The truth was just the opposite of that which Robert believed it to be. From the moment Lady Henmarsh arrived at Middlemeads, Katharine's mood underwent a change unfavourable to the prospect of domestic happiness which had begun to dawn upon her. An atmosphere of heartlessness and worldliness surrounded this woman; and then she was associated in Katharine's mind with all the bitterness and humiliation of the past. The pain, now grown almost old, began to revive again; the restlessness and weariness of spirit, the terrible anger, the unavailing self-contempt, which rendered Katharine unapproachable to all, despite her suave and gracious manner, and especially to him who had afforded her the occasion to incur it. These feelings did not return in their intensity all at once; but their first approach to the invasion of Katharine's heart was made when the girl perceived the hardly veiled contempt with which her _ci-devant_ chaperone regarded her spontaneous effort to be good and happy. It needed little to turn the balance in which the fate of Robert and Katharine Streightley hung at that moment, and Lady Henmarsh's disdainful touch did it. Not directly--she had no direct influence with Katharine now--but indirectly, by the pain of humiliating association, by the sudden revival of the old bitterness, and the sense that all this was but a sordid bargain after all. The evil leaven began its work when Lady Henmarsh left Katharine, still standing by the window of her morning room, in the self-same attitude in which she had stood by the window in Queen Anne Street, and watched in vain for the coming of Gordon Frere. She moved away at length, with a restless and impatient sigh, and went to seek for Ellen.