"Well, all I know is, I must go back to mamma now; but I shall make another raid into these regions by-and-by, and you must keep a place for me. Ah! there are—Miss Brownings; you see I don't forget my lesson, Miss Gibson."
"Molly, I cannot have you speaking so to Lady Harriet," said Mrs. Gibson, as soon as she was left alone with her stepdaughter. "You would never have known her at all if it had not been for me, and don't be always putting yourself into our conversation."
"But I must speak if she asks me questions," pleaded Molly.
"Well! if you must, you must, I acknowledge. I'm candid about that at any rate. But there's no need for you to set up to have an opinion at your age."
"I don't know how to help it," said Molly.
"She's such a whimsical person; look there, if she's not talking to Miss Phœbe; and Miss Phœbe is so weak she'll be easily led away into fancying she is hand and glove with Lady Harriet. If there is one thing I hate more than another, it is the trying to make out an intimacy with great people."
Molly felt innocent enough, so she offered no justification of herself, and made no reply. Indeed she was more occupied in watching Cynthia. She could not understand the change that seemed to have come over her. She was dancing, it was true, with the same lightness and grace as before, but the smooth bounding motion, as of a feather blown onwards by the wind, was gone. She was conversing with her partner, but without the soft animation that usually shone out upon her countenance. And when she was brought back to her seat Molly noticed her changed colour, and her dreamily abstracted eyes.
"What is the matter, Cynthia?" asked she, in a very low voice.
"Nothing," said Cynthia, suddenly looking up, and in an accent of what, in her, was sharpness. "Why should there be?"
"I don't know; but you look different to what you did—tired or something."