"I need not say that my honoured guardian was not at Hollingsby this morning. Like Aunt Ellicott, he sympathizes with the fox," said Kathleen, after a pause.
"Mr. Matheson called here whilst you were out."
"Expecting to see me, no doubt. How disappointed he would be at finding only you!"
She looked archly at her cousin, but in Geraldine's face there was no self-consciousness.
"I am certain he was disappointed," continued Kathleen. "Perhaps he came round to make sure that I had not mounted Polly and gone after the hounds. Eh, Ger?"
"Do not say that, Kitty dear. Such a thought would never enter his mind. He knows you would never break your promise to your father."
"Yet, after I made it, my poor father himself doubted whether I should keep it. I cannot tell you, Ger, how the thought of this one thing troubles me, and all the more, because he had said so much about the Mountfords, and that I, a girl, need not be a whit behind the noblest of the men who had gone before me. I am certain something has been hidden from me. I was just told what everybody else knew, that my mother's blindness and helplessness were the result of a fall from her horse. But I am not prohibited from riding. It torments me to think there is a mystery about the whole thing. I am not a child. I ought to know all."
Kathleen waited for no reply, but snatched up her gloves and left the room hastily, that Geraldine might not notice her springing tears.
Mrs. Ellicott entered almost directly afterwards.
"Is anything wrong with Kitty?" she asked. "She rushed past me just now, and I fancied she was crying. Surely you girls have not been quarrelling!"