no doubt,” said Lady Otway. “But what hour would you like the carriage this morning?” she continued, touching the bell.
“Katharine shall decide,” said Mrs. Hilbery, feeling herself unable to prefer one hour to another. “And I was just going to tell you, Katharine, how, when I woke this morning, everything seemed so clear in my head that if I’d had a pencil I believe I could have written quite a long chapter. When we’re out on our drive I shall find us a house. A few trees round it, and a little garden, a pond with a Chinese duck, a study for your father, a study for me, and a sitting-room for Katharine, because then she’ll be a married lady.”
At this Katharine shivered a little, drew up to the fire, and warmed her hands by spreading them over the topmost peak of the coal. She wished to bring the talk back to marriage again, in order to hear Aunt Charlotte’s views, but she did not know how to do this.
“Let me look at your engagement-ring, Aunt Charlotte,” she said, noticing her own.
She took the cluster of green stones and turned it round and round, but she did not know what to say next.
“That poor old ring was a sad disappointment to me when I first had it,” Lady Otway mused. “I’d set my heart on a diamond ring, but I never liked to tell Frank, naturally. He bought it at Simla.”
Katharine turned the ring round once more, and gave it back to her aunt without speaking. And while she turned it round her lips set themselves firmly together, and it seemed to her that she could satisfy William as these women had satisfied their husbands; she could pretend to like emeralds when she preferred diamonds. Having replaced her ring, Lady Otway remarked that it was chilly, though not more so than one must expect at this time of year. Indeed, one ought to be thankful to see the sun at all, and she advised them both to dress warmly for their
