“You will trust me, when I have been good a long time, Aunt Jane?”
“My dear, I would trust you any time, you know; but then that’s no use. I can’t judge; and your Aunt Barbara says, after such lawlessness, you need very experienced training to root out old associations.”
Perhaps the aunts were more shocked than was quite needful and treated Kate as if she had been older and known better what she was doing; but they were sincere in their horror at her offence; and once she even heard Lady Barbara saying to Mr. Mercer that there seemed to be a doom on the family—in the loss of the promising young man—and—
The words were not spoken, but Kate knew that she was this greatest of all misfortunes to the family.
Poor child! In the midst of all this, there was one comfort. She had not put aside what Mr. Wardour had told her about the Comforter she could always have. She did say her prayers as she had never said them before, and she looked out in the Psalms and Lessons for comforting verses. She knew she had done very wrong, and she asked with all the strength of her heart to be forgiven, and made less unhappy, and that people might be kinder to her. Sometimes she thought no help was coming, and that her prayers did no good, but she went on; and then, perhaps, she got a kind little caress from Lady Jane, or Mr. Mercer spoke good-naturedly to her, or Lady Barbara granted her some little favour, and she felt as if there was hope and things were getting better; and she took courage all the more to pray that Uncle Giles might not be very hard upon her, nor the Lord Chancellor very cruel.
CHAPTER XIV.
A fortnight had passed, and had seemed nearly as long as a year, since Kate’s return from Oldburgh, when one afternoon, when she was lazily turning over the leaves of a story-book that she knew so well by heart that she could go over it in the twilight, she began to gather from her aunt’s words that somebody was coming.
They never told her anything direct; but by listening a little more attentively to what they were saying, she found out that a letter—no, a telegram—had come while she was at her lessons; that Aunt Barbara had been taking rooms at a hotel; that she was insisting that Jane should not imagine they would come to-night—they would not come till the last train, and then neither of them would be equal—
“Poor dear Emily! But could we not just drive to the hotel and meet them? It will be so dreary for them.”
“You go out at night! and for such a meeting! when you ought to be keeping yourself as quiet as possible! No, depend upon it they will prefer getting in quietly, and resting to-night; and Giles, perhaps, will step in to breakfast in the morning.”