Then she also left the room.
Her departure was the signal for a perfect babel of tongues. The girls of St. Dorothy's were immensely excited. Matilda sought an opportunity to find her way to the door; no one noticed her departure now, and she rushed out of the house trembling a good deal, and glad when she found herself in the open air. Matilda was a thorough coward. She perceived at a glance that the full weight of public opinion would be against her, if her part in this sorry story were known.
"There is nothing for it now, but for me to take up Kate O'Connor," she said to herself; "to make much of her; to consider it the finest thing in the world to have been a dairymaid and a peasant girl when you were a child. Kate is wonderfully clever, and she has scored a point in her favor. By and by, however, there will come a reaction, and then my hour will have arrived."
CHAPTER XIII.
CECIL INVESTIGATES.
"DO sit down, Molly! Where are you going?" said Hester Temple.
Molly Lavender paused when Hester said these words to her.
"I want to find Kate," she said. "There is something dreadful the matter with Kate. She looked at me as if she thought I had said something. Oh, I must go to her; don't keep me."