She waited as though her whole life hung on her mother’s answer. “I really don’t know what’s happened to you, Katie,” Mrs. Trenchard answered very quietly. “You’re like a young woman in a play—and you used to be so sensible. Just give me those scissors again, dear. Certainly if you were to marry Philip to-morrow, without waiting until the end of the year, as you promised, I should feel—we should all feel—that you had given us up. It would be difficult not to feel that.” “And if we wait until the end of the year and then marry and don’t live in Glebeshire but somewhere else—will you give us up _then_?” “My dear, isn’t it quite simple? We’ve given Philip every opportunity of knowing us—we’re now just going to give him another. If he loves you he will not want to take you away from all of us who love you also. He’ll do his best to like us—to settle—” “To settle!” Katherine cried. “Don’t you see that that’s what he’s tried to do—and he can’t—he can’t! It’s killing him—and you want him to be killed!... You’d like him to leave me, and if he won’t do that you’ll break his will, keep him under you, ruin his spirit.... Mother, let him alone—If we marry, after six months, let us lead our own lives. You’ll see I shall be as much yours as ever, more than ever. It will be all right. It must be!” Mrs. Trenchard said then her final word. “If you leave us for Philip that is your affair. I do my best to keep you both. You’ve talked much, Katie dear, about our dislike of Philip—what of his dislike of us? Is that nothing? Doesn’t he show it every moment of the day? Unless he hates us less you’ll have to choose. You’ll have to choose—let him come down to Garth then—we’ll do everything for him.” Katherine would have answered, but a sudden catch in her mother’s voice, a sudden, involuntary closing of the eyes, made her dart forward. “Mother, you’re tired.” “Yes, my dear, very.” They sat down on the old sofa together. Mrs. Trenchard, her arms folded, leant back against her daughter’s shoulder. “Just a moment, Katie dear,” she murmured, “before I undress.” Suddenly she was asleep. Katherine sat stiffly, staring before her into the room. Her arm was round her mother, and with the pressure of her hand she felt the soft firmness of the shoulder beneath the dressing-gown. Often in the old days her mother had thus leant against her. The brushing of her hair against Katherine’s cheek brought back to the girl thronging memories of happy, tranquil hours. Those memories flung before her, like reproaching, haunting ghosts, her present unhappiness. Her love for her mother filled her heart; her body thrilled with the sense of it. And so, there in the clumsy, familiar room, the loneliest hour of all life came to her.