Millie went up to her. “Katherine’s engaged, Aunt Sarah, to Mr. Mark.”
“What do you say about Katherine?”
“She’s engaged.”
“She’s what?”
“Engaged!”
“Who to?”
“Mr. Mark.”
“Eh? What?”
“Mark!”
At the shouting of that name it did indeed seem that the very walls and ceiling of that old room would collapse. To Aunt Aggie, to Millie, to Henry, to Aunt Betty, this raid upon Katherine struck more deeply than any cynical student of human nature could have credited. For the moment Philip Mark was forgotten—only was it apparent to them all from Grandfather Trenchard and Great Aunt Sarah to Henry that Katherine, their own absolute property, the assurance given to them that life would be always secure, solid, unalterable, had declared publicly, before the world, that she preferred a stranger, a complete, blown-from-anywhere stranger, to the family. What would happen to them all, to their comforts, their secret preferences and habits (known as they all, individually, believed, only to Katherine), to their pride, to their self-esteem? They loved one another, yes, they loved the Trenchard family, the Trenchard position, but through all these things, as a skewer through beef, ran their reliance upon Katherine. It was as though someone had cried to them: “The whole of Glebeshire is blown away—fields and houses, roads and rivers. You must go and live in Yorkshire. Glebeshire cares for you no longer!”