‘I will never pray for him or his work again,’ she vowed to herself, and the vow had all the savagery of a pagan oath. ‘His name shall never pass my lips or find a place in my heart. It shall be to me as if such a man had never lived.’ From this time there was a marked change in her manner. It was brighter, gayer, harder than it had been before. That mournful resignation which had distinguished her since her father’s death gave place to a proud indifference, a careless scorn of all things and all men, save the few friends she liked and trusted. That disgust of life which attacks most of us at odd times, and which sometimes afflicts even the young, had seized upon her. All things in this world were hateful to her. Solomon, sated with wealth and glory, could not have felt the emptiness of earthly joys more deeply than this girl of nineteen, whose lips had scarcely touched the cup of life. She knew herself rich, and with all good things at her disposal--beautiful enough to command the love of men; and yet, because that one man whom she loved had proved false and unworthy, she turned with a sickened soul from all that earth held of hope or pleasure. Unhappily she had not yet learned to look higher for comfort. She was not irreligious. She firmly believed all her Church taught her to believe, but she had not learned, like Hezekiah, to lay her trouble before the Lord. She locked up her grief in her own heart, as something apart from her spiritual life; and she went on conforming outwardly to all the duties of religion, but deriving no inward solace from her faith. Beatrix was in this mood when Mrs. Dulcimer, delighted at Bella’s speedy success, but opining, nevertheless, that something more must be done, was seized with a happy idea. ‘Kenrick,’ she exclaimed at tea one evening, when Kenrick had announced his intention of going to have one more peep at Culverhouse Castle before he embarked on board the P. and O. steamship that was to carry him on the first stage of his journey to India--‘Kenrick,’ cried Mrs. Dulcimer, with an excited air, ‘I really think it is the oddest thing in the world.’ ‘What, dear Mrs. Dulcimer?’ asked Kenrick, while everybody else looked curious. ‘Why, that after knowing you all these years, and hearing you talk so much about Culverhouse Castle, we should never have seen it.’ ‘I don’t know whom you mean by we,’ said Mr. Dulcimer, ‘but I beg to say that I spent three weeks at Culverhouse in one of my long vacations, and a capital time I had there. The Avon is one of the finest salmon rivers I ever fished in.’ ‘Ah, that was in Kenrick’s father’s time,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer; ‘but though you may be perfectly quainted with the place, Clement, I have never seen it.’