Page:Night and Day (1919).pdf/125

 And that’s Miriam, in her coachman’s cloak, with all the little capes on, and she wore great top-boots underneath. You young people may say you're unconventional, but you’re nothing compared with her.”

Turning the page, she came upon the picture of a very masculine, handsome lady, whose head the photographer had adorned with an imperial crown.

“Ah, you wretch!” Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, “what a wicked old despot you were, in your day! How we all bowed down before you! ‘Maggie,’ she used to say, ‘if it hadn’t been for me, where would you be now?’ And it was true; she brought them together, you know. She said to my father, ‘Marry her,’ and he did; and she said to poor little Clara, ‘Fall down and worship him,’ and she did; but she got up again, of course. What else could one expect? She was a mere child─eighteen─and half dead with fright, too. But that old tyrant never repented. She used to say that she had given them three perfect months, and no one had a right to more; and I sometimes think, Katharine, that’s true, you know. It’s more than most of us have, only we have to pretend, which was a thing neither of them could ever do. I fancy,” Mrs. Hilbery mused, “that there was a kind of sincerity in those days between men and women which, with all your outspokenness, you haven't got.”

Katharine again tried to interrupt. But Mrs. Hilbery had been gathering impetus from her recollections, and was now in high spirits.

“They must have been good friends at heart,” she resumed, “because she used to sing his songs. Ah, how did it go?” and Mrs. Hilbery, who had a very sweet voice, trolled out a famous lyric of her father’s which had been set to an absurdly and charmingly sentimental air by some early Victorian composer.

“It’s the vitality of them!” she concluded, striking her fist against the table. “That’s what we haven’t