good. I have
not wished to interfere; I have not wished to give you pain. I am a
useless old woman. I have no children of my own. I only want to see you
happy, Katharine."

Again she stretched forth her arms, but they remained empty.

"You are not going to say these things to Cassandra," said Katharine
suddenly. "You've said them to me; that's enough."

Katharine spoke so low and with such restraint that Mrs. Milvain had
to strain to catch her words, and when she heard them she was dazed by
them.

"I've made you angry! I knew I should!" she exclaimed. She quivered, and
a kind of sob shook her; but even to have made Katharine angry was some
relief, and allowed her to feel some of the agreeable sensations of
martyrdom.

"Yes," said Katharine, standing up, "I'm so angry that I don't want
to say anything more. I think you'd better go, Aunt Celia. We don't
understand each other."

At these words Mrs. Milvain looked for a moment terribly apprehensive;
she glanced at her niece's face, but read no pity there, whereupon
she folded her hands upon a black velvet bag which she carried in an
attitude that was almost one of prayer. Whatever divinity she prayed to,
if pray she did, at any rate she recovered her dignity in a singular way
and faced her niece.

"Married love," she said slowly and with emphasis upon every word, "is
the most sacred of all loves. The love of husband and wife is the most
holy we know. That is the lesson Mamma's children learnt from her; that
is what they can never forget. I have tried to speak as she would have
wished her daughter to speak. You are her grandchild."

Katharine seemed to judge this defence upon its merits, and then to
convict it of falsity.

"I don't see that there is any excuse for your behavior," she said.

At these words Mrs. Milvain rose and stood for a moment beside her
niece. She had never met with such treatment before, and she did not
know with what weapons to break down the terrible wall of resistance
offered her by one who, by virtue of youth and beauty and sex, should
have been all tears and supplications. But Mrs. Milvain herself was
obstinate; upon a matter of this kind she could not admit that she was
either beaten or mistaken. She beheld herself the champion of married
love in its purity and supremacy; what her niece stood for she was quite
unable to say, but she was filled with the gravest suspicions. The old
woman and the young woman stood side by side in unbroken