have pitied him; one would have tried to help him. There's nothing
so disgraceful after all--But he's been going about all these years,
pretending, letting one take it for granted, that he was single. And the
poor deserted little wife--"

"She is NOT his wife," Aunt Celia interrupted.

"I've never heard anything so detestable!" Mrs. Hilbery wound up,
striking her fist on the arm of her chair. As she realized the facts she
became thoroughly disgusted, although, perhaps, she was more hurt by
the concealment of the sin than by the sin itself. She looked splendidly
roused and indignant; and Katharine felt an immense relief and pride in
her mother. It was plain that her indignation was very genuine, and
that her mind was as perfectly focused upon the facts as any one could
wish--more so, by a long way, than Aunt Celia's mind, which seemed to
be timidly circling, with a morbid pleasure, in these unpleasant shades.
She and her mother together would take the situation in hand, visit
Cyril, and see the whole thing through.

"We must realize Cyril's point of view first," she said, speaking
directly to her mother, as if to a contemporary, but before the words
were out of her mouth, there was more confusion outside, and Cousin
Caroline, Mrs. Hilbery's maiden cousin, entered the room. Although she
was by birth an Alardyce, and Aunt Celia a Hilbery, the complexities of
the family relationship were such that each was at once first and second
cousin to the other, and thus aunt and cousin to the culprit Cyril, so
that his misbehavior was almost as much Cousin Caroline's affair as
Aunt Celia's. Cousin Caroline was a lady of very imposing height and
circumference, but in spite of her size and her handsome trappings,
there was something exposed and unsheltered in her expression, as if
for many summers her thin red skin and hooked nose and reduplication of
chins, so much resembling the profile of a cockatoo, had been bared to
the weather; she was, indeed, a single lady; but she had, it was the
habit to say, "made a life for herself," and was thus entitled to be
heard with respect.

"This unhappy business," she began, out of breath as she was. "If the
train had not gone out of the station just as I arrived, I should have
been with you before. Celia has doubtless told you. You will agree with
me, Maggie. He must be made to marry her at once for the sake of the
children--"

"But does he refuse to marry her?" Mrs. Hilbery inquired, with a