‘These are not very pleasant answers. Precisely—with me. Am I so much less agreeable than that pompous aunt?’
‘Uncle Courtenay, you seem to forget who I am, and all about it!’ cried Kate, reddening, her eyes brightening. ‘My aunt! Why, she is like my mother. I would not leave her for all the world. I will not hear a word that is not respectful to her. Why, I belong to her! You must forget—— I am sure I beg your pardon, Uncle Courtenay,’ she added, after a pause, subduing herself. ‘Of course you don’t mean it; and now that I see you are joking about my aunt, of course you were only making fun of me about Ombra too.’
‘I am a likely person to make fun,’ said Mr. Courtenay. ‘I know nothing about your Ombras; but I am right, nevertheless, though the fact is of no importance. I have one thing to say, however, which is of importance, and that is, I can’t have this sort of thing. You understand me, Kate? You are a young woman of property, and will have to move in a very different sphere. I can’t allow you to begin your career with the Shanklin tea-parties. We must put a stop to that.’
‘I assure you, Uncle Courtenay,’ cried Kate, very gravely, and with indignant state, ‘that the people here are as good as either you or I. The Eldridges are of very good family. By-the-bye, I forgot to mention, they are cousins of our old friends at the Langton Rectory—the Hardwicks. Don’t you remember, uncle? And Bertie and the rest—you remember Bertie?—visit here.’
‘Oh! they visit here, do they?’ said Mr. Courtenay, with meaning looks.
Something kept Kate from adding, ‘He is here now.’ She meant to have done so, but could not, somehow. Not that she cared for Bertie, she declared loftily to herself; but it was odious to talk to any one who was always taking things into his head! So she merely nodded, and made no other reply.
‘I suppose you are impatient to be back to your Eldridges, and people of good family?’ he said. ‘The best thing for you would be to consider all this merely a shadow, like your friend with the odd name. But I am very much surprised at Mrs. Anderson. She ought to have known better. What! must I not say as much as that?’
‘Not to me, if you please, uncle,’ cried Kate, with all the heat of a youthful champion.
He smiled somewhat grimly. Had the girl taken it into her foolish head to have loved him, Mr. Courtenay would have been much embarrassed by the unnecessary sentiment. But yet this foolish enthusiasm for a person on the other side of the house—for one of the mother’s people, who was herself an interloper, and had really nothing to do with the Courtenay stock, struck him as a robbery from himself. He felt angry, though he was aware it was absurd.
‘I shall take an opportunity, however, of making my opinion very clear,’ he said, deliberately, with a pleasurable sense that at least he could make this ungrateful, unappreciative child unhappy. The latter half of this talk was held at the corner of the lawn, where the two stood together, much observed and noted by all the party. The young people all gazed at Kate’s guardian with a mixture of wonder and awe. What could he be going to do to her? They felt his disapproval affect them somehow like a cold shade; and Mrs. Anderson felt it also, and was disturbed more than she would show, and once more felt vexed and disgusted indeed with Providence, which had so managed matters as to send him on such a day.