Chapter 46

Hollingford Gossips

'MY dear Molly, why didn't you come and dine with us? I said to sister I would come and scold you well. Oh, Mr Osborne Hamley, is that you?' and a look of mistaken intelligence at the tete-a-tete she had disturbed came so perceptibly over Miss Phoebe's face that Molly caught Osborne's sympathetic eye, and both smiled at the notion.

'I'm sure I - well! one must sometimes - I see our dinner would have been - ' Then she recovered herself into a connected sentence. 'We only just heard of Mrs Gibson's having a fly from the "George," because sister sent our Nancy to pay for a couple of rabbits Tom Ostler had snared (I hope we shan't be taken up for poachers, Mr Osborne - snaring doesn't require a licence, I believe?), and she heard he was gone off with the fly to the Towers with your dear mamma; for Coxe who drives the fly in general has sprained his ankle. We had just finished dinner, but when Nancy said Tom Ostler would not be back till night I said, "Why, there's that poor dear girl left all alone by herself, and her mother such a friend of ours," - when she was alive, I mean, But I'm sure I'm glad I'm mistaken.'

Osborne said, - 'I came to speak to Mr Gibson, not knowing he had gone to London, and Miss Gibson kindly gave me some of her lunch. I must go now.'

'Oh dear! I am so sorry,' fluttered out Miss Phoebe, 'I disturbed you; but it was with the best intentions. I always was mal-apropos from a child.' But Osborne was gone before she had finished her apologies. Before he left, his eyes met Molly's with a strange look of yearning farewell that struck her at the time, and that she remembered strongly afterwards.

'Such a nice suitable thing, and I came in the midst, and spoilt it all. I am sure you're very kind, my dear, considering - '

'Considering what, my dear Miss Phoebe? If you are conjecturing a love affair between Mr Osborne Hamley and me, you never were more mistaken in your life. I think I told you so once before. Please do believe me.'

'Oh, yes! I remember. And somehow sister got it into her head it was Mr Preston, I recollect.'

'One guess is just as wrong as the other,' said Molly, smiling, and trying to look perfectly indifferent, but going extremely red from annoyance at the mention of Mr Preston's name. It was very difficult for her to keep up any conversation, for her heart was full of Osborne - his changed appearance, his melancholy words of foreboding, and his confidences about his wife - French, Catholic, servant. Molly could not help trying to piece these strange facts together by imaginations of her own, and found it very hard work to attend to kind Miss Phoebe's unceasing patter. She came up to the point, however, when the voice ceased; and could recall, in a mechanical manner, the echo of the last words, which from both Miss Phoebe's look, and the dying accent that lingered in Molly's ear, she perceived to be a question.