“Afraid of losing me.” Katherine, as she said this, made a little forward movement with her hand as though she were asking for help, but Mrs. Trenchard’s eyes were wide and cold. “Afraid of losing you?... My dear, he can’t trust you very much!” “No, no, it isn’t that!... He knows that you, the others don’t like him. He hates Garth—at least he hates it if he’s always got to live there. If he’s alone here in London he thinks that you’ll persuade me never to leave you, that you’ll get the tighter hold of me, that—Oh! I can’t explain it all!” she broke off quite desperately. “But it isn’t good for him to be there, he’s unhappy, he’s depressed. Mother, _why_ do you hate him?” she cried, suddenly challenging the whole room, with its old familiar pictures, its books and furniture to answer her. “I think,” said Mrs. Trenchard, very quietly, counting her stitches and nodding her head at her stocking, “that you’re taking all this in a very exaggerated fashion—and you never used to be exaggerated, Katie, my dear—no, you never used to be. I often used to say what a comfort and help I always found you, because you saw things as they were—not like Millie and Henry, who would get excited sometimes over very little. But your engagement’s changed you, Katie dear—it really has—more than I should have expected.” Katherine, during this speech, had summoned her control. She spoke now with a voice low and quiet—ridiculously like her mother’s an observer might have thought. “Mother, I don’t want to be exaggerated—I don’t indeed. But, all these last six months, we’ve never said to one another what we’ve thought, have never spoken openly about anything—and now we must. It _can’t_ go on like this.” “Like what, Katie dear?” “Never knowing what we’re really thinking. We’ve become a dreadful family—even father’s noticed it.” “Certainly,” said Mrs. Trenchard slowly. “We were all happier before Philip came.”