Cyril had hardly expected anything better than this, yet the actual discomfiture was no less difficult to bear. To be told that he must see Beatrix no more, knowing as he did that the girl he loved returned his love with fullest measure, and was willing to fling every tie to the winds for his sake! And then her ties were at best so feeble. The father she was ready to defy for his sake was a father who had never loved her, who freely confessed his lack of affection for her. Not much, perhaps, to forfeit such a father’s favour for the sake of a lover who loved her with all the strength of his strong nature. Cyril could not bring himself to say, Disobey your father, fling fortune to the winds, and be my wife. Duty forbade him, and consideration for Beatrix was on the side of duty. The day might come when she would upbraid him with the loss of her father’s cold liking, and her loss of fortune. He saw himself, far away in the future, a disappointed man--a failure--high hopes unrealized, labours unsuccessful, aspirations blighted; saw himself struggling single-handed against misfortune, and with Beatrix by his side. Might she not--if life went badly with him--repent her choice? And what was the bitterness of the present--the loss involved in doing right--compared with that sharper bitterness, that greater loss, which might follow in the future upon doing wrong? ‘My first and last visit to the Water House, I dare say,’ he thought, as he paused for a minute in the quadrangle, to look up at the ivy-clad walls, the massive stone mullions and Tudor gables. A fine old house if its associations had been bright and pleasant, but, looked at as the dungeon of unloved youth, it appeared dismal as an Egyptian tomb. He saw an open door in the cloistered side wall--a door leading to the garden, and thought how natural it would be for him to go there in search of Beatrix--thought how happily he would have gone to seek her if Mr. Harefield’s decision had favoured their love--if he had given them ever so little encouragement, ever so small a right to look hopefully towards the future. Now all was blank--a dull, dead despair. He went under the archway, and the outer door shut behind him with a hollow clang in the twilight. CHAPTER VII. MRS. DULCIMER MEANS BUSINESS. WHEN a benevolent idea entered the mind of the good-natured Mrs. Dulcimer, there immediately began a process of incubation or hatching, as of a patient maternal hen intent on the development of her eggs. Like that domestic fowl, Mrs. Dulcimer gave her whole mind to the task, and, for the time being, thought of nothing else. The notion of a marriage between Cyril Culverhouse and Bella Scratchell was now incubating. Bella, of whom Mrs. Dulcimer had not thought much hitherto, was now taken under her wing, a _protégée_ whose provision in life was an actual duty.