Instead of answering, Miss Scott produced a small newspaper cutting, which she had carried inside her glove with the evident intention of showing it to him. He took it, read it, and slipped it into his pocket with a rather harsh little laugh. “That was ingenious,” he said; “but the idea that you, of all people, could ever fulfil such outrageous conditions!”
“I’m perfectly satisfactory, you see. I fill the place very well, and Lady Jane is kindness itself.”
“I suppose that hideous frock is also meant to enhance the effect?”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, indeed it does! Most decidedly! But I should have thought that what has happened to you would have been quite enough to satisfy my mother, without making it so much worse.”
By this time they were up on the moor, which began not more than half a mile from the great house. As Lionel spoke the last words he looked sadly at Miss Scott’s blotched face; but it hurt him to see it, and he looked away at once, following his sisters’ movements with his eyes. At that very moment he saw them both stoop suddenly to pick up stones from the rough moorland road; having armed themselves, they dashed away like greyhounds from the leash, straight across the moor, in a direction which would soon take them out of sight in the hollow beyond. Miss Scott was watching them too, and showed signs of wishing to give chase at once, but Lionel stopped her.
“They’ve probably seen a cat,” he said quietly.
Miss Scott, who knew nothing about moors, did not understand.
“Cats kill the young birds,” Lionel explained. “The best thing we can do is to sit down and wait. It won’t hurt them to have a good run.”
As Miss Scott sat down on a boulder by the roadside, he caught sight of the thick sole of her right shoe for the first time. He had often seen cripples wearing just such a shoe on one foot, and he started a little and drew his breath sharply between his teeth as one does at a painful sight. She understood, but was silent for a moment, though she instantly drew back her foot under the edge of her tweed skirt.