Chapter Eight.
“I heard you,” Miss Matilda said in tones of immense reserve to her youngest sister on the following morning when they met on the landing at the top of the stairs, “talking from your window last night.”
Prudence blushed brightly.
“Then it was you who came to my door?”
“Yes.” Miss Matilda kept her maidenly gaze lowered to the carpet. Her expression was guilty, so that one might have supposed that she, and not the defiant young woman whom she accosted in this unexpected way, had engaged in clandestine whisperings overnight. “I was afraid Mary might wake. You were a little imprudent, I think.”
Prudence laughed. The gently spoken reproof sounded like a play on her name.
“You are a dear,” she said, and felt more kindly towards this sister whom she so little understood.
Had Miss Matilda proved less pliant to Miss Graynor’s moulding she might have developed into an ordinary human being; but she had gone down under Miss Agatha’s training, had imbibed the family traditions until she became saturated with the Graynor ideals and lost her own individuality. In her heart she sympathised with her sister’s indiscretions; but her mind condemned this conduct as unseemly and unbecoming in a girl of refinement.