‘Mind, it is in confidence. You must never tell any one.’
‘Never. Oh, you may trust me!’ cried Constance.
‘Her half-brother,’ said Dolores; and the girl proceeded to tell Constance what she had told Maude Sefton about Mr. Flinders, and how her mother had been used to assist him out of her own earnings, and how he had met her at Exeter station, and was so disappointed to have missed her father. Constance listened most eagerly, greatly delighted to have a secret confided to her, and promising to keep it with all her might.
‘And now,’ said Dolores, ‘what shall I do? If poor Uncle Alfred writes to me, Aunt Lilias will have the letter and read it, and the Mohuns are all so stuck up; they will despise him, and very likely she will never let me have the letter.’
‘Yes, but, dear, couldn’t you write here, with my things, and tell him how it is, and tell him to write under cover to me?’
‘Dear Connie! How good you are! Yes, that would be quite delightful!’
All the confidences and all the caresses had, however, taken quite as long as the G.F.S. class, and before Constance had cleared a space on the table for Dolores’s letter, there was a summons to say that Gillian was ready to go home.
‘So early!’ said Constance. ‘I thought you would have had tea and stayed to evening service.’
‘I should like it so much,’ cried Dolores, remembering that it would spare her the black oxen in the cross-path, as well as giving her the time with her friend.
So they went down with the invitation, but Gillian replied that mamma always liked to have all together for the Catechism, and that she could not venture to leave Dolores without special permission.