She told the story to Giles, and it made him furiously angry.
"You young ninny to humble yourself to her," he cried, with flashing eyes. "Will you never learn to expect nothing but injustice from her? It isn't what we do, or say; it is jealousy. She will not let our father love us, she hates the children of our mother, and hates our mother's memory, that she was in every way Mistress Eliza's superior, as she guesses, knowing that she was better born, better bred, and surely better in character. I remember our mother, Con, if not clearly. I'm sorry you have not even so much recollection of her. You are like her, and may be thankful for it. I could trounce you for crawling to Mistress Hopkins! Learn your lesson for all time, and no more apologies! Con, I shall not stand it! No matter how it goes with this colony, I shall go back to England. I will not stay to be put upon, to see my father turned from me."
"Oh, Giles, that could never be!" cried Constance. "Father will never turn from us."
"I did not say from _us_; I said from _me_," retorted Giles. "You are different, a girl, and--and like Mother, and--several other reasons. But I often see that Father is not sure whether he shall approve me or not. It will not be so long till I am twenty-one, then I shall get out of reach of these things."
Constance's troubled face brightened. To her natural hopefulness Giles's twenty-first birthday was far enough away to allow a great deal of good to come before it.
"Oh, twenty-one, Giles! You'll be prospering and happy here before that," she cried.
"But I must tell no more of troubles with my stepmother to Giles," she added mentally. "It will never do to pile fuel on his smouldering fires!"
The next day when Constance was helping Mistress Hopkins with her mending, she noticed the oilskin-wrapped packet that her father had left with his wife for safe keeping, tossed carelessly upon the hammock which swung from the side of the berth which she and her stepmother shared, the bed devised by ingenuity for little Damaris.
"Is not that packet in Damaris's hammock Father's packet of valuable papers?" Constance asked. "Is there not a risk in letting them lie about, so highly as he prizes them?"
She made the suggestion timidly, for Dame Eliza did not take kindly to hints of this nature. To her surprise her stepmother received her remark not merely pleasantly, but almost eagerly, quick with self-reproach.