Molly’s father was not at home when she returned; and there was no one to give her a welcome. Mrs. Gibson was out paying calls, the servants told Molly. She went upstairs to her own room, meaning to unpack and arrange her borrowed books, Rather to her surprise she saw the chamber, corresponding to her own, being dusted; water and towels too were being carried in.

‘Is any one coming?’ she asked of the housemaid.

‘Missus’s daughter from France. Miss Kirkpatrick is coming tomorrow.’

Was Cynthia coming at last? Oh, what a pleasure it would be to have a companion, a girl, a sister of her own age! Molly’s depressed spirits sprang up again with bright elasticity. She longed for Mrs Gibson’s return, to ask her all about it: it must be very sudden, for Mr. Gibson had said nothing of it at the Hall the day before. No quiet reading now; the books were hardly put away with Molly’s usual neatness. She went down into the drawing-room, and could not settle to anything. At last Mrs. Gibson came home, tired out with her walk and her heavy velvet cloak. Until that was taken off, and she had rested herself for a few minutes, she seemed quite unable to attend to Molly’s questions.

‘Oh, yes! Cynthia is coming home tomorrow, by the “Umpire,” which passes through at ten o’clock. What an oppressive day it is for the time of the year! I really am almost ready to faint. Cynthia heard of some opportunity, I believe, and was only too glad to leave school a fortnight earlier than we planned. She never gave me the chance of writing to say I did, or did not, like her coming so much before the time; and I shall have to pay for her just the same as if she had stopped. And I meant to have asked her to bring me a French bonnet; and then you could have had one made after mine. But I’m very glad she’s coming, poor dear.’

‘Is anything the matter with her?’ asked Molly.

‘Oh, no! Why should there be?’

‘You called her “poor dear,” and it made me afraid lest she might be ill.’

‘Oh, no! It’s only a way I got into, when Mr. Kirkpatrick died. A fatherless girl — you know one always does call them “poor dears.” Oh, no! Cynthia never is ill. She’s as strong as a horse. She never would have felt today as I have done. Could you get me a glass of wine and a biscuit, my dear? I’m. really quite faint.’

Mr. Gibson was much more excited about Cynthia’s arrival than her own mother was. He anticipated her coming as a great pleasure to Molly, on whom, in spite of his recent marriage and his new wife, his interests principally centred. He even found time to run upstairs and see the bedrooms of the two girls; for the furniture of which he had paid a pretty round sum.

‘Well, I suppose young ladies like their bedrooms decked out in this way! It’s very pretty certainly, but —’

‘I liked my own old room better, papa; but perhaps Cynthia is accustomed to such decking up.’

‘Perhaps; at any rate, she’ll see we’ve tried to make it pretty. Yours is like hers. That’s right. It might have hurt her, if hers had been smarter than yours. Now, good-night in your fine flimsy bed.’

Molly was up betimes — almost before it was light — arranging her pretty Hamley flowers in Cynthia’s room. She could hardly eat her breakfast that morning. She ran upstairs and put on her things, thinking that Mrs. Gibson was quite sure to go down to the ‘George’ Inn, where the ‘Umpire’ stopped, to meet her daughter after a two years’ absence. But to her surprise Mrs. Gibson had arranged herself at her great worsted-work frame, just as usual; and she, in her turn, was astonished at Molly’s bonnet and cloak.

‘Where are you going so early, child? The fog hasn’t cleared away yet.’

‘I thought you would go and meet Cynthia; and I wanted to go with you.’

‘She will be here in half an hour; and dear papa has told the gardener to take the wheelbarrow down for her luggage. I’m not sure if he is not gone himself.’

‘Then are not you going?’ asked Molly, with a good deal of disappointment.

‘No, certainly not. She will be here almost directly. And, besides, I don’t like to expose my feelings to every passer-by in High Street. You forget I have not seen her for two years, and I hate scenes in the market-place.’

She settled herself to her work again; and Molly, after some consideration, gave up her own going, and employed herself in looking out of the downstairs window which commanded the approach from the town.

‘Here she is — here she is!’ she cried out at last. Her father was walking by the side of a tall young lady; William the gardener was wheeling along a great cargo of luggage. Molly flew to the front-door, and had it wide open to admit the new comer some time before she arrived.

‘Well! here she is. Molly, this is Cynthia. Cynthia, Molly. You’re to be sisters, you know.’

Molly saw the beautiful, tall, swaying figure, against the light of the open door, but could not see any of the features that were, for the moment, in shadow. A sudden gush of shyness had come over her just at the instant, and quenched the embrace she would have given a moment before. But Cynthia took her in her arms, and kissed her on both cheeks.

‘Here’s mamma,’ she said, looking beyond Molly on to the stairs where Mrs. Gibson stood, wrapped up in a shawl, and shivering in the cold. She ran past Molly and Mr. Gibson, who rather averted their eyes from this first greeting between mother and child.

Mrs. Gibson said —

‘Why, how you are grown, darling! You look quite a woman.’

‘And so I am,’ said Cynthia. ‘I was before I went away; I’ve hardly grown since — except, it is always to be hoped, in wisdom.’

