Shrapnel might think what he liked, and say what he liked, as far as she was concerned, apart from the man she loved.  Rosamund went through these emotions altogether on Nevil’s behalf, and longed for her affirmatizing inspiring sisterhood until the thought of them threw another shade on him.

What champion was she to look to?  To whom but to Mr. Everard Romfrey?

It was with a spasm of delighted reflection that she hit on Mr. Romfrey.  He was like a discovery to her.  With his strength and skill, his robust common sense and rough shrewd wit, his prompt comparisons, his chivalry, his love of combat, his old knightly blood, was not he a match, and an overmatch, for the ramping Radical who had tangled Nevil in his rough snares?  She ran her mind over Mr. Romfrey’s virtues, down even to his towering height and breadth.  Could she but once draw these two giants into collision in Nevil’s presence, she was sure it would save him.  The method of doing it she did not stop to consider:  she enjoyed her triumph in the idea.

Meantime she had passed from Dr. Shrapnel to Miss Denham, and carried on a conversation becomingly.

Tea had been made in the garden, and she had politely sipped half a cup, which involved no step inside the guilty house, and therefore no distress to her antagonism.  The sun descended.  She heard the doctor reciting.  Could it be poetry?  In her imagination the sombre hues surrounding an incendiary opposed that bright spirit.  She listened, smiling incredulