"I need no thanks!" Kathleen said, "I only want Betty to say that she will come; you will come, child?"
How kind were those eyes that looked into hers, how sweet a smile there was on her Ladyship's beautiful face! It must have melted a heart of stone and Betty's warm passionate little heart was not of stone. So she broke down, sobbing and crying, she would come and glad and grateful she was, and come she would that very day if her Ladyship would but have her.
"Pack your little box, Betty," Kathleen said, "and I will send one of the men presently to fetch it for you and I think and hope you will be happy and—and maybe Betty, you will not find the old garden so changed after all. I will answer for it there are no ugly fences and the stone maid stands where she did in the middle of the lake, Betty, so—go come and see your little friend again!" She held out her kind hand, but Betty did not take it, instead she dropped suddenly onto her knees and kissed that white hand as if it had been the hand of a Queen, and so like a queen was Kathleen to the country maid, a Queen all beautiful, all generous, all kind. Queen! No, an angel from Heaven rather! And when she had gone Betty stood there, all unmindful that her grandmother was here and she spoke her thoughts aloud.
"Very willing and glad I would be," she said slowly, "very willing and glad to die for she, I would!"
Mrs. Hanson sniffed, she had no patience with such outrageous and exaggerated statements.
"Get 'ee off and pack your box," she said sharply, "and think yourself lucky, Betty Hanson, as 'ee hev found another home, and a kind mistress, too kind I be afeared! Too kind and lenient like wi' 'ee and your folly, my maid!"
CHAPTER XVII
HAROLD SCARSDALE RETURNS
Kathleen's face was very thoughtful, a little sad even, as she walked back along the white dusty road. She hardly saw the village folk, who bobbed and curtseyed to her as she passed. She saw only a sweet oval face, a glorious head of glittering hair, a pair of sad, wistful blue eyes.
"So these people do, as their betters!" she thought. "They drive and goad their children into unhappy marriages! My Lord's daughter must be made to marry thirty thousand a year, as little Betty, Mrs. Hanson's granddaughter, is to be forced into marriage with thirty shillings a week! How wrong and what a shame it all is! Money, rank, position and interest! Is there no such thing as love left in the world at all? May not a man choose his mate, a woman choose for herself from among all men, the one she loves? It seems not, in village or in city, in cottage or in palace, and I——" she paused. "I did as I was bidden and I am happier perhaps than I deserve to be!"