At eight o’clock there came a gentle tapping at the door. ‘Oh, if you please, miss,’ said the housemaid, ‘master wishes to see you in the library.’ ‘It has come,’ thought Beatrix, rising from the sofa. She paused for an instant as she passed the cheval glass to survey herself from head to foot. She was dressed in dark blue cloth, plainly made, fitting her like a riding habit--a close linen collar clasped with a gold button. The tall, full figure had more of womanly pride than girlish grace. ‘Yes,’ she said to herself, ‘I am like my mother. Perhaps that is why he hates me. And yet, if he had not loved her better than anything on earth, why should he be so miserable?’ This was a problem that Beatrix had often tried to solve. The loss which had blighted her father’s life must have been the loss of one deeply loved. Yet Beatrix’s memory of her mother’s last year on earth could recall no evidence of a husband’s love. Her father was standing with his back to the fire, when she went into the library, just in the same attitude as that in which he had awaited Cyril Culverhouse. He had changed his long gray dressing-gown for a frock coat. That was the only alteration. There was but one lamp in the room--a large reading lamp with a crimson velvet shade which threw all the light on Mr. Harefield’s table. The rest of the room was in semi-darkness, fitfully illuminated by the wood fire. Mr. Harefield did not waste time upon any ceremonious preamble. ‘I have had an application for your hand,’ he said, his daughter standing before him, facing him steadily. ‘Yes, papa.’ ‘You know of it, I suppose?’ ‘Yes, papa.’ ‘And you approve of it?’ She hesitated for a moment, remembering her last conversation with Cyril. ‘I am deeply attached to Mr. Culverhouse,’ she said, her voice trembling a little at the daring confession, ‘and he is the only man I will ever marry.’ ‘Indeed! That is coming to the point. How old are you, Beatrix?’ ‘Nineteen.’ ‘And you have made up your mind already that there is but one man upon earth you can love--that you will marry him, and no other?’ ‘Yes, papa,’ she answered, looking at him with those dark intense eyes of hers--so like other eyes, long since quenched in eternal night. ‘Yes, papa, I am very sure of that. Fate may be too strong for me--I feel sometimes as if I were born for an evil destiny. I may not marry Cyril, perhaps; but I will never marry any one else.’ ‘Do you know that when I am dead--if you do not offend me--you will be a very rich woman?’ ‘I have never thought about it, papa.’ ‘Think about it now, then. If you marry to please me you will have an estate large enough to make you an important personage in the world. If you marry Cyril Culverhouse you will not have sixpence. I will leave all I have in the world to found an asylum for----’ A coarse word was on his lips, but he checked himself and substituted a euphuism,-- ‘An asylum for nameless children.’