"Saucy? Uncle Ralph saucy? Why, he is the most kindly man in the world,--sometimes hasty, but always well-mannered. I don't see how he could be saucy."
"I advise you not to stand up for him against your mother."
"I shouldn't defend him in anything wrong; but I think there must be some misunderstanding."
"He is like Mark, I suppose, always perfect in your eyes."
This was the first time since Mr. Kinloch's death that the step-mother had ever alluded to the fondness which had existed between Mark and Mildred as school-children, and her eyes were bent upon the girl eagerly. It was as though she had knocked at the door of her heart, and waited for its opening to look into the secret recesses. A quick flush suffused Mildred's face and neck.
"You are unkind, mother," she said; for the glance was sharper than the words; and then, bursting into tears, she went to her room.
"So it has come to this!" said Mrs. Kinloch to herself. "Well, I did not begin at all too soon."
She walked through the hall to the back piazza. She heard voices from beyond the shrubbery that bordered the grass-plot where the clothes were hung on lines to dry. Lucy, the maid, evidently was there, for one; indeed, by shifting her position so as to look through an opening in the bushes, Mrs. Kinloch could see the girl; but she was not busy with her clothes-basket. An arm was bent around her plump and graceful figure. The next instant, as Mrs. Kinloch saw by standing on tiptoe, two forms swayed toward each other, and Lucy, no way reluctantly, received a kiss from--Hugh Branning!
Very naughty, certainly,--but it is incumbent on me to tell the truth, and accordingly I have put it down.
Now my readers are doubtless prepared for a catastrophe. They will expect to hear Mrs. Kinloch cry, "Lucy Ransom, you jade, what are you doing? Take your clothes and trumpery and leave this house!" You will suppose that her son Hugh will be shut up in the cellar on bread and water, or sent off to sea in disgrace. That is the traditional way with angry mistresses, I know; but Mrs. Kinloch was not one of the common sort. She did not know Talleyrand's maxim,--"Never act from first impulses, for they are always--_right_!" Indeed, I doubt if she had ever heard of that slippery Frenchman; but observation and experience had led her to adopt a similar line of policy.