The woman’s face flushed, and her eyes sparkled angrily, then her lips moved as if to question, but she closed them tightly into a thin line and waited, knowing from old experience that it would not be long before her young mistress’ grief and trouble would be poured into er ear.
She was quiet, and clasping the agitated girl once lore in her arms, she began to rock herself slowly to and fro.
“No, no! don’t,” cried Kate, peevishly, and she raised her head once more, looking handsomer than ever in her anger and indignation. “I am no longer a child. Aunt and uncle have encouraged it. This hateful money is at the bottom of it all. They wish me to marry him. Pah! he makes me shudder with disgust. And how could I even think of such a horror with all this terrible trouble so new.”
Eliza half closed her eyes and nodded her head, while her mouth seemed almost to disappear.
“It is cruel—it is horrible,” Kate continued. “They have encouraged it all through. Even aunt, with her sickly worship of her wretched spoiled boy. Oh, what a poor, pitiful, weak creature she must have thought me. No one seemed to understand me but Mr Garstang.”
Eliza knit her brows a little at his name, but she remained silent, and by slow degrees she was put in possession of all that had taken place; and then, faint and weary, Kate let her head sink down till her forehead rested once more upon the breast where she had so often sunk to rest.
“Oh, the hateful money!” she sighed, as the tears came at last. “Let him have it. What is it to me? But I cannot stop here, nurse; it is impossible. We must go at once. Uncle is my guardian, but surely he cannot force me to stay against my inclination. If I remained here it would kill me. Nurse,” she cried, with a display of determination that the woman had never seen in her before, “you must pack up what is necessary, and to-morrow we will go. It would be easy to stay at some hotel till we found a place—a furnished cottage just big enough for us two; anywhere so that we could be at peace. We could be happier then—Why don’t you speak to me when I want comfort in my trouble?”
“Because no words of mine could give you the comfort you need, my dear. Don’t you know that my heart bleeds for you, and that always when my poor darling child has suffered I have suffered, too?”
“Yes, yes, dear; I know,” said Kate, raising her face to kiss the woman passionately. “I do know. Don’t take any notice of what I said. All this has made me feel so wickedly angry, and as if I hated the whole world.”
“Don’t I know my darling too well to mind a few hasty words?” said the woman, softly. “Say what you please. If it is angry I know it only comes from the lips, and there is something for me always in my darling’s heart.”