Wives and Daughters Part II

Mrs Hamley dies, leaving the squire miserable and alone. Osborne has been in a major scrape, having failed at Cambridge, then got into financial trouble through leading an extravagant lifestyle. He comes home but his father is angry with him. The Hamleys are going through a very unhappy phase, as the squire has money troubles and Osborne has added to them. Molly is pleased when Cynthia comes home and is happy to have a new sister. She is a very pretty, warm, charming girl, and they soon become friends, though Cynthia has a prickly relationship with her own Mother. Molly does not much like Mrs Gibson, realising that she is silly, often dishonest in small things and vain. Cynthia feels angry that her mother neglected her, spending as much time as she could with the Cumnors, and sending her daughter off on visits or to school. However Mrs Gibson tries to be a good stepmother to Molly, though more because she wants to be seen as sweet natured than out of genuine good feeling. She is pleased when the 2 Hamley sons start to visit regularly.. but not so pleased when Roger shows signs of being in love with Cynthia. He is the second son and Mrs Gibson who is very affected, professes to find him coarse by comparison with Osborne who is elegant and genteel. Molly enjoys being with Cynthia. Her friends in Hollingford are the Miss Brownings, the daughters of the late Vicar, who are kindly but not very clever... and middle aged. Mrs Gibson becomes irritated when Lady Harriet, the youngest of the Cumnor girls, who is still unmarried, becomes friendly with Molly... During one of Molly's visits to the Hamley house, she overhears Roger telling Osborne that there is a letter from his, Osborne's wife. THe brothers tell her that the marriage is a secret and that they are begging her not to speak of it, which she promises to do. Another friend they make at this stage is Mr Preston, the bailiff of the Cumnor estate, who has taken to socialising in the town.. but noone realises that he is doing this because he is in love with Cynthia, and is trying to get her to become openly engaged to him. However, Roger has proposed to Cynthia; she is reluctant to get engaged, and tells him she will wait for him but she does not want theirs to be a formal engagement. He is going away on a trip to Africa to study natural history, and he will be in some danger, so he agrees to have an informal private engagment, known only to his family and hers. Eventually, Molly learns that Mr Preston lent Cynthia some money a few years earlier when she was only 16 and had no pretty dresses, and he asked her to marry him then. Molly finds Cynthia and Mr Preston arguing, out in the countryside, and her step sister tells her the story. She explains that she was attracted to Preston then, he was a handsome man and she was only 16. But she felt uneasy at a secret engagement, and then when a little older, a girl at her school talked about him.... He mentioned how he flirted with a pretty widow and how the widow was infatuated with him and trying to lure him into marriage. Cynthia realised that Preston was talking about her own mother and she grew angry and decided to end the engagment. But he refused to listen to her, even when she tried to repay him the money he'd lent her. Now she's engaged to Roger, and really wants to finish wit Preston but he wont agree to this.