Kitty contemplated him a moment, icily. Then she said: “All my sympathies are with Nature.”
Kilcroney reddened, shrugged his shoulders, and replacing the linings of his pockets in their normal position, thrust his hands into them, and sauntered out of the room.
There was nothing further to be done; the moment was unpropitious.
Kitty balled the blue sheet with an angry hand, and flung it after him, and Pamela, who had never finished that phrase of directions, rose from the escritoire and picked it up.
The action was performed with so much composure that it seemed but the natural outcome of her good manners.
“Don’t give it back to me, child!” exclaimed Kitty with tartness. “Throw it into the waste paper basket. Have you wrote your message?”
Pamela walked back to the writing-table.
“I was un-bethinking myself, your Ladyship, that it would be better for me to run back myself, and choose the sprays. Miss Smithson, the person in charge of the office of a Saturday, is that disagreeable, she’d send the wrong sets on purpose. It won’t take me half an hour, my Lady.”
She tore the sheet she had begun writing upon in two, and dropped it into the elegant little gilt be-ribboned basket, which was the repository of my Lady Kilcroney’s scraps. She made a brisk curtsy and stepped out of the room.
Even Lydia’s sharp eyes failed to perceive that she had not thrown away the livery-man’s crumpled account; that she had thrust into her kerchief.