This happened about a fortnight before Christmas, and at a time when Miss Scratchell’s duties at the Park were in a considerable degree suspended. She would not have been wanted there at all, under ordinary circumstances, for the young Pipers, who had a frank detestation of all kinds of learning, claimed a holiday at this season, and had their claim allowed. But Mrs. Piper was ill, so ill as to be confined to her own room; and in this juncture she found Isabella’s domestic talents of use to her, and, without any extra remuneration, contrived to occupy a good deal of Isabella’s time. A little while ago, when she was living in her fool’s paradise, believing herself loved by Cyril Culverhouse, this encroachment upon her leisure would have been aggravating in the extreme to Bella Scratchell. But just now it was rather a relief than otherwise, for it gave her an excuse for neglecting her cottagers. She went among them still, now and then, and was sweet and sympathetic as of old, reading favourite chapters of St. John to the consumptive dressmaker, or carrying a bunch of wintry flowers to the wheelwright’s bed-ridden daughter, a patient victim to spinal complaint; but, so far as it was possible, she avoided meeting Cyril. There was too keen a shame, too fierce an agony in the thought of her delusion. In this innocent seeming Dresden china beauty there existed a capacity for passionate feeling, unsuspected by her kindred or friends. From love to vindictiveness was only a step in this intense nature. She hated Mrs. Dulcimer for having entrapped her--she hated herself for having fallen so easily into so petty a snare. She hated Cyril for not loving her--she hated him still more for loving somebody else--and she hated Beatrix Harefield most of all for being the object of his love. ‘Has she not enough of the good things of this life without taking him from me?’ she thought savagely, forgetting that as Cyril had never belonged to her, Beatrix could hardly be charged with robbery. ‘He would have cared for me if he had never seen her,’ argued Bella. ‘She is handsomer than I am--grand and noble looking--while I am small and mean.’ Vanity and self-esteem were alike crushed by Cyril’s indifference. She had been vain of her pink and white prettiness hitherto. Now she looked at herself in the glass, and scorned her trivial beauty--the blue eyes and light brown lashes--the indefinite eyebrows, the blunt inoffensive little nose--the rose-bud mouth, and coquettish dimples. A beauty to catch fools perhaps; but of no value in the eyes of a man of character, like Cyril Culverhouse. She bore her burden quietly, being very proud, after her small manner, and no one in that noisy home circle of Mr. Scratchell’s discovered that there was anything amiss in the eldest daughter of the house.