cing-master to marry Katharine? that gibbering ass with
the face of a monkey on an organ? that posing, vain, fantastical fop?
with his tragedies and his comedies, his innumerable spites and prides
and pettinesses? Lord! marry Rodney! She must be as great a fool as he
was. His bitterness took possession of him, and as he sat in the
corner of the underground carriage, he looked as stark an image of
unapproachable severity as could be imagined. Directly he reached home
he sat down at his table, and began to write Katharine a long, wild, mad
letter, begging her for both their sakes to break with Rodney, imploring
her not to do what would destroy for ever the one beauty, the one truth,
the one hope; not to be a traitor, not to be a deserter, for if she
were--and he wound up with a quiet and brief assertion that, whatever
she did or left undone, he would believe to be the best, and accept from
her with gratitude. He covered sheet after sheet, and heard the early
carts starting for London before he went to bed.

CHAPTER XXIV

The first signs of spring, even such as make themselves felt towards the
middle of February, not only produce little white and violet flowers
in the more sheltered corners of woods and gardens, but bring to birth
thoughts and desires comparable to those faintly colored and sweetly
scented petals in the minds of men and women. Lives frozen by age,
so far as the present is concerned, to a hard surface, which neither
reflects nor yields, at this season become soft and fluid, reflecting
the shapes and colors of the present, as well as the shapes and colors
of the past. In the case of Mrs. Hilbery, these early spring days were
chiefly upsetting inasmuch as they caused a general quickening of her
emotional powers, which, as far as the past was concerned, had never
suffered much diminution. But in the spring her desire for expression
invariably increased. She was haunted by the ghosts of phrases. She gave
herself up to a sensual delight in the combinations of words. She sought
them in the pages of her favorite authors. She made them for herself
on scraps of paper, and rolled them on her tongue when there seemed no
occasion for such eloquence. She was upheld in these excursions by the
certainty that no language could outdo the splendor of her father's
memory, and although her efforts did not notably further the end of his
biography, she was under the impression of living more in his shade at
such times than