erform professionally upon either. Indeed, for
thirty-two years of life he had nothing more substantial to show than a
manuscript book containing the score of half an opera. In this protest
of his, Katharine had always given him her support, and as she was
generally held to be an extremely sensible person, who dressed too well
to be eccentric, he had found her support of some use. Indeed, when she
came down at Christmas she usually spent a great part of her time in
private conferences with Henry and with Cassandra, the youngest girl,
to whom the silkworms belonged. With the younger section she had a great
reputation for common sense, and for something that they despised but
inwardly respected and called knowledge of the world--that is to say,
of the way in which respectable elderly people, going to their clubs
and dining out with ministers, think and behave. She had more than once
played the part of ambassador between Lady Otway and her children. That
poor lady, for instance, consulted her for advice when, one day, she
opened Cassandra's bedroom door on a mission of discovery, and found the
ceiling hung with mulberry-leaves, the windows blocked with cages, and
the tables stacked with home-made machines for the manufacture of silk
dresses.

"I wish you could help her to take an interest in something that other
people are interested in, Katharine," she observed, rather plaintively,
detailing her grievances. "It's all Henry's doing, you know, giving up
her parties and taking to these nasty insects. It doesn't follow that if
a man can do a thing a woman may too."

The morning was sufficiently bright to make the chairs and sofas in Lady
Otway's private sitting-room appear more than usually shabby, and the
gallant gentlemen, her brothers and cousins, who had defended the Empire
and left their bones on many frontiers, looked at the world through a
film of yellow which the morning light seemed to have drawn across
their photographs. Lady Otway sighed, it may be at the faded relics,
and turned, with resignation, to her balls of wool, which, curiously
and characteristically, were not an ivory-white, but rather a tarnished
yellow-white. She had called her niece in for a little chat. She had
always trusted her, and now more than ever, since her engagement to
Rodney, which seemed to Lady Otway extremely suitable, and just what one
would wish for one's own daughter. Katharine unwittingly increased her
reputation for wisdom by asking