“Are you speaking of Mollie?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, candidly, “though I did not mean to speak aloud. My thoughts were only a mental echo of the remark I made a moment ago,—that I don't like Chandos. I do not like him at all, even at this distance, and I cannot resist feeling that I do not want him to see anything more of Mollie. We are not very discreet, we Vagabonds, but we must learn wisdom enough to shield Mollie.” And she sighed again.
“I understand that,” he said, almost tenderly, so sympathetically, in fact, that she turned toward him as if moved by a sudden impulse.
“I have sometimes thought since I came here,” she said, “that perhaps you might help me a little, if you would. She is so pretty, you see, and so young, and, through knowing so little of the world and longing to know so much, in a childish, half-dazzled way, is so innocently wilful that she would succumb to a novel influence more readily than to an old one. So I have thought once or twice of asking you to watch her a little, and guard her if—if you should ever see her in danger.”
“I can promise to do that much, at least,” he returned, smiling.
She held out her hand impetuously, just as she would have held it out to Griffith, and, oh, the hazard of it,—the hazard of so throwing aside her mock airs and graces, and showing herself to him just as she showed herself to the man she loved,—the Dolly whose heart was on her lips and whose soul was in her eyes.
“Then we will make a 'paction' of it,” she said. “You will help me to take care of her.”
“For your sake,” he said, “there are few things I would not do.”
So from that time forward he fell into the habit of regarding unsuspecting Mollie as his own special charge. He was so faithful to his agreement, indeed, that once or twice Griffith was almost ready to console himself with the thought that perhaps, after all, the child's beauty and tractability would win its way, and Gowan would find himself seriously touched at heart. Just now he could see that his manner was scarcely that of a lover, but there most assuredly was a probability that it might alter and become more warm and less friendly and platonic. As to Mollie herself, she was growing a trifle incomprehensible; she paid more attention to her lovely hair than she had been in the habit of doing, and was even known to mend her gloves; she began to be more conscious of the dignity of her seventeen years. She complained less petulantly of the attentions of Phil's friends, and accepted them with a better grace. The wise one even observed that she tolerated Brown, the obnoxious, and permitted him to admire her—at a distance. In her intercourse with Gowan she was capricious and had her moods. Sometimes she indulged in the weakness of tiring herself in all her small bravery when he was coming, and presented herself in the parlor beauteous and flushed and conscious, and was so delectably shy and sweet that she betrayed him into numerous trifling follies not at all consistent with his high position of mentor; and then, again, she was obstinate, rather incomprehensible, and did not adorn herself at all, and, indeed, was hard enough to manage.
“You are growing very queer, Mollie,” said Miss Aimée, wonderingly.