'Linda,' said Gertrude, answering rather with dignity than with anger, 'you ought to know by this time that it is not likely that I should plead false excuses. Alaric never said he had a headache.'
'He said he stayed from church to be with Uncle Bat; but when we came back we found him with you.'
'Uncle Bat went to sleep, and then he came into the drawing-room.'
The two girls said nothing more about it. Linda should have remembered that she had never breathed a word to her sister of Alaric's passion for herself. Gertrude's solemn propriety had deterred her, just as she was about to do so. How very little of that passion had Alaric breathed himself! and yet, alas! enough to fill the fond girl's heart with dreams of love, which occupied all her waking, all her sleeping thoughts. Oh! ye ruthless swains, from whose unhallowed lips fall words full of poisoned honey, do ye never think of the bitter agony of many months, of the dull misery of many years, of the cold monotony of an uncheered life, which follow so often as the consequence of your short hour of pastime?
On the Monday morning, as soon as Alaric and Charley had started for town—it was the morning on which Linda had been provoked to find that both Gertrude and Alaric had been up half an hour before they should have been—Gertrude followed her mother to her dressing-room, and with palpitating heart closed the door behind her.
Linda remained downstairs, putting away her tea and sugar, not in the best of humours; but Katie, according to her wont, ran up after her mother.
'Katie,' said Gertrude, as Katie bounced into the room, 'dearest Katie, I want to speak a word to mamma—alone. Will you mind going down just for a few minutes?' and she put her arm round her sister, and kissed her with almost unwonted tenderness.
'Go, Katie, dear,' said Mrs. Woodward; and Katie, speechless, retired.
'Gertrude has got something particular to tell mamma; something that I may not hear. I wonder what it is about,' said Katie to her second sister.
Linda's heart sank within her. 'Could it be? No, it could not, could not be, that the sweet voice which had whispered in her ears those well-remembered words, could have again whispered the same into other ears—that the very Gertrude who had warned her not to listen to such words from such lips, should have listened to them herself, and have adopted them and made them her own! It could not, could not be!' and yet Linda's heart sank low within her.