“One must be doing something,” he answered.
She hardly seemed to heed his reply. “It is nice to have some one to come to,” she said; “everything is all wrong just now.”
“What is the matter, dear?” he asked, noticing that the child had been crying.
“Oh, I have such a tale to tell you about Aline. You know that mother thought that the thief was Edward, and father has been spending ever so much time and trouble over it and has practically proved that it could not be Edward; because, though Edward may have taken the cup, there was some money that went one day when Edward was away from Holwick. So mother must needs get it into her head that it was Aline.”
“How utterly ridiculous!” said Ian.
“Yes, and at first I do not think she really thought so; it was only because she does not like Aline and is particularly angry with her just now, because it was Aline who was the cause of her being shown up as wrong about Edward; and——and,” the child went on sobbing as she spoke,—“it was partly my fault. Mother knows I love Aline and I was rude to her the other day and she knows it punishes me more than anything else for her to be unkind to Aline”; and here Audry quite broke down.
“Do not cry, dear child,” said Ian, stroking her thick brown locks. “Come, tell me all about it and we’ll make a nice plan to put things right for Aline.”
Audry and her mother never got on very well together. Both were headstrong and impulsive, but whereas Audry’s nature was generous and kind, the lady of Holwick was a hard selfish woman. She loved her daughter in her selfish way, but power was her one desire, and she wanted entirely to dictate the course of her life for her; and even in the things of little importance was apt to be tyrannical. Aline had become a cause of much contention between them, and Eleanor Mowbray had now added to her natural dislike of Aline a desire to spite her daughter by ill-treating her little friend.
“Well, you know that Aline is in the habit of taking things to the sick people round about,” Audry went on, when her grief had a little subsided, “and old Elspeth generally acts as almoner. Mother, however, has interfered lately, and has said that she will not allow it without her permission and that, she will hardly ever give,—never, for the people that Aline most cares about. So Aline has been buying things with her own money and you know she has not much.”