Mary reflected for a second.
“It means, chiefly, a power of being disagreeable to one’s own family, I think. I have that, perhaps. I didn’t want to live at home, and I told my father. He didn’t like it.... But then I have a sister, and you haven’t, have you?”
“No, I haven’t any sisters.”
“You are writing a life of your grandfather?” Mary pursued.
Katharine seemed instantly to be confronted by some familiar thought from which she wished to escape. She replied, “Yes, I am helping my mother,” in such a way that Mary felt herself baffled, and put back again into the position in which she had been at the beginning of their talk. It seemed to her that Katharine possessed a curious power of drawing near and receding, which sent alternate emotions through her far more quickly than was usual, and kept her in a condition of curious alertness. Desiring to classify her, Mary bethought her of the convenient term “egoist.”
“She’s an egoist,” she said to herself, and stored that word up to give to Ralph one day when, as it would certainly fall out, they were discussing Miss Hilbery.
“Heavens, what a mess there’ll be to-morrow morning!” Katharine exclaimed. “I hope you don’t sleep in this room, Miss Datchet?”
Mary laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” Katharine demanded.
“I won’t tell you.”