Lily felt thoroughly baffled by Miss Cleeve, and could not decide whether or not the governess had penetrated the motive of her artless enquiries.
Because she felt ashamed of her own attempts at solving the mystery that was in the air, she was sure that she was being naughty again.
When she went downstairs to the dining-room, her mother and Miss Cleeve were already there, talking in furtive tones to one another. Eleanor broke off the instant that Lily appeared and looked at her in rather a startled way, but Miss Cleeve, with the same determined naturalness with which she had spoken upstairs, uttered her final remark quite loud:
"So I thought perhaps a word to the wise, Mrs. Stellenthorpe——"
"Quite right, Miss Cleeve, thank you. I shall take care. Anyway it won't be very long now before——"
They both looked at Lily, who suddenly felt so uncomfortable that, to cover her own confusion, she almost involuntarily cried out: "Before what, Mother?"
Her mother and Miss Cleeve exchanged glances in a way that made Lily feel unutterably small and foolish and ignorant.
To her deep mortification, she felt her face burning with angry scarlet, although without knowing why.
"Poor little thing!" said Eleanor, and actually laughed, causing all Lily's inchoate disconcertment to culminate in a silent, furious resolution, that never again would she ask any of them about anything, so long as she lived.
The impassioned, childishly formed determination was not of a nature to endure. The inexplicable resentment that had caused it, Lily never forgot.