’Oh, yes!  I remember.  And somehow sister got it into her head it was Mr. Preston, I recollect.’

‘One guess is just as wrong as the other,’ said Molly, smiling, and trying to look perfectly indifferent, but going extremely red from annoyance at the mention of Mr. Preston’s name.  It was very difficult for her to keep up any conversation, for her heart was full of Osborne —­his changed appearance, his melancholy words of foreboding, and his confidences about his wife—­French, Catholic, servant.  Molly could not help trying to piece these strange facts together by imaginations of her own, and found it very hard work to attend to kind Miss Phoebe’s unceasing patter.  She came up to the point, however, when the voice ceased; and could recall, in a mechanical manner, the echo of the last words, which from both Miss Phoebe’s look, and the dying accent that lingered in Molly’s ear, she perceived to be a question.  Miss Phoebe was asking her if she would go out with her?  She was going to Grinstead’s, the bookseller of Hollingford; who, in addition to his regular business, was the agent for the Hollingford Book Society, received their subscriptions, kept their accounts, ordered their books from London, and, on payment of a small salary, allowed the Society to keep their volumes on shelves in his shop.  It was the centre of news and gossip, the club, as it were, of the little town.  Everybody who pretended to gentility in the place belonged to it, It was a test of gentility, indeed, rather than of education or a love of literature.  No shopkeeper would have thought of offering himself as a member, however great his general intelligence and love of reading; while it boasted upon the list of subscribers most of the county families in the neighbourhood, some of whom subscribed to the Hollingford Book Society as a sort of duty belonging to their station, without often using their privilege of reading the books; while there were residents in the little town, such as Mrs. Goodenough, who privately thought reading a great waste of time, that might be much better employed in sewing, and knitting, and pastry-making, but who nevertheless belonged to it as a mark of station, just as these good, motherly women would have thought it a terrible come-down in the world if they had not had a pretty young servant-maid to fetch them home from the tea-parties at night.  At any rate, Grinstead’s was a very convenient place for a lounge.  In that view of the Book Society every one agreed.  Molly went upstairs to get ready to accompany Miss Phoebe; and on opening one of her drawers she saw Cynthia’s envelope, containing the notes she owed to Mr. Preston, carefully sealed up like a letter.  This was what Molly had so unwillingly promised to deliver—­the last final stroke to the affair.  Molly took it up, hating it.  For a time she had forgotten it; and now it was here, facing her, and she must try and get rid of it.  She put it into her pocket for the chances of the walk and the day, and fortune