[CHAPTER II.—MAKING TERMS.]
The moment the two little girls found themselves outside their grandfather’s door they wrenched their little hands away from Miss Griselda’s and Miss Katharine’s, and with a gay laugh like two wild, untamed birds flew down the wide oak staircase and across the hall to a room where a woman, dressed very soberly, waited for them. She was sitting on the edge of a hard cane-bottomed chair, her veil was down, and her whole attitude was one of tense and nervous watchfulness. The children ran to her with little cries of rapture, climbed together on her knee, pulled up her veil, and nearly smothered her pale dark face with kisses.
“Mother, mother, mother, he was so cross!”
“He had pain, mother, and him’s eyes was wrinkled up so.”
“But, mother, we gave him a kiss, and he said I was strong and Kitty was weak. We have not seen the tower yet, and we haven’t got our grapes, and there are two old ladies, and we don’t like them much, and we ran away from them—and—oh, here they are!”
The children clung tightly to their mother, who struggled to her feet, pushed them aside with a gesture almost of despair, and came up at once to the two Miss Lovels.
“I know this visit is unwarranted; I know it is considered an intrusion. The children’s father was born here, but there is no welcome for them; nevertheless I have brought them. They are beautiful children—look at them. No fairer daughters of your house ever were born than these two. Look at Rachel; look at Kitty. Is it right they should be brought up with no comforts in a poor London lodging? Rachel, kiss your aunts. Kitty, little one, kiss your aunts and love them.”
Rachel skipped up gayly to the two stiff old ladies, but Kitty began at last to be influenced by the frowns which met her on all sides; she pouted, turned her baby face away, and buried it in her mother’s lap.
“Look at them—are they not beautiful?” continued the mother. “Is it fair that they should be cooped up in a London lodging when their father belonged to this place? I ask you both—you who are my husband’s sisters; you who were children when he was a child, who used to play with him and kiss him, and learn your lessons out of the same book, and to sleep in the same nursery—is it fair?”
“It is not fair,” said Miss Katharine suddenly. She seemed carried quite out of herself; her eyes shone, and the pink of a long-gone beauty returned with a transient gleam to her faded cheek. “It is not fair,” she repeated. “No, Griselda, I am not afraid of you. I will say what is in my mind. Valentine’s face speaks to me again out of the baby face of that dear little child. What was Rupert Lovel to us that we should place a likeness to him before a likeness to our own dead brother? I say it is unfair that Valentine’s children should have neither part nor lot in his old home. I, for one, am willing to welcome them to Avonsyde.”