This was more like the speeches Kate made in her own head than
anything she had ever said to her aunts; and it was quite just
besides, and not spoken in naughtiness, and Lady Barbara did not
think it wrong to show that she attended to it. "You are right,
Katharine," she said; "no one wishes you to be either proud or
ungrateful. I would not wish entirely to prevent you from seeing the
children of the family, but it must not be till there is some
acquaintance between myself and their mother, and I cannot tell
whether you can be intimate with them till I know what sort of
children they are. Much, too, must depend on yourself, and whether
you will behave well with them."

Kate gave a long sigh, and looked up relieved; and for some time she
and her aunt were not nearly so much at war as hitherto, but seemed
to be coming to a somewhat better understanding.

Yet it rather puzzled Kate. She seemed to herself to have got this
favour for crying for it; and it was a belief at home, not only that
nothing was got by crying, but that if by some strange chance it
were, it never came to good; and she began the more to fear some
disappointment about the expected Wardours.

For two or three days she was scanning every group on the sands with
all her might, in hopes of some likeness to Sylvia, but at last she
was taken by surprise: just as she was dressed, and Aunt Barbara was
waiting in the drawing-room for Aunt Jane, there came a knock at the
door, and "Mrs. Wardour" was announced.

In came a small, quiet-looking lady in mourning, and with her a girl