had emptied a portfolio containing old photographs over her table, and was looking from one to another.
“Surely, Katharine,” she said, “the men were far handsomer in those days than they are now, in spite of their odious whiskers? Look at old John Graham, in his white waistcoat─look at Uncle Harley. That’s Peter the manservant, I suppose. Uncle John brought him back from India.”
Katharine looked at her mother, but did not stir or answer. She had suddenly become very angry, with a rage which their relationship made silent, and therefore doubly powerful and critical. She felt all the unfairness of the claim which her mother tacitly made to her time and sympathy, and what Mrs. Hilbery took, Katharine thought bitterly, she wasted. Then, in a flash, she remembered that she had still to tell her about Cyril’s misbehaviour. Her anger immediately dissipated itself; it broke like some wave that has gathered itself high above the rest: the waters were resumed into the sea again, and Katharine felt once more full of peace and solicitude, and anxious only that her mother should be protected from pain. She crossed the room instinctively, and sat on the arm of her mother’s chair. Mrs. Hilbery leant her head against her daughter’s body.
“What is nobler,” she mused, turning over the photographs, “than to be a woman to whom every one turns, in sorrow or difficulty? How have the young women of your generation improved upon that, Katharine? I can see them now, sweeping over the lawns. at Melbury House, in their flounces and furbelows, so calm and stately and imperial (and the monkey and the little black dwarf following behind), as if nothing mattered in the world but to be beautiful and kind. But they did more than we do, I sometimes think. They were, and that’s better than doing. They seem to me like ships, like majestic ships, holding on their way, not shoving or pushing, not
