ne might apply to the antics of a promising
child. So this evening, after five pages or so of one of these masters,
Mrs. Hilbery protested that it was all too clever and cheap and nasty
for words.

"Please, Katharine, read us something REAL."

Katharine had to go to the bookcase and choose a portly volume in sleek,
yellow calf, which had directly a sedative effect upon both her parents.
But the delivery of the evening post broke in upon the periods of Henry
Fielding, and Katharine found that her letters needed all her attention.

CHAPTER VIII

She took her letters up to her room with her, having persuaded her
mother to go to bed directly Mr. Hilbery left them, for so long as she
sat in the same room as her mother, Mrs. Hilbery might, at any moment,
ask for a sight of the post. A very hasty glance through many sheets
had shown Katharine that, by some coincidence, her attention had to be
directed to many different anxieties simultaneously. In the first place,
Rodney had written a very full account of his state of mind, which was
illustrated by a sonnet, and he demanded a reconsideration of their
position, which agitated Katharine more than she liked. Then there were
two letters which had to be laid side by side and compared before she
could make out the truth of their story, and even when she knew the
facts she could not decide what to make of them; and finally she had
to reflect upon a great many pages from a cousin who found himself in
financial difficulties, which forced him to the uncongenial occupation
of teaching the young ladies of Bungay to play upon the violin.

But the two letters which each told the same story differently were the
chief source of her perplexity. She was really rather shocked to find it
definitely established that her own second cousin, Cyril Alardyce, had
lived for the last four years with a woman who was not his wife, who
had borne him two children, and was now about to bear him another. This
state of things had been discovered by Mrs. Milvain, her aunt Celia,
a zealous inquirer into such matters, whose letter was also under
consideration. Cyril, she said, must be made to marry the woman at once;
and Cyril, rightly or wrongly, was indignant with such interference with
his affairs, and would not own that he had any cause to be ashamed of
himself. Had he any cause to be ashamed of himself, Katharine wondered;
and she turned to her aunt again.

"Remember," she wrote, in her profuse, emp