He was surprised to find her in a state of great distress, shedding furtive tears, and trying to hide a face eloquent of grief.
“May I ask what’s the matter?” he asked, when she had begun to talk about the flowers and the trees, in a rather broken and unmanageable voice.
“Oh, I don’t know whether I ought to tell you!”
“Well, look here. I’ll go as far as the wall that shuts in the kitchen-garden; that’s on the other side of the house, you know. I’ll walk very slowly, and if I find any caterpillars on the gooseberries I’ll pick them off. That will give you a long time. And when I come back I shall expect you to have made up your mind whether you can tell me or not. Only,” added he wistfully, “I do hope you will make up your mind that you can; for I’m ‘dying of curiosity,’ as the ladies say.”
“No, they don’t say that,” said Mabin cantankerously. “Women are much less curious than the men, really. I wouldn’t have heard what I did for worlds if I could have helped it. And you are ‘dying’ to know it!”
“Well, I won’t argue with you,” replied Rudolph philosophically, as he walked slowly, according to his promise, in the direction of the kitchen-garden.
Mabin watched him, drying her eyes, and asking herself whether there would be any harm in confiding in him. She felt the want of some one of whom she could take counsel in this extremely embarrassing situation for a young girl to find herself in. If only Mrs. Haybrow had been at hand! She was a motherly woman, whose sympathy could be as much relied upon as her advice. Not once did it occur to the girl to write to her step-mother, who would have consulted Mr. Rose, with results disastrous to the reputation of poor little Mrs. Dale. For it was not to be supposed that a father could allow his daughter to remain in the house of a lady about whom there was certainly more than a suspicion of irregularity of some sort.
She was pondering these things, in a helpless and bewildered fashion, anxious to do right, and not quite certain where the right lay, when she heard a firm step on the gravel path, and, looking round, saw that the austere-looking lady who had descended so abruptly upon Mrs. Dale was coming toward her.
Mabin would have liked to run away, and did indeed give one glance and make one step, in the direction of the little path between the yews which led round to the kitchen garden.
But the person she had to deal with was not to be put off in that manner.