"You are perfectly right, Tild," Katherine's voice was ominously soft, "and so is Charlie. You go ahead, and very soon you will have got above Mabel, and, of course, I would not be a drag on you for the world. I think, after to-day, we will just write to one another now and then, and you must not bother to come up to see me. We do not think alike on any point--but I shall always remember how good you were to me when I was a tiresome little girl." "Oh, Kitten!" and Matilda felt almost tearful; for apart from her fear of reawakening her fiancé's interest in her sister, she still had a secret affection for her. "Yes, you were very good to me, then, Tild, but now we have come to a final parting of the ways, and we are all satisfied--I shall fulfil my ideas, and you will fulfil yours." And afterwards, when she walked back to Berkeley Square, she pondered deeply. There was no such thing as family affection really in the abstract--it only held when the individuals were in sympathy and had a community of interests. They--her family--were as glad at the thought that they had risen above her, and need not communicate in the future, as she was that she would not have to bring her mind down to their point of view. Matilda was the last link--and Matilda had shown that she desired also to break away. Katherine felt that but for Lady Garribardine's real affection for her, she was virtually alone in the world. If only there were no backward thoughts in her mind, she would have looked upon her fair future as a certainty; sooner or later, with the visit to Valfreyne in front of her, and the frequent occasions upon which she must see the Duke at her mistress' house, she knew she could continue to attract him if she so desired, and make him love her with a great love. There was that subtle, indescribable sympathy of ideas between them. And as Algy had called forth physical passion, and Gerard the awakening of the spirit, this man seemed to arouse the essence of all three things, the body, the spirit and the soul. But there lay this ugly shadow between them, and she began to realise the meaning of the old saw from Horace, "Black care sits behind the horseman," and she had not yet made up her mind to dislodge him and defy fate. The three days in Paris began to haunt her until she severely took herself to task, and analysed everything. She must not look back upon them in that fashion. She must remember them gratefully, she told herself, since they had opened her eyes for the first time in a way that nothing else could have done, and she indeed felt that it was very doubtful if she could ever have obtained Lady Garribardine's situation, and so her education from Gerard Strobridge, without the experience that that episode in her life had given her to start upon.