fire.

"What in the name of conscience did he do it for?" he speculated at
last, rather to himself than to her.

Katharine had begun to read her aunt's letter over again, and she now
quoted a sentence. "Ibsen and Butler.... He has sent me a letter full of
quotations--nonsense, though clever nonsense."

"Well, if the younger generation want to carry on its life on those
lines, it's none of our affair," he remarked.

"But isn't it our affair, perhaps, to make them get married?" Katharine
asked rather wearily.

"Why the dickens should they apply to me?" her father demanded with
sudden irritation.

"Only as the head of the family--"

"But I'm not the head of the family. Alfred's the head of the family.
Let them apply to Alfred," said Mr. Hilbery, relapsing again into his
arm-chair. Katharine was aware that she had touched a sensitive spot,
however, in mentioning the family.

"I think, perhaps, the best thing would be for me to go and see them,"
she observed.

"I won't have you going anywhere near them," Mr. Hilbery replied with
unwonted decision and authority. "Indeed, I don't understand why they've
dragged you into the business at all--I don't see that it's got anything
to do with you."

"I've always been friends with Cyril," Katharine observed.

"But did he ever tell you anything about this?" Mr. Hilbery asked rather
sharply.

Katharine shook her head. She was, indeed, a good deal hurt that Cyril
had not confided in her--did he think, as Ralph Denham or Mary Datchet
might think, that she was, for some reason, unsympathetic--hostile even?

"As to your mother," said Mr. Hilbery, after a pause, in which he seemed
to be considering the color of the flames, "you had better tell her the
facts. She'd better know the facts before every one begins to talk about
it, though why Aunt Celia thinks it necessary to come, I'm sure I don't
know. And the less talk there is the better."

Granting the assumption that gentlemen of sixty who are highly
cultivated, and have had much experience of life, probably think of many
things which they do not say, Katharine could not help feeling rather
puzzled by her father's attitude, as she went back to her room. What a
distance he was from it all! How superficially he smoothed these events
into a semblance of decency which harmonized with his own view of life!
He never wondered what Cyril had felt, nor did the hidden aspects of the
case tempt him to examine into them. He merely seem