He might have said something very shocking if Mrs. Dulcimer had not come in at this moment. She found Beatrix in tears, and Kenrick pacing up and down the room with a distracted air. These two facts indicated that something decisive had happened, and Mrs. Dulcimer saw from Kenrick’s face that the something was of an unsatisfactory nature. ‘How provoking!’ she thought. ‘It really seems as if no plan of mine is to succeed.’ Beatrix did not appear at the tea-table. She sent an apology by Rebecca. She had a headache, and would go to bed early. Kenrick was absent-minded, and out of spirits. The meal, usually so cheerful, was eaten in silence; Mr. Dulcimer had picked up a queer little seventeenth century copy of Boileau at Great Yafford that morning, and looked at the tail-pieces and initials as he took his tea. ‘Stop and smoke your cigar here, Ken,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer when tea was over, and Sir Kenrick was about to follow his host to the library. ‘But don’t you dislike smoke in this room?’ ‘Not for once in a way. Your cigars are very mild, and Rebecca will air the room well to-morrow morning. I want to have a chat with you.’ ‘Delighted,’ said Kenrick, sitting down opposite Mrs. Dulcimer’s work-table. He had a shrewd suspicion of what was coming, but he felt that it would comfort him to pour his woes into a friendly ear. He knew very well that Mrs. Dulcimer had set her heart upon his marrying Miss Harefield. ‘What had you been doing to make Beatrix cry?’ asked the Vicar’s wife, coming straight to the point. ‘I had asked her to be my wife.’ ‘What, they were tears of joy then?’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘Quite the contrary. She had rejected me flatly.’ ‘Oh, Kenrick! But why?’ ‘She did not condescend to enter very minutely into her reasons, but I believe the principal one is that she doesn’t care for me.’ ‘Oh, Kenrick,’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer, in exactly the same tone as before. ‘What a pity!’ ‘Yes, it’s regrettable. If my first thought were her fortune and the good it would do to Culverhouse, I should deserve my fate. But that is only my second thought. I love her very dearly. If she were the poorest little nursery governess in the county I should love her just the same, and would take her back to India with me, and work for her and be happy with her all the days of my life.’ ‘But her money would pay off those mortgages; as Lady Culverhouse she would have a leading position in your part of the country.’ ‘She would be admired and adored,’ said Kenrick. ‘It would be in every way such a suitable match,’ protested Mrs. Dulcimer, a remark she was in the habit of making about every pair of young people whose footsteps she wished to direct to the hymeneal altar. ‘Really human nature is very perverse.’ She remembered how ignominiously she had failed in her desire to benefit Cyril and Bella; and here was this more important scheme apparently doomed to failure.