’Then I like roughness.  It did me good.  It made me feel how badly—­oh, Mrs. Hamley, I did behave so badly to papa this morning.’

She rose up and threw herself into Mrs. Hamley’s arms, and sobbed upon her breast.  Her sorrow was not now for the fact that her father was going to be married again, but for her own ill-behaviour.

If Roger was not tender in words, he was in deeds.  Unreasonable and possibly exaggerated as Molly’s grief had appeared to him, it was real suffering to her; and he took some pains to lighten it, in his own way, which was characteristic enough.  That evening he adjusted his microscope, and put the treasures he had collected in his morning’s ramble on a little table; and then he asked his mother to come and admire.  Of course Molly came too, and this was what he had intended.  He tried to interest her in his pursuit, cherished her first little morsel of curiosity, and nursed it into a very proper desire for further information.  Then he brought out books on the subject, and translated the slightly pompous and technical language into homely every-day speech.  Molly had come down to dinner, wondering how the long hours till bedtime would ever pass away:  hours during which she must not speak on the one thing that would be occupying her mind to the exclusion of all others; for she was afraid that already she had wearied Mrs. Hamley with it during their afternoon tete-a-tete.  But prayers and bedtime came long before she had expected; she had been refreshed by a new current of thought, and she was very thankful to Roger.  And now there was to-morrow to come, and a confession of penitence to be made to her father.

But Mr. Gibson did not want speech or words.  He was not fond of expressions of feeling at any time, and perhaps, too, he felt that the less said the better on a subject about which it was evident that his daughter and he were not thoroughly and impulsively in harmony.  He read her repentance in her eyes; he saw how much she had suffered; and he had a sharp pang at his heart in consequence.  But he stopped her from speaking out her regret at her behaviour the day before, by a ’There, there, that will do.  I know all you want to say.  I know my little, Molly—­my silly little goosey—­better than she knows herself.  I’ve brought you an invitation.  Lady Cumnor wants you to go and spend next Thursday at the Towers!’

‘Do you wish me to go?’ said she, her heart sinking.

’I wish you and Hyacinth to become better acquainted—­to learn to love each other.’

‘Hyacinth!’ said Molly, entirely bewildered.

’Yes; Hyacinth!  It’s the silliest name I ever heard of; but it’s hers, and I must call her by it.  I can’t bear Clare, which is what my lady and all the family at the Towers call her; and “Mrs Kirkpatrick” is formal and nonsensical too, as she’ll change her name so soon.’

‘When, papa?’ asked Molly, feeling as if she were living in a strange, unknown world.