Kitty cut her short. "Don't worry, mother. I'll be all right. He's not married Mabel yet."
This reminder seemed to come to Mrs. Brill like a revelation, so fast had her imagination worked. She calmed down and Kitty took the opportunity to seek to escape. "Tell Salvina the news," she said. "She'll be specially interested in it. In fact, judging by the last time, she'll be more excited than I am," and she smiled somewhat mysteriously. "Tell her I'm sorry I missed her—I was hoping to find her having a holiday, but apparently I haven't been lucky enough to strike some Jewish fast."
But partly because Mrs. Brill was enraptured by her beautiful daughter, partly to keep the pompous equipage outside her door as long as possible, she detained Kitty so unconscionably that Salvina arrived from school. Kitty flew to embrace her as usual, but arrested herself, shocked.
"Why, Sally!" she cried. "You look like a ghost! What's the matter?"
"Nothing," said Salvina with a wan smile. "Just the excitement of seeing you, I suppose."
Kitty performed the postponed embrace but remained dubious and shaken. Was it that her mind was morbidly filled with funereal images, or was it that her fresh eye had seen what her mother's custom-blinded vision had missed—that there was death in Salvina's face?
This face of death-in-life stirred up unwonted emotions in Kitty and made her refrain apprehensively from speaking again of Lily's death; and some days later, when the first bustle of grief had subsided in Bedford Square, Kitty, still haunted by that grewsome vision, wrote Salvina a letter.
"My dear old Sally,—You must really draw in your horns. You were not looking at all well the other day. You are burning the candle at both ends, I am sure. That horrid Board School is killing you. I am going to beg a fortnight's holiday for you, and I am going to take you to Boulogne for a week, and then, when you are all braced up again, we can have the second week at Paris."
"My dearest and best of Sisters," [Salvina replied,] "How shocking the news mother has told me of the death of poor Lily! If she did wrong she was speedily punished. But let us hope she really loved him. I am sure that your brooding on her sad fate and your sympathy with the family in this terrible affliction has made you fancy all sorts of things about me, just as mother is morbidly apprehensive of that horrible creature marrying Mabel and thus robbing you of your place. But your sweet letter did me more good than if I had really gone to Paris. How did you know it was the dream of my life? But it cannot be realized just yet, for it would be impossible for me to be spared from school just now. Miss Green is away with diphtheria, and as this is examination time, Miss Rolver has her hands full. Besides, mother would be left alone. Don't worry about me, darling. I always feel like this about this time of year, but the summer holiday is not many weeks off and Ramsgate always sets me up again.
"Your loving sister,
"Salvina.