she had "willed" him to come
to her, and he came? Surely--though as to this he had his qualms--she
could not have spoken with this abandonment to any other of her new
English acquaintances? To Darrell, for instance, who was expected at
Grosville Park that evening. No! From the beginning she had turned to
him, William Ashe; she had been conscious of the same mutual
understanding, the same sympathy in difference that he himself felt.

It was, at any rate, with the feeling of one whose fate has most
strangely, most unexpectedly overtaken him that he sat down beside her.
His own pulses were running at a great rate; but there was to be no sign
of it for her. He tried, indeed, to calm her by that mere cheerful
strength and vitality of which he was so easily master. "Why should you
be in despair?" he said, bending towards her. "Tell me. Let me try and
help you. Was your sister unkind to you?"

Kitty made no reply at once. The tears that brimmed her large eyes
slipped down her cheeks without disfiguring her. She was looking
absently, intently, into a dark depth of wood as though she sought there
for some truth that escaped her--truth of the past or of the present.

"I don't know," she said, at last, shaking her head, "I don't know
whether it was unkind. Perhaps it was only what we deserve, maman and
I."

"You!" cried Ashe.

"Yes," she said, passionately. "Who's going to separate between maman
and me? If she's done mean, shocking things, the people she's done them
to will hate me too. They <i>shall</i> hate me! It's right."

She turned to him violently. She was very white, and her little hands as
she sat there before him, proudly erect, twisted a lace handkerchief
between them that would soon be in tatters. Somehow Ashe winced before
the wreck of the handkerchief; what need to ruin the pretty, fragile
thing?

"I am quite sure no one will ever hate you for what you haven't done,"
he said, steadily. "That would be abominably unfair. But, you see, I
don't understand--and I don't like--I don't wish--to ask questions."

"<i>Do</i> ask questions!" she cried, looking at him almost reproachfully.
"That's just what I want you to do--Only," she added, hanging her head
in depression, "I shouldn't know what to answer. I am played with, and
treated as a baby! There is something horrible the matter--and no one
trusts me--every one keeps me in the dark. No one ever thinks whether I
am miserable or not."

She raised her hands to her