Did he believe her guilty of that last and worst of crimes, the murder of a father? Hardly. But he was not fully assured of her innocence. His mind had been racked with doubt--ever since that day of the inquest when he had stood in the doorway and watched her agonized face and listened to her faltering words. There is nothing that the human mind more unwillingly believes than a strange coincidence; and that coincidence of Miss Harefield’s purchase of the laudanum within a week of her father’s death by laudanum had been too much for Cyril’s faith. Had his beloved been a penniless orphan, and no worldly gain to be had from loving her, he might have reconciled his doubt with his honour and married her, trusting to time for the elucidation of the mystery that now stained her young life with the taint of possible guilt. But in this case there was too much for him to win--and in every feeling that drew him to Beatrix he recognised a snare of Satan. Little by little he had come to know that public opinion in Little Yafford--and even in the neighbouring town of Great Yafford--had condemned Beatrix Harefield. Every detail of her conduct had been canvassed. Her late appearance on the morning of her father’s death was taken as an evidence of guilt. She had feared to face the catastrophe her crime had brought about, and had feigned sleep to stave off the appalling moment. Or she had simulated that heavy slumber in order to support her story about the laudanum. Her suggestion that her father should be sought for in a certain room, and the fact that he was found in that very room; her lame story--obviously an after thought--of the laudanum bottle in her mother’s room--all told against her. The fact that an empty bottle had been found there proved nothing. Beatrix had no doubt placed it where it was found. There had been ample time for her to do so between the first and second meetings of the coroner’s jury. Then as to motive? Well, one need not look very far for that, argued Little Yafford. Mr. Harefield had been a tyrant, and had made his daughter’s life miserable. She saw in his death a release from his tyranny, with the assurance of wealth and independence. Everybody knew--thanks to Mrs. Dulcimer--how cruelly the wretched girl had been treated, even forbidden to visit the Vicarage, where she had always been so happy. And then there was that secret love affair which had been spoken about at the inquest. That would give a still stronger motive than her own wrongs. The more cultured inhabitants of Little Yafford, gentlemen who had dipped into old magazines and Annual Registers, quoted the case of Miss Blandy, an unfortunate young woman in the last century, who had given Henley-on-Thames, the place of her birth and residence, a classic fame by poisoning her father with ratsbane mixed in his water gruel.