ed to realize, rather
languidly, that Cyril had behaved in a way which was foolish, because
other people did not behave in that way. He seemed to be looking through
a telescope at little figures hundreds of miles in the distance.

Her selfish anxiety not to have to tell Mrs. Hilbery what had happened
made her follow her father into the hall after breakfast the next
morning in order to question him.

"Have you told mother?" she asked. Her manner to her father was almost
stern, and she seemed to hold endless depths of reflection in the dark
of her eyes.

Mr. Hilbery sighed.

"My dear child, it went out of my head." He smoothed his silk hat
energetically, and at once affected an air of hurry. "I'll send a note
round from the office.... I'm late this morning, and I've any amount of
proofs to get through."

"That wouldn't do at all," Katharine said decidedly. "She must be
told--you or I must tell her. We ought to have told her at first."

Mr. Hilbery had now placed his hat on his head, and his hand was on the
door-knob. An expression which Katharine knew well from her childhood,
when he asked her to shield him in some neglect of duty, came into his
eyes; malice, humor, and irresponsibility were blended in it. He nodded
his head to and fro significantly, opened the door with an adroit
movement, and stepped out with a lightness unexpected at his age. He
waved his hand once to his daughter, and was gone. Left alone, Katharine
could not help laughing to find herself cheated as usual in domestic
bargainings with her father, and left to do the disagreeable work which
belonged, by rights, to him.

CHAPTER IX

Katharine disliked telling her mother about Cyril's misbehavior quite as
much as her father did, and for much the same reasons. They both shrank,
nervously, as people fear the report of a gun on the stage, from all
that would have to be said on this occasion. Katharine, moreover, was
unable to decide what she thought of Cyril's misbehavior. As usual, she
saw something which her father and mother did not see, and the effect of
that something was to suspend Cyril's behavior in her mind without any
qualification at all. They would think whether it was good or bad; to
her it was merely a thing that had happened.

When Katharine reached the study, Mrs. Hilbery had already dipped her
pen in the ink.

"Katharine," she said, lifting it in the air, "I've just made out such
a queer, strange thing about your grandfather.