The morning after Mother Carey’s interview with Gilbert she looked up as her door was pushed open, and beheld Julia, white and rigid with temper, standing on the threshold.

“What is the matter, child?” exclaimed her aunt, laying down her work in alarm.

Close behind Julia came Kathleen, her face swollen with tears, her expression full of unutterable woe.

Julia’s lips opened almost automatically as she said slowly and with bitter emphasis, “Aunt Margaret, is it true, as Kathleen says, that my father has all your money and some of Uncle Peter’s?”

Something snapped in Mother Carey!  One glance at Kathleen showed only too well that she had committed the almost unpardonable sin of telling Julia what had been carefully and tenderly kept from her.  Before she could answer Kathleen had swept past Julia and flung herself on the floor near her mother.

“Oh, mother, I can’t say anything that will ever make you understand.  Julia knows, she knows in her heart, what she said that provoked me!  She does nothing but grumble about the work, and how few dresses we have, and what a drudge she is, and what common neighbors we have, and how Miss Tewksbury would pity her if she knew all, and how Uncle Allan would suffer if he could see his daughter living such a life!  And this morning my head ached and my tooth ached and I was cross, and all at once something leaped out of my mouth!”

“Tell her what you said,” urged Julia inexorably.

Sobs choked Kathleen’s voice.  “I said—­I said—­oh! how can I tell it!  I said, if her father hadn’t lost so much of my father’s and my mother’s money we shouldn’t have been so poor, any of us.”

“Kathleen, how could you!” cried her mother.

If Julia wished to precipitate a tempest she had succeeded, and her face showed a certain sedate triumph.

“Oh! mother! don’t give me up; don’t give me up!” wailed Kathleen.  “It wasn’t me that said it, it was somebody else that I didn’t know lived inside of me.  I don’t expect you to forgive it or forget it, Julia, but if you’ll only try, just a little bit, I’ll show you how sorry I feel.  I’d cut myself and make it bleed, I’d go to prison, if I could get back to where I was before I said it!  Oh! what shall I do, mother, if you look at me like that again or say ‘How could you!’”

There was no doubting Kathleen’s remorse; even Julia saw that.

“Did she tell the truth, Aunt Margaret?” she repeated.

“Come here, Julia, and sit by me.  It is true that your Uncle Peter and I have both put money into your father’s business, and it is true that he has not been able to give it back to us, and perhaps may never do so.  There is just enough left to pay your poor father’s living expenses, but we trust his honor; we are as sorry for him as we can be, and we love him dearly.  Kathleen meant nothing but that your father has been unfortunate and we all have to abide by the consequences; but I am amazed that my daughter should have so forgotten herself as to speak of it to you!” (Renewed sobs from the prostrate Kathleen).