‘Molly, I cannot have you speaking so to Lady Harriet,’ said Mrs Gibson, as soon as she was left alone with her step-daughter.  ’You would never have known her at all if it had not been for me, and don’t be always putting yourself into our conversation.’

‘But I must speak if she asks me questions,’ pleaded Molly.

’Well! if you must, you must, I acknowledge.  I’m candid about that at any rate.  But there’s no need for you to set up to have an opinion at your age.’

‘I don’t know how to help it,’ said Molly.

’She’s such a whimsical person; look there, if she’s not talking to Miss Phoebe; and Miss Phoebe is so weak she’ll be easily led away into fancying she is hand and glove with Lady Harriet.  If there is one thing I hate more than another, it is the trying to make out an intimacy with great people.’

Molly felt innocent enough, so she offered no justification of herself, and made no reply.  Indeed she was more occupied in watching Cynthia.  She could not understand the change that seemed to have come over the latter.  She was dancing, it was true, with the same lightness and grace as before, but the smooth bounding motion as of a feather blown onwards by the wind was gone.  She was conversing with her partner, but without the soft animation that usually shone out upon her countenance.  And when she was brought back to her seat Molly noticed her changed colour, and her dreamily abstracted eyes.

‘What is the matter, Cynthia?’ asked she, in a very low voice.

‘Nothing,’ said Cynthia, suddenly looking up, and in an accent of what was, in her, sharpness.  ‘Why should there be?’

’I don’t know; but you look different to what you did—­tired or something.’

’There is nothing the matter, or, if there is, don’t talk about it.  It is all your fancy.’

This was a rather contradictory speech, to be interpreted by intuition rather than by logic.  Molly understood that Cynthia wished for quietness and silence.  But what was her surprise, after the speeches that had passed before, and the implication of Cynthia’s whole manner to Mr. Preston, to see him come up, and, without a word, offer his arm to Cynthia and lead her off to dance.  It appeared to strike Mrs. Gibson as something remarkable, for, forgetting her late passage at arms with Molly, she asked, wanderingly, as if almost distrusting the evidence of her senses,—­

‘Is Cynthia going to dance with Mr. Preston?’

Molly had scarcely time to answer before she herself was led off by her partner.  She could hardly attend to him or to the figures of the quadrille for watching for Cynthia among the moving forms.

Once she caught a glimpse of her standing still—­downcast—­listening to Mr. Preston’s eager speech.  Again she was walking languidly among the dancers, almost as if she took no notice of those around her.  When she and Molly joined each other again, the shade on Cynthia’s face had deepened to gloom.  But, at the same time, if a physiognomist had studied her expression, he would have read in it defiance and anger, and perhaps also a little perplexity.  While this quadrille had been going on, Lady Harriet had been speaking to her brother.