An Open Verdict by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

SLOWLY and gradually health and strength came back to Beatrix Harefield. The family life at the Vicarage was a new thing to her. It was a new thing to live in a house where everybody was cheerful, and where people seemed fond of her. The library was her favourite room, and Mr. Dulcimer her chosen companion. Whether he was silently absorbed in his book, or laid it down, as he did very often, to talk to her, Beatrix found his society all-sufficient. She read and studied at a table he had allotted to her, apart from him, and yet near him. Under his guidance she read the books that filled her mind with the best material; she climbed from height to height upon the hills of knowledge. New worlds opened to her that she had never dreamed of, and she went in and found that there were pleasant regions in those strange worlds. Science, which she had only known as a name, opened its treasure-house for her. Art, which she had known almost as vaguely, was revealed to her, with all its mysteries and beauties, unknown to the ignorant. And Poetry, best and sweetest of all, in her mind, opened the door to a fairy-land of inexhaustible delight. She did not forget Cyril, but she learned to look with a calm disdain upon her maligners in Little Yafford, and she was almost happy.

Before the end of March Mrs. Dulcimer had broken altogether with Miss Coyle, after rebuking that ancient sibyl, in no measured phrase, for her want of charity.