Her figure was erect and striking. She walked, ran, and danced equally well. Movement was a necessity to her; in some moods repose was impossible. In her gestures she had the freedom and unconscious dignity of a young Indian squaw.
Catherine, or Cathy, as she was generally called by her intimate friends, had struck up a warm friendship with Queenie on the first day they met. Queenie's strange eyes drew her like magnets; their troubled pathos stimulated curiosity and invited pity. Queenie's pride and independence, her quiet reserve, only charmed the younger girl.
Cathy made swift advances, but they were only repelled by the sad-looking young governess. Cathy, nothing daunted, turned her attention to Emmie, and won her heart in a trice, and from that moment Queenie succumbed.
When Queenie loved, she loved with her whole heart; half measures were impossible; she must give entire confidence, or none at all. Her reserve, once broken through, was broken for ever. She soon made her friends acquainted with the chequered story of her past life. She told Cathy the absolute blank of the future was perfectly appalling to her.
Cathy listened and pitied, and started all sorts of vague Utopian schemes that should ameliorate the condition of her favorites.
Her own life had no bitter background. She was indeed a motherless orphan, but she was so very young when her parents died that the cloud had hardly shadowed her. She spoke of them affectionately, as of some dear unknown friends.
Queenie knew all about Cathy's home—the dull old house at Hepshaw, overlooking the churchyard and the plane-tree walk. She had even pictured to herself the granite quarries, where Garth Clayton spent long hard-working days.
Cathy was never weary of talking about Garth. She would expatiate for hours on his virtues. Was he not the stay and prop of the little household? Did not even Langley, the motherly elder sister, go to him for advice and counsel? The handsome younger brother, long, lazy Ted, was spoken about more seldom.
"Ted is just Ted," Cathy would say sometimes, in reply to Queenie's half quizzical interrogations. "A dear old fellow, of course; but he cannot hold a candle to Garth. Why Garth is a perfect king in Hepshaw. There is no one more respected. The work he does among the quarry-men perfectly astonishes our new vicar. He has classes for them, and teaches them himself, and plays cricket with them, and gets up entertainments and lectures in the school-room. Why, the men perfectly adore him."
"How I should like to live at Hepshaw!" Queenie would answer sometimes, sighing she hardly knew why.