had never distinctly put these questions to herself before. Often as she had murmured, she had never resisted, nor realised the possibility of resistance. Often as she had declared that her life was hateful to her, she had no more expected that it would change than that the sun would come out because she complained when it was raining.
Katharine was impetuous; but if she had any of her mother’s strength of purpose it was as yet undeveloped. Yet all sorts of impulses and desires were awakening within her, and gradually driving her to a settled purpose – namely, to question her mother as to her reasons for living at Applehurst, and her intentions for the future.
It would be difficult to realise how tremendous a step this seemed to Katharine. To have an opinion of her own and grumble about it, was one thing – to act upon it, quite another – still she got up from her knees by the lavender bush, which she had been cutting while indulging in these meditations, and walked slowly into the house. Katharine never remembered coming into her mother’s presence in her life without a certain sense of awe and of expectation of criticism, and now as she opened the drawing-room door, her heart beat fast, and her colour, always bright enough, burnt all over her forehead and neck.
It was a pretty pleasant drawing-room; with an unmistakable air of refinement and cultivation; plenty of books and tokens of occupation, while all the furniture was handsome and in good order.
Mrs Kingsworth was sitting at a davenport, writing a letter. She was a tall woman, with a figure slender and élancé as that of a girl, delicate, regular features, and a small head adorned with an abundance of smooth, dark hair. Spite of her quiet black dress and cap, she had lost little of her youthfulness, and her eyes were bright, keen, and full of life. Otherwise it was a still set face, with little variety of expression, and spite of some likeness of form and colouring most unlike in character to the changing flushing countenance of the girl beside her.
“Isn’t it time you found some occupation, Katharine?” she said.
There was no displeasure in her tone, but as Katharine stood silent, she said quietly, “Go and practise for an hour, I don’t like to see you doing nothing.”
“What can it matter what I do?” said Katharine impetuously, her quickly roused temper diverting her in a moment from her purpose.
“Only as rational occupation is rather a better thing than idleness,” said Mrs Kingsworth with a touch of satire in her voice.
“I mean – Mamma, I want to know whether we are to live at Applehurst for ever and ever?” cried Katharine, suddenly and without any warning.
“What makes you ask me such a question?” said her mother quickly.
“Because I want an answer to it, mother! because I – I want to go away. I want to know why we never have any change. I should like to go to the sea-side – to have some friends. I hate Applehurst!”
Katharine was so frightened that there were tears in her voice as she spoke. She stood behind her mother’s chair, and twitched her hands together nervously. Mrs Kingsworth looked down at her letter.
“I thought, Katie,” she said, “that I had taught you to look for better things than change and amusement. It would grieve me very much if you had a turn for constant excitement. That is a kind of character which I despise.”
“I think it is very dull here,” said Katharine; “I want to know people. I want to do something different.”
She was fairly crying by this time, and after a minute’s silence her mother went on speaking.
“Do you know, Katharine, what I consider to be more worth living for than anything else?”
“What?” said Katharine surprised.
“The opportunity of doing a noble action,” said Mrs Kingsworth, in a low tone; “so to live and so to think and believe that if a great choice came to one, one would do the right thing, let the consequences be what they might.”
She laid down her pen that her daughter might not see her hand tremble. It was quite as critical a moment to her as to Katharine.
“Yes, but I don’t see what all that has to do with our being shut up in Applehurst!”
“Perhaps not – but you can recognise the principle that life has better aims than amusement. Believe me, no good is worth having which is bought at the expense of the slightest self-reproach.”
“I don’t mean to be cross, mamma,” said Katharine, entirely mistaking her drift, “but if we could go away sometimes – you know I am grown up.”
“Are you?” said Mrs Kingsworth. “Sometimes you are so childish that I can hardly believe it. If I could see that you had more fixed principle, that you really cared for your duty, I might think it more possible to expose you to temptations of which you now know nothing.”
“But, mamma, I don’t want to do anything wrong.”
“I think you do not see the beauty of caring for the highest right.”
Katharine pouted. She was too well trained to be flippant; but her mother’s tone irritated her; so that contrary to the principle in which she had been trained that nothing was ever gained by crying for it, she burst into tears. Mrs Kingsworth looked round at her as she stood sobbing in a vehement girlish fashion, and rubbing her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief.
“Well,” she said, “you will have a little change. Uncle Kingsworth has written to propose a visit, and I am telling him that we shall expect him here on Monday. If you like,” she added after a pause, “you can tell him your troubles.”
“He might ask us to go again to stay with him,” said Katharine, brightening up.
Her mother made no answer, and the girl slipped away into the garden and sat down on the grass. She felt ruffled and vexed, with an impression that her mother was very unsympathising, and that the sentiments which she had uttered were tiresome, matter-of-course truisms, not worth enforcing. But Uncle Kingsworth was coming, and that was something to look forward to. And before many minutes had passed Mrs Kingsworth heard Katharine run up stairs, humming a tune.
She sat still herself, oppressed with a sense of failure. How could she ever rely on this impatient childish girl to carry out the act of restitution on which her heart was set?
“If she fails I should despise her!” said Mrs Kingsworth to herself with slower tears than Katharine’s rising in her eyes, “yet I suppose her wishes are natural.”
She loved her daughter as much as ever daughter was loved; but she cared infinitely more that Katharine should be good than that she should be happy, and this principle carried out logically in small matters made her the very opposite of a spoiling mother.
Still she was enough disturbed by what had passed to resolve almost for the first time in her life on consulting Canon Kingsworth. Her clear high purpose had crystallised itself in her mind, and had been sufficient for itself – every other influence had been a disturbance from it.
Canon Kingsworth’s rare visits were always a pleasant excitement at Applehurst. The later dinner, the different dress, the turning out of the spare bedroom gave an unwonted feeling of “company” in itself cheerful. Not that there was ever anything to complain of in the household; for though Mrs Kingsworth was not a woman who found pleasure in domestic details, she was accustomed as a matter of course to have everything kept up to a certain mark of propriety and comfort.
But
