“I don’t think you have been at all silly in thinking Major Clare liked you. Any one would have thought so,” said Emberance, warmly.
Kate turned and kissed her, while Emberance went on.
“But how can you tell—how can you possibly tell that he doesn’t really care about you? What makes you think so?”
“I don’t think I can tell you,” said Kate; “but I do know that he meant—meant to marry me because—I was rich. No, I cannot tell you how I found it out.”
“Oh, Kitty, are you sure? I don’t think it can have been all that.”
“Well, it is enough if it was partly that,” said Kate disdainfully, “I will never listen to him any more.” Emberance was puzzled, she could not tell how the discovery had come about, and moreover, she guessed that the facts were more complicated than Kate supposed. She saw that Kate was angry, and sore, and miserable, full of pain and disappointment; but she doubted if the very depths of her heart had been touched, thinking that if so, she would have been more ready to find excuses for her lover.
“Kate,” she said, “sometimes I have felt doubtful whether Major Clare was quite in earnest. I think he is rather a flirt, do you know?”
“No, he is a fortune-hunter,” said Kate, with great decision. She cried again as she spoke. It was a bitter experience even if it might have been bitterer still.
“Mamma is right,” she said, “it is hateful to be rich or to care about it.”
She kept her secret, Emberance could not tell what had passed, and Kate never told her, and never talked about her disappointment any more. She held her tongue, and felt brave and strong in her anger. Her mother hoped that the change in her ways showed that she was reflecting on her position altogether, and Kate said no word, not even when she heard that Major Clare had gone away on another visit. She was too straightforward to have expected him to try again to “deceive her,” as she called it; but as she stood alone, and looked out towards the Vicarage, there came over the poor child all in a minute the weariest feeling of wishing that he had. There came to her a moment, when if Major Clare had been beside her and spoken tenderly to her again, she would not have cared about asking the reason, would not, could not have turned away,—a moment when all her scruples seemed utterly valueless, compared to the love that they had cost her. Kate could not know that the sick pain of that hour of ungratified yearning was a light price to pay for the inheritance of her mother’s honesty which had saved her from her mother’s fate.