But though he was not there his brother Roger was.  Molly saw him in a minute when she entered the little drawing-room; but Cynthia did not.

‘And see, my dears,’ said Miss Phoebe Browning, turning them round to the side where Roger stood waiting for his turn of speaking to Molly.  ’We’ve got a gentleman for you after all!  Wasn’t it fortunate?—­just as sister said that you might find it dull—­you, Cynthia, she meant, because you know you come from France; and then, just as if he had been sent from heaven, Mr. Roger came in to call; and I won’t say we laid violent hands on him, because he was too good for that; but really we should have been near it, if he had not stayed of his own accord.’

The moment Roger had done his cordial greeting to Molly, he asked her to introduce him to Cynthia.

‘I want to know her—­your new sister,’ he added, with the kind smile Molly remembered so well since the very first day she had seen it directed towards her, as she sate crying under the weeping ash.  Cynthia was standing a little behind Molly when Roger asked for this introduction.  She was generally dressed with careless grace.  Molly, who was delicate neatness itself, used sometimes to wonder how Cynthia’s tumbled gowns, tossed away so untidily, had the art of looking so well and falling in such graceful folds.  For instance, the pale lilac muslin gown she wore this evening had been worn many times before, and had looked unfit to wear again until Cynthia put it on.  Then the limpness became softness, and the very creases took the lines of beauty.  Molly, in a daintily clean pink muslin, did not look half so elegantly dressed as Cynthia.  The grave eyes that the latter raised when she had to be presented to Roger had a sort of child-like innocence and wonder about them, which did not quite belong to Cynthia’s character.  She put on her armour of magic that evening—­involuntarily as she always did; but, on the other side, she could not help trying her power on strangers.  Molly had always felt that she should have a right to a good long talk with Roger when she next saw him; and that he would tell her, or she should gather from him, all the details she so longed to hear about the squire—­about the Hall—­about Osborne—­about himself.  He was just as cordial and friendly as ever with her.  If Cynthia had not been there all would have gone on as she had anticipated; but of all the victims to Cynthia’s charms he fell most prone and abject.  Molly saw it all, as she was sitting next to Miss Phoebe at the tea-table, acting right-hand, and passing cake, cream, sugar, with such busy assiduity that every one besides herself thought that her mind, as well as her hands, was fully occupied.  She tried to talk to the two shy girls, as in virtue of her two years’ seniority she thought herself bound to do; and the consequence was, she went upstairs with the twain clinging to her arms, and willing to swear an eternal friendship.  Nothing would satisfy them but that she must sit between them