“My _dear_ Katherine!” she said. Then—“Just give me that reel of silk, dear, on the table.” Then—“But it’s absurd—you don’t—” she seemed to struggle with her words as though she were beating back some other personality that threatened to rise and overwhelm her. “You don’t—” She found her words. “You don’t know him.” Katherine broke in eagerly. “I loved him at the very beginning I think. I felt I knew him at once. I don’t know; it’s so hard to see how it began, but I can’t help it, Mother. I’ve known it myself for weeks now; Mother—” She knelt down beside the sofa and looked up, and then, at something in her mother’s eyes, looked down again. “Please—please—I know it seems strange to you now, but soon you’ll get to know him—then you’ll be glad—” She broke off, and there followed a long silence. Mrs. Trenchard put down the doll very carefully, and then, with her hands folded on her lap, lay back on her sofa. She watched the dark evening as it gathered in beyond the windows; she heard her maid’s knock on the door, watched her draw the curtains and switch on the light. It was only four o’clock, but it was very cold. “I think I’ll have my shawl, dear,” said Mrs. Trenchard. “The Indian one that your Uncle Timothy gave me—it’s in the third drawer—there—to the right.... Thank you. I must go down. Grandfather’s coming down to tea this afternoon.” Katherine drew closer to the sofa, after she had brought the shawl; she laid her hand upon her mother’s, which were very cold. “But, Mother, you’ve said nothing! I know that now it must seem as though I’d done it without asking you, without telling you, but I didn’t know myself until yesterday afternoon. It came so suddenly.” “Yesterday afternoon?” Mrs. Trenchard drew her shawl closely about her. “But how could he—Mr. Mark—yesterday afternoon? You weren’t alone with him—Aggie was there. Surely she—” “No. He wrote on a piece of paper and slipped it across to me, and I said ‘yes.’ We both felt we couldn’t wait.” “I don’t like him,” Mrs. Trenchard said slowly. “You knew that I didn’t like him.” The colour rose in Katherine’s cheeks. “No,” she said, “I knew that you thought some of his ideas odd. But you didn’t know him.” “I don’t like him,” said Mrs. Trenchard again. “I could never like him. He isn’t a religious man. He has a bad effect upon Henry. You, Katherine, to accept him when you know that he doesn’t go to church and was so rude to poor Mr. Seymour and thinks Russia such a fine country! I can’t think,” said Mrs. Trenchard, her hands trembling again, “what’s come over you.” Katherine got up from her knees. “You won’t think that when you know him better. It’s only that he’s seen more of the world than we have. He’ll change and we’ll change, and perhaps it will be better for all of us. Down in Glebeshire we always have done so much the same things and seen the same people, and even here in London—”