Decimus lost their power over the girl's imagination; she yielded to the charm which Katharine exercised over all whom she chose to attract, and was almost as much dazzled as her brother. To Robert the good understanding which subsisted between the two was a source of the purest pleasure; he loved his sister dearly, and he had a sense of her piety, her gentleness, her humility of mind, and the beneficence of such an influence, though he had never defined these things to his own mind or reasoned upon them. On the whole, these early days at Middlemeads were good days; they were a fair seedtime, and the harvest might have been blessed; but the enemy had sown the tares early, and they were destined to flourish in sinister strength. As for Katharine, the genuine affection and admiration with which her sister-in-law regarded her soon began to be sweet and precious to her; her former life had been isolated from all such ties of girlish friendship and confidence, and she had despised them in theory, holding them among the missish follies which she laughed at and held herself above. She had aspired to the reputation of a woman of the world, and she had attained it; and in right of it had no intimacies except of convenience, and no relations with her own sex except those of the most superficial social observance. To Katharine, therefore--who had not, since she left the elegant establishment in which she had acquired all the graces with which nature had not previously supplied her, had any more congenial companion for the hours not absolutely demanded by society than Lady Henmarsh--the novelty of such a friendship as that offered her by Ellen Streightley possessed an ineffable charm. The purity, the simplicity, the very narrowness of the girl's mind pleased her; the unquestioning submission with which she received her opinions, the unqualified admiration which she evinced in every look and word, conveyed, by their simple sincerity, the subtlest charm of flattery. Katharine felt that Ellen's presence did her good; that the peace of mind which pervaded her diffused a tranquil and wholesome atmosphere around her: she did not know whence came the salutary influence; she had never been taught to recognise piety and principle by their peaceable fruits; but she felt all that she did not analyse; and above all she became conscious that she was beginning to live less for herself--that she was acquiring new, unselfish, and harmless interests. Her heart had begun to soften in those days; she was won by the artless confidence of the girl to whom she was an object of wondering admiration, and the wrath and bitterness of her soul began to subside.