’It seems as if there might be cases where—­setting the question of love entirely on one side—­it must be almost a duty to find some one to be a substitute for the mother....  I can believe,’ said he, in a different tone of voice, and looking at Molly afresh, ’that this step may be greatly for your father’s happiness—­it may relieve him from many cares, and may give him a pleasant companion.’

’He had me.  You don’t know what we were to each other—­at least, what he was to me,’ she added, humbly.

’Still he must have thought it for the best, or he wouldn’t have done it.  He may have thought it the best for your sake even more than for his own.’

‘That is what he tried to convince me of.’

Roger began kicking the pebble again.  He had not got hold of the right end of the clue.  Suddenly he looked up.

’I want to tell you of a girl I know.  Her mother died when she was about sixteen—­the eldest of a large family.  From that time—­all though the bloom of her youth—­she gave herself up to her father first as his comforter, afterwards as his companion, friend, secretary—­anything you like.  He was a man with a great deal of business on hand, and often came home only to set to afresh to preparations for the next day’s work.  Harriet was always there, ready to help, to talk, or to be silent.  It went on for eight or ten years in this way; and then her father married again,—­a woman not many years older than Harriet herself.  Well—­they are just the happiest set of people I know—­you wouldn’t have thought it likely, would you?’

She was listening, but she had no heart to say anything.  Yet she was interested in this little story of Harriet—­a girl who had been so much to her father, more than Molly in this early youth of hers could have been to Mr. Gibson.  ‘How was it?’ she sighed out at last.

’Harriet thought of her father’s happiness before she thought of her own,’ Roger answered, with something of severe brevity.  Molly needed the bracing.  She began to cry again a little.

‘If it were for papa’s happiness——­’

’He must believe that it is.  Whatever you fancy, give him a chance.  He cannot have much comfort, I should think, if he sees you fretting or pining,—­you who have been so much to him, as you say.  The lady herself, too—­if Harriet’s stepmother had been a selfish woman, and been always clutching after the gratification of her own wishes; but she was not:  she was as anxious for Harriet to be happy as Harriet was for her father—­and your father’s future wife may be another of the same kind, though such people are rare.’

‘I don’t think she is, though,’ murmured Molly, a waft of recollection bringing to her mind the details of her day at the Towers long ago.

Roger did not want to hear Molly’s reasons for this doubting speech.  He felt as if he had no right to hear more of Mr. Gibson’s family life, past, present, or to come, than was absolutely necessary for him, in order that he might comfort and help the crying girl, whom he had come upon so unexpectedly.  And besides, he wanted to go home, and be with his mother at lunch-time.  Yet he could not leave her alone.