the tips of her fingers; and though it gave her a deep wound to think her boy had thus given her over, she could not bear to see him unhapp{130}y. She laid down her work at last, and stole out of the room, wondering if he noticed her going, and went and knocked at Kate’s door. “My dear, I have just made the tea, and it smells so refreshing. I thought, if you had not gone to bed, a cup would do you good,” she said, coming in and taking Kate’s hand. Her eyes were so wistful, such an unspoken prayer was in her face, that a glimmering of what she must mean just flashed upon Kate.
{130}
“How good of you to come and tell me! May Parsons go down and bring me a cup?” said the girl. She had been seated by the open window, with the breath of the lilies stealing up from the dark garden, and a reverie had stolen over her, about nothing in particular; only the soft night was in it, and the lilies, and the vague delights of youth. I almost think she had felt John Mitford’s incipient undeveloped sentiment breathing up to her in the vagueness and darkness, with an indefinite perfume, like the flowers. And Kate had no mind to leave this sweet confusion of dreams and odours and far-off suggestion, for ac{131}tual talk and commonplace intercourse; and her first impulse was to get gently rid of her visitor, if that might be.
{131}
“It would lose all its fragrance coming up-stairs,” said Mrs Mitford. “You have not begun to undress, or even taken down your pretty hair; come down, my dear, for half an hour,—I know it will do your head good. You know, everybody says ours is such good tea.”
“Don’t I know it!” said Kate; “but——”
“But I can’t take any refusal,” said Mrs Mitford, drawing the girl’s arm within her own. Oh, how little she wanted her at that moment, had the truth been known! and yet she coaxed and wooed her as if it were a personal grace. And the girl yielded, thinking more a great deal of the sweetness of being thus sought and coaxed by the mother, than of the son who was sitting in the dumps on the sofa in the dark corner down-stairs.
“If you want me,” she said, with a faint accent of inquiry{132}, and gave Mrs Mitford a soft little kiss. “I think mamma must have been like you,” she said in apology, a remark which confused John’s mother, and made her feel guilty. For it was not kindness to this motherless creature that moved her, but the maternal passion which paused at nothing which could give pleasure to her boy.
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