"Then you would go back to Northwood?" he said, with a laugh. "Yes; if my uncle were here I should return with him at once. I was an impressionable, weak girl when I listened to you that night I had faith in you then. Events since have made me a woman." She rose again, and took a step or two to cross the room, and he sprang up to open the door. "We shall see," he said, with an angry laugh. "Thank you," she said, calmly. "I was not going upstairs." And to his utter amazement she passed beyond him to one of the bookshelves, took down the volume she had been studying, and returned to her seat. He stood gazing at her, utterly confounded; but she calmly opened the book, and, utterly ignoring his presence, sat reading and turning over the leaves. There was a profound silence in the room for a few minutes, save that the clock on the chimney-piece kept on its monotonous tick; and then Garstang strode angrily to the door, went out, and closed it heavily behind him, while Kate uttered a low, deep sigh, and with her face ghastly and eyes closing, sank back in her chair. The tension had been agonising, and she felt as if something in her brain was giving way. CHAPTER FORTY TWO. "Still obstinate?" Kate turned her head and looked gravely at Garstang, but made no reply. A week had passed since the scene in the library, and during that period she had calmly resumed her old position in the house, meeting her enemy at the morning and evening meals; and while completely crushing every advance by her manner, shown him that she was waiting in full confidence for the hour of her release. She never once showed her weakness, or let him see traces of the misery or despair which rendered her nights, sleeping or waking, an agony; she answered him quietly enough whenever he spoke on ordinary subjects, but at the slightest approach to familiarity, or if he showed a disposition to argue about the folly, as he called it, of her conduct, she rose and left the room, and somehow her manner impressed him so, that he dared not try to detain her. He felt, as she had told him, that it was no longer the weak girl with whom he was contending, but the firm, imperious woman; while her confidence in her own power increased as she, on more than one occasion, realised the fact that she had completely mastered. But the position remained the same, and as soon as she was alone the battle with another enemy commenced. Despair was always making its insidious approaches, sapping her very life, and teaching her that her triumph was but temporary; and she shuddered often as she thought of the hour when her strength and determination would fail.