And just then, to Kate’s great wonder, in came Lady Jane, though it was full half an hour earlier than she usually left her room; and Lady Barbara looked up to her, and said, quite as if excusing herself, “Indeed, Jane, I have not been angry with her.”
And Kate, somehow, understanding that she might, flung herself down by Aunt Jane, and hid her face in her lap, not crying any more, though the sobs were not over, and feeling the fondling hands on her hair very tender and comforting, though she wondered to hear them talk as if she were asleep or deaf—or perhaps they thought their voices too low, or their words too long and fine for her to understand; nor perhaps did she, though she gathered their drift well enough, and that kind Aunt Jane was quite pleading for herself in having come to the rescue.
“I could not help it, indeed—you remember Lady de la Poer, Dr. Woodman, both—excitable, nervous temperament—almost hysterical.”
“This unfortunate intelligence—untoward coincidence—” said Lady Barbara. “But I have been trying to make her feel I am not in anger, and I hope there really was a struggle for self-control.”
Kate took her head up again at this, a little encouraged; and Lady Jane kissed her forehead, and repeated, “Aunt Barbara was not angry with you, my dear.”
“No, for I think you have tried to conquer yourself,” said Lady Barbara. She did not think it wise to tell Kate that she thought she could not help it, though oddly enough, the very thing had just been said over the child’s head, and Kate ventured on it to get up, and say quietly, “Yes, it was not Aunt Barbara’s speaking to me that made me cry, but I am so unhappy about Alice and Sylvia Joanna;” and a soft caress from Aunt Jane made her venture to go on. “It is not only the playing with them, though I do wish for that very very much indeed; but it would be so unkind, and so proud and ungrateful, to despise my own cousin’s cousins!”
This was more like the speeches Kate made in her own head than anything she had ever said to her aunts; and it was quite just besides, and not spoken in naughtiness, and Lady Barbara did not think it wrong to show that she attended to it. “You are right, Katharine,” she said; “no one wishes you to be either proud or ungrateful. I would not wish entirely to prevent you from seeing the children of the family, but it must not be till there is some acquaintance between myself and their mother, and I cannot tell whether you can be intimate with them till I know what sort of children they are. Much, too, must depend on yourself, and whether you will behave well with them.”
Kate gave a long sigh, and looked up relieved; and for some time she and her aunt were not nearly so much at war as hitherto, but seemed to be coming to a somewhat better understanding.
Yet it rather puzzled Kate. She seemed to herself to have got this favour for crying for it; and it was a belief at home, not only that nothing was got by crying, but that if by some strange chance it were, it never came to good; and she began the more to fear some disappointment about the expected Wardours.
For two or three days she was scanning every group on the sands with all her might, in hopes of some likeness to Sylvia, but at last she was taken by surprise: just as she was dressed, and Aunt Barbara was waiting in the drawing-room for Aunt Jane, there came a knock at the door, and “Mrs. Wardour” was announced.