No horror of her solitude, no melancholy recollections, no dread of the future disturbed Sydney's mind. The one sense left in her was the sense of fatigue. Vacantly, mechanically, the girl rested as a tired animal might have rested. She saw nothing, heard nothing; the one feeling of which she was conscious was a dull aching in every limb. The moon climbed the heavens, brightened the topmost leaves of the trees, found the gloom in which Sydney was hidden, and cheered it tenderly with radiant light. She was too weary to sleep, too weary even to shade her face when the moonbeams touched it. While the light still strengthened, while the slow minutes still followed each other unheeded, the one influence that could rouse Sydney found her at last--set her faint heart throbbing--called her prostrate spirit to life again.
She heard a glad cry of recognition in a child's voice:
"Oh, Sydney, dear, is it you?"
In another instant her little pupil and playfellow of former days was in her arms.
"My darling, how did you come here?"
Susan answered the question. "We are on our way back from the Palace, miss. I am afraid," she said, timidly, "that we ought to go in."
Silently resigned, Sydney tried to release the child. Kitty clung to her and kissed her; Kitty set the nurse at defiance. "Do you think I am going to leave Syd now I have found her? Susan, I am astonished at you!"
Susan gave way. Where the nature is gentle, kindness and delicacy go hand-in-hand together, undisturbed by the social irregularities which beset the roadway of life. The nursemaid drew back out of hearing. Kitty's first questions followed each other in breathless succession. Some of them proved to be hard, indeed, to answer truly, and without reserve. She inquired if Sydney had seen her mother, and then she was eager to know why Sydney had been left in the garden alone.
"Why haven't you gone back to the house with mamma?" she asked.
"Don't ask me, dear," was all that Sydney could say. Kitty drew the inevitable conclusion: "Have you and mamma quarreled?"
"Oh, no!
"Then come indoors with me."
"Wait a little, Kitty, and tell me something about yourself. How do you get on with your lessons?"
"You dear foolish governess, do you expect me to learn my lessons, when I haven't got you to teach me? Where have you been all this long while? _I_ wouldn't have gone away and left _you!_"
She paused; her eager eyes studied Sydney's face with the unrestrained curiosity of a child. "Is it the moonlight that makes you look pale and wretched?" she said. "Or are you really unhappy? Tell me, Syd, do you ever sing any of those songs that I taught you, when you first came to us?"
"Never, dear!"
"Have you anybody to go out walking with you and running races with you, as I did?"
"No, my sweet! Those days have gone by forever."
Kitty laid her head sadly on Sydney's bosom. "It's not the moonlight," she said; "shall I tell you a secret? Sometimes I am not happy either. Poor papa is dead. He always liked you--I'm sure you are sorry for him."
Astonishment held Sydney speechless. Before she could ask who had so cruelly deceived the child, and for what purpose, the nursemaid, standing behind the chair, warned her to be silent by a touch.
"I think we are all unhappy now," Kitty went on, still following her own little train of thought. "Mamma isn't like what she used to be. And even my nice Captain hasn't a word to say to me. He wouldn't come back with us; he said he would go back by himself."
Another allusion which took Sydney by surprise! She asked who the Captain was. Kitty started as if the question shocked her. "Oh dear, dear, this is what comes of your going away and leaving us!
You don't know Captain Bennydeck."
The name of her father's correspondent! The name which she vaguely remembered to have heard in her childhood! "Where did you first meet with him?" she inquired.
"At the seaside, dear!"
"Do you mean at Sandyseal?"
"Yes. Mamma liked him--and grandmamma liked him (which is wonderful)--and I gave him a kiss. Promise me not to tell! My nice Captain is going to be my new papa."
Was there any possible connection between what Kitty had just said, and what the poor child had been deluded into believing when she spoke of her father? Even Susan seemed to be in the secret of this strange second marriage! She interfered with a sharp reproof. "You mustn't talk in that way, Miss Kitty. Please put her off your lap, Miss Westerfield; we have been here too long already."
Kitty proposed a compromise; "I'll go," she said, "if Syd will come with me."
"I'm sorry, my darling, to disappoint you."
Kitty refused to believe it. "You couldn't disappoint me if you tried," she said boldly.
"Indeed, indeed, I must go away. Oh, Kitty, try to bear it as I do!"
Entreaties were useless; the child refused to hear of another parting. "I want to make you and mamma friends again. Don't break my heart, Sydney! Come home with me, and teach me, and play with me, and love me!"
