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 just as I arrived, I should have been with you before. Celia has doubtless told you. You will agree with me, Maggie. He must be made to marry her at once—for the sake of the children—”

“But does he refuse to marry her?” Mrs. Hilbery inquired, with a return of her bewilderment.

“He has written an absurd perverted letter, all quotations,” Cousin Caroline puffed. “He thinks he’s doing a very fine thing, where we only see the folly of it The girl’s every bit as infatuated as he is—for which I blame him.”

“She entangled him,’ Aunt Celia intervened, with a very curious smoothness of intonation, which seemed to convey a vision of threads weaving and interweaving a close, white mesh round their victim.

“It’s no use going into the rights and wrongs of the affair now, Celia,” said Cousin Caroline with some acerbity, for she believed herself the only practical one of the family, and regretted that, owing to the slowness of the kitchen clock, Mrs. Milvain had already confused poor dear Maggie with her own incomplete version of the facts. “The mischief’s done, and very ugly mischief too. Are we to allow the third child to be born out of wedlock? (I am sorry to have to say these things before you, Katharine.) He will bear your name, Maggie—your father’s name, remember.”

“But let us hope it will be a girl,” said Mrs. Hilbery.

Katharine, who had been looking at her mother constantly, while the chatter of tongues held sway, perceived that the look of straightforward indignation had already vanished; her mother was evidently casting about in her mind for some method of escape, or bright spot, or sudden illumination which should show to the satisfaction of everybody that all had happened, miraculously but incontestably, for the best.

“It’s detestable—quite detestable!” she repeated, but