‘As if lawyers were not always doing something of the kind!’

’Leave it to those to whom it is necessary.  I dislike planning marriages or looking forward to deaths about equally.’

‘You are getting very prosaic and tiresome, Hollingford!’

‘Only getting!’ said he smiling.  ’I thought you had always looked upon me as a tiresome matter-of-fact fellow.’

’Now, if you’re going to fish for a compliment, I am gone.  Only remember my prophecy when my vision comes to pass; or make a bet, and whoever wins shall spend the money on a present to Prince Caramalzaman or Princess Badoura, as the case may be.’

Lord Hollingford remembered his sister’s words as he heard Roger say to Molly as he was leaving the Towers on the following day,—­

’Then I may tell my father that you will come and pay him a visit next week?  You don’t know what pleasure it will give him.’  He had been on the point of saying ‘will give us,’ but he had an instinct which told him it was as well to consider Molly’s promised visit as exclusively made to his father.

The next day Molly went home; she was astonished at herself for being so sorry to leave the Towers; and found it difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the long-fixed idea of the house as a place wherein to suffer all a child’s tortures of dismay and forlornness with her new and fresh conception.  She had gained health, she had had pleasure, the faint fragrance of a new and unacknowledged hope had stolen into her life.  No wonder that Mr. Gibson was struck with the improvement in her looks, and Mrs. Gibson impressed with her increased grace.

‘Ah, Molly,’ said she, ’it’s really wonderful to see what a little good society will do for a girl.  Even a week of association with such people as one meets with at the Towers is, as somebody said of a lady of rank whose name I have forgotten, “a polite education in itself.”  There is something quite different about you—­a je ne scais quoi—­that would tell me at once that you have been mingling with the aristocracy.  With all her charms, it was what my darling Cynthia wanted; not that Mr. Henderson thought so, for a more devoted lover can hardly be conceived.  He absolutely bought her a parure of diamonds, I was obliged to say to him that I had studied to preserve her simplicity of taste, and that he must not corrupt her with too much luxury.  But I was rather disappointed at their going off without a maid.  It was the one blemish in the arrangements, the spot in the sun.  Dear Cynthia, when I think of her, I do assure you, Molly, I make it my nightly prayer that I may be able to find you just such another husband.  And all this time you have never told me who you met at the Towers?’

Molly ran over a list of names.  Roger Hamley’s came last.

‘Upon my word!  That young man is pushing his way up!’

‘The Hamleys are a far older family than the Cumnors,’ said Molly, flushing up.