come to this house where the society of two agreeable girls, and the soothing syrup of their mother’s speeches, awaited him whenever he liked to come. To say nothing of the difference that struck upon his senses, poetical though he might esteem himself, of a sitting-room full of flowers and tokens of women’s presence, where all the chairs were easy, and all the tables well covered with pretty things, to the great drawing-room at home, where the draperies were threadbare, and the seats uncomfortable, and no sign of feminine presence ever now lent a grace to the stiff arrangement of the furniture. Then the meals, light and well cooked, suited his taste and delicate appetite so much better than the rich and heavy viands prepared by the servants at the Hall. Osborne was becoming a little afraid of falling into the habit of paying too frequent visits to the Gibsons (and that, not because he feared the consequences of his intercourse with the two young ladies; for he never thought of them excepting as friends; — the fact of his marriage was constantly present to his mind, and Aimee too securely enthroned in his heart, for him to remember that he might be looked upon by others in the light of a possible husband); but the reflection forced itself upon him occasionally, whether he was not trespassing too often on hospitality which he had at present no means of returning.

But Mrs. Gibson, in her ignorance of the true state of affairs, was secretly exultant in the attraction which made him come so often and lounge away the hours in their house and garden. She had no doubt that it was Cynthia who drew him to the house; and if the latter had been a little more amenable to reason, her mother would have made more frequent allusions than she did to the crisis which she thought was approaching. But she was restrained by the intuitive conviction that if her daughter became conscious of what was impending, and was made aware of Mrs. Gibson’s cautious and quiet efforts to forward the catastrophe, the wilful girl would oppose herself to it with all her skill and power. As it was, Mrs. Gibson trusted that Cynthia’s affections would become engaged before she knew where she was, and that in that case she would not attempt to frustrate her mother’s delicate scheming, even though she did perceive it. But Cynthia had come across too many varieties of flirtation, admiration, and even passionate love, to be for a moment at fault as to the quiet friendly nature of Osborne’s attentions. She received him always as a sister might a brother. It was different when Roger returned from his election as Fellow of Trinity. The trembling diffidence, the hardly suppressed ardour of his manner, made Cynthia understand before long with what kind of love she had now to deal. She did not put it into so many words — no, not even in her secret heart — but she recognized the difference between Roger’s relation to her and Osborne’s, long before Mrs. Gibson found it out. Molly was, however, the first to discover the nature of Roger’s attraction. The first time they saw him after the ball, it came out to her observant eyes. Cynthia had not been looking well since that evening; she went slowly about the house, pale and heavy-eyed; and, fond as she usually was of exercise and the free fresh air, there was hardly any persuading her now to go out for a walk. Molly watched this fading with tender anxiety, but to all her questions as to whether she had felt over-fatigued with her dancing, whether anything had occurred to annoy her, and all such inquiries, she replied in languid negatives. Once Molly touched on Mr. Preston’s name, and found that this was a subject on which Cynthia was raw; now, Cynthia’s face lighted up with spirit, and her whole body showed her ill-repressed agitation, but she only said a few sharp words, expressive of anything but kindly feeling towards the gentleman, and then bade Molly never name his name to her again. Still, the latter could not imagine that he was more than intensely distasteful to her friend, as well as to herself, he could not be the cause of Cynthia’s present indisposition. But this indisposition lasted so many days without change or modification, that even Mrs. Gibson noticed it, and Molly became positively uneasy. Mrs. Gibson considered Cynthia’s quietness and languor as the natural consequence of ‘dancing with everybody who asked her’ at the ball. Partners whose names were in the ‘Red Book’ would not have produced half the amount of fatigue, according to Mrs. Gibson’s judgment apparently, and if Cynthia had been quite well, very probably she would have hit the blot in her mother’s speech with one of her touches of sarcasm. Then, again, when Cynthia did not rally, Mrs. Gibson grew impatient, and accused her of being fanciful and lazy; at length, and partly at Molly’s instance, there came an appeal to Mr. Gibson, and a professional examination of the supposed invalid, which Cynthia hated more than anything, especially when the verdict was, that there was nothing very much the matter, only a general lowness of tone, and depression of health and spirits, which would soon be remedied by tonics, and, meanwhile, she was not to be urged to exertion.

‘If there is one thing I dislike,’ said Cynthia to Mr. Gibson, after he had pronounced tonics to be the cure for her present state, ‘it is the way doctors have of giving tablespoonfuls of nauseous mixtures as a certain remedy for sorrows and cares.’ She laughed up in his face as she spoke; she had always a pretty word and smile for him, even in the midst of her loss of spirits.

‘Come! you acknowledge you have “sorrows” by that speech; we’ll make a bargain: if you’ll tell me your sorrows and cares, I’ll try and find some other remedy for them than giving you what you are pleased to term my nauseous mixtures.’

‘No,’ said Cynthia, colouring; ‘I never said I had sorrows and cares; I spoke generally. What should I have a sorrow about — you and Molly are only too kind to me,’ her eyes filling with tears.

‘Well, well, we’ll not talk of such gloomy things, and you shall have some sweet emulsion to disguise the taste of the bitters I shall be obliged to fall back upon.’

‘Please, don’t. If you but knew how I dislike emulsions and disguises! I do want bitters — and if I sometimes — if I’m obliged to — if I’m not truthful myself, I do like truth in others — at least, sometimes.’ She ended her sentence with another smile, bus it was rather faint and watery.

Now the first person out of the house to notice Cynthia’s change of look and manner was Roger Hamley — and yet he did not see her until, under the influence of the nauseous mixture, she was beginning to recover. But his eyes were scarcely off her during the first five minutes he was in the room. All the time he was trying to talk to Mrs. Gibson in reply to her civil platitudes, he was studying Cynthia; and at the first convenient pause he came and stood before Molly, so as to interpose his person between her and the rest of the room; for some visitors had come in subsequent to his entrance.

‘Molly, how ill your sister is looking! What is it? Has she had advice? You must forgive me, but so often those who live together in the same house don’t observe the first approaches of illness.’

Now Molly’s love for Cynthia was fast and unwavering, but if anything tried it, it was the habit Roger had fallen into of always calling Cynthia Molly’s sister in speaking to the latter. From any one else it would have been a matter of indifference to her, and hardly to be noticed; it vexed both ear and heart when Roger used the expression; and there was a curtness of manner as well as of words in her reply.

‘Oh! she was over-tired by the ball. Papa has seen her, and says she will be all right very soon.’

‘I wonder if she wants change of air?’ said Roger, meditatively. ‘I wish — I do wish we could have her at the Hall; you and your mother too, of course. But I don’t see how it would be possible — or else how charming it would be!’

Molly felt as if a visit to the Hall under such circumstances would be altogether so different an affair to all her former ones, that she could hardly tell if ............