Katherine thought of that earlier occasion in that same room when she had first spoken of her engagement. How far apart since then they had grown! It seemed to her to-night, as she looked at that broad white back, that she was looking at a stranger.... Yes, but an extraordinary stranger, a really marvellous woman. How curious that Katherine should have been living during all those years of intimate affection with her mother and have thought of her never—no, never at all. She had taken her, her love, her little habits, her slow voice, her relentless determination, her ‘managing’—all these things and many more—as though they had been inevitably outside argument, statement or gratitude. But now, simply because of the division that there was between them, she saw her as a marvellous woman, the strangest mingling of sweetness and bitterness, of tenderness and hardness, of unselfishness and relentless egotism. She saw this, suddenly, standing there in the doorway, and the imminent flash of it struck her for an instant with great fear. Then she saw Philip and gained her courage.
“I want to speak to you, Mother,” she repeated, moving into the middle of the room.
“Well, dear ...” said Mrs. Trenchard, through the hair-pins. She did not let down her hair, but after another glance into the mirror, moved away, found a pink woolly dressing-gown, which she put on. Then sat down on the old sofa, taking up, as she always did, a little piece of work—this time it was some long red worsted that she was knitting. It curled away from her, like a scarlet snake, under the flickering light of the candles on her dressing-table, disappearing into darkness.
Katherine stood in front of her mother, with her hands behind her, as she had done when she was a very little girl.
“Well, dear, what is it?” said Mrs. Trenchard again.
“Mother—I don’t want you to have Philip down at Garth.”
“Why not, dear? I thought you would like it.”
“He isn’t happy there.”
“Well, he’s only got to say so.... He needn’t come.”
“If he doesn’t—he’s afraid.”