“Good afternoon, Miss Haredale,” he said, “I hope this lovely weather will last for my cousin’s party at Loseby.”
The sense of unaccustomed secrecy made Amethyst give a guilty start; she dropped the letter, Sylvester picked it up, and the address in the clear-marked writing caught his eye. He noticed it, of course, by no word or look, but her crimson blush startled him.
Why should she write to a man whom, in common with Lucian Leigh, he detested; and why, if she did so, should she look so frightened and ashamed?
She dropped the letter into the box, and with a murmured excuse of being in a hurry, went back with winged footsteps, but a heavy heart.
She took herself to task for her folly in being so much startled and upset, but the shadow of half-understood evil is very frightful to a young soul; and she turned, with almost a sense of relief, from her mother’s revelations, to what she believed to be more within her comprehension, Una’s “silliness” about Major Fowler.
She had, of course, seen many girls who were “silly,” and meaning to scold and coax Una out of such folly, went straight up to her room in search of her, opening the door without waiting for an answer to her knock.
The girl was crouched up in a chair all in a heap, and glared at Amethyst under her hair, as if she would have liked to spring at her.
“What is the matter, Una?” said Amethyst. “Won’t you tell me all about it? Why are you so miserable, you poor little dear?”
“I mean to tell you. I hate to see you think the world is all sugar, when I know it is so wicked. I’ll teach you knowledge of the world.”
“Well?” said Amethyst composedly, and sitting down on the side of the bed. She was too much of a modern school-girl to be easily impressed by heroics.