A little figure, young and light, was standing outside the window in the rain,--not Val’s mother, in her worn and stormy beauty, but poor little Violet in her blue cloak, the hood drawn over her golden hair--her eyes, which had been pathetic at their gayest moment, beseeching now with a power that would have melted the most obdurate. “Oh, my lady, let me in, let me in!” cried Vi. Lady Eskside stood for a minute immovable. “Her heart turned,” as she said afterwards, against this trifling little creature that was the cause of so much trouble (though how poor Vi, who suffered most, could be the cause, heaven knows!--people are not logical when they are in pain). Then I think it was the rain that moved her, and not the child’s pleading face. She could not have left her enemy’s dog, let alone his daughter, out in that drenching rain. She went across the room, slow and stately, and opened the window. But when Violet in her wet cloak came in, Lady Eskside gave her no encouragement. “This is a wet night for you to be out,” was all she said.
“Oh, Lady Eskside!” said poor Violet, throwing herself down in a heap at the old lady’s feet--“I have come to ask your pardon on my knees. Oh, you cannot think we knew of it, mamma and I. She is ill, or she would have been here too. Oh, my lady, my lady, think a moment! if it is hard for you, it is worse for us. It will kill mamma; and my heart is broken, my heart is broken!” cried poor little Vi.
“Miss Pringle, I do not think, on the spur of the moment, that there is much to be said between you and me.”
“Oh, my lady!” Violet cried out, as if she had been struck, at the sound of her own name.
“Nothing to be said,” continued Lady Eskside, though her voice wavered. “Who would blame you, poor thing--or your mother either? but between your father’s family and mine what can there be to say? That is not a fit posture for a young lady. We are not in a theatre, but private life,” said the old lady, severely calm. “If you will rise up and put off your wet cloak, I will order the carriage to take you home.”
“Oh, no, no!” cried Violet, rising to her feet. Her soft eyes sent forth an answering flash; her pale little face flushed over. “If you will not have any pity--I meant nothing else, my lady--will you tell--Val,” she added, with a hysterical sob rising in her throat, “that he is not to think any more of what he said last night. I’ll--forget it. It cannot be now, whatever--might have been. Oh, Mary,” cried the girl, turning to Miss Percival, whom she saw for the first time--“tell him! I never, never can look him in the face again.”