Cultivated taste and the tender sentiment which finds delightful occupation in preparing a house for a beloved object had not been called into operation in the arrangement and decoration of the abode to which Robert Streightley brought his bride in the early spring which succeeded their marriage. These motive powers had, however, been efficiently replaced by the care and experience of a first-rate London upholsterer; and a more refined and _exigeant_ taste than that of the young mistress of Middlemeads might have pronounced a favourable judgment upon the result. There was, indeed, nothing ancient about the mansion but the mansion itself. Its family associations were all with those from whose keeping it had passed, and by the change had lost the subtle touch of dignity which lingers about a residence within whose walls many lines of the same race have begun and ended. It had none of those grand though dingy _pieces de famille_ which lent an air of refinement and meaning to the faded house in Queen Anne Street; but it was a home which any man might be proud to inaugurate--a home to which all these things might be suitably added in time. Seen as Katharine Streightley saw it first, with the tender glory of the spring upon the woods, with the sunshine pouring down upon the grand old façade, and the joyous music of innumerable birds piercing the pure air, her new home elicited an exclamation of delighted surprise from her, which was eagerly welcomed by Robert. He had seen but rarely of late any evidence of the enthusiasm and freshness of heart which had been among the first and most potent of Katharine's charms for him. He had looked for them in vain when new scenes and new impressions might have been expected to call them forth during their travels; but they had rewarded his search so rarely, that he had begun to wonder if he was ever again to see that peculiar smile, like sudden sunshine, in the eyes whose beauty had grown sombre of late, or to recognise that keen trill of girlish pleasure in the voice whose refined intonation had acquired depth and seriousness since he had heard it first. Robert Streightley knew very little of the woman he had married, as little of her strength as of her weakness; and the passionate ardour of his love for her, the undiminished admiration with which he regarded her, were accompanied with all the interest and curiosity attendant upon a new study. His narrow experience of life, his little knowledge of women, preserved him from much pain in the present at least. It never occurred to him to impute the alteration in Katharine to its true source. He had taken Mr. Guyon's word for the trifling nature of the sentiment entertained by his daughter for Gordon Frere, though even at that period it is probable he would have hesitated at taking Mr. Guyon's word upon any other subject; and though he could not deceive himself so far as to believe that his beautiful wife reciprocated the