Beatrix seemed indifferent as to whether Bella went or stayed, so Miss Scratchell got her goods and chattels together, and departed with her father, after many loving embraces and pretty expressions of gratitude. Perhaps in the book of the recording angel that parting kiss of Bella’s went down in a particular column devoted to such Judas kisses--that traitor kiss of Darnley’s, for instance, on the night of Rizzio’s assassination. Bella went home with her father, looking slim and pretty in her new black dress and bonnet, and doing her best to soothe her parent’s wrath with sweet deprecating speeches. In the box which she had just packed--to be brought home later--there were many things that she had not taken to the Water House, including a handsome black silk gown, and innumerable trifles in the shape of gloves, collars, and neck-ribbons; but there was one thing which Miss Scratchell carried away in her pocket, and which she held to be of more importance than all her finery. This was the sealed envelope which she had found upon Mr. Harefield’s writing-table. ‘For my daughter Beatrix.’ She took it from her pocket when she was safely locked in her own room, secure from the intrusion of the family herd. She sat with the packet on her lap, thoughtfully contemplating it. She had kept it more than a fortnight, and had not broken the seal. She had been sorely tempted to see what was inside the envelope, but had resisted the temptation. To open it would be a crime, she had told herself, and she made a kind of virtue of this self-denial. All she wanted was to keep the document. She had made up her mind that this sealed packet contained the key to the mystery of Christian Harefield’s death. So long as the seal remained unbroken that death would remain a mystery. No one would know whether it was suicide or murder; and this uncertainty would hang like a cloud over Beatrix. This was Isabella Scratchell’s revenge. That pink and white prettiness of hers was not incompatible with the capacity to seize an opportunity and to persevere in an inexorable hatred. ‘She has beauty and wealth, and a good old name,’ thought Bella; ‘but so long as her father’s death remains unexplained she will hardly have the love of Cyril Culverhouse.’ Bella had heard enough from Mr. Piper and Miss Coyle on Christmas Day to know very well which way opinion was drifting in Little Yafford. It was a settled thing already in the minds of a good many deep thinkers, and profound students of human nature as exhibited in the weekly papers, that Beatrix Harefield knew more about her father’s death than anybody else. The very horror of the idea that her hand had put the poison in his way gave it a morbid attraction for tea-table conversation. There was a growing opinion that the coroner’s jury had done less than their duty in returning an open verdict.