It seemed to him this evening that Molly was looking particularly nice and ladylike—or, in the language of the day, “pleasing and genteel.” She was not pretty; Jack would have said that he did not wish her to be pretty. He liked her better as she was. But she was not without her own measure of attractiveness.
“Of course you would wish it,” Molly added decisively. “In your place I would do so. And if—if I could be a soldier, Jack, I would feel as you do. I would wish to go where Sir John goes. ’Tis a thousand pities I am a girl and cannot be a soldier.”
“You would wish to go to the Indies, if I were to stay at home?”
Molly smiled at the conceit, as it seemed to her.
“’Tis vastly more likely that you may be the one to go and I to be the stay-at-home.” She did not speak as if it were in any sense a distressing question, though as a secondary consideration she remarked placidly, “And I should miss you, Jack.”
“As much as ever you profess to miss Roy?”
“Jack—why, Jack, what a question to ask! Roy is my twin. He is more to me than all the whole world beside. He always will be more. If I did not see Roy for fifteen years—for fifty years!—it would make no difference! Oh, none whatever! Never in my life shall I care for another as I care for Roy!”
“Never, never, never!” repeated Molly. “I love my father and my mother dearly, and I love Polly, and I like you too, Jack. But Roy—Roy is more to me than all. If I could see Roy——”
“That is vastly well, Molly! But wait—wait till your time shall come—till somebody will be more to you than even Roy.”
“Never!” reiterated Molly. “You mean that one day I shall have a particular preference for—for some gallant gentleman, Jack. Nay, but I shall never marry, for I could not care for any beyond my caring for Roy. And so that matter is for ever settled!”
Jack was silent—perhaps a degree nettled by Molly’s assured indifference. He did not count himself in love with Molly; but he wanted her to love him.
“’Tis no more my mode than yours to change and change about. Some people sometimes would seem to forget.” That slight pucker came again to her smooth brow.
For one instant Jack imagined the words to be a possible reflection on himself, despite what went before, and his lips opened in ready protest. Then he saw where Molly was gazing; and as his glance followed her lead, his forehead drew into, not a mere pucker, but a frown.