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'Can you be ready to go up by the "Bang-up" to-night? said Mr Gibson, 'for, curiously enough, after more than twenty years of quiet practice at Hollingford, I am summoned up to-day for the first time to a consultation in London, to-morrow. I am afraid Lady Cumnor is worse, my dear. 'You don't say so? Poor dear lady! What a shock it is to me. I'm so glad I've had some breakfast.
Perhaps the contents of Lady Ogram's will would be known at Hollingford this evening. He searched vainly for Constance and for May. The former he did not see until she crossed the hall to enter one of the carriages; the latter appeared not at all. Had she, then, really left Rivenoak? Sitting in his hired brougham, in dignified solitude, he puzzled anxiously over this question.
Poor Lord Hollingford! there was nothing for it but for him to follow his sister's very explicit lead, and Molly and he walked off to their places, each heartily wishing their dance together well over. Lady Harriet flew off to Mr. Sheepshanks to secure her respectable young farmer, and Mrs. Gibson remained alone, wishing that Lady Cumnor would send one of her attendant gentlemen for her.
"Oh, and I forgot that Hollingford is to have a fine market-hall, on condition that the street leading to it is called Arabella Street her name, you know." "Oh, indeed!" murmured Dyce, and became mute. Mrs. Toplady amused herself for a moment with observation of the play of his muscles. She finished her tea. "I'll have another cup, if you please. Oh yes, we were speaking of Miss Bride.
"How nice it will be," she suddenly remarked, "when you are in Parliament! Of course you will invite us to tea on the terrace, and all that kind of thing." "I'm sure I hope I shall have the chance. My election is by no means a certainty, you know. The Tories are very strong at Hollingford." "Oh, but we're all going to work for you. When we get back to Rivenoak, I shall begin a serious campaign.
And if Lord Hollingford had not been returned for the county on the Whig interest as his father had been before him, until he had succeeded to the title it is quite probable Lord Cumnor would have considered the British constitution in danger, and the patriotism of his ancestors ungratefully ignored. But, excepting at elections, he had no notion of making Whig and Tory a party cry.
'Osborne will have had a first-rate education as good as any man in the county he'll have this property, and he's a Hamley of Hamley; not a family in the shire is as old as we are, or settled on their ground so well. Osborne may marry where he likes. If Lord Hollingford had a daughter, Osborne would have been as good a match as she could have required.
Robinson opened the door for Molly almost before the carriage had fairly drawn up at the Hall, and told her that the squire had been very anxious for her return, and had more than once sent him to an upstairs window, from which a glimpse of the hill-road between Hollingford and Hamley could be perceived, to know if the carriage was not yet in sight. Molly went into the drawing-room.
So there had been a great lull of invitations for the Gibsons to Hollingford tea-parties. Mrs.
At last she had found the man to stand against Robb the Grinder, the man of hope, a political and moral enthusiast who might sweep away the mass of rotten privilege and precedent encumbering the borough of Hollingford. She wrote to all her friends, at Hollingford and throughout the country, making known that the ideal candidate in the Liberal cause had at last been discovered.
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