Chapter 55 - Page 2

the circumstances relating to Osborne's private marriage and sudden death. He offered, and they accepted his offer, to go out again for any time that they might think equivalent to the five months he was yet engaged to them for. They were most of them gentlemen of property, and saw the full importance of proving the marriage of an eldest son, and installing his child as the natural heir to a long-descended estate. This much information, but in a more condensed form, Mr Gibson gave to Molly, in a very few minutes. She sate up on her sofa, looking very pretty with the flush on her cheeks, and the brightness in her eyes.

'Well!' said she, when her father stopped speaking.

'Well! what?' asked he, playfully.

'Oh! why, such a number of things. I've been waiting all day to ask you all about everything. How is he looking?'

'If a young man of twenty-four ever does take to growing taller, I should say that he was taller. As it is, I suppose it is only that he looks broader, stronger - more muscular.'

'Oh! is he changed?' asked Molly, a little disturbed by this account.

'No, not changed; and yet not the same. He is as brown as a berry for one thing; caught a little of the negro tinge, and a beard as fine and sweeping as my bay- mare's tail.'

'A beard! But go on, papa. Does he talk as he used to do? I should know his voice amongst ten thousand.'

'I did not catch any Hottentot twang, if that's what you mean. Nor did he say, "Caesar and Pompey berry much alike, 'specially Pompey," which is the only specimen of negro language I can remember just at this moment.'

'And which I never could see the wit of,' said Mrs Gibson, who had come into the room after the conversation had begun; and did not understand what it was aiming at. Molly fidgeted; she wanted to go on with her questions and keep her father to definite and matter-of-fact answers, and she knew that when his wife chimed into a conversation, Mr Gibson was very apt to find out that he must go about some necessary piece of business.

'Tell me, how are they all getting on together?' It was an inquiry which she did not make in general before Mrs Gibson, for Molly and her father had tacitly agreed to keep silence on what they knew or had observed, respecting the three who formed the present family at the Hall.

'Oh!' said Mr Gibson, 'Roger is evidently putting everything to rights in his firm, quiet way.'

'"Things to rights." Why, what's wrong?' asked Mrs Gibson quickly. 'The squire and the French daughter-in-law don't get on well together, I suppose? I am always so glad Cynthia acted with the promptitude she did; it would have been very awkward for her to have been mixed up with all these complications. Poor Roger! to find himself supplanted by a child when he comes home!'

'You were not in the room, my dear, when I was telling Molly of the reasons for Roger's return; it