It was high time to be going out of town; and Mrs. Lacy was to go and
be with her son in his vacation.
This was the time when Kate and the Wardours had hoped to be
together. But "the natural consequence" of the nonsense Kate had
talked, about being "always allowed" to do rude and careless things,
and her wild rhodomontade about romping games with the boys, had
persuaded her aunts that they were very improper people for her to be
with, and that it would be wrong to consent to her going to Oldburgh.
That was one natural consequence of her folly. Another was that when
the De la Poers begged that she might spend the holidays with them,
and from father and mother downwards were full of kind schemes for
her happiness and good, Lady Barbara said to her sister that it was
quite impossible; these good friends did not know what they were
asking, and that the child would again expose herself in some way
that would never be forgotten, unless she were kept in their own
sight till she had been properly tamed and reduced to order.
It was self-denying in Lady Barbara to refuse that invitation, for
she and her sister would have been infinitely more comfortable
together without their troublesome countess--above all when they had
no governess to relieve them of her. The going out of town was sad
enough to them, for they had always paid a long visit at Caergwent
Castle, which had felt like their home through the lifetime of their
brother and nephew; but now it was shut up, and their grief for their
young nephew came back all the more freshly at the time of year when
they were used to be kindly entertained by him in their native home.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130