’Well, but as there is no question of Molly in this business, I don’t see the use of bringing her name in, and considering either her family or her fortune.’

‘No, to be sure not,’ said the squire, rousing up.  ’My wits had gone far afield, and I’ll own I was only thinking what a pity it was she would not do for Osborne.  But of course it’s out of the question—­out of the question.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Gibson, ’and if you will excuse me, squire, I really must go now, and then you’ll be at liberty to send your wits afield uninterrupted.’  This time he was at the door before the squire called him back.  He stood impatiently hitting his top-boots with his riding-whip, waiting for the interminable last words.

’I say, Gibson, we’re old friends, and you’re a fool if you take anything I say as an offence.  Madam your wife and I did not hit it off the only time I ever saw her.  I won’t say she was silly, but I think one of us was silly, and it was not me.  However, we’ll pass that over.  Suppose you bring her, and this girl Cynthia (which is as outlandish a Christian name as I’d wish to hear), and little Molly out here to lunch some day,—­I’m more at my ease in my own house,—­and I’m more sure to be civil, too.  We need say nothing about Roger,—­neither the lass nor me,—­and you keep your wife’s tongue quiet, if you can.  It will only be like a compliment to you on your marriage, you know—­and no one must take it for anything more.  Mind, no allusion or mention of Roger, and this piece of folly.  I shall see the girl then, and I can judge her for myself; for, as you say, that will be the best plan.  Osborne will be here, too; and he’s always in his element talking to women.  I sometimes think he’s half a woman himself, he spends so much money and is so unreasonable.’

The squire was pleased with his own speech and his own thought, and smiled a little as he finished speaking.  Mr. Gibson was both pleased and amused; and he smiled too, anxious as he was to be gone.  The next Thursday was soon fixed upon as the day on which Mr. Gibson was to bring his womankind out to the Hall.  He thought that on the whole the interview had gone off a good deal better than he had expected, and felt rather proud of the invitation of which he was the bearer.  Therefore Mrs. Gibson’s manner of receiving it was an annoyance to him.  She meanwhile had been considering herself as an injured woman ever since the evening of the day of Roger’s departure.  What business had any one had to speak as if the chances of Osborne’s life being prolonged were infinitely small, if in fact the matter was uncertain?  She liked Osborne extremely, much better than Roger; and would gladly have schemed to secure him for Cynthia, if she had not shrunk from the notion of her daughter’s becoming a widow.  For if Mrs. Gibson had ever felt anything acutely it was the death of Mr Kirkpatrick, and, amiably callous as she was in most things, she recoiled from exposing her daughter wilfully to the