CHAPTER XXI.
A REAL ROUSING FRIGHT.
Wonderful to relate, the holidays passed smoothly enough. Hughie was the sort of boy to be touched by Rosamund's words. No one had before appealed to him just in Rosamund's way. He found, too, considerable pleasure and interest on his own account at The Follies, for Lady Jane was singularly kind to him, and gave him a pony to ride, and he was permitted the rare indulgence of going with the gamekeeper into the woods to take his first lesson in partridge-shooting; but this came later on.
Meanwhile Miss Frost made a great effort to recover her self-control; but such an agony of jealousy had taken possession of the poor lady that she could scarcely bear to be in the society either of her pupil or her little sister. Irene exercised more and more influence over Agnes, and for a long time that influence was altogether for good. When the child asked simple questions Irene replied simply. She felt ashamed of her own want of knowledge on many particulars. She went regularly to church twice every Sunday because little Agnes thought that no living person could do otherwise. She did not at all want to go, and she trembled as much as ever when the choir sang, and when the place became hushed and people called themselves "miserable sinners," and looked so unconcerned and so well-dressed. But for the sake of Agnes she restrained herself, for Agnes' little, pale, calm face appeared not to think at all about the matter.
Nevertheless, it was scarcely possible that such a cloudless state of things could continue. As to Hughie, he and Irene were more or less neutral, neither speaking much to the other. They were both absolutely different, but both were absolutely without fear.
There came a day, however, when Irene took it into her wild little head that Hughie needed a lesson to be taught him.
"I know by his looks," she thought, "that he hates my loving Agnes so much."
Accordingly, she made up her mind to administer a lesson, and to make it as stiff a piece of terrorism as she could devise.
"He thinks he knows a great deal; but I'll teach him!" thought the girl.
Some of her old wicked spirit had come back to her. She had no longer any lessons to employ her time; she had no longer Rosamund's wholesome influence—Rosamund who was in Switzerland, and whose letters, delightful as they were, could not take the place of her constant presence.