h bore without
complaint, but that it was evident that every one depended on him,
and he had a room at the top of the house, with a wonderful view over
London, and a rook.

"A wretched old bird in a corner, with half its feathers out," she said,
with a tenderness in her voice that seemed to commiserate the sufferings
of humanity while resting assured in the capacity of Ralph Denham to
alleviate them, so that Mrs. Hilbery could not help exclaiming:

"But, Katharine, you ARE in love!" at which Katharine flushed, looked
startled, as if she had said something that she ought not to have said,
and shook her head.

Hastily Mrs. Hilbery asked for further details of this extraordinary
house, and interposed a few speculations about the meeting between Keats
and Coleridge in a lane, which tided over the discomfort of the moment,
and drew Katharine on to further descriptions and indiscretions. In
truth, she found an extraordinary pleasure in being thus free to talk to
some one who was equally wise and equally benignant, the mother of her
earliest childhood, whose silence seemed to answer questions that were
never asked. Mrs. Hilbery listened without making any remark for a
considerable time. She seemed to draw her conclusions rather by looking
at her daughter than by listening to her, and, if cross-examined, she
would probably have given a highly inaccurate version of Ralph Denham's
life-history except that he was penniless, fatherless, and lived at
Highgate--all of which was much in his favor. But by means of these
furtive glances she had assured herself that Katharine was in a state
which gave her, alternately, the most exquisite pleasure and the most
profound alarm.

She could not help ejaculating at last:

"It's all done in five minutes at a Registry Office nowadays, if you
think the Church service a little florid--which it is, though there are
noble things in it."

"But we don't want to be married," Katharine replied emphatically, and
added, "Why, after all, isn't it perfectly possible to live together
without being married?"

Again Mrs. Hilbery looked discomposed, and, in her trouble, took up the
sheets which were lying upon the table, and began turning them over this
way and that, and muttering to herself as she glanced:

"A plus B minus C equals 'x y z'. It's so dreadfully ugly, Katharine.
That's what I feel--so dreadfully ugly."

Katharine took the sheets from her mother's hand and began shuffling
them absent-m