"When I went to school! No, I should think not," said Kitty, with her giddiest laugh. "I have locked up my lesson books and thrown away the key. So you must not lecture me on my studies as you used to do, Mr. Vivian."
"I should not presume to do so," he said, with rather unnecessary stiffness.
"But you used to do it! Have you forgotten?" asked Kitty, peeping up at him archly from under her long, curling eyelashes. There was a momentary smile upon his lips, but it disappeared as he answered quietly:—
"What was allowable when you were a child, would justly be resented by you now, Miss Heron."
"I should not resent it; indeed I should not mind," said Kitty, eagerly. "I should like it: I always like being lectured, and told what I ought to do. I should be glad if you would scold me again about my reading; I have nobody to tell me anything now."
"I could not possibly take the responsibility," said Rupert. "If you have thrown away the key of your book-box, Miss Heron, I don't think that you will be anxious to find it again."
"Oh, but the lock could be picked!" cried Kitty, and then repented her words, for Rupert's impassive face showed no interest beyond that required by politeness. The tears were very near her eyes, but she got rid of them somehow, and plunged into a neat and frosty style of conversation which she heartily detested. "This is Strathleckie; you have never seen it before, I think? It is on the Leckie property, but it is not an old place like Netherglen. I think it was built in 1840."
"Not a very good style of architecture," said Rupert, scanning it with an attentive eye.
"A good style of architecture, indeed!" commented Kitty to herself, as she ran away to her own room, after committing Mr. Vivian to the care of her step-mother, who was lying on a sofa in the drawing-room, quite ready to unfold her views about the higher education of girls. "What a piece of ice he is! He used not to be so frigid. I wonder if we offended him in any way before we left London. He has never been nice since then. Nice? He is simply hateful!" and Kitty stamped on the floor of her bed-room with alarming vehemence, but the crystal drops that had been so long repressed were trembling on her eyelashes, and giving to her face the grieved look of a child.
Meanwhile Vivian was thinking:—"What a pity she is so spoilt! A coquettish, hare-brained flirt: that is all that she is now, and she promised to be a sweet little woman two years ago! What business had she to be out walking with Hugo Luttrell? I should have heard of it if they were going to be married. I suppose she has had nobody to look after her. And yet Miss Murray always struck me as a sensible, staid kind of girl. Why can she not keep her cousin in order?" And then Rupert was conscious of a certain sense of impatience for Kitty's return, much as he disapproved of her alluring ways.