and Katharine, her daughter, had some superior rank among all the
cousins and connections, the more so because she was an only child.
The Alardyces had married and intermarried, and their offspring were
generally profuse, and had a way of meeting regularly in each other's
houses for meals and family celebrations which had acquired a semi-
sacred character, and were as regularly observed as days of feasting
and fasting in the Church.

In times gone by, Mrs. Hilbery had known all the poets, all the
novelists, all the beautiful women and distinguished men of her time.
These being now either dead or secluded in their infirm glory, she
made her house a meeting-place for her own relations, to whom she
would lament the passing of the great days of the nineteenth century,
when every department of letters and art was represented in England by
two or three illustrious names. Where are their successors? she would
ask, and the absence of any poet or painter or novelist of the true
caliber at the present day was a text upon which she liked to
ruminate, in a sunset mood of benignant reminiscence, which it would
have been hard to disturb had there been need. But she was far from
visiting their inferiority upon the younger generation. She welcomed
them very heartily to her house, told them her stories, gave them
sovereigns and ices and good advice, and weaved round them romances
which had generally no likeness to the truth.

The quality of her birth oozed into Katharine's consciousness from a
dozen different sources as soon as she was able to perceive anything.
Above her nursery fireplace hung a photograph of her grandfather's
tomb in Poets' Corner, and she was told in one of those moments of
grown-up confidence which are so tremendously impressive to the
child's mind, that he was buried there because he was a "good and