"He had me. You don't know what we were to each other—at least, what he was to me," she added, humbly.
"Still he must have thought it for the best, or he wouldn't have done it. He may have thought it the best for your sake even more than for his own."
"That is what he tried to convince me of."
Roger began kicking the pebble again. He had not got hold of the right end of the clue. Suddenly he looked up.
"I want to tell you of a girl I know. Her mother died when she was about sixteen—the eldest of a large family. From that time—all through the bloom of her youth—she gave herself up to her father, first as his comforter, afterwards as his companion, friend, secretary—anything you like. He was a man with a great deal of business on hand, and often came home only to set to afresh to preparations for the next day's work. Harriet was always there, ready to help, to talk, or to be silent. It went on for eight or ten years in this way; and then her father married again,—a woman not many years older than Harriet herself. Well—they are just the happiest set of people I know—you wouldn't have thought it likely, would you?"
She was listening, but she had no heart to say anything. Yet she was interested in this little story of Harriet—a girl who had been so much to her father, more than Molly in this early youth of hers could have been to Mr. Gibson. "How was it?" she sighed out at last.
"Harriet thought of her father's happiness before she thought of her own," Roger answered, with something of severe brevity. Molly needed the bracing. She began to cry again a little.
"If it were for papa's happiness—"
"He must believe that it is. Whatever you fancy, give him a chance. He cannot have much comfort, I should think, if he sees you fretting or pining,—you who have been so much to him, as you say. The lady herself, too—if Harriet's stepmother had been a selfish woman, and been always clutching after the gratification of her own wishes; but she was not: she was as anxious for Harriet to be happy as Harriet was for her father—and your father's future wife may be another of the same kind, though such people are rare."
"I don't think she is, though," murmured Molly, a waft of recollection bringing to her mind the details of her day at the Towers long ago.