Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

"Yes. I was going to see old Abraham, when the Squire called to me over the hedge, as I was jogging along. He told me the news; and there was no resisting his invitation to come back and lunch with them. Besides, one gets a great deal of meaning out of Roger's words; it didn't take so very long a time to hear this much."

"I should think he would come and call upon us soon," said Mrs. Gibson to Molly, "and then we shall see how much we can manage to hear."

"Do you think he will, papa?" said Molly, more doubtfully. She remembered the last time he was in that very room, and the hopes with which he left it; and she fancied that she could see traces of this thought in her father's countenance at his wife's speech.

"I can't tell, my dear. Until he's quite convinced of Cynthia's intentions, it can't be very pleasant for him to come on mere visits of ceremony to the house in which he has known her; but he's one who will always do what he thinks right, whether pleasant or not."

Mrs. Gibson could hardly wait till her husband had finished his sentence before she testified against a part of it.

"'Convinced of Cynthia's intentions!' I should think she had made them pretty clear! What more does the man want?"

"He's not as yet convinced that the letter wasn't written in a fit of temporary feeling. I've told him that this was true; although I didn't feel it my place to explain to him the causes of that feeling. He believes that he can induce her to resume the former footing. I don't; and I've told him so; but, of course, he needs the full conviction that she alone can give him."

"Poor Cynthia! My poor child!" said Mrs. Gibson, plaintively. "What she has exposed herself to by letting herself be over-persuaded by that man!"

Mr. Gibson's eyes flashed fire. But he kept his lips tight closed; and only said, "'That man,' indeed!" quite below his breath.

Molly, too, had been damped by an expression or two in her father's speech. "Mere visits of ceremony!" Was it so, indeed? A "mere visit of ceremony!" Whatever it was, the call was paid before many days were over. That he felt all the awkwardness of his position towards Mrs. Gibson—that he was in reality suffering pain all the time—was but too evident to Molly; but, of course, Mrs. Gibson saw nothing of this in her gratification at the proper respect paid to her by one whose name was in the newspapers that chronicled his return, and about whom already Lord Cumnor and the Towers family had been making inquiry.