be defined.  But Molly, for all her clear conscience and her brave heart, felt acutely that she was only tolerated, not welcomed.  She caught the buzzing whispers of the two Miss Oakeses’, who, when they first met the heroine of the prevailing scandal, looked at her askance, and criticized her pretensions to good looks, with hardly an attempt at under-tones.  Molly tried to be thankful that her father was not in the mood for visiting.  She was even glad that her stepmother was too much of an invalid to come out, when she felt thus slighted, and as it were, degraded from her place.  Miss Browning herself, that true old friend, spoke to her with chilling dignity, and much reserve, for she had never heard a word from Mr. Gibson since the evening when she had put herself to so much pain to tell him of the disagreeable rumours affecting his daughter.

Only Miss Phoebe would seek out Molly with even more than her former tenderness; and this tried Molly’s calmness more than all the slights put together.  The soft hand, pressing hers under the table,—­the continual appeals to her, so as to bring her back into the conversation, touched Molly almost to shedding tears.  Sometimes the poor girl wondered to herself whether this change in the behaviour of her acquaintances was not a mere fancy of hers; whether, if she had never had that conversation with her father, in which she had borne herself so bravely at the time, she should have discovered the difference in their treatment of her.  She never told her father how she felt these perpetual small slights; she had chosen to bear the burden of her own free will; nay, more, she had insisted on being allowed to do so; and it was not for her to grieve him now by showing that she shrank from the consequences of her own act.  So she never even made an excuse for not going into the small gaieties, or mingling with the society of Hollingford.  Only she suddenly let go the stretch of restraint she was living in, when one evening her father told her that he was really anxious about Mrs Gibson’s cough, and should like Molly to give up a party at Mrs Goodenough’s, to which they were all three invited, but to Which Molly alone was going.  Molly’s heart leaped up at the thoughts of stopping at home, even though the next moment she had to blame herself for rejoicing at a reprieve that was purchased by another’s suffering.  However, the remedies prescribed by her husband did Mrs Gibson good; and she was particularly grateful and caressing to Molly.

‘Really, dear!’ said she, stroking Molly’s head, ’I think your hair is getting softer, and losing that disagreeable crisp curly feeling.’

Then Molly knew that her stepmother was in high good-humour; the smoothness or curliness of her hair was a sure test of the favour in which Mrs. Gibson held her at the moment.