His spirits fell when he came to himself, saw how many other gentlemen had also written essays and with what indifference and languor the red-faced gentleman hustled his pages in amongst all the others. Nevertheless, he did come out of that examination-room with some conviction as to the course that his future life would take, and with a kindness, almost a tenderness, towards this grey town that was going to allow him, even to command him, to write essays for the next three years. With Henry one mood succeeded another as rapidly as, in his country, wet weather succeeds fine. He returned to Garth in an outrageous temper. His main feeling now was that Philip had spoiled Cambridge for him. Philip and his immoral life ‘got in’ between all that he saw and dropped a misty veil, so that he could think of nothing in the way that tradition had taught him. He had always had a great respect for tradition. Then as the weeks passed by he was made increasingly unhappy by the strange condition in which he found the family. He was, at heart, the crudest sentimentalist, and his sentimentalism had been fed by nothing so richly as by the cherished conviction that the George Trenchards were the most united family in England. He had always believed this; and had never, until now, considered the possibility of any division. But what now did he find? His mother stern, remote, silent, Millie irritable, uneasy and critical, Aunt Aggie always out of temper, Aunt Betty bewildered and tactless, even his father disturbed and unlike himself. And Katie?... He could not have believed that six months would change anyone so utterly. Instead of the reliable, affectionate and stolid sister who had shared with him all her intimacies, her plans, her regrets, her anticipations, he beheld now a stranger who gave him no intimacies at all, avoided him and hid from him her undoubted unhappiness. It was true of him now as it had ever been that ‘he would give his life to make Katherine happy,’ but how was he to do anything for her when she would tell him nothing, when she treated him like a stranger, and then blamed him for his hostilities.