‘Directly, no. You are equivocating with me, as only your virtuous man can equivocate. You are Pharisees, every one of you, straining at gnats and swallowing camels. What about your indirect influence? It was that which broke off my marriage.’ ‘I met your betrothed wife yesterday, by accident. I was taken off my guard. In the bewilderment of that moment I may have said foolish things--’ ‘Yes, you urged her to break off her marriage. You left her a year ago, of your own accord. And now, finding that I had won her, it came into your head to try and take her away from me. A manly course throughout.’ ‘Kenrick, when I went away conscience was my dictator. Yesterday I let passion master me. I confess it with deepest humiliation. But trust me, if Beatrix did not love you, it is better--infinitely better--that you and she should be parted for ever. No happiness would have come out of your union----’ ‘Preach your sermons to more patient listeners,’ cried Kenrick, savagely. ‘I will have none of them.’ And so the cousins parted. Kenrick went to Great Yafford to make inquiries at the station, but at that busy place there had been nobody with leisure enough to particularize two ladies--one tall and the other short--going away by the seven o’clock train. Neither Miss Harefield’s carriage nor Miss Harefield’s person had made any impression upon the mind of the porter who had carried her luggage into the station. There was a train that started for London at seven, there was another that went northward at a quarter past. There was the Liverpool train at 7.30. She might have travelled by any one of these. Kenrick went back to the Vicarage in a savage humour. No good could have come from the pursuit of his lost bride, but it was hard not to know where she had gone. Fortunately Cyril passed him unawares on the road between the town and the village, so those two did not meet again. ‘I shall go to London to-morrow,’ Kenrick told the Dulcimers that evening, ‘and present myself at the War Office next day.’ ‘You want to go back to India directly?’ asked the Vicar. ‘Yes, I shall cut short my leave by a month or six weeks.’ ‘Dear Kenrick, why not stop with us till you recover your spirits after this cruel blow?’ urged Mrs. Dulcimer. ‘My kindest of friends, I could never recover my spirits at Little Yafford. Forgive me for saying so, but the place has become hateful to me. Even your kindness could not make it endurable.’ ‘Kenrick is right,’ said the Vicar. ‘He has been very badly treated, and his profession will be his best consolation.’