Miss Scarlett smiled. She was quick of perception in some ways; she understood the little girl's loyal admiration of her sister, and again she patted her fair head.
'Well,' she said, encouragingly, 'sometimes, I hope, Jacinth may like to spend a holiday afternoon with us. But tell her and your aunt from me, that if ever they are at a loss what to do with you, Frances, Miss Mildmay must let me know. We can manage a good run in the garden even in wintry weather, and there are such things as blindman's-buff and hide-and-seek in the house sometimes.'
'Thank you very much,' said Frances. 'I think—I would like to come sometimes on Saturdays, for, besides going with Aunt Alison, I shouldn't wonder if—I daresay Jass may have often to go'——She stopped and hesitated, and finally blushed. 'I don't think I can explain,' she said.
'Never mind, my dear,' said Miss Marcia, coming to the rescue, with a vague idea that perhaps Jacinth had some private charities of her own in prospect which she did not wish talked about. 'Give Miss Scarlett's message to your aunt and sister, and good-bye till Monday morning.'
Frances ran off, much relieved in her mind.
'But I really must be careful how I talk,' she reflected sagely. 'I had quite forgotten that I wasn't to chatter about Lady Myrtle—except to Bessie and Margaret. Jacinth said I might really count them my friends, and that means being able to tell them anything I like. Besides, how could I have helped telling Margaret about Lady Myrtle, when she told me all the story of her being their great-aunt?'
Her conscience nevertheless was not absolutely at rest, and joined to her eagerness to tell her sister all she had heard of the Harpers' family history was now a slight fear of Jacinth's considering her indiscreet, and she was so preoccupied that, as she hurried out to the hall, where Phebe was waiting, she almost ran against Bessie, who was eagerly watching for her.
'Frances,' she said, 'I must speak to you a moment. I asked Miss Linley, and she let me run in, and she said I might walk down to the gate with you.' There was rather a long drive up to the door of Ivy Lodge. 'Listen, dear; it's this. I can't bear to ask you to keep anything a secret from your aunt or your sister, but sometimes secrets may be right, if they concern other people and are not about anything in any way wrong. And I don't see what else to do. It is this—would you mind promising me not to tell anybody about Lady Myrtle Goodacre being our relation, till I have written home to mother and told her that you and Jacinth know her, and about your grandmother having been her dear friend? I am so afraid of doing harm, or vexing father, for though he is so good, he is—very proud, you know, and—he could not bear it to—to come round to Lady Myrtle that we were talking about her, or—thinking about her money.'
Bessie's face by this time was crimson. Frances opened her mouth as if about to speak, then shut it again, and gazed at Bessie with a variety of contradictory feelings looking out of her blue eyes. There was disappointment, strong disappointment that her wonderful schemes for bringing the Harpers and their old relative together threatened thus to be nipped in the bud; there was disappointment, too, that she was not to have the pleasure and importance of relating the story 'just like one in a book' to her sister; and yet there was considerable relief, born of her recently aroused misgiving as to how Jacinth would look upon her confidences with Margaret.
Bessie meanwhile stood looking at her in undisguised anxiety.