time, and
a number of vases were always full of fresh flowers was supposed to be a
natural endowment of hers, and, indeed, Mrs. Hilbery often observed that
it was poetry the wrong side out. From a very early age, too, she had
to exert herself in another capacity; she had to counsel and help and
generally sustain her mother. Mrs. Hilbery would have been perfectly
well able to sustain herself if the world had been what the world is
not. She was beautifully adapted for life in another planet. But the
natural genius she had for conducting affairs there was of no real use
to her here. Her watch, for example, was a constant source of surprise
to her, and at the age of sixty-five she was still amazed at the
ascendancy which rules and reasons exerted over the lives of other
people. She had never learnt her lesson, and had constantly to be
punished for her ignorance. But as that ignorance was combined with a
fine natural insight which saw deep whenever it saw at all, it was not
possible to write Mrs. Hilbery off among the dunces; on the contrary,
she had a way of seeming the wisest person in the room. But, on the
whole, she found it very necessary to seek support in her daughter.

Katharine, thus, was a member of a very great profession which has, as
yet, no title and very little recognition, although the labor of mill
and factory is, perhaps, no more severe and the results of less benefit
to the world. She lived at home. She did it very well, too. Any one
coming to the house in Cheyne Walk felt that here was an orderly place,
shapely, controlled--a place where life had been trained to show to
the best advantage, and, though composed of different elements, made to
appear harmonious and with a character of its own. Perhaps it was
the chief triumph of Katharine's art that Mrs. Hilbery's character
predominated. She and Mr. Hilbery appeared to be a rich background for
her mother's more striking qualities.

Silence being, thus, both natural to her and imposed upon her, the only
other remark that her mother's friends were in the habit of making about
it was that it was neither a stupid silence nor an indifferent silence.
But to what quality it owed its character, since character of some sort
it had, no one troubled themselves to inquire. It was understood that
she was helping her mother to produce a great book. She was known to
manage the household. She was certainly beautiful. That accounted for
her satisfactorily. But it would have