that she
lumped together, the marriage and the interment, she had been present
at the former, just as she had sent Marian, before it, a liberal
cheque; but this had not been for her more than the shadow of an
admitted link with Mrs. Condrip's course. She disapproved of clamorous
children for whom there was no prospect; she disapproved of weeping
widows who couldn't make their errors good; and she had thus put within
Marian's reach one of the few luxuries left when so much else had gone,
an easy pretext for a constant grievance. Kate Croy remembered well
what their mother, in a different quarter, had made of it; and it was
Marian's marked failure to pluck the fruit of resentment that committed
them, as sisters, to an almost equal fellowship in abjection. If the
theory was that, yes, alas, one of the pair had ceased to be noticed,
but that the other was noticed enough to make up for it, who would fail
to see that Kate couldn't separate herself without a cruel pride? That
lesson became sharp for our young lady the day after her interview with
her father.

"I can't imagine," Marian on this occasion said to her, "how you can
think of anything else in the world but the horrid way we're situated."

"And, pray, how do you know," Kate inquired in reply, "anything about
my thoughts? It seems to me I give you sufficient proof of how much I
think of _you._ I don't, really, my dear, know what else you've to do
with!"

Marian's retort, on this, was a stroke as to which she had supplied
herself with several kinds of preparation, but there was, none the
less, something of an unexpected note in its promptitude. She had
foreseen her sister's general fear; but here, ominously, was the
special one. "Well, your own business is of course your own business,
and you may say there's no one less in a position than I to preach to
you. But, all the same, if you wash your hands of me for ever for it, I
won't, for this once, keep back that I don't consider you've a right,
as we all stand, to throw yourself away."

It was after the children's dinner, which was also their mother's, but
which their aunt mostly contrived to keep from ever becoming her own
luncheon; and the two young women were still in the presence of the
crumpled table-cloth, the dispersed pinafores, the scraped dishes, the
lingering odour of boiled food. Kate had asked, with ceremony, if she
might put up a window a little, and Mrs. Condrip had replied without it
that she might do