dining out with ministers, think and behave. She had more than once played the part of ambassador between Lady Otway and her children. That poor lady, for instance, consulted her for advice when, one day, she opened Cassandra’s bedroom door on a mission of discovery, and found the ceiling hung with mulberry-leaves, the windows blocked with cages, and the tables stacked with home-made machines for the manufacture of silk dresses.
“I wish you could help her to take an interest in something that other people are interested in, Katharine,” she observed, rather plaintively, detailing her grievances. “It’s all Henry’s doing, you know, giving up her parties and taking to these nasty insects. It doesn’t follow that if a man can do a thing a woman may too.”
The morning was sufficiently bright to make the chairs and sofas in Lady Otway’s private sitting-room appear more than usually shabby, and the gallant gentlemen, her brothers and cousins, who had defended the Empire and left their bones on many frontiers, looked at the world through a film of yellow which the morning light seemed to have drawn across their photographs. Lady Otway sighed, it may be at the faded relics, and turned, with resignation, to her balls of wool, which, curiously and characteristically, were not an ivory-white, but rather a tarnished yellow-white. She had called her niece in for a little chat. She had always trusted her, and now more than ever, since her engagement to Rodney, which seemed to Lady Otway extremely suitable, and just what one would wish for one’s own daughter. Katharine unwittingly increased her reputation for wisdom by asking to be given knitting-needles too.
“It’s so very pleasant,” said Lady Otway, “to knit while one’s talking. And now, my dear Katharine, tell me about your plans.”
The emotions of the night before, which she had sup-
