“Don’t you eat nothing, my dear?” asked her mother anxiously. “I can’t say as India have made you fat, Kathleen.” She smiled involuntarily. “Surely you do not wish me to be fat, mother?” “Well, no, not exactly. But I’d like to see you enjoy your food.” “Did she go through the form of showing you her list?” “No, my dear, she didn’t. Your father knows who is coming. I did say to her as how I wished she’d bring her children--they are such little ducks--but she gave a little scoffing laugh and didn’t even reply.” “How can you tolerate her! You should turn her out of the house!” “Oh, my dear Kathleen,” said Mrs. Massarene in an awed tone. “We’ve owed everything to her. If it hadn’t been for her I believe we shouldn’t have known a soul worth speaking of to this day. That old Khris (though he’s a real prince) is somehow down on his luck and can’t get anybody anywhere. You’ve made fine friends, to be sure, but they didn’t cotton to us; and your Lady Mary--whom you’ve just come from--they say, isn’t what she should be.” “Is Lady Kenilworth?” “Lord, she must be, my dear! Why she comes on here from Sandringham! She’s at the very tiptop of the tree. She stays at Windsor and she sits next the Queen at the Braemar gathering. What more could you have? And though she does bite my nose off and treat me like dirt I can’t help being took by her; there’s something about her carries you off your feet like; I don’t know what to call it.” “Fascination.” “Well, yes; I suppose you’d say so. It’s a kind of power in her, and grace and beauty and cruelty all mixed up in her, as ’tis in a pretty young cat. Your father’s that wrapped up in her he sits staring like an owl when she’s in the room, and I believe if she told him to hop on one leg round the Houses of Parliament he’d do it to please her.” “Does he not see how ridiculous she makes him?” “My dear,” said Mrs. Massarene with solemnity, “a man never thinks he is ridiculous. He says to himself, ‘I’m a _man_,’ and he gets a queer sort of comfort out of that as a baby does out of sucking its thumb.” Katherine smiled absently. “Does Lady Kenilworth ever speak of her brother--her eldest brother, Lord Hurstmanceaux?” she said in an embarrassed tone, which her mother did not observe. “Yes; she says he’s a bear. She’s brought her brothers-in-law, and a good many of her relations, her ‘people,’ as she calls ’em, but her own brothers, none of ’em, ever.” “This place belonged to her cousin.”