This was a great relief to Kitty, who had conceived an unconquerable, shy dislike of her guardian since he had grown so strangely affable and even tender in his demeanour towards herself, and so false, so deceitful in his external politeness towards the Frau President. Involuntarily she adopted, in her intercourse with him, the dignified reserve of a woman, where she had formerly shown the confidence of a child. And this very change seemed to please and encourage him in his new, strange rôle. He divined her wishes and fulfilled them; he had long since consented that the unused portion of the mill-garden should be sold to the workmen. He placed no obstacles in the way of any of her benevolent schemes, and, when her purse was empty, filled it without a word of remonstrance. "Deny yourself the fulfilment of no whim, Kitty; I shall soon have to buy you another iron safe," he said, in allusion to the astounding increase of her capital. She listened in gloomy silence. With all his finesse and diplomatic replies to her grave inquiries, he had never yet disproved the complaint made by the people, that her wealth had been gained by pitiless usury,—a complaint to which the Frau President never lost an opportunity of alluding. The naïve childish delight Kitty had formerly taken in being so rich had been converted into a kind of dread of the money which was so swiftly, so strangely accumulating, only, it might be, to fall upon and crush her at some future day in just retribution.
She had grown notably graver. The sunny smile that her lively temperament had so often called up upon her face was now rare. She was never unreservedly gay, except in the house by the river, and there only at certain times. The dean’s widow had been for some time charitably teaching a number of poor children to knit and to sew, every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. In this little scheme Kitty, with the joyful consent of the old lady, had taken part. Intercourse with children was something entirely novel in her experience, stirring chords in her nature the existence of which she had never suspected. She took heartfelt delight in the little creatures, and admitted to herself that the care and instruction of them was an occupation beyond all others to her in interest.