The autumn drifted away through all its seasons. The golden
corn-harvest, the walks through the stubble-fields, and rambles into
hazel-copses in search of nuts; the stripping of the apple-orchards
of their ruddy fruit, amid the joyous cries and shouts of watching
children; and the gorgeous tulip-like colouring of the later time had
now come on with the shortening days. There was comparative silence
in the land, excepting for the distant shots, and the whirr of the
partridges as they rose up from the field.
Ever since Miss Browning's unlucky conversation, things had been
ajar in the Gibsons' house. Cynthia seemed to keep every one out at
(mental) arms'-length; and particularly avoided any private talks
with Molly. Mrs. Gibson, still cherishing a grudge against Miss
Browning for her implied accusation of not looking enough after
Molly, chose to exercise a most wearying supervision over the poor
girl. It was, "Where have you been, child?" "Who did you see?" "Who
was that letter from?" "Why were you so long out when you had only
to go to so-and-so?" just as if Molly had really been detected in
carrying on some underhand intercourse. She answered every question
asked of her with the simple truthfulness of perfect innocence;
but the inquiries (although she read their motive, and knew that
they arose from no especial suspicion of her conduct, but only that
Mrs. Gibson might be able to say that she looked well after her
stepdaughter) chafed her inexpressibly. Very often she did not go out
at all, sooner than have to give a plan of her intended proceedings,
when perhaps she had no plan at all,--only thought of wandering out
at her own sweet will, and of taking pleasure in the bright solemn
fading of the year. It was a very heavy time for Molly,--zest and
life had fled, and left so many of the old delights mere shells of
seeming. She thought it was that her youth had fled; at nineteen!
Cynthia was no longer the same, somehow: and perhaps Cynthia's change
would injure her in the distant Roger's opinion. Her stepmother
seemed almost kind in comparison with Cynthia's withdrawal of her
heart; Mrs. Gibson worried her, to be sure, with all these forms of
watching over her; but in all her other ways, she, at any rate, was
the same. Yet Cynthia herself seemed anxious and care-worn, though
she would not speak of her anxieties to Molly. And then the poor girl
in her goodness would blame herself for feeling Cynthia's change of
manner; for as Molly said to herself, "If it is hard work for me to
help always fretting after Roger, and wondering where he is, and how
he is, what must it be for her?"