"That makes it all the nicer, does it not? Who could tell that they were not really mother and son? Why think about the fact at all, when he so willingly forgets it, and Mrs. Whitmore loves him as her own? Do you know, Gertrude, you called him your 'stepbrother' to-day. I never heard you use the term before, and to me it sounded horribly harsh, seeing you are all children of one father."
"Did I?" replied Gertrude. "Ah, well, only one heard it; and, if you please, we will now have done with this matter, once and for all. Mrs. Tindall is wanting our help. It is shocking to desert her, even for a few moments."
Gertrude hastened to offer her assistance in packing some sweets which required careful handling, and soon she and the rest of the party were on their way to the place selected for the picnic.
Never had Pauline seen her friend more apparently gay and light-hearted, and the girl rejoiced that the impression produced by her unfortunate allusions had already passed away. She was, however, mistaken.
Gertrude did not, and could not, forget. Through that day and after came again and again the haunting thought, "I am only a pensioner on Richard's bounty. Only one of the second wife's children—the portionless wife of a man who had little to leave for her and his daughters. It is plain what people think. How grateful we ought to be that we are allowed to live as if we were rich, when we have next to nothing! I wish, how I wish, that I, at any rate, had been justly dealt with, and brought up with a full knowledge that I am a poor girl, who may at any time, be sent out into the world to battle for my daily bread."
In spite of these bitter thoughts, Gertrude was quite in earnest when she told Pauline that she should say nothing of what she had learned through her words. The girl liked her life of luxury, her beautiful surroundings, her freedom from present care. She was not prepared to give up these, even while she inwardly rebelled against receiving as her brother's gift what she had always deemed her own by right of being her father's daughter, as Richard was his son. So she shut up all these thoughts in her own mind, and returned home to live the old life and enjoy as best she might the sweets of it, though sometimes the one bitter drop would partly spoil the flavour of the rest.
Much, however, as Gertrude might strive to conceal what she felt, everyone noticed a change in her manner towards her brother, though none could account for it. "Brother Dick" was the term hitherto used by all the girls in speaking of him, but the bare "Richard" became Gertrude's substitute for the more endearing expression, ever after her return home.
Once, to Mrs. Whitmore's intense surprise, she called him her stepbrother to some visitors at Mere Side.
"Gertrude, why did you speak of Dick by that name?" asked her mother, with a pained look on her face.
"It is right, is it not? Surely there was no harm in using the correct term for once!" she replied in half-jesting, half-defiant tone. "Richard is my stepbrother."