“Wicked,” cried her mother; “it’s shamefully wicked.”
“And you are good, mother, you don’t ever tell lies; I believe you, mother, of course.” She turned and went out of the room. As she went slowly in the direction of the field where the other children were taking turns to ride bareback one of the horses, her thoughts were very puzzled.
“I wish things would be ’splained to me,” she said, half aloud, and she pushed back her curls from her forehead. “There are more and more things every day want ’splaining. I certainly did hear her say it. I heard them all talking, and Lady Helen said something, and Mr. Rochester said something, and mother said that father wished me not to know, and I was to have a letter, and then mother said ‘in his absence.’ Oh, what can it mean?”
The other children shouted to her from the field, but she was in no mood to join them, and just then Lord Grayleigh, who was pacing up and down his favorite walk, called her to his side.
“What a puzzled expression you are wearing, my little girl,” he said. “Is anything the matter?”
Sibyl skipped up to him. Some of the cloud left her face. Perhaps he could put things straight for her.
“I want to ask you a question,” she said.
“You are always asking questions. Now ask me something really nice; but first, I have something to say. I am in a very giving mood this morning. Sometimes I am in a saving mood, and would not give so much as a brass farthing to anybody, but I am in the other sort of mood to-day. I am in the mood to give a little golden-haired girl called——”
“Sibyl,” said the child, beginning to laugh; “if she is golden-haired it must be me. What is it you want to give me?”
Her attention was immediately arrested; her eyes shone and her lips smiled.