and with good reason. After all her pains, it was very strange that
Katharine should be so utterly unfit to behave like a well-bred girl.
There might have been excuse for her before she had been taught, but
now it was mere obstinacy.

She should be careful how she took her out for a long time to come!

Kate's heart swelled within her. It was not obstinacy, she know; and
that bit of injustice hindered her from seeing that it was really
wilful recklessness. She was elated with Ernest's foolish school-boy
account of her, which a more maidenly little girl would not have
relished; she was strengthened in her notion that she was ill-used,
by hearing that the De la Poers pitied her; and because she found
that Aunt Barbara was considered to be a little wrong, she did not
consider that she herself had ever been wrong at all.

And Lady Barbara was not far from the truth when she told her sister
"that Katharine was perfectly hard and reckless; there was no such
thing as making her sorry!"



CHAPTER VI.



After that first visit, Kate did see something of the De la Poers,
but not more than enough to keep her in a constant ferment with the
uncertain possibility, and the longing for the meetings.