“But why?”
“I will tell you why. I have not told anybody else, not even Nora, but I will tell you. I ought not to have gone away that day in the country when Pip was so ill. It was awfully selfish of me! Perhaps if I hadn’t gone he would not have had that fit, poor dear! and he might have been alive still.”
“He might, of course,” said Nan, who knew well that he would have been alive, for certainly Jack would not have got at him had Kitty remained at home.
“That is why I am so absolutely miserable when I think about it,” continued Kitty. “The poor darling died quite neglected; even you did not go up to see him, because I asked you not.”
“And if,” said Nan, trembling very much—“if Pip had not died in the way you think, but from a sort of an accident, how would you feel then?”
“How would I feel if Pip had met with an accident? But he did not meet with an accident.”
“But let us suppose,” said Nan—“it is fun sometimes to suppose—let us suppose that he did, that that was the way he died.”
“I cannot suppose what did not happen, and I hate to talk of it.”
“But if it had, and—and somebody was to blame, how would you feel towards that somebody?”
“You really are too extraordinary, Nan! I should hate that somebody. I tell you what it is,” continued Kitty, “I would never forgive that person—never, never. But there! what nonsense you are talking! Nothing of the kind did happen. That is not your secret, is it?”