‘Enough to hang her if she had been anybody else,’ said Miss Coyle. ‘Why did she buy that laudanum?’ ‘For her own use.’ ‘Ah!’ said Miss Coyle. There is a great deal of meaning in the monosyllable ‘Ah!’ if it be uttered with a grave shake of the head, a tightening of thin lips, and a prolongation of tone. ‘I don’t think there is any Christian feeling in Little Yafford,’ exclaimed Mrs. Dulcimer, drawing on a tight glove, and bursting it in a ruinous manner. ‘Except at the Vicarage,’ sneered Miss Coyle. ‘The place is given over to a pack of prying old maids and spiteful old bachelors.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Miss Coyle, with withering sarcasm. She rose to accompany Mrs. Dulcimer to the door. She was not going to fail in politeness, even to a departing foe. ‘Good afternoon, and good-bye,’ said the Vicar’s wife, walking along the little garden path with an air of shaking the dust of Miss Coyle’s tenement from off her shoes. From this time forward Mrs. Dulcimer took Beatrix under her wing. She forgot that she too had shared the dark suspicions of Little Yafford. It was in her mind as if those suspicions had never been. She was a woman who lived from hand to mouth. Her ideas were the ideas of to-day; yesterday’s convictions went for nothing. She told Rebecca that she was disgusted with the people of Little Yafford for their infamous conduct to Beatrix; and Rebecca, who, though of too sterling metal to be a time-server, loved to please her mistress, went over to Miss Harefield’s party, and defended her stoutly at all kitchen tea parties. And Sir Kenrick--Sir Kenrick, who had always despised her slanderers, was now Beatrix Harefield’s most ardent champion. He had begun by thinking that she would make an admirable mistress of Culverhouse Castle; he ended by being very sure that she would make an adorable wife. He left off fishing for sulky pike in the reedy pools and inlets of the winding river, and spent his days hanging about the Vicarage, idle and happy, and very much in the way of other people’s industry. The lynx eyes of Mrs. Dulcimer, trained to see very far into all budding loves, were quick to perceive the state of affairs. She was delighted, and forgot that she had ever abandoned her plans for the union of the impoverished Culverhouse estate, and the fat fields and rich pastures of the Harefield property. It seemed to her the realization of her own idea. She took Kenrick’s young affection under her protection; she smiled fondly upon the unconscious Beatrix. She was full of Machiavellian schemes for leaving the two young people in each other’s society. The end of Kenrick’s leave was drawing near. Things were getting desperate, Mrs. Dulcimer thought. It must be now or never. She even went so far as to tell Kenrick so. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ she said. ‘I know she likes you.’