owing steeper
and steeper, past villas and cottages and pretty gardens, until at last
all dwellings were left behind, and only hedges bordered the wide road;
and then the hedges were passed too, and they were out on the open
downs with miles of rough level grassland stretching away on either side
of them, broken only by the flat white road along which they rolled so
easily.

Up here, on this height, with nothing to intercept it, a little breeze
met them. It was a very faint little breeze, but it was refreshing.
Kitty drew in deep breaths of it with pleasure, for the closeness and
thunderousness of the atmosphere were very trying. The sky overhead
looked heavy and angry, black, with a dull red glow burning through here
and there, while a hot mist veiled the horizon.

For a time they drove on without speaking, Prue's regular footfalls, the
noise of the wheels, and the sharp, clear calls of the birds alone
breaking the silence. Kitty was thinking deeply, trying to summon
courage to make her earnest, final appeal, and wondering how to begin.

"Father," she began at last, "I--I wish you would give us one more
chance--trial, I mean. We would try to behave better, really we would;
and--and I will do my best to look after the house and the servants
properly. I am sure I can if I try. There shall always be hot water,
and--well, you see I feel it is all my fault, and I have brought it all
on the others--"

Dr. Trenire came back with a start from his drowsy musings, and tried to
gather what it was that his daughter was saying, for she was rather
incoherent. Her voice shook at first with nervousness. "Eh, what?" he
stammered.

It was disconcerting to Kitty to find that he had not been taking in a
word of what it had cost her such an effort to say. "I will do my best
to look after the house and the servants," she repeated desperately,
"if--"

"But I am afraid, child, you really don't know how. It is not in anger,
Kitty, that I am making this new arrangement. I am doing it because I
feel you have a task entirely beyond your power, and for all your sakes
I must see that you have an orderly and comfortable home, and--"

"It won't be _comfortable_," said Kitty pathetically. "It will never be
that any more."

"You must not begin by being prejudiced against your aunt," reasoned her
father gently.

"I am not, father, really; we are not prejudiced," she answered; "but we
know, and--and every one else knows that--tha