‘WHY WAS MY CRESSID THEN SO HARD TO WIN?’ SLOWLY and gradually health and strength came back to Beatrix Harefield. The family life at the Vicarage was a new thing to her. It was a new thing to live in a house where everybody was cheerful, and where people seemed fond of her. The library was her favourite room, and Mr. Dulcimer her chosen companion. Whether he was silently absorbed in his book, or laid it down, as he did very often, to talk to her, Beatrix found his society all-sufficient. She read and studied at a table he had allotted to her, apart from him, and yet near him. Under his guidance she read the books that filled her mind with the best material; she climbed from height to height upon the hills of knowledge. New worlds opened to her that she had never dreamed of, and she went in and found that there were pleasant regions in those strange worlds. Science, which she had only known as a name, opened its treasure-house for her. Art, which she had known almost as vaguely, was revealed to her, with all its mysteries and beauties, unknown to the ignorant. And Poetry, best and sweetest of all, in her mind, opened the door to a fairy-land of inexhaustible delight. She did not forget Cyril, but she learned to look with a calm disdain upon her maligners in Little Yafford, and she was almost happy. Before the end of March Mrs. Dulcimer had broken altogether with Miss Coyle, after rebuking that ancient sibyl, in no measured phrase, for her want of charity. ‘I shall never drop in to tea here again,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘No, Miss Coyle, not if we both were to live for a hundred years.’ ‘I shall be very sorry for that,’ replied Miss Coyle, sitting very erect behind her oval tea-tray, and with her gaze fixed upon her silver teapot, marked with King George’s pigtail, and an heirloom; ‘but I cannot alter my opinion, even,’ with a tremulous movement of her cannon curls, ‘for the privilege of retaining Mrs. Dulcimer’s friendship. I can only say, and I shall say so while the power of speech is left me, that Miss Harefield is a young person I would never consent to receive in my house--no, not if her thousands were millions.’ ‘Fortunately Miss Harefield does not want to come into your house,’ retorted Mrs. Dulcimer, very red and angry, and with all her frillings and puffings in agitation. ‘Thousands, indeed! Do you suppose Beatrix Harefield’s fortune has any influence with Mr. Dulcimer or me?’ ‘I don’t presume to speculate upon Mr. Dulcimer’s motives or yours, but I believe the coroner’s jury would have come to a very different verdict if Miss Harefield had been poor and a stranger. Look at the men who were on the jury. Why, there was Haslope the grocer, who has served the Water House ever since he has been in trade; and Ridswell the upholsterer, who had the order for the funeral. Slavish creatures who have fattened upon the Harefield family! Of course they would not condemn the daughter of their patron.’ ‘What proof can you bring against her?’