“No one, but I haven’t decided, only if I do decide that Kingsworth ought to belong to Emberance, I shall give it to her. That’s all.”
She spoke with a blunt simplicity, that jarred on Major Clare. If she had been woman enough to care for him, he thought she could not have checked his love tale with her scruple. She paused, half choked with the effort of speaking, and a sudden whirl of temptation seized the Major’s soul—Emberance! Emberance the heiress! What then? What did the child mean? Was there a flaw in her title? He hesitated and was silent, and forgot that the child was a woman after all, though in her very simplicity unable to understand a doubt.
She saw the test that she had never meant for a test, tell its tale. She knew the sacrifice that honour demanded, she knew how she must suffer for her father’s sin.
“He only cared for Kingsworth!” she thought, “he doesn’t love me!” and without giving Major Clare a moment’s time to achieve the self-conquest, on which he would probably have resolved, without letting him adjust his thoughts or his feelings, she sprang up from the hearth-rug.
“You needn’t tell me the rest of your story now. I don’t want to hear any more of it. I shall go to tea,” and she fled from him before he could say a word. She threw away her chance, where an older or more prudent woman would have kept it. The question was if it were worth keeping. He did not rush after her, and catch her, and silence all her doubts with one vehement protest, but he stamped his foot with anger at her impatience and want of confidence, and believed that he would have been true to her had she given him the chance.
Kate rushed into the drawing-room because it was the easiest way of escape from him, and not till she was there in the midst of the group of girls did she become conscious that she was trembling, and almost sobbing, hardly able to make a pretence of composure.
“Where’s Uncle Bob?” said Minnie.
Kate murmured something about the dining-room. Emberance glanced at her, and said,—
“Kitty, we mustn’t stay for tea, it is so dark, let us go home. Come,—come and put your hat on.”
Rosa and Minnie were not so utterly devoid of expectation that “something might have happened,” as to offer any objection to this proposal, and Kate hurried away with scarcely a word of farewell. She sped along the lane, still in silence, and Emberance thought it better not to speak to her, though much at a loss to know what could have passed. Surely no happy emotion could take such a form as this, such bitter sobs could not come of any mere excitement and agitation.