The very pain that Lady
Barbara took to hush it up, her fears lest it should come to the ears
of the De la Poers, her hopes that it MIGHT not be necessary to
reveal it to her brother, assisted to weigh down Kate with a sense of
the heinousness of what she had done, and sunk her so that she had no
inclination to complain of the watchfulness around her. And Aunt
Jane's sorrowful kindness went to her heart.
"How COULD you do it, my dear?" she said, in such a wonderful wistful
tone, when Kate was alone with her.
Kate hung her head. She could not think now.
"It is so sad," added Lady Jane; "I hoped we might have gone on so
nicely together. And now I hope your Uncle Giles will not hear of
it. He would be so shocked, and never trust you again."
"YOU will trust me, when I have been good a long time, Aunt Jane?"
"My dear, I would trust you any time, you know; but then that's no
use. I can't judge; and your Aunt Barbara says, after such
lawlessness, you need very experienced training to root out old
associations."
Perhaps the aunts were more shocked than was quite needful and
treated Kate as if she had been older and known better what she was
doing; but they were sincere in their horror at her offence; and once
she even heard Lady Barbara saying to Mr. Mercer that there seemed to
be a doom on the family--in the loss of the promising young man--and-
-The words were not spoken, but Kate knew that she was this greatest
of all misfortunes to the family.
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