‘Yes! That we will hope,’ said Mrs. Gibson, in rather a meaning way. Indeed there were evidently hidden allusions in their seeming commonplace speeches. When they all came into the full light and repose of the drawing-room, Molly was absorbed in the contemplation of Cynthia’s beauty. Perhaps her features were not regular; but the changes in her expressive countenance gave one no time to think of that. Her smile was perfect; her pouting charming; the play of the face was in the mouth. Her eyes were beautifully shaped, but their expression hardly seemed to vary. In colouring she was not unlike her mother; only she had not so much of the red-haired tints in her complexion; and her long-shaped, serious grey eyes were fringed with dark lashes, instead of her mother’s insipid flaxen ones. Molly fell in love with her, so to speak, on the instant. She sate there warming her feet and hands, as much at her ease as if she had been there all her life; not particularly attending to her mother — who, all the time, was studying either her or her dress — measuring Molly and Mr. Gibson with grave observant looks, as if guessing how she should like them.

‘There’s hot breakfast ready for you in the dining-room, when you are ready for it,’ said Mr. Gibson. ‘I’m sure you must want it after your night journey.’ He looked round at his wife, at Cynthia’s mother, but she did not seem inclined to leave the warm room again.

‘Molly will take you to your room, darling,’ said she; ‘it is near hers, and she has got her things to take off. I’ll come down and sit in the dining-room while you are having your breakfast, but I really am afraid of the cold now.’

Cynthia rose and followed Molly upstairs.

‘I’m so sorry there isn’t a fire for you,’ said Molly, ‘but — I suppose it wasn’t ordered; and, of course, I don’t give any orders. Here is some hot water, though.’

‘Stop a minute,’ said Cynthia, getting hold of both Molly’s hands, and looking steadily into her face, but in such a manner that she did not dislike the inspection.

‘I think I shall like you. I am go glad! I was afraid I should not. We’re all in a very awkward position together, aren’t we? I like your father’s looks, though.’

Molly could not help smiling at the way this was said. Cynthia replied to her smile.

‘Ah, you may laugh. But I don’t know that I am easy to get on with; mamma and I didn’t suit when we were last together. But perhaps we are each of us wiser now. Now, please leave me for a quarter of an hour. I don’t want anything more.’

Molly went into her own room, waiting to show Cynthia down to the dining-room. Not that, in the moderate-sized house, there was any difficulty in finding the way. A very little trouble in conjecturing would enable a stranger to discover any room. But Cynthia had so captivated Molly, that she wanted to devote herself to the new comer’s service. Ever since she had heard of the probability of her having a sister —(she called her a sister, but whether it was a Scotch sister, or a sister a la mode de Bretagne, would have puzzled most people) — Molly had allowed her fancy to dwell much on the idea of Cynthia’s coming; and in the short time since they had met, Cynthia’s unconscious power of fascination had been exercised upon her. Some people have this power. Of course, its effects are only manifested in the susceptible. A school-girl may be found in every school who attracts and influences all the others, not by her virtues, nor her beauty, nor her sweetness, nor her cleverness, but by something that can neither be described nor reasoned upon. It is the something alluded to in the old lines:—

‘Love me not for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye and face;
No, nor for my constant heart —
For these may change, and turn to ill,
And thus true love may sever.
But love me on, and know not why,
So hast thou the same reason still
To dote upon me ever.’

A woman will have this charm, not only over men but over her own sex; it cannot be defined, or rather it is so delicate a mixture of many gifts and qualities that it is impossible to decide on the proportions of each. Perhaps it is incompatible with very high principle; as its essence seems to consist in the most exquisite power of adaptation to varying people and still more various moods; ‘being all things to all men.’ At any rate, Molly might soon have been aware that Cynthia was not remarkable for unflinching morality; but the glamour thrown over her would have prevented Molly from any attempt at penetrating into and judging her companion’s character, even had such processes been the least in accordance with her own disposition.

Cynthia was very beautiful, and was so well aware of this fact that she had forgotten to care about it; no one with such loveliness ever appeared so little conscious of it. Molly would watch her perpetually as she moved about the room, with the free stately step of some wild animal of the forest — moving almost, as it were, to the continual sound of music. Her dress, too, though now to our ideas it would be considered ugly and disfiguring, was suited to her complexion and figure, and the fashion of it subdued within due bounds by her exquisite taste. It was inexpensive enough, and the changes in it were but few. Mrs. Gibson professed herself shocked to find that Cynthia had but four gowns, when she might have stocked herself so well, and brought over so many useful French patterns, if she had but patiently awaited her mother’s answer to the letter which she had sent announcing her return by the opportunity madame had found for her. Molly was hurt for Cynthia at all these speeches; she thought they implied that the pleasure which her mother felt in seeing her a fortnight sooner after her two years’ absence was inferior to that which she would have received from a bundle of silver-paper patterns. But Cynthia took no apparent notice of the frequent recurrence of these small complaints. Indeed, she received much of what her mother said with a kind of complete indifference, that made Mrs. Gibson hold her rather in awe; and she was much more communicative to Molly than to her own child. With regard to dress, however, Cynthia soon showed that she was her mother’s own daughter in the manner in which she could use her deft and nimble fingers. She was a capital workwoman; and, unlike Molly, who excelled in plain sewing, but had no notion of dressmaking or millinery, she could repeat the fashions she had only seen in passing along the streets of Boulogne, with one or two pretty rapid movements of her hands, as she turned and twisted the ribbons and gauze her mother furnished her with. So she refurbished Mrs. Gibson’s wardrobe; doing it all in a sort of contemptuous manner, the source of which Molly could not quite make out.

Day after day the course of these............