‘You place yourself too low and me too high,’ answered Beatrix, sadly. She had not withdrawn her hand, and Kenrick’s heart thrilled with a new-born hope. ‘You forget my tainted name. Kind as the people here are to me, I dare say there is not one among them who does not know that I have been suspected of poisoning my father.’ The pained look in her face told Kenrick how bitter this thought was, and how ever present in her mind. ‘They know nothing except that you are the loveliest and noblest of women,’ said Kenrick. ‘My love, my love, do not reject me. You can give me fortune to restore the glory of a good old name--to bring back to this place the pride and hospitality and usefulness of days gone by--and I can give you nothing in exchange, save love and reverence. It is hardly a fair bargain, perhaps; yet I am bold enough to press my suit, for I believe that you and I could be happy together.’ After a pause of a few minutes, and a long-drawn sigh, Beatrix answered him with a sweet seriousness that to him seemed simply adorable. ‘I had my dream of a very different life,’ she said, ‘but that dream was rudely broken. I like you, Sir Kenrick, because you have trusted me; I am grateful to you because you have never let the evil thoughts of others influence your mind against me. If you can be content with liking and gratitude, I am content to be your wife.’ There was a tone of resignation rather than happiness in this acceptance, but it lifted Kenrick into the seventh heaven of delight. ‘Dearest, you have made me almost mad with joy,’ he cried. ‘You shall never regret--no, love, God helping me, you shall never regret your sweet consent of this blissful evening.’ He drew her to his heart, and kissed the tremulous lips, which shrank from him with an involuntary recoil. How cold those lips were! If he had kissed her in her coffin that kiss could hardly have been colder. CHAPTER XIV. ‘OH, BREAK, MY HEART!--POOR BANKRUPT, BREAK AT ONCE.’ CYRIL CULVERHOUSE had entered upon a career of unceasing toil. He had given himself scanty rest or respite at Little Yafford, though it was a place where most curates would have taken life easily; but at Bridford he learned, for the first time, what work means in an overcrowded, sorely neglected manufacturing town. The ignorances and abuses which he found rampant in those noisome back slums and overcrowded alleys, lying hidden behind the outward respectability of the high street, aroused his indignation against a system that allowed such things to be. He was no democrat; he had no sympathy with would-be levellers; but it seemed to him that there must be something out of joint in the time, when such depths of social degradation were left to their native gloom, while the gaslit thoroughfare and the shriek of the railway engine testified to the march of improvement.