“Oh, no, I never could! Papa was so shocked!” and she was again covered with confusion at the thought.
“But,” added her uncle, “it is not as if you had not gone to older and better friends than any you have ever had, my poor child. I am afraid you have been much tried, and have not had a happy life since you left Oldburgh.”
“I have always been naughty,” said Kate.
“Then we must try if your Aunt Emily can help you to be good. Will you try to be as like her own child to her as you can, Katharine?”
“And to you,” actually whispered Kate; for somehow at that moment she cared much more for the stern uncle than the gentle aunt.
He lifted her up and kissed her, but set her down again with the sigh that told how little she could make up to him for the son he had left in Egypt. Yet, perhaps that sigh made Kate long with more fervent love for some way of being so very good and affectionate as quite to make him happy, than if he had received her demonstration as if satisfied by it.
CHAPTER XV.
Nothing of note passed during the rest of the evening. Mrs. Umfraville came home; but Kate had fallen back into the shy fit that rendered her unwilling to begin on what was personal, and the Colonel waited to talk it over with his wife alone before saying any more.
Besides, there were things far more near to them than their little great-niece, and Mrs. Umfraville could not see Lord de la Poer without having her heart very full of the sons to whom he had been so kind. Again they sat round the fire, and this time in the dark, while once more Giles and Frank and all their ways were talked over and over, and Kate was forgotten; but she was not sitting alone in the dark window—no, she had a footstool close to her uncle, and sat resting her head upon his knee, her eyes seeking red caverns in the coals, her heart in a strange peaceful rest, her ears listening to the mother’s subdued tender tones in speaking of her boys, and the friend’s voice of sympathy and affection. Her uncle leant back and did not speak at all; but the other two went on and on, and Mrs. Umfraville seemed to be drinking in every little trait of her boys’ English life, not weeping over it, but absolutely smiling when it was something droll or characteristic.
Kate felt subdued and reverent, and loved her new relations more and more for their sorrows; and she began to dream out castles of the wonderful goodness by which she would comfort them; then she looked for her uncle’s hand to see if she could dare to stroke it, but one was over his brow, the other out of reach, and she was shy of doing anything.