Now
that she was the rich Miss Brownlow, she was not likely to feel that
she was the plain one.
The sense of exile was over when the house in London was taken, and
so Janet could afford to be kind to Kenminster; and she was like the
Janet of old times, without her slough of captious disdain. Even
then there was a sense that the girl was not fathomed; she never
seemed to pour out her inner self, but only to talk from the surface,
and certainly not to have any full confidence with her mother—-nay,
rather to hold her cheap.
Mary Ogilvie detected this disloyal spirit, and was at a loss whether
to ascribe it to modern hatred of control, to the fact that Caroline
had been in her old home more like the favourite child than the
mother, or to her own eager naturalness of demeanour, and total lack
of assumption. She was anything but weak, yet she could not be
dignified, and was quite ready to laugh at herself with her children.
Janet could hardly be overawed by a mother who had been challenged by
her own gamekeeper creeping down a ditch, with the two Johns, to see
a wild duck on her nest, and with her hat half off, and her hair
disordered by the bushes.
The "Folly" laughed till its sides ached at the adventure, and
Caroline asked Mary if she were not longing to scold her.
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