“How do you do?” said Lady Jane, carrying out the same idea. “How is your father? I am glad to hear that he has, on the whole, not suffered in health—nor you either, Katherine, I hope?”
“I don’t know about suffering in health. I am well enough,” the girl said.
“I perceive,” said Lady Jane, “by your manner that you identify me somehow with what has happened. That is why I have come here to-day. You must feel I don’t come as I usually do. In ordinary circumstances I should probably have sent for you to come to me. Katherine, I can see that you think I’m somehow to blame, in what way, I’m sure I don’t know.”
“I have never expressed any blame. I don’t know that I have ever thought anyone was to blame—except——”
“Except—except themselves. You are right. They are very hot-headed, the one as much as the other. I don’t mean to say that he—he is a sort of relation of mine—has not asked my advice. If he has done so once he has done it a hundred times, and I can assure you, Katherine, all that I have said has been consistently ‘Don’t ask me.’ I have told him a hundred times that I would not take any responsibility. I have said to him, ‘I can’t tell how you will suit each other, or whether you will agree, or anything.’ I have had nothing to do with it. I felt, as he was staying in my house at the time, that you or your father might be disposed to blame me. I assure you it would be very unjust. I knew no more of what was going on on Wednesday last—no more than—than Snap did,” cried Lady Jane. Snap was the little tyrant of the fields at Steephill, a small fox terrier, and kept everything under his control.
“I can only say that you have never been blamed, Lady Jane. Papa has never mentioned your name, and as for me——”
“Yes, Katherine, you; it is chiefly you I think of. I am sure you have thought I had something to do with it.”
Katherine made a pause. She was in a black dress. I can scarcely tell why—partly, perhaps, from some exaggerated sentiment—actually because Mrs. Simmons, who insisted on attending to her till someone could be got to replace Stevens, had laid it out. And she was unusually pale. She had not in reality “got over” the incident so well as people appeared to hope.
“To tell the truth,” she said, “all the world has seemed quite insignificant to me except my sister. I have had so much to do thinking of her that I have had no time for anything else.”
“That’s not very complimentary to people that have taken so great an interest in you.” Lady Jane was quite discomposed by having the word insignificant applied to her. She was certainly not insignificant, whatever else she might be.