‘There would be no stagnation for me at Culverhouse; yet I had much rather remain in the army. But is my profession to separate us? You may not like to go to India.’ ‘It will be my duty to go with you.’ ‘My love, I have no words to say how happy you have made me. It would have been a grief to give up my profession, but I would have done it without a word, in obedience to your wish.’ ‘A wife should have no wish about serious things in opposition to her husband,’ answered Beatrix. They were at Culverhouse Castle before dusk, and again the village gossips were bobbing to Beatrix, this time with the assurance, derived from Betty Mopson’s direct assertion, that she was to be their Lady Bountiful, the source of comfort and blessing at Christmastide, and in all time of trouble. They spent a calm and quiet week at the castle. Beatrix liked the gray old buildings, with their quaint mixture of ecclesiastical and domestic uses. First a castle, then an abbey, then a good old Tudor dwelling-house. That was the history of Culverhouse. Kenrick brought out old county chronicles to prove what a big place it had been in its time. How it had belonged to a warrior of the Culverhouse breed in the days of the first crusade; how it had been afterwards surrendered to the Church by a sinning and repenting Culverhouse; and how, after sequestration and malappropriation under the tyrant Harry, it had come back by marriage to the Culverhouses, in a most miraculous way. ‘Your house seems to have always been buttressed by heiresses,’ said Mr. Dulcimer, poring over a musty parchment that Kenrick had produced for his inspection. ‘You have been a very lucky family.’ ‘Luckier than we have deserved, I fear,’ answered Kenrick, with a glance at Beatrix. They all went to Little Yafford at the end of the week, and Kenrick was established at the Vicarage, under strict charge of Rebecca. That worthy woman exercised an awful tyranny over him, feeding him with jellies and soups with as off-hand authority as if he had been a nest of young thrushes, or a turkey in process of fattening for Christmas. He bore it all meekly, for was not Mrs. Dulcimer the best friend he had, since it was she who had first suggested his winning Beatrix? They were to be married early in the year. Everybody was talking about it already. It would be a much more interesting marriage than Mr. Piper’s second nuptials, though that event had kept the village gossips alive for full six weeks. The tide of popular feeling had turned, and Beatrix now stood high in the estimation of her neighbours. Even Miss Coyle was silent, contenting herself with an occasional shrug of her shoulders, or a significant elevation of her grizzled eyebrows. The slander had died a natural death, it had expired of inanition.