She unlocked the door, restored the key to its place on the other side, and returned to her own room. She looked at her watch, and found that it was half-past ten. She had been an hour in that chamber of the dead. She locked the door of her own room, just in time to escape a visitation from Miss Scales, whose gentle tapping sounded on the panel five minutes afterwards. ‘Are you going to bed, dear?’ inquired the duenna. ‘Yes, Miss Scales, love. Good night.’ ‘Good night, dear.’ Beatrix stirred the fire. The autumn nights were getting chill and shivery. It seemed as if the river became an embodied dampness at this time of the year, and stole into the house after nightfall, like a spectre. She took out her desk, and in that firm and almost masculine hand of hers began a letter to Cyril. ‘Dearest,’ she began. No other name was needed. He was her dearest and only dear. ‘DEAREST,--My father has told me his decision. It is just as I said it would be. He will bestow no blessing upon our love. He has sworn to disinherit me if I marry you. He is quite resolute, and will never change his mind, he assures me. Nothing you or I could do would soften him. If you marry me you will marry a pauper. I am to be penniless. ‘Is your mind made up, Cyril? Are you true and steadfast? If so you will find me firm as rock. Poverty has no terrors for me. I would marry you, dearest, if you were a farm labourer with a dozen shillings a week. I would work, drudge, and wash and mend, and be your happy wife. I have told my father as much as this. I have told him that I renounce his money and his lands--that I am ready to be your wife whenever you choose to claim me--that the loss of all he has to leave cannot make me swerve by one hair’s breadth from my purpose. ‘Do you think me bold, Cyril, or unwomanly, for writing thus frankly? If you do please pardon me, as Romeo pardoned Juliet, because I have not “more cunning to be strange.” Write to me, dearest. I am forbidden to go to the Vicarage any more while I remain under my father’s roof; so I have little hope of seeing you. Write and tell me what you wish. ‘Your ever affectionate ‘BEATRIX.’ What was Cyril Culverhouse to do on receiving such a letter as this of Beatrix Harefield’s, after his promise to her father that he would hold no further communication with her? To leave such a letter unanswered was impossible to any man. To break his word and answer it in an underhand manner was impossible to Cyril Culverhouse.