"Ay! I remember now. No! I won't have any more. Give Mr. Osborne what wine he chooses. Perhaps he can eat and drink." So the Squire went away upstairs with bitterness as well as sorrow in his heart.
When lights were brought, Molly was struck with the change in Osborne. He looked haggard and worn; perhaps with travelling and anxiety. Not quite such a dainty gentleman either, as Molly had thought him, when she had last seen him calling on her stepmother, two months before. But she liked him better now. The tone of his remarks pleased her more. He was simpler, and less ashamed of showing his feelings. He asked after Roger in a warm, longing kind of way. Roger was out: he had ridden to Ashcombe to transact some business for the Squire. Osborne evidently wished for his return; and hung about restlessly in the drawing-room after he had dined.
"You're sure I mayn't see her to-night?" he asked Molly, for the third or fourth time.
"No, indeed. I will go up again if you like it. But Mrs. Jones, the nurse Dr. Nicholls sent, is a very decided person. I went up while you were at dinner, and Mrs. Hamley had just taken her drops, and was on no account to be disturbed by seeing any one, much less by any excitement."
Osborne kept walking up and down the long drawing-room, half talking to himself, half to Molly.
"I wish Roger would come. He seems to be the only one to give me a welcome. Does my father always live upstairs in my mother's rooms, Miss Gibson?"
"He has done since her last attack. I believe he reproaches himself for not having been enough alarmed before."
"You heard all the words he said to me; they were not much of a welcome, were they? And my dear mother, who always—whether I was to blame or not—I suppose Roger is sure to come home to-night?"
"Quite sure."
"You are staying here, are you not? Do you often see my mother, or does this omnipotent nurse keep you out too?"