Mrs. Pike was absent at a Shakespeare reading.  Dr. Trenire had been out all day, a long round over bleak country, and had not been home more than an hour.  Kitty had heard him come, and had longed—­as she had never longed in the days when she was free to do as she liked—­to go and superintend his meal, and hear all about his day.  But she knew what a to-do there would be if she did not stay where she was and do her lessons, and she had just lost herself again in the story of “Enid,” when, to her surprise, she heard her father’s footsteps coming along the passage and stopping at the door of the school-room.  She was even more surprised when, on opening the door, he said very quietly and gravely, “Kitty, will you come to me in my study at once?  I wish to speak to you.”

She had looked up with a smile, but the expression on her father’s face caused her smile to die away, and left her perplexed and troubled.

“What was it?  Was Dan in trouble—­or ill—­or—­or what had happened?”

It never occurred to her as she got up and hurried after her father to his room that the trouble might be of her causing.  When she reached the study she found Dr. Trenire standing by the table holding a letter which he was reading.  He looked up from it when she entered, and in answer to the alarmed questioning in her eyes, he, after hesitating a moment, put the letter into her hand.  “Read that,” he said sternly, “and tell me what it means.”

Kitty took the letter, but she was so bewildered and troubled by her father’s manner, and the mystery, and her own dread, that she gazed at it for seconds, unable to take in a word that it contained.

“Well?”

“I—­I haven’t read it yet, father,” she stammered.  “Do tell me; is it—­ is it anything about Dan?”

Dr. Trenire looked at her very searchingly.  “This is not the time for trifling, Kitty,” he said.  “The letter is about you, I am sorry to say.  I am so shocked, so grieved, and astonished at what it tells me, that I—­I cannot make myself believe it unless you tell me that I must.  Read it.”

Kitty read it this time—­read it with the blood rushing over her face and neck, her eyes smarting, her cheeks tingling; and as she more and more clearly grasped the meaning, her heart beat hot and fast with indignation.

When she looked up, her hurt, shamed eyes struck reproach to Dr. Trenire’s heart.  “Father, you didn’t—­you didn’t think that I—­I—­that what that letter says is true?” The feeling that he had, if only for a moment, done so hurt her far more than did the letter, which was from Miss Richards.