Presently a shrill bell pealed loudly through the house, a startling sound amidst a silence which seemed to have lasted for ages, nay, to be a normal condition of one’s existence. Bella gave a little jump, and sat up in her chair alert and eager. ‘Could it be Cyril Culverhouse? No, of course not.’ His image filled so large a place in her life that even the sudden ringing of a bell suggested his approach, till reason came to check the vagaries of fancy. The same thought darted into Beatrix’s mind. For a woman deeply in love, earth holds only one man--her lover. Was it Cyril who came to claim her; to trample down the barrier of paternal authority, and to claim her by the right of their mutual love? This idea being, at the first flash of reason, utterly untenable, lasted no longer with Beatrix than it had done with Bella. ‘It must be Miss Scales,’ she said, going to the door. ‘And yet I should not have thought she would travel on a Sunday. She is so very particular about Sunday.’ Miss Scales belonged to a sect with whom God’s day of rest means a day of penance; a day upon which mankind holds itself in an apologetic attitude towards its Maker, as if deprecating the Divine wrath for its audacity in having taken the liberty to be born. The two girls went out into the corridor, and from the corridor to the square open gallery in the middle of the house, from which the broad staircase descended. Here, leaning upon the oaken balustrade, they looked down into the hall. It was empty when they first looked, a vacant expanse of black and white marble. Then there came another peal of the bell, and the butler walked slowly across to the door, and opened it just wide enough to reconnoitre the visitor. Here there was a brief parley, the drift of which the girls could not distinguish. They only heard a murmur of masculine voices. ‘It can’t be Miss Scales,’ whispered Beatrix. ‘They would have brought in her portmanteau before this.’ The parley ceased all at once, the butler threw open the door, and a gentleman came in out of the windy night, bringing a blast of cold air with him. He took off his hat, and stood in the centre of the hall, looking about him, while the butler carried his card to Mr. Harefield. The stranger was a man of about fifty, tall and spare of figure, but with a certain nobility of bearing, as of one accustomed to command. The finely shaped head was beautifully set upon the shoulders, the chest was broad and deep. As he looked upwards the two girls drew back into the shadow, still watching him. It was a beautiful head, a grand Italian face full of tranquillity and power, like a portrait by Moroni. The eyes were dark, the skin was a pale olive, the hair ‘a sable silvered.’ A thrill went through Beatrix’s heart as she looked at him.