to Katharine. How impotent they were, fiddling about all day long with
papers! And the clock was striking eleven and nothing done! She
watched her mother, now rummaging in a great brass-bound box which
stood by her table, but she did not go to her help. Of course,
Katharine reflected, her mother had now lost some paper, and they
would waste the rest of the morning looking for it. She cast her eyes
down in irritation, and read again her mother's musical sentences
about the silver gulls, and the roots of little pink flowers washed by
pellucid streams, and the blue mists of hyacinths, until she was
struck by her mother's silence. She raised her eyes. Mrs. Hilbery 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 misbehavior. 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