"I'll tell you what, Molly—you're bound by a promise, you know, and cannot tell Mr. Gibson without breaking your solemn word—but it's just this: I'll leave Hollingford and never come back again, if ever your father hears of this affair; there!" Cynthia stood up now, and began to fold up Molly's shawl, in her nervous excitement.
"Oh, Cynthia—Roger!" was all that Molly said.
"Yes, I know! you need not remind me of him. But I'm not going to live in the house with any one who may be always casting up in his mind the things he had heard against me—things—faults, perhaps—which sound so much worse than they really are. I was so happy when I first came here; you all liked me, and admired me, and thought well of me, and now— Why, Molly, I can see the difference in you already. You carry your thoughts in your face—I have read them there these two days—you've been thinking, 'How Cynthia must have deceived me; keeping up a correspondence all this time—having half-engagements to two men!' You've been more full of that than of pity for me as a girl who has always been obliged to manage for herself, without any friend to help her and protect her."
Molly was silent. There was a great deal of truth in what Cynthia was saying: and yet a great deal of falsehood. For, through all this long forty-eight hours, Molly had loved Cynthia dearly; and had been more weighed down by the position the latter was in than Cynthia herself. She also knew—but this was a second thought following on the other—that she had suffered much pain in trying to do her best in this interview with Mr. Preston. She had been tried beyond her strength: and the great tears welled up into her eyes, and fell slowly down her cheeks.
"Oh! what a brute I am!" said Cynthia, kissing them away. "I see—I know it is the truth, and I deserve it—but I need not reproach you."
"You did not reproach me!" said Molly, trying to smile. "I have thought something of what you said—but I do love you dearly—dearly, Cynthia—I should have done just the same as you did."
"No, you would not. Your grain is different, somehow."
CHAPTER XLV.
CONFIDENCES.
All the rest of that day Molly was depressed and not well. Having anything to conceal was so unusual—almost so unprecedented a circumstance with her that it preyed upon her in every way.
It was a nightmare that she could not shake off; she did so wish to forget it all, and yet every little occurrence seemed to remind her of it. The next morning's post brought several letters; one from Roger for Cynthia, and Molly, letterless herself, looked at Cynthia as she read it, with wistful sadness. It appeared to Molly as though Cynthia should have no satisfaction in these letters, until she had told him what was her exact position with Mr. Preston; yet Cynthia was colouring and dimpling up as she always did at any pretty words of praise, or admiration, or love. But Molly's thoughts and Cynthia's reading were both interrupted by a little triumphant sound from Mrs. Gibson, as she pushed a letter she had just received to her husband, with a—