But when she made humble apology for the fault and begged Mrs. Hopkins's pardon with sweet sincerity, she was received in a manner that turned contrition into bitterness.
Dame Eliza looked at her with a cold light in her steely blue eyes, and a scornful smile. Plainly she was too petty herself to understand generosity in others, and construed Constance's apology into a confession of fear of her.
"Poor work spreading bad butter over a burnt crust," she commented. "There's no love lost between us, Constantia Hopkins; maybe none ever found, nor ever will be. I don't want your fair words, nor need you hope your father will not one day see you, and that sullen brother of yours, as do I. So waste no breath trying to get around me. Damaris is fretting; look after her."
Poor Constance! She had been so honestly sorry for having been angry and having given vent to it, had gone to her stepmother with such sincerity, hoping against hope, for the unnumbered time, that she could make their relation pleasanter! It was not possible to help feeling a violent reaction from this reception, to keep her scorned sweetness from turning to bitterness in her heart.
She told the story to Giles, and it made him furiously angry.
"You young ninny to humble yourself to her," he cried, with flashing eyes. "Will you never learn to expect nothing but injustice from her? It isn't what we do, or say; it is jealousy. She will not let our father love us, she hates the children of our mother, and hates our mother's memory, that she was in every way Mistress Eliza's superior, as she guesses, knowing that she was better born, better bred, and surely better in character. I remember our mother, Con, if not clearly. I'm sorry you have not even so much recollection of her. You are like her, and may be thankful for it. I could trounce you for crawling to Mistress Hopkins! Learn your lesson for all time, and no more apologies! Con, I shall not stand it! No matter how it goes with this colony, I shall go back to England. I will not stay to be put upon, to see my father turned from me."
"Oh, Giles, that could never be!" cried Constance. "Father will never turn from us."
"I did not say from us; I said from me," retorted Giles. "You are different, a girl, and—and like Mother, and—several other reasons. But I often see that Father is not sure whether he shall approve me or not. It will not be so long till I am twenty-one, then I shall get out of reach of these things."
Constance's troubled face brightened. To her natural hopefulness Giles's twenty-first birthday was far enough away to allow a great deal of good to come before it.
"Oh, twenty-one, Giles! You'll be prospering and happy here before that," she cried.