“Well, well—we’ll see.”
“I thought I was very fond of Mr Prayle, aunt dear; and then I grew sure that I was, when I saw how he was always being shut up in the study with Kate, and it—it—”
“Speak out, my dear,” said Aunt Sophia gravely.
“It made me feel so miserable.”
Aunt Sophia’s face puckered, and she bowed her head.
“Then I said that it was wicked and degrading to think what I did, and I drove such thoughts away, and tried to believe that it was all Cousin James’s affairs; and then I saw something else; but I would not believe it was true till this morning.”
“Well, Naomi, my child, and what was it?”
“Why, aunt—Oh, I don’t like to confess—it was so shameless and unmaidenly; but I thought I loved him so very much. I—I—don’t like to confess.”
“Not to me, my dear?”
“Yes, yes; I will, aunt dear—I will,” cried the girl, whose cheeks were now aflame. “It’s about a fortnight ago that one evening, when we were all sitting in the drawing-room with the windows open, and it was so beautiful and soft and warm, Mr Prayle got up and came across and talked to me for a few minutes. It was only about that sketch I was making, and he did not say much, but he said it in such a way that it set my heart beating; and when he left the room, I fancied it meant something. So I got up, feeling terribly guilty, and went out of the window on to the lawn and then down to the rose garden, and picked two or three buds. Then I went round to the grass path where Mr Prayle walks up and down so much with his book.”