‘Innocent or guilty!’ echoed Kenrick. ‘I see you are as bad as the rest. I should not have thought that possible. You have quite made up your mind then, Cyril. You abandon all hope of winning Miss Harefield?’ ‘Entirely.’ ‘So be it,’ said Kenrick. ‘Then let us talk of other things.’ Though Sir Kenrick proposed a change of conversation he was curiously silent and absent for the next half-hour, and gave Cyril ample leisure for thought. The two young men sat smoking and looking at the fire as they had done on many a previous evening, each wrapped in his own thoughts. When the clock in the hall struck ten, Sir Kenrick emptied the ashes out of his pipe, and put it back in its proper place on the mantelpiece. ‘Well, good night, old fellow,’ he said, in his usual careless style. ‘How soon do you think of leaving this place?’ ‘Before the end of the week.’ ‘That’s sudden.’ ‘Yes; but you remember what the Giaour said,-- ‘“Better to sink beneath the shock Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.”’ Painful partings cannot be too sudden.’ ‘You will inconvenience Mr. Dulcimer.’ ‘Not much. He got on without a curate for six months before I came.’ ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To Bridford.’ ‘A horrible manufacturing hole!’ exclaimed Sir Kenrick. ‘A place where there is good work to be done by any man strong enough to do it.’ ‘Oh, you are mad, Cyril, that is all--a fanatic. No fakir with shrivelled arms was ever worse. But I wish you well, dear fellow, wherever you go.’ Kenrick went away, wondering at his cousin’s foolishness. He did not know how far things had gone between Cyril and Beatrix, or he might have wondered still more. He thought Cyril might have won Miss Harefield by trying. He did not know she was already won. CHAPTER IX. ‘THOSE ARE THE KILLING GRIEFS WHICH DARE NOT SPEAK.’