“Go away from me, Kit Carrington, go away! I will never again tell you how I love you, I love you, oh, how I love you! Shame to make me weak! Horrible, horrible! Richard, come, come, dear, kind, tender Richard! Kit is cruel to me. Anne, little Anne, come back quick!” Little Anne had obeyed an instinct that sent her, frightened and white, mystified, yet understanding much, away from the door after she had heard and seen almost all that had passed, but before the actors in the scene discovered her. Now, when Anne called, she came hastily, young as she was, proving her ability to play a part, saying as she came: “Yes, Miss Anne, dear, did you want me?” But little Anne was not equal to the demand made upon her by Anne’s hysterical weeping. She threw her thin arms around the girl, and drew her head down into the hollow of her very hollow shoulder, mothering her and patting her. “I’m sure I don’t see how you can bother her, Kit, for you are always so very dear, but I do certainly think you’d better run right away! It’ll make her sick to cry so. Just go right home, dear Kit, and you’d better say a prayer to St. Joseph, ’cause he’s the one for husbands. There, there, my poor darling, please try to feel better! Don’t cry! I know it’ll come all right. See how I didn’t die when I was so sick; often things turn out better’n you’d think! Anne, little Anne, will take care of you. Good-bye, dear Kit. I’m sorry, but Mother’s out, and I truly think you’d better go home, just this one time!” she said, coaxing both of her patients purringly. “Oh, little Anne, little Anne, I used to be little Anne, too! Don’t grow up, child!” sobbed Anne, not lifting her head as Kit went slowly out of the room. CHAPTER XVII _Honour_ Little Anne expected Anne to recover after a reasonable time. She had never known a grown person to cry so violently. She had dealt with no abandon of emotion except her own, and after she had cried tempestuously she was always done with it. But Anne’s weeping abated only to begin all over again when little Anne began to hope; despair of its ever ending seized her. Her arm ached, too, but Anne remembered that it would and withdrew from it to lie face downward in the window cushions, which relaxed the muscles of little Anne’s strained body, but tautened the cords of her heart. “Please, please, please, dear!” little Anne repeated constantly, patting Anne’s shoulder steadily, changing hands that the action in which she had undefined confidence might not cease. Then little Anne, getting desperate, bent over Anne. “Wouldn’t you like to see somebody?” she anxiously suggested. “Shall I call the doctor, or someone?” “I think it’s a priest I need, Anne; I’d like to go to confession!” she sobbed. Little Anne was not only relieved by this first coherent speech from her patient, but she hailed the suggestion as the most fitting thing.