CHAPTER 18: "Saucy Kate.".
"Wife, what ails the child ?" Lady Frances Trevlyn raised her calm eyes from her embroidery, and gave one swift glance around the room, as if to make sure that she and her husband were alone.
"Dost thou speak of Kate ?" she asked then in a low voice.
"Ay, marry I do," answered Sir Richard, as he took the seat beside the glowing hearth, near to his wife's chair, which was his regular place when he was within doors.

"I scarce know the child again in some of her moods.

She was always wayward and capricious, but as gay and happy as the day was long--as full of sunshine as a May morning.

Whence come, then, all these vapours and reveries and bursts of causeless weeping?
I have found her in tears more oft these last three months than in all the years of her life before; and though she strives to efface the impression by wild outbreaks of mirth, such as we used of old to know, there is something hollow and forced about these merry moods, and the laugh will die away the moment she is alone, and a look will creep upon her face that I like not to see." "Thou hast watched her something closely, Richard." "Ay, truly I have.

I would have watched any child of mine upon whom was passing so strange a change; but thou knowest that Kate has ever been dear to me--I have liked to watch her in her tricksy moods.