“And yet, if I were Mademoiselle's friend instead of her servant, I should counsel her to bear it.”
“But I will not,” cried Kate, indignantly. “Lady Hester shall know of your conduct this very instant.”
“One moment, Mademoiselle, just one moment,” said Nina, interposing herself between Kate and the door. “My tongue is oftentimes too ready, and I say things for which I am deeply sorry afterwards. Forgive me, I beg and beseech you, if I have offended; reject my counsels, disdain my assistance, if you will, but do not endanger yourself in an instant of anger. If you have but little control over your temper, I have even less over mine; pass out of that door as my enemy, and I am yours to the last hour of my life.”
There was a strange and almost incongruous mixture of feeling in the way she uttered these words; at one moment abject in submission, and at the next hurling a defiance as haughty as though she were an injured equal. The conflict of the girl's passion, which first flushed, now left her pale as death, and trembling in every limb. Her emotion bespoke the most intense feeling, and Kate stood like one spellbound, before her. Her anger had already passed away, and she looked with almost a sense of compassion at the excited features and heaving bosom of the Spanish girl.
“You wrong yourself and me too, Nina,” said Kate Dalton, at last. “I have every trust in your fidelity, but I have no occasion to test it.”
“Be it so, Mademoiselle,” replied the other, with a courtesy.
“Then all is forgotten,” said Kate, affecting a gayety she could not feel; “and now let me hasten downstairs, for I am already late.”
“The Prince will have thought it an hour, Mademoiselle,” said the girl; the quiet demureness of her manner depriving the words of any semblance of impertinence. If Kate looked gravely, perhaps some little secret source of pleasure lay hid within her heart; and in the glance she gave at her glass, there was an air of conscious triumph that did not escape the lynx-eyed Nina.
“My Lady is waiting dinner, Miss Dalton,” said a servant, as he tapped at the door; and Kate, with many a trouble warring in her breast, hastened downstairs, in all the pride of a loveliness that never was more conspicuous.