If Cyril could have had Mr. Dulcimer’s faith he would have had Mr. Dulcimer’s courage. He was no slave of other men’s opinions, and would have snapped his fingers in the face of Little Yafford, if all had been well within. But there was the difficulty. That stricken face of Beatrix’s, those wild startled eyes--as he had seen them in the candle-lit room at the Water House--haunted him like an evil dream. He saw guilt and remorse in those troubled looks--the fear of God and man. Had he been a man who lived for himself alone, who had no higher aim in life than his own happiness, Cyril Culverhouse might have stifled the voice of doubt, and listened only to love’s pleading. But it was not so with him--he had chosen a loftier kind of life, he had given himself a loftier aim. He was to live for others, and to make the lives of others better than their own unaided weakness could make them. He, who was to be the teacher and counsellor of others, must be, so far as it is possible for humanity, spotless in his life and in his surroundings. Could he marry a wife of whom it could be said in one breath, ‘She was suspected of poisoning her father,’ and in the next, ‘Yes, but she brought her husband ten thousand a year’? No. It was clear to him that this fatal cloud of suspicion must make a life-long severance between Beatrix and him. Love might have bridged the gulf, but honour and duty held him back. He had not seen Beatrix since her father’s death, and he had made up his mind to leave Little Yafford without seeing her. His business was to announce his resolve in a manner that would give her the least pain possible; but he knew the blow would be hard to bear. He knew that she loved him with an intense and all-absorbing love. ‘Oh, God, if she has sinned so deeply for the love of me,’ he thought, in a moment of horror, finding himself suddenly on the edge of a black abyss of doubt, down which he dared not look, ‘if to bring about our union she has done this hideous thing! But no, I will not believe her guilty. I will pity and deplore her position, the victim of groundless suspicion. If I dare not sacrifice my duty to my love, I will at least believe her innocent.’ He remembered that little speech of hers during their chance meeting on the moor, a speech that had shocked and revolted him at the time, and had been a painful recollection to him afterwards. ‘Is it wicked to wish for my father’s death?’ Did not that question imply that she had already committed the sin? Was it possible that the wicked wish, nursed and cherished, had culminated in the fatal act? The doubt tortured him.