As Kate hurried through the passageways toward Miss Frazier’s bedroom she wondered whether she really could. What excuse should she give for disturbing Aunt Katherine while she was dressing?
There was no time to think that out. Aunt Katherine called “Come,” almost before Kate’s knuckles tapped the door.
CHAPTER XX
A FAREWELL IN THE DARK
Miss Frazier was sitting before her dressing table attired in a blue silk dressing-robe.
“Nothing the matter, Kate?” she asked, the minute that she realized it was Kate and not one of the servants who had entered. “Bertha tells me Elsie is better. I am glad I was able to get back for dinner, after all. Both you and Elsie have been on my mind. Was it a dull day?”
“No, not dull a bit.” If Aunt Katherine only knew how very far from dull!
Aunt Katherine put down the comb with which she had been “fluffing” her hair. She looked at Kate questioningly. Why was her niece here, and looking so discomfited, at the dressing hour?
Kate had already spied the note, across the room, pinned to the pincushion on the bureau’s top. To the corner of her eye it appeared as big as a flag! How had Miss Frazier ever avoided seeing it? It fairly shrieked in the room.
“Well?” Her aunt was expecting something of her. She must say something to make her presence reasonable. But what excuse could she ever make to go ’way across the big room to that bureau? In this plight Kate blurted out the news that her mother was there.
“Your mother!”