“Like lights in a storm—”
“In the midst of a hurricane,” she concluded, as the window shook beneath the pressure of the wind. They listened to the sound in silence.
Here the door opened with considerable hesitation, and Mrs. Hilbery’s head appeared, at first with an air of caution, but having made sure that she had admitted herself to the dining-room and not to some more unusual region, she came completely inside and seemed in no way taken aback by the sight she saw. She seemed, as usual, bound on some quest of her own which was interrupted pleasantly but strangely by running into one of those queer, unnecessary ceremonies that other people thought fit to indulge in.
“Please don’t let me interrupt you, Mr.—” she was at a loss, as usual, for the name, and Katharine thought that she did not recognize him. “I hope you’ve found something nice to read,” she added, pointing to the book upon the table. “Byron—ah, Byron. I’ve known people who knew Lord Byron,” she said.
Katharine, who had risen in some confusion, could not help smiling at the thought that her mother found it perfectly natural and desirable that her daughter should be reading Byron in the dining-room late at night alone with a strange young man. She blessed a disposition that was so convenient, and felt tenderly towards her mother and her mother’s eccentricities. But Ralph observed that although Mrs. Hilbery held the book so close to her eyes she was not reading a word.
“My dear mother, why aren’t you in bed?” Katharine exclaimed, changing astonishingly in the space of a minute to her usual condition of authoritative good sense. “Why are you wandering about?”
“I’m sure I should like your poetry better than I like Lord Byron’s,” said Mrs. Hilbery, addressing Ralph Denham.
“Mr. Denham doesn’t write poetry; he has written articles for father, for the Review,” Katharine said, as if prompting her memory.
“Oh dear! How dull!” Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, with a sudden laugh that rather puzzled her daughter.
Ralph found that she had turned upon him a gaze that was at once very vague and very penetrating.