Among the "county people" (as Mrs. Gibson termed them) who called
upon her as a bride, were the two young Mr. Hamleys. The Squire,
their father, had done his congratulations, as far as he ever
intended to do them, to Mr. Gibson himself when he came to the hall;
but Mrs. Hamley, unable to go and pay visits herself, anxious to show
attention to her kind doctor's new wife, and with perhaps a little
sympathetic curiosity as to how Molly and her stepmother got on
together, made her sons ride over to Hollingford with her cards and
apologies. They came into the newly-furnished drawing-room, looking
bright and fresh from their ride: Osborne first, as usual, perfectly
dressed for the occasion, and with the sort of fine manner which
sate so well upon him; Roger, looking like a strong-built, cheerful,
intelligent country farmer, followed in his brother's train. Mrs.
Gibson was dressed for receiving callers, and made the effect she
always intended to produce, of a very pretty woman, no longer in
first youth, but with such soft manners and such a caressing voice,
that people forgot to wonder what her real age might be. Molly was
better dressed than formerly; her stepmother saw after that. She
disliked anything old or shabby, or out of taste about her; it hurt
her eye; and she had already fidgeted Molly into a new amount of care
about the manner in which she put on her clothes, arranged her hair,
and was gloved and shod. Mrs. Gibson had tried to put her through a
course of rosemary washes and creams in order to improve her tanned
complexion; but about that Molly was either forgetful or rebellious,
and Mrs. Gibson could not well come up to the girl's bedroom every
night and see that she daubed her face and neck over with the
cosmetics so carefully provided for her. Still her appearance was
extremely improved, even to Osborne's critical eye. Roger sought
rather to discover in her looks and expression whether she was happy
or not; his mother had especially charged him to note all these
signs.
Osborne and Mrs. Gibson made themselves agreeable to each other
according to the approved fashion when a young man calls on a
middle-aged bride. They talked of the "Shakspeare and musical
glasses" of the day, each vieing with the other in their knowledge
of London topics. Molly heard fragments of their conversation in the
pauses of silence between Roger and herself. Her hero was coming
out in quite a new character; no longer literary or poetical, or
romantic, or critical, he was now full of the last new play, the
singers at the opera. He had the advantage over Mrs. Gibson, who, in
fact, only spoke of these things from hearsay, from listening to the
talk at the Towers, while Osborne had run up from Cambridge two or
three times to hear this, or to see that wonder of the season. But
she had the advantage over him in greater boldness of invention to
eke out her facts; and besides she had more skill in the choice and
arrangement of her words, so as to make it appear as if the opinions
that were in reality quotations, were formed by herself from actual
experience or personal observation; such as, in speaking of the
mannerisms of a famous Italian singer, she would ask,--