‘Now I have been thinking,’ continued Mrs. Dulcimer, sinking to a mysterious undertone, ‘that perhaps if Beatrix could be made to think that Cyril was fickle and inconstant, and that before he left Little Yafford he had got to care for someone else--you, for instance,’ whispered Mrs. Dulcimer, making a little stab at Bella with her forefinger, ‘it might cure her of her foolish attachment to him. It is ridiculous that she should go on caring for a man who doesn’t love her, when there is a noble young fellow who does love her passionately, and can make her Lady Culverhouse. If she could only be made to think that Cyril was fond of you, Bella, without actual falsehood,’ concluded Mrs. Dulcimer, with a strong emphasis upon the qualifying adjective, as much as to say that in so good a cause she would not mind sailing rather near the wind. ‘I’m sure I don’t know how it is to be done,’ said Bella, with a meditative air. ‘Beatrix is so self-opinionated. It is not as if she were a weak-minded pliable girl. She is as hard as rock.’ ‘But you are so clever, Bella. You could manage anything. If I were to say now that I always thought Cyril was very fond of you--and I did think so for a long time, as you know, dear--and if you were to say something that would sustain that idea. We need neither of us tell an actual story.’ ‘Of course not,’ answered Bella, piously. ‘Do you suppose I would tell a story, dear Mrs. Dulcimer?’ ‘Indeed no, my love. I know how truthful you are.’ Thus it was agreed between the Vicar’s wife and her ductile _protégée_ that, somehow or other, Beatrix was to be persuaded that her lover had been doubly false to her; false in abandoning her because evil tongues maligned her, false in preferring another woman. CHAPTER XIII. ‘A SMILE OF THINE SHALL MAKE MY BLISS.’ BY what serpentine twists and windings Bella Scratchell reached the end she had in view need not be recorded. She was by nature a creature of many curves, and all her progress in life was devious and indirect. Enough that she succeeded in making Beatrix Harefield believe her lost lover false and fickle, and thus undermined the girl’s respect for the man who had renounced her. So long as Beatrix could believe that Cyril had sacrificed his heart’s desire to his duty as priest and teacher, she would have continued to reverence and love him. Present or absent, he would have remained the one central figure in her life. From the moment she was persuaded to think him the shallow lover of a day--or indeed, worse than this, a lover who had been drawn to her by the lure of her wealth, and who at the bottom of his heart had always preferred Bella’s lilies and roses--from that moment she despised him, and concentrated all the forces of her mind in the endeavour to forget him.