‘She is in a mental fever of some kind,’ thought he to himself.  ’She is very fascinating, but I don’t quite understand her.’  If Molly had not been so entirely loyal to her friend, she might have thought this constant brilliancy a little tiresome when brought into every-day life; it was not the sunshiny rest of a placid lake, it was rather the glitter of the pieces of a broken mirror, which confuses and bewilders.  Cynthia would not talk quietly about anything now; subjects of thought or conversation seemed to have lost their relative value.  There were exceptions to this mood of hers, when she sank into deep fits of silence, that would have been gloomy had it not been for the never varying sweetness of her temper.  If there was a little kindness to be done to either Mr Gibson or Molly, Cynthia was just as ready as ever to do it; nor did she refuse to do anything her mother wished, however fidgety might be, the humour that prompted the wish.  But in this latter case Cynthia’s eyes were not quickened by her heart.

Molly was dejected, she knew not why.  Cynthia had drifted a little apart; that was not it.  Her stepmother had whimsical moods; and if Cynthia displeased her, she would oppress Molly with small kindnesses and pseudo-affection.  Or else everything was wrong, the world was out of joint, and Molly had failed in her mission to set it right, and was to be blamed accordingly.  But Molly was of too steady a disposition to be much moved by the changeableness of an unreasonable person.  She might be annoyed, or irritated, but she was not depressed.  That was not it.  The real cause was certainly this.  As long as Roger was drawn to Cynthia, and sought her of his own accord, it had been a sore pain and bewilderment to Molly’s heart; but it was a straightforward attraction, and one which Molly acknowledged, in her humility and great power of loving, to be the most natural thing in the world.  She would look at Cynthia’s beauty and grace, and feel as if no one could resist it.  And when she witnessed all the small signs of honest devotion which Roger was at no pains to conceal, she thought, with a sigh, that surely no girl could help relinquishing her heart to such tender, strong keeping as Roger’s character ensured.  She would have been willing to cut off her right hand, if need were, to forward his attachment to Cynthia; and the self-sacrifice would have added a strange zest to a happy crisis.  She was indignant at what she considered to be Mrs. Gibson’s obtuseness to so much goodness and worth; and when she called Roger ’a country lout’, or any other depreciative epithet, Molly would pinch herself in order to keep silent.  But after all those were peaceful days compared to the present, when she, seeing the wrong side of the tapestry, after the wont of those who dwell in the same house with a plotter, became aware that Mrs. Gibson had totally changed her behaviour to Roger, from some cause unknown to Molly.