"Doubtless she had her duties," says Miss Penelope, in a voice of suppressed fear. What is she going to hear next? what are these dreadful children going to say?
"Perhaps she had," said Terence. "If so, they didn't agree with her, as she was always in a bad temper. She used to give it to papa right and left, until he didn't dare to call his soul his own. When I marry, I shall take very good care my wife doesn't lead me the life my mother led my father."
"Your wife! who'd marry you?" says Kit, scornfully, which interlude gives the discussion a rest for a little time. But soon they return to the charge.
"Your mother when here had an angelic temper," says Miss Penelope. Miss Priscilla all this time seems incapable of speech.
"Well, she hadn't when there," says Terence; and then he says a dreadful thing, as vulgar as it is dreadful, that fills his aunt's heart with dismay. "She and my father fought like cat and dog," he says; and the Misses Blake feel their cup is indeed full.
"And she never would take Monica anywhere," says Kit; "so selfish!"
It is growing too terrible. Is their idol to be shattered thus before their eyes?
"Monica, was your mother unkind to you?" says Miss Penelope, in a voice full of anguish. After all these years, is the Katherine of their affections to be dragged in the dust?
Monica hesitates. She can see the grief in her aunt's face, and cannot bear to add to it. The truth is that the late Mrs. Beresford had not been beloved by her children, for reasons which it will be possible to conceive, but which would be tiresome to enumerate here. Perhaps there seldom had been a more careless or disagreeable mother.
So Monica pauses, flushes, glances nervously from right to left, and then back again, and finally rests her loving, regretful eyes full upon Miss Penelope's agitated face.