Rosamund checked her lips from uttering:  To be a puppet of
Dr. Shrapnel’s!

She remarked, ‘He is very eloquent—­Dr. Shrapnel?’

Miss Denham held some debate with herself upon the term.

‘Perhaps it is not eloquence; he often . . . no, he is not an orator.’

Rosamund suggested that he was persuasive, possibly.

Again the young lady deliberately weighed the word, as though the nicest measure of her uncle or adoptor’s quality in this or that direction were in requisition and of importance—­an instance of a want of delicacy of perception Rosamund was not sorry to detect.  For good-looking, refined-looking, quick-witted girls can be grown; but the nimble sense of fitness, ineffable lightning-footed tact, comes of race and breeding, and she was sure Nevil was a man soon to feel the absence of that.

’Dr. Shrapnel is persuasive to those who go partly with him, or whose condition of mind calls on him for great patience,’ Miss Denham said at last.

’I am only trying to comprehend how it was that he should so rapidly have won Captain Beauchamp to his views,’ Rosamund explained; and the young lady did not reply.

Dr. Shrapnel’s house was about a mile beyond the town, on a common of thorn and gorse, through which the fir-bordered highway ran.  A fence waist-high enclosed its plot of meadow and garden, so that the doctor, while protecting his own, might see and be seen of the world, as was the case when Rosamund approached.  He was pacing at long slow strides along the gravel walk, with his head bent and bare, and his hands behind his back, accompanied by a gentleman who could be no other than Nevil, Rosamund presumed to think; but drawing nearer she found she was mistaken.

‘That is not Captain Beauchamp’s figure,’ she said.

‘No, it is not he,’ said Miss Denham.

Rosamund saw that her companion was pale.  She warmed to her at once; by no means on account of the pallor in itself.

‘I have walked too fast for you, I fear.’

‘Oh no; I am accused of being a fast walker.’

Rosamund was unwilling to pass through the demagogue’s gate.  On second thoughts, she reflected that she could hardly stipulate to have news of Nevil tossed to her over the spikes, and she entered.

While receiving Dr. Shrapnel’s welcome to a friend of Captain Beauchamp, she observed the greeting between Miss Denham and the younger gentleman.  It reassured her.  They met like two that have a secret.

The dreaded doctor was an immoderately tall man, lean and wiry, carelessly clad in a long loose coat of no colour, loose trowsers, and huge shoes.