And indeed the Duchess did come forward with the gravest looks, after the flowers had all been gathered up and restored to the box and her talk was over with Miss Jean.
“Miss Douglas,” she said, “I am much surprised to find you here.”
“Your Grace,” said Kirsteen, “I am very well here.”
“That is just your silly notion. A young person of your age is not fitted to dispose of her own life. Your worthy parents had looked out a most suitable match for you, and I cannot but say it was very wrong and a shame to all belonging to you that you should run away.”
“I would rather say nothing about it, madam,” said Kirsteen. “Whether that was the cause or not, the heart knoweth its own bitterness; and every one of us, however small we may be, understands their own affairs best.”
“No, young lady,” said the Duchess, “that’s not so. You are not at an age when you are fit to judge. It is just nothing but childish folly,” she added, raising her voice also intentionally, and casting a glance towards her daughter, “to object to a good man and a gentleman of a good family, and who is hale and hearty and full of sense—because he is not just as young as some long-legged fool that you may think better worth your pains.”
“Like me, for instance,” said Lord John in an audible aside.
Her Grace’s eyes softened as her look rested for a moment upon her scapegrace. Then she turned back to Kirsteen with her severest look. “It is a very bad example to other foolish young creatures that you have set in running away. But I hope you will think better of it, and be persuaded, and go back to your family,” she said.
“I do not think I can do that,” said Kirsteen, “for there’s nothing changed that I know, and the reason that brought me away is still there.”
“Miss Douglas,” said the Duchess, “his Grace himself has heard all about this from one and another, and I make little doubt that when he hears where you are and that we have seen you, and what an unsuitable place you are in for a gentleman’s daughter, he will take it into his own hands, and just insist that you must go back.”