Then it was--while it was still a new thing for them to talk of their mutual love--that he told Beatrix her father must be informed of their attachment. CHAPTER VI. CHRISTIAN HAREFIELD’S ANSWER. THE Monday after that Sunday evening supper at the Vicarage dragged more heavily than any day Beatrix could remember since that never-to-be forgotten awful day when--a little child in a strange city--she was told of her mother’s death. To-day she felt that a blow was impending--a stroke that must shatter the rosy chain that bound her to her bright new life. The strictness of Miss Scales’ rule had been relaxed since Beatrix’s eighteenth birthday. The lady was now rather companion and duenna than governess; but Miss Scales was conscientious, and did not care to take her salary without earning it, so she had urged upon Beatrix that a young lady of eighteen was in duty bound to go on improving her mind, and Beatrix had consented to two hours’ daily reading, on a rigid system. English history one day--Roman another--Grecian another--Travels on the fourth day--_Belles-lettres_, represented by the dullest books in the English language, on the fifth--and French, as exemplified in an intensely proper novel, on the sixth. And all this reading was to be carefully done, with a good deal of reference to the best authorities--all obsolete, and improved upon by the newest lights to be obtained from the last discoveries published a year or two before the battle of Waterloo. That her favourite authorities could be superseded was a possibility beyond Miss Scales’ mental grasp. She had learned out of those books, and would continue to teach out of them to her dying day. Upon this particular Monday the English historians hung somewhat heavily. Hume was dull--and Rapin furnished no improvement upon him. ‘Really, Miss Scales dear,’ said Beatrix at last, with a stifled yawn, ‘I don’t think I am appreciating Joan of Arc at all properly this morning. She was much too good a person to be yawned over like this; and if she really was burnt at Rouen, and did not get out of that cruel Beaufort’s clutches, and marry and have ever so many children afterwards----’ ‘Joan of Arc--married--and the mother of a family! Beatrix, what are you dreaming of?’ cried the scandalized Miss Scales, her little gray ringlets quivering with indignation. ‘Mr. Dulcimer says she did, and that there are documents to prove it.’ ‘Mr. Dulcimer is a horrid person to tell you such stories; and after this I shouldn’t be at all surprised at his going over to Rome.’ ‘Would you much mind my putting up the books, Miss Scales love?’ asked Beatrix, in the coaxing way in which she was wont to address her duenna. ‘My mind isn’t equal to grasping such heroism as Joan’s to-day.’ ‘You have been looking absent-minded all the morning, certainly.’ ‘I do feel rather head-achy.’ ‘Then you’d better take a seidlitz powder--and be sure you put in the blue paper first----’