So far as it went, Katharine's argument with herself was frank and well founded; but it did not go far enough, it did not extend to the acknowledgment of the real blot which she dreaded her friend's hitting. That Mrs. Stanbourne should regard her in the gravely responsible position of a wife, as wholly given up to empty amusements, the pursuit of pleasure and excitement, and the lavish expenditure of money upon every trifle which took her fancy, was, she chose to persuade herself, what she dreaded. And this certainly was an impression to be deprecated; but it was only secondary, though she put it first. It was her conduct towards Robert which she really feared to find exposed to the keen, unembarrassed scrutiny of Mrs. Stanbourne, whom she knew to be a woman incapable of trifling with the ideal of duty either in theory or in practice. That she would discern her to be a wife without love for her husband, without gratitude for all his affection and observance, without sympathy for his tastes, observance of his wishes, or consideration for his feelings; a woman hardened, wilful, and selfish; who had made a marriage which was a bargain, and was not faithful to the spirit of her share in that bargain. If Mrs. Stanbourne's customary penetration did not fail her, this was what it would show her, under the surface of a life of gaiety, extravagance, and luxury. She felt in her conscience, whose voice she could not stifle, that she was unjust towards the man who had given her not only money but love. True, she did not care for the love, she did not want it; but after all, it was the vehicle by which the money which she did want and did care for was conveyed to her; and there was an undeniable baseness, a failure of duty and propriety in her conduct, only the more flagrant because the sufferer by it was compelled to endure it uncomplainingly, because the injury was, so to speak, impalpable. Katharine was too clear-sighted not to perceive and understand her own shortcomings perfectly; and in her inmost heart she dreaded that Mrs. Stanbourne would understand them too. Plainly put, she knew the truth to be, that she was revenging on the man who had given her a brilliant and enviable position before the world; who had effectually screened her from scorn and malice, and made her an object of envy instead; the man who loved her with a fervour of admiration and devotion which served only to provoke and embitter her,--the deadly injury inflicted upon her by another, the baseness of whose conduct every womanly instinct should have taught her to requite with contempt. She had done Robert Streightley the tremendous wrong of marrying him without loving him; true, he knew it and accepted it, but it was none the less, in the light of a pure woman's conscience, a deadly wrong--and she had not made the slightest effort to retrieve or repair that wrong. If a transient impulse, ascribable to the elasticity of spirit of her age