Elizabeth Gaskell

“ You must make no noise, no step; but you may go in and see her. I must tell you, I'm almost certain she won't ask for you.'
'But she may, papa. I will go home on Friday, if she has not. I think she will.'
So Molly hung about the house, trying to do all she could out of the sick-room, for the comfort of those in it. They only came out for meals, or for necessary business, and found little time for talking to her, so her life was solitary enough, waiting for the call that never came. The evening of the day on which she had had the above conversation with Roger, Osborne arrived. ”

“ But though they met at the breakfast-table, they purposely avoided addressing each other. Perhaps the natural subject of conversation between the two, at such a time, would have been Osborne's long journey the night before; but he had never spoken of the place he had come from, whether north, south, east, or west, and the squire did not choose to allude to anything that might bring out what his son wished to conceal. ”

“ I will go up again if you like it. But Mrs. Jones, the nurse Dr Nicholls sent, is a very decided person. I went up while you were at dinner, and Mrs. Hamley had just taken her drops, and was on no account to be disturbed by seeing any one, much less by any excitement.'
Osborne kept walking up and down the long drawing-room, half talking to himself, half to Molly.
'I wish Roger would come. He seems to be the only one to give me a welcome. Does my father always live upstairs in my mother's rooms, Miss Gibson?'
'He has done since her last attack. ”

“ She did seem so to crave for news of him. I think she dreamed of him; and then when she wakened it was a relief to her to talk about him to me. She always seemed to associate me with him. We used to speak so much of him when we were together.'
'I don't know what we should any of us have done without you. ”

“ Then there would arise a very natural wonder as to who was Osborne's wife. Molly had not stayed so long and so intimately in the Hamley family without being well aware of the manner in which the future lady of Hamley was planned for. The squire, for instance, partly in order to show that Osborne, his heir, was above the reach of Molly Gibson, the doctor's daughter, in the early days before he knew Molly well, had often alluded to the grand, the high, and the wealthy marriage which Hamley of Hamley, as represented by his clever, brilliant, handsome son Osborne, might be expected to make. Mrs. ”