“Why, Papa, the other Sylvia—Sylvia Joanna, you know—has her birthday to-day, and we settled at Bournemouth that I should spend the day with her; and on Saturday, when Aunt Barbara heard of it, she said she did not want me to be intimate there, and that I must not go, and told me to write a note to say she had made a previous engagement for me.”
“And do you know that she had not done so?”
“O Papa! she could not; for when I said I would not write a lie, she never said it was true.”
“Was that what you said to your aunt?”
“Yes,”—and Kate hung her head—“I was in a passion.”
“Then, Kate, I do not wonder that Lady Barbara insisted on obedience, instead of condescending to argue with a child who could be so insolent.”
“But, Papa,” said Kate, abashed for a moment, then getting eager, “she does tell fashionable falsehoods; she says she is not at home when she is, and—”
“Stay, Kate; it is not for you to judge of grown people’s doings. Neither I nor Mary would like to use that form of denying ourselves; but it is usually understood to mean only not ready to receive visitors. In the same way, this previous engagement was evidently meant to make the refusal less discourteous, and you were not even certain it did not exist.”
“My Italian mistress did want to come on Monday,” faltered Kate, “but it was not ‘previous.’”
“Then, Kate, who was it that went beside the mark in letting us believe that Lady Barbara locked you up to make you tell falsehoods?”