‘No, thank you, dear, I’m really not ill. But I think a turn in the garden would do me good. I’ll read ever so much to-morrow, if you’ll let me.’ ‘If I’ll let you, Beatrix! When have _I_ ever stood between you and the improvement of your mind? But I hope you won’t get hold of Mr. Dulcimer’s crotchets. Joan of Arc not burned at Rouen, indeed! What is the world coming to? And Archbishop Whately has written a pamphlet to prove that there was no such person as Napoleon, though my father saw him--with his own eyes--on board the _Bellerophon_, in Plymouth roads.’ Beatrix waited for no further permission to put the dingy old books back upon their shelves, and go out bare-headed into the autumnal garden. It was a good old garden at all times--a wide stretch of lawn following the bend of the river--a broad gravelled walk with moss-grown old stone vases at intervals--and a stone bench here and there--flowers in profusion, but of the old-fashioned sort--rare shrubs and trees--plane and tulip, and Spanish chestnut that had been growing for centuries--one grand cedar stretching wide his limbs over the close-shorn sward--a stone sundial with a blatantly false inscription to the effect that it recorded only happy hours--and for prospect, the Roman one-arched bridge, with the deep narrow river flowing swiftly under it,--these in the foreground; and in the distance across the river the heterogeneous roofs, chimneys, and gables of Little Yafford, with the good old square church tower rising up in their midst, and behind this little settlement the purple moor sloping far up towards the calm grey sky. It was a scene so familiar to Beatrix that she scarcely felt its great beauty, as she walked up and down the river terrace, thinking of Cyril and the interview that was to take place to-day. She was not hopeful as to the result of that interview. There were hard thoughts in her mind about her father. ‘He has never given me his love,’ she said to herself. ‘Will he be cruel enough to take this love from me--this love that makes life a new thing?’ While Beatrix was pacing slowly to and fro along the quiet river-side walk, Cyril was coming down the sloping road to the Roman bridge, thinking of what he had to do. It was not a pleasant mission by any means. He was going to beard the lion in his den--to offer himself as a husband for the richest heiress in the neighbourhood. He, Cyril Culverhouse, who had not a sixpence beyond his stipend, and who yet came of too good a family to be called an adventurer. He had never spoken to Mr. Harefield, and he was going to him to ask for his daughter’s hand. The position was difficult, but Cyril did not shrink from facing it.