Was she to be allowed merely to sit and talk?
It was so much pleasanter to sit in a nice room filled with all sorts of interesting odds and ends which she hadn't looked at for a year, at least, than to seek out one date which contradicted another in a dictionary.
"We've all had perfect husbands," she concluded, generously forgiving Sir Francis all his faults in a lump.

"Not that I think a bad temper is really a fault in a man.

I don't mean a bad temper," she corrected herself, with a glance obviously in the direction of Sir Francis.

"I should say a quick, impatient temper.

Most, in fact ALL great men have had bad tempers--except your grandfather, Katharine," and here she sighed, and suggested that, perhaps, she ought to go down to the library.
"But in the ordinary marriage, is it necessary to give way to one's husband ?" said Katharine, taking no notice of her mother's suggestion, blind even to the depression which had now taken possession of her at the thought of her own inevitable death.
"I should say yes, certainly," said Lady Otway, with a decision most unusual for her.
"Then one ought to make up one's mind to that before one is married," Katharine mused, seeming to address herself.
Mrs.Hilbery was not much interested in these remarks, which seemed to have a melancholy tendency, and to revive her spirits she had recourse to an infallible remedy--she looked out of the window.
"Do look at that lovely little blue bird!" she exclaimed, and her eye looked with extreme pleasure at the soft sky.