I know that my eyes were flashing as they confronted Aunt Kizzy, who stammered out:
“Your second cousin,—yes. Did you happen to see him while at Wellesley?”
She was trying to be very cool, but I was terribly excited, and, losing all fear of her, replied:
“No; you took good care that I should meet no Harvard boys; but I saw Grantley Montague once on the train, and I heard so much about him, but I never dreamed he was my cousin. If I had, nothing would have kept me from him. Did he know I was there?”
“He knows nothing of you whatever,” Aunt Kizzy said. “I did not think it best he should as it might have interfered with the studies of you both. He is coming soon, and you will of course make his acquaintance.”
I was sitting upon the box and crying bitterly, not only for the humiliation and injustice done to me, but from a sense of all I had lost by not knowing that Grantley was my cousin.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, when she asked why I cried. “It would have made me so happy, and I have been so lonely at times, with no one of my own blood to care for me, and I should have been so proud of him; and when he invited me to his party, why didn’t you let me go? I did everything to please you. You did nothing to please me!”
I must have been hysterical, for my voice sounded very loud and unnatural as I reproached her, while she tried to soothe me and explain. But I would not be soothed, and kept on crying until I could cry no longer, and still, in the midst of my pain, I was conscious of a great joy welling up in my heart, as I reflected that Grantley was my cousin, and that I should soon see him in spite of Aunt Kizzy, who, I think, was really sorry for me and did not resent what I said to her. She had me in her room for an hour after lunch, and tried to smooth the matter over.
“You are very pretty,” she said, “and Grant is very susceptible to a pretty face, and if he had seen yours he might have paid you attentions which would have turned your head, and perhaps have done you harm as they would have meant nothing. They couldn’t mean anything; they must mean nothing.”
She was getting more and more excited, and began to walk the floor as she went on: