“Oh, all right—I didn’t mean anything. Only I thought your mother would be vexed, perhaps,” he said, a little tartly.
CHAPTER XI.
LORD WESTBROOK.
“Vexed,” was no word to use in describing the displeasure and mortification of my poor dear mother when I boldly went straight off to her with an honest account of myself; nor, I must say, was it adequate to express my own feelings when I comprehended—dimly at first, and then with sudden, blinding clearness—the enormity of my indiscretion. I went to my own room and sat down by the bedside, with my hands in my lap, and said to myself, “Oh! if it were only ten years hence, that it might be as forgotten as if it had never happened. Oh! if Regy had never been born, and I had only girl cousins!” And when Eleanor came creeping in to look for me, I laid my burning face on her shoulder, and had a good, hearty, downright cry, and said to that kind friend and comforter, “Oh! if I had never set foot in England, Eleanor, how thankful I should be!”
I had a very bad time of it altogether. Mother and I made it up between us, for she knew I was innocent of any idea of impropriety, and was sorry to be obliged to suggest it to me; and daddy was away with uncle Armytage somewhere, and I don’t think was ever told about it—nor would he have scolded me if he had been. But when I joined the family as they were sipping their afternoon tea together, aunt Alice took me to task, in the midst of them all, and lectured me in a manner that was simply intolerable. What with her “usages of society,” and “what people would say”—on which she harped with a stupid reiteration and persistence that was the more aggravating as she knew I had heard all that was necessary on those points from my own proper guardian—and what with Bertha and Bella chiming in with their well-meant but silly little excuses for my ignorance, they drove me into a rage amongst them, and I am afraid I was impertinent. Aunt Kate was the only one who thought of laying the blame on Regy, and of course I disclaimed any advantage to be got from that on the ground that I had myself asked him to take me. Upon the whole I paid dearly for my little escapade, and not only in the immediate punishment that I suffered. I turned over a new leaf in life, so to speak, and I missed something that had graced the pages that were shut up and done with—some innocent liberty and freshness of youth—that I never found any more. It was fortunate for me, however, that a greater event occurred, to eclipse the importance of this one, before the day was over—at any rate, I thought it was fortunate for a little while.
I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, with my hands clasped round my knees, having dragged from an open drawer beside me the dress I meant to put on for dinner, and then fallen into a reverie in the midst of its tumbled folds, when Bertha and Bella burst in upon me without any ceremony of knocking at the door.
“Oh, Kitty,” exclaimed my elder cousin, flinging herself down before me, still dressed as she had come hours ago from her afternoon drive, in a huge Gainsborough hat set very much on one side, from beneath which her fringes and feathers of fluffy hair were blown all ways about her flushed face, “not that grey thing, I beg of you; your white silk, or the Brussels net, or the black and green; one of your very best, dear; for somebody is coming to dinner.”
“I know—only Regy’s friends.”
“Somebody else,” explained Bella, breaking in. “Tell her quickly, Bertha; there will be none too much time to get ourselves ready.”
“Well then, Kitty,” announced Bertha, with portentous solemnity, “Lord Westbrook is coming.”