watched Catherine attentively. Even Kitty observed that her
mother's face grew paler and paler as she read the letters. "You
look as if you were frightened, mamma." There was no reply. Kitty
began to feel so uneasy on the subject of her dinner and her
guests, that she actually ventured on putting a question to her
grandmother.

"Will they be long, do you think, before they come?" she asked.

The old lady's worldly wisdom had passed, by this time from a
state of suspicion to a state of certainty. "My child," she
answered, "they won't come at all."

Kitty ran to her mother, eager to inquire if what Mrs. Presty had
told her could possibly be true. Before a word had passed her
lips, she shrank back, too frightened to speak.

Never, in her little experience, had she been startled by such a
look in her mother's face as the look that confronted her now.
For the first time Catherine saw her child trembling at the sight
of her. Before that discovery, the emotions that shook her under
the insult which she had received lost their hold. She caught
Kitty up in her arms. "My darling, my angel, it isn't you I am
thinking of. I love you!--I love you! In the whole world there
isn't such a good child, such a sweet, lovable, pretty child as
you are. Oh, how disappointed she looks--she's crying. Don't
break my heart!--don't cry!" Kitty held up her head, and cleared
her eyes with a dash of her hand. "I won't cry, mamma." And child
as she was, she was as good as her word. Her mother looked at her
and burst into tears.