‘I am not to see Cyril, or hear from him, for two years. He is going to leave this place in the spring. He might be ill--dying--and I should know nothing, till I took up the _Times_ some morning and saw the advertisement of his death.’ ‘He is young and strong,’ replied Bella. ‘There is nothing less likely than that he should die. I don’t think you need make yourself unhappy in advance about that.’ Her cold hard tone wounded Beatrix, who had expected more sympathy. ‘Don’t let us talk about him, Bella,’ she said. But Bella was determined to talk about him till she had found out all that there was for her to know. She assumed a more sympathetic tone, and Beatrix was induced to tell of Cyril’s interview with her father, and of the letter which her lover wrote to her after that interview. The clocks struck eleven a few minutes after this conversation was ended. ‘And now I must run to the Park and spend an hour with poor Mrs. Piper,’ said Bella. ‘I promised to go over every day to make myself useful. She is so wretched about her servants, if there is no one to look after them.’ ‘How painful to have servants that require to be looked after!’ said Beatrix, who was accustomed to a household that went as if by clockwork, conducted by a butler and housekeeper who were trusted implicitly. ‘It is rather dreadful,’ replied Bella. ‘I think I would sooner have our maid-of-all-work, with her sooty face and red elbows, than poor Mrs. Piper’s staff of smart young women, who study nothing but their own comfort, and come and go as if the Park were an hotel; for our poor Sarah is at least faithful, and would no more think of leaving us than of going to the moon. Good-bye, darling, I shall be back before luncheon.’ Beatrix went back to her quiet room, and her books. Her mind had been much widened by her intercourse with Mr. Dulcimer and his library, and good books were a consolation and delight to her. She had marked out a line of serious study, which she fancied might make her fitter to be Cyril’s wife, and was resolved not to be led astray by any flowers of literature. Hard reading was a little difficult sometimes, for her thoughts would wander to the lover from whom cruel fate had parted her; but she persevered bravely, and astonished Miss Scales by the severity of her self-discipline. Bella tripped briskly across the fields to Little Yafford Park, which was about half a mile from the village, and only a little less distant from the Water House. It was Saturday morning, and she knew that Mrs. Piper would be worried about the weekly bills, which had an unvarying tendency to be heavier than she expected to find them. Mrs. Piper was propped up with pillows in her easy chair by the fire, while all the youthful Pipers--including a couple of apple-cheeked ungainly boys from an expensive boarding-school--were making havoc of her handsomely furnished morning-room--a process eminently calculated to shorten the brief remnant of her days.