"Poor little thing!" she said, "she is grateful!" So she was more than usually kind to Betty and the girl whose heart was bursting with love and gratitude, would very willingly have lain down and allowed Kathleen to trample on her.
"What do you think of my little maid, Allan? Don't you think the child is pretty?"
"Eh, your maid? Oh yes!" Allan said. "Quite a pretty little thing!" He was thinking of something else, the fourteenth of the month was weighing rather heavily on him and his spirits.
If it had only been his father who was coming, or only Kathleen's, but that both should come, that both should bring friends of their own troubled Allan. He knew that his father's friends were not likely to find much favour with his Lordship. Allan had met most of them, he knew Cutler, a prosy, self sufficient, middle aged bore. Jobson was another of the same type. Coombe was a big man with a loud voice and vulgar aggressive manner. He told interminable stories without wit or point. They were sound men in the City, very likely, but he dreaded their advent here. For his father he felt nothing but pride and affection. He knew the old man's goodness of heart, his generous nature, his simplicity, for these he loved him and honoured him above all men. Let my Lord Gowerhurst sneer at that good honest man if he dared—if he dared—in his, Allan's presence. It was not of his father, but of Cutler, Jobson, Coombe and Company that Allan felt nervous and whom he worried about.
Kathleen had told him that her father was bringing a friend.
"Who?" Allan asked.
"I don't know, Allan, he writes, an old friend of mine—but I doubt it, very few of my father's friends were mine—I am sorry," she said frankly, "that he is coming. I know that you do not like him, Allan, I cannot wonder that you do not!" She sighed and her head drooped a little.
And Allan, looking at her, felt his heart swell with pity, for he knew what that proud spirit of hers had been called on to suffer because of her father, the Earl.
But was it pity only that made his heart swell, that made him take a step towards her, then stand hesitating?
He turned abruptly and went out into the garden. He was puzzled, uneasy, uncertain—Life had seemed so placid, the future as well as the present had seemed so certain, as certain as anything human could be. He and Kathleen understood one another so perfectly, were such firm friends, such tried companions; yet did they understand one another after all? Did he even understand himself?