“Tell it me again,” said she, in a low, distinct voice.
“Lisette says that Mademoiselle has orders—from whom I cannot say—that you are to remain in England, to go to a school, or to live with a governess, or to return to Ireland, or something; but whatever it is, that we are to be separated.” And again her grief burst forth and choked her words.
“I knew this would come one day,” said Kate, slowly, but without any touch of emotion. “It was a caprice that took me, and it is a caprice that deserts me.”
“Oh, don’t say that, Kate, of my own dear papa, who loves you almost as he loves me!”
“I can have nothing but words of gratitude for him, Ada, and for your mother.”
“You mean, then——”
“No matter what I mean, my sweet Ada. It may be, after all, a mercy. Who is to say whether, after another year of this sort of life, its delicious happiness should have so grown into my nature that it would tear my very heart-strings to free myself from its coils? Even now, there were days when I forgot I was a peasant girl, without home, or friends, or fortune.”
“Oh, Kate, you will break my heart if you speak this way!”
“Well, then, to talk more cheerfully. Will not that pretty hat yonder, with the long blue feather, look wondrous picturesque, as I follow the goats up the steep sides of Inchegora? and will not that gauzy scarf be a rare muffle as I gather the seaweed below the cliffs of Bengore?”
“Kate, Kate!” sobbed Ada, “how cruel you are! You know, too, that dear papa does not mean this. It is not to hardship and privation he would send you.”