"Ah, you don't know; you never can be sure about a young man! But with Roger it wouldn't so much signify. He would know he couldn't marry for years to come."
All that afternoon the Squire tried to steer clear of Molly, to whom he felt himself to have been an inhospitable traitor. But she was so perfectly unconscious of his shyness of her, and so merry and sweet in her behaviour as a welcome guest, never distrusting him for a moment, however gruff he might be, that by the next morning she had completely won him round, and they were quite on the old terms again. At breakfast this very morning, a letter was passed from the Squire to his wife, and back again, without a word as to its contents; but—
"Fortunate!"
"Yes! very!"
Little did Molly apply these expressions to the piece of news Mrs. Hamley told her in the course of the day; namely, that her son Osborne had received an invitation to stay with a friend in the neighbourhood of Cambridge, and perhaps to make a tour on the Continent with him subsequently; and that, consequently, he would not accompany his brother when Roger came home.
Molly was very sympathetic.
"Oh, dear! I am so sorry!"
Mrs. Hamley was thankful her husband was not present, Molly spoke the words so heartily.
"You have been thinking so long of his coming home. I am afraid it is a great disappointment."
Mrs. Hamley smiled—relieved.