doors of Cumnor Towers. Back again to the town; another picking up of
womankind in their best clothes, and another return, and so on till the
whole party were assembled either in the house or in the really
beautiful gardens. After the proper amount of exhibition on the one
part, and admiration on the other, had been done, there was a collation
for the visitors, and some more display and admiration of the treasures
inside the house. Towards four o'clock, coffee was brought round; and
this was a signal of the approaching carriage that was to take them
back to their own homes; whither they returned with the happy
consciousness of a well-spent day, but with some fatigue at the long-
continued exertion of behaving their best, and talking on stilts for so
many hours. Nor were Lady Cumnor and her daughters free from something
of the same self-approbation, and something, too, of the same fatigue;
the fatigue that always follows on conscious efforts to behave as will
best please the society you are in.

For the first time in her life, Molly Gibson was to be included among
the guests at the Towers. She was much too young to be a visitor at the
school, so it was not on that account that she was to go; but it had so
happened that one day when Lord Cumnor was on a 'pottering' expedition,
he had met Mr. Gibson, _the_ doctor of the neighbourhood, coming out of
the farm-house my lord was entering; and having some small question to
ask the surgeon (Lord Cumnor seldom passed any one of his acquaintance
without asking a question of some sort--not always attending to the
answer; it was his mode of conversation), he accompanied Mr. Gibson to
the out-building, to a ring in the wall of which the surgeon's horse
was fastened. Molly was there too, sitting square and quiet on her
rough little pony, waiting for her father. Her grave eyes opened large
and wide at the close neighbourhood and evident advance of 'the earl';
for to her little imagination the grey-haired, red-faced, somewhat