Mr. Gibson came in rubbing his hands after his frosty ride. Molly judged from the look in his eye that he had been fully informed of the present state of things at the Hall by some one. But he simply went up to and greeted the squire, and waited to hear what was said to him. The squire was fumbling at the taper on the writing-table, and before he answered much he lighted it, and signing to his friend to follow him, he went softly to the sofa and showed him the sleeping child, taking the utmost care not to arouse it by flare or sound.

‘Well! this is a fine young gentleman,’ said Mr. Gibson, returning to the fire rather sooner than the squire expected. ‘And you’ve got the mother here, I understand. Mrs. Osborne Hamley, as we must call her, poor thing! It’s a sad coming home to her, for I hear she knew nothing of his death.’ He spoke without exactly addressing any one, so that either Molly or the squire might answer as they liked. The squire said —

‘Yes! She has felt it a terrible shock. She’s upstairs in the best bedroom. I should like you to see her, Gibson, if she’ll let you. We must do our duty by her, for my poor lad’s sake. I wish he could have seen his boy lying there; I do. I daresay it preyed on him to have to keep it all to himself. He might ha’ known me, though. He might ha’ known my bark was waur than my bite. It’s all over now, though; and God forgive me if I was too sharp. I’m punished now.’

Molly grew impatient on the mother’s behalf.

‘Papa, I feel as if she was very ill; perhaps worse than we think. Will you go and see her at once?’

Mr. Gibson followed her upstairs, and the squire came too, thinking that he would do his duty now, and even feeling some self-satisfaction at conquering his desire to stay with the child. They went into the room where she had been taken. She lay quite still in the same position as at first. Her eyes were open and tearless, fixed on the wall. Mr. Gibson spoke to her, but she did not answer; he lifted her hand to feel her pulse; she never noticed.

‘Bring me some wine at once, and order some beef-tea,’ he said to Molly.

But when he tried to put the wine into her mouth as she lay there on her side, she made no effort to receive or swallow it, and it ran out upon the pillow. Mr. Gibson left the room abruptly; Molly chafed the little inanimate hand; the squire stood by in dumb dismay, touched in spite of himself by the death-inlife of one so young, and who must have been so much beloved.

Mr. Gibson came back two steps at a time; he was carrying the half-awakened child in his arms. He did not scruple to rouse him into yet further wakefulness — did not grieve to hear him begin to wail and cry. His eyes were on the figure upon the bed, which at that sound quivered all through; and when her child was laid at her back, and began caressingly to scramble yet closer, Aimee turned round, and took him to her arms, and lulled him and soothed him with the soft wont of mother’s love.

Before she lost this faint consciousness, which was habit or instinct rather than thought, Mr. Gibson spoke to her in French. The child’s one word of ‘maman’ had given him this clue. It was the language sure to be most intelligible to her dulled brain; and as it happened — only Mr. Gibson did not think of that — it was the language in which she had been commanded, and had learnt to obey.

Mr. Gibson’s tongue was a little stiff at first, but by-and-by he spoke it with all his old readiness. He extorted from her short answers at first, then longer ones, and from time to time he plied her with little drops of wine, until some further nourishment should be at hand. Molly was struck by her father’s low tones of comfort and sympathy, although she could not follow what was said quickly enough to catch the meaning of what passed.

By-and-by, however, when her father had done all that he could, and they were once more downstairs, he told them more about her journey than they yet knew. The hurry, the sense of acting in defiance of a prohibition, the over-mastering anxiety, the broken night, and fatigue of the journey, had ill prepared her for the shock at last, and Mr. Gibson was seriously alarmed for the consequences. She had wandered strangely in her replies to him; had perceived that she was wandering, and had made great efforts to recall her senses; but Mr Gibson foresaw that some bodily illness was coming on, and stopped late that night, arranging many things with Molly and the squire. One — the only — comfort arising from her state was the probability that she would be entirely unconscious by the morrow — the day of the funeral. Worn out by the contending emotions of the day, the squire seemed now unable to look beyond the wrench and trial of the next twelve hours. He sate with his head in his hands, declining to go to bed, refusing to dwell on the thought of his grandchild — not three hours ago such a darling in his eyes. Mr. Gibson gave some instructions to one of the maid-servants as to the watch she was to keep by Mrs. Osborne Hamley, and insisted on Molly’s going to bed. When she pleaded the apparent necessity of her staying up, he said —

‘Now, Molly, look how much less trouble the dear old squire would give if he would obey orders. He is only adding to anxiety by indulging himself. One pardons everything to extreme grief, however. But you will have enough to do to occupy all your strength for days to come; and go to bed you must now. I only wish I saw my way as clearly through other things as I do to your nearest duty. I wish I’d never let Roger go wandering off; he’ll wish it too, poor fellow! Did I tell you Cynthia is going off in hot haste to her uncle Kirkpatrick’s? I suspect a visit to him will stand in lieu of going out to Russia as a governess.’

‘I am sure she was quite serious in wishing for that.’

‘Yes, yes! at the time. I’ve no doubt she thought she was sincere in intending to go. But the great thing was to get out of the unpleasantness of the present time and place; and uncle Kirkpatrick’s will do this as effectually, and more pleasantly, than a situation at Nishni–Novgorod in an ice-palace.’

He had given Molly’s thoughts a turn, which was what he wanted to do. Molly could not help remembering Mr. Henderson; and his offer, and all the consequent hints; and wondering, and wishing — what did she wish? or had she been falling asleep? Before she had quite ascertained this point she was asleep in reality.

After this, long days passed over in a monotonous round of care; for no one seemed to think of Molly’s leaving the Hall during the woeful illness that befell Mrs. Osborne Hamley. It was not that her father allowed her to take much active part in the nursing; the squire gave him carte-blanche, and he engaged two efficient hospital nurses to watch over the unconscious Aimee; but Molly was needed to receive the finer directions as to her treatment and diet. It was not that she was wanted for the care of the little boy; the squire was too jealous of the child’s exclusive love for that, and one of the housemaids was employed in the actual physical charge of him; but he needed some one to listen to his incontinence of language, both when his passionate regret for his dead son came uppermost, and also when he had discovered some extraordinary charm in that son’s child; and again when he was oppressed with the uncertainty of Aimee’s long-continued illness. Molly was not so good or so bewitching a listener to ordinary conversation as Cynthia; but where her heart was interested her sympathy was deep and unfailing. In this case she only wished that the squire could really feel that Aimee was not the encumbrance which he evidently considered her to be. Not that he would have acknowledged the fact, if it had been put before him in plain words. He fought against the dim consciousness of what was in his mind; he spoke repeatedly of patience when no one but himself was impatient; he would often say that when she grew better she must not be allowed to leave the Hall until she was perfectly strong, when no one was even contemplating the remotest chance of her leaving her child, excepting only himself. Molly once or twice asked her father if she might not speak to the squire, and represent the hardship of sending her away — the improbability that she would consent to quit her boy, and so on; but Mr. Gibson only replied —

‘Wait quietly. Time enough when nature and circumstance have had their chance, and have failed.’

It was well that Molly was such a favourite with the old servants; for she had frequently to restrain and to control. To be sure, she had her father’s authority to back her; and they were aware that where her own comfort, ease, or pleasure was concerned she never interfered, but submitted to their will. If the squire had known of the want of attendance to which she submitted with the most perfect meekness, as far as she herself was the only sufferer, he would have gone into a towering rage. But Molly hardly thought of it, so anxious was she to do all she could for others and to remember the various charges which her father gave her in his daily visits. Perhaps he did not spare her enough. She was willing and uncomplaining; but one day after Mrs. Osborne Hamley had ‘taken the turn,’ as the nurses called it, when she was lying weak as a new-born baby, but with her faculties all restored, and her fever gone, when spring buds were blooming out, and spring birds sang merrily, Molly answered to her father’s sudden questioning that she felt unaccountably weary; that her head ached heavily, and that she was aware of a sluggishness of thought which it required a painful effort to overcome.

‘Don’t go on,’ said Mr. Gibson, with a quick pang of anxiety, almost of remorse. ‘Lie down here — with your back to the light. I’ll come back and see you before I go.’ And off he went in search of the squire. He had a good long walk before he came upon Mr. Hamley in a field of spring wheat, where the women were weeding, his little grandson holding to his finger in the intervals of short walks of inquiry into the dirtiest places, which was all his sturdy little limbs could manage.

‘Well, Gibson, and how goes the patient? Better! I wish we could get her out of doors, such a fine day as it is. It would make her strong as soon as anything. I used to beg my poor lad to come out more. Maybe, I worried him; but the air is the finest thing for strengthening that I know of, Though, perhaps, she’ll not thrive in English air as if she’d been born here; and she’ll not be quite right till she gets back to her native place, wherever that is.’

‘I don’t know. I begin to think we shall get her quite round here; and I don’t know that she could be in a better place. But it is not about her. May I order the carriage for my Molly?’ Mr. Gibson’s voice sounded as if he was choking a little as he said these last words.

‘To be sure,’ said the squire, setting the child down. He had been holding him in his arms the last few minutes; but now he wanted all his eyes to look into Mr. Gibson’s face. ‘I say,’ said he, catching hold of Mr. Gibson’s arm, ‘what’s the matter, man? Don’t twitch up your face like that, but speak!’

‘Nothing’s the matter,’ said Mr. Gibson, hastily. ‘Only I want her at home, under my own eye;’ and he turned away to go to the house, But the squire left his field and his weeders, and kept at Mr. Gibson’s side. He wanted to speak, but his heart was so full he did not know what to say. ‘I say, Gibson,’ he got out at last, ‘your Molly is liker a child of mine than a stranger; and I reckon we’ve all on us been coming too hard upon her. You don’t think there’s much amiss, do you?’

‘How can I tell?’ said Mr. Gibson, almost savagely. But any hastiness of temper was instinctively understood by the squire; and he was not offended, though he did not speak again till they reached the house. Then he went to order the carriage, and stood by sorrowful enough while the horses were being put in. He felt as if he should not know what to do without Molly; he had never known her value, he thought, till now. But he kept silence on this view of the case; which was a praiseworthy effort on the part of one who usually let by-standers see and hear as much of his passing feelings as if he had had a window in his breast. He stood by while Mr. Gibson helped the faintly-smiling, tearful Molly into the carriage. Then the squire mounted on the step and kissed her hand; but when he tried to thank her and bless her, he broke down; and as soon as he was once more safely on the ground Mr. Gibson cried out to the coachman to drive on. And so Molly left Hamley Hall. From time to time her father rode up to the window, and made some little cheerful and apparently careless remark. When they came within two miles of Hollingford he put spurs to his horse, and rode briskly past the carriage windows, kissing his hand to the occupant as he did so. He went on to prepare her home for Molly: when she arrived Mrs. Gibson was ready to greet her. Mr. Gibson had given one or two of his bright, imperat............