“La! missy,—young ladies shouldn’t climb ladders!”
“You never were a young lady, Dickson,” said Katharine, laughing, while her foot still twitched impatiently.
“La! no, Miss Katharine, that I never was,—I’ve been man and boy this seventy year.”
“Then you don’t know how much nicer it is to be anything else!” said Katharine. “But the peaches are nice, thank you,” she added, taking one, “though this place is to life, what peaches are to roast mutton—cloying.”
She laughed again as she spoke, subsiding into the ordinary discontent of a well accustomed grievance. For it was no new thing for Katharine Kingsworth to wish herself anywhere but at Applehurst. Had she known how good a right she had to another home and to other interests, she might have been still less willing to endure her seclusion. But though she did not know her own family history, the sad fact that had prompted her mother, while still a young woman, to bury herself and her child at Applehurst was well-known to several people.
When that stern resolution had come to the new made widow, as she looked round on Kingsworth, and thought of the terrible doubt in which her husband’s fate was involved, thought of the way in which the country round must regard her daughter’s inheritance, a great horror of the place weighed on her. The Canon and Mr Macclesfield, the family man of business, might manage the estate as they liked,—she would never live there, never go there, and Katharine should not grow up where every one looked askance at her.
It was a vehement, one-sided resolution, and Canon Kingsworth did not approve of it; but as, of course, Katharine’s minority had never been contemplated, the will named no personal guardians for her, and he could not, if he would, have taken her from her mother’s charge. Applehurst belonged to Mrs Kingsworth herself, and thither she betook herself with her year-old baby, and there, with one short interval, she had remained ever since. Katharine was now a woman, and even her mother began to feel that something more was due to her.
Mrs Kingsworth was a woman of very strong principles and perhaps not very tender feelings. She was clever, high-spirited, and very handsome, when as Mary Lacy she had married George Kingsworth, and had he been worthy of her, might have softened into an excellent woman. But when she discovered his falsity, neither her love nor his terrible death threw any softening veil over her disappointment. She shuddered at her own disgrace yet more than at his, and every association connected with him was hateful to her. She was really perfectly unworldly, and she did not care at all for the wealth and position that had tempted him.
She took Katharine away, determined to rear her up in high, stern principles, and never to allow her to become accustomed to the life of an heiress. Let her be happy and know that she could be happy without Kingsworth, and on the day she was twenty-one let her give it back to her cousin Emberance.
This was the clue to Mrs Kingsworth’s conduct, this was the hope, nay, the resolve of her life, and therefore she brought up Katharine to be independent of luxuries and of society, therefore she secluded her from all intercourse with those of her own rank, fearing lest any marriage engagement might tie her hands, or any preference warp her judgment, before the day when she could legally free herself from the weight of her wealth.