‘Look, Molly!’ said he, as she was on the point of leaving the room again, on finding him there alone.  ’I gathered these flowers for you before breakfast.’  He came to meet her reluctant advance.

‘Thank you!’ said she.  ’You are very kind.  I am very much obliged to you.’

‘Then you must do something for me,’ said he, determined not to notice the restraint of her manner, and making the rearrangement of the flowers which she held a sort of link between them, so that she could not follow her impulse, and leave the room.—­’Tell me,—­honestly as I know you will if you speak at all,—­have not I done something to vex you since we were so happy at the Towers together?’

His voice was so kind and true,—­his manner so winning yet wistful, that Molly would have been thankful to tell him all; she believed that he could have helped her more than any one to understand how she ought to behave rightly; he would have disentangled her fancies,—­if only he himself had not lain at the very core and centre of all her perplexity and dismay.  How could she tell him of Mrs. Goodenough’s words troubling her maiden modesty?  How could she ever repeat what his father had said that morning, and assure him that she, no more than he, wished that their old friendliness should be troubled by the thought of a nearer relationship?

‘No, you never vexed me in my whole life, Roger,’ said she, looking straight at him for the first time for many days.

’I believe you, because you say so.  I have no right to ask further.  Molly, will you give me back one of those flowers, as a pledge of what you have said?’

‘Take whichever you like,’ said she, eagerly offering him the whole nosegay to choose from.

‘No; you must choose, and you must give it me.’

Just then the squire came in.  Roger would have been glad if Molly had not gone on so eagerly to ransack the bunch for the choicest flower in his father’s presence; but she exclaimed,—­

’Oh, please, Mr. Hamley, do you know which is Roger’s favourite flower?’

’No.  A rose, I daresay.  The carriage is at the door, and, Molly my dear, I don’t want to hurry you, but—­’

’I know.  Here, Roger,—­here is a rose!

(’And red as a rose was she.’)

I will find papa as soon as ever I get home.  How is the little boy?’

‘I’m afraid he’s beginning of some kind of a fever.’

And the squire took her to the carriage, talking all the way of the little boy; Roger following, and hardly heeding what he was doing in the answer to the question he kept asking himself:  ’Too late—­or not?  Can she ever forget that my first foolish love was given to one so different?’

While she, as the carriage rolled away, kept saying to herself,—­’We are friends again.  I don’t believe he will remember what the dear squire took it into his head to suggest, for many days.  It is so pleasant to be on the old terms again; and what lovely flowers!’