"I don't know," said her mother, replying to the question after her own fashion. "I'm sure I don't always approve of Mr. Preston; but even if it was him she was thinking about, he's far more agreeable than she is; and I had much rather have him coming to call than an old maid like her any day."
"I don't know that it was Mr. Preston she was thinking about," said Molly. "It was only a guess. When you were both in London she spoke about him,—I thought she had heard something about you and him, Cynthia." Unseen by her mother Cynthia looked up at Molly, her eyes full of prohibition, her cheeks full of angry colour. Molly stopped short suddenly. After that look she was surprised at the quietness with which Cynthia said, almost immediately,—
"Well, after all, it is only your fancy that she was alluding to Mr. Preston, so perhaps we had better not say any more about him; and as for her advice to mamma to look after you better, Miss Molly, I'll stand bail for your good behaviour; for both mamma and I know you're the last person to do any foolish things in that way. And now don't let us talk any more about it. I was coming to tell you that Hannah Brand's little boy has been badly burnt, and his sister is downstairs asking for old linen."
Mrs. Gibson was always kind to poor people, and she immediately got up and went to her stores to search for the article wanted.
Cynthia turned quietly round to Molly.
"Molly, pray don't ever allude to anything between me and Mr. Preston,—not to mamma, nor to any one. Never do! I've a reason for it,—don't say anything more about it, ever."
Mrs. Gibson came back at this moment, and Molly had to stop short again on the brink of Cynthia's confidence; uncertain indeed this time, whether she would have been told anything more, and only sure that she had annoyed Cynthia a good deal.
But the time was approaching when she would know all.
CHAPTER XLII.
THE STORM BURSTS.
The autumn drifted away through all its seasons. The golden corn-harvest, the walks through the stubble-fields, and rambles into hazel-copses in search of nuts; the stripping of the apple-orchards of their ruddy fruit, amid the joyous cries and shouts of watching children; and the gorgeous tulip-like colouring of the later time had now come on with the shortening days. There was comparative silence in the land, excepting for the distant shots, and the whirr of the partridges as they rose up from the field.