The child felt hot and tired.  She rested herself on the bench, and, spreading the flowers by her side, began to arrange them in the form of a nosegay.  Still true to her love for Sydney, she had planned to present the nosegay to her mother, offering the gift as an excuse for returning to the forbidden subject of her governess, and for asking when they might hope to see each other again.

Choosing flowers and then rejecting them, trying other colors and wondering whether she had accomplished a change for the better, Kitty was startled by the sound of a voice calling to her from the direction of the brook.

She looked round, and saw a gentleman crossing the bridge.  He asked the way to Brightwater Cottage.

There was something in his voice that attracted her—­how or why, at her age, she never thought of inquiring.  Eager and excited, she ran across the lawn which lay between her and the brook, before she answered the gentleman’s question.

As they approached each other, his eyes sparkled, his face flushed; he cried out joyfully, “Here she is!”—­and then changed again in an instant.  A horrid pallor overspread his face as the child stood looking at him with innocent curiosity.  He startled Kitty, not because he seemed to be shocked and distressed, she hardly noticed that; but because he was so like—­although he was thinner and paler and older—­oh, so like her lost father!

“This is the cottage, sir,” she said faintly.

His sorrowful eyes rested kindly on her.  And yet, it seemed as if she had in some way disappointed him.  The child ventured to say:  “Do you know me, sir?”

He answered in the saddest voice that Kitty had ever heard:  “My little girl, what makes you think I know you?”

She was at a loss how to reply, fearing to distress him.  She could only say:  “You are so like my poor papa.”

He shook and shuddered, as if she had said something to frighten him.  He took her hand.  On that hot day, his fingers felt as cold as if it had been winter time.  He led her back to the seat that she had left.  “I’m tired, my dear,” he said.  “Shall we sit down?” It was surely true that he was tired.  He seemed hardly able to lift one foot after the other; Kitty pitied him.  “I think you must be ill;” she said, as they took their places, side by side, on the bench.

“No; not ill.  Only weary, and perhaps a little afraid of frightening you.”  He kept her hand in his hand, and patted it from time to time.  “My dear, why did you say ‘poor papa,’ when you spoke of your father just now?”

“My father is dead, sir.”

He turned his face away from her, and pressed both hands on his breast, as if he had felt some dreadful pain there, and was trying to hide it.  But he mastered the pain; and he said a strange thing to her—­very gently, but still it was strange.  He wished to know who had told her that her father was dead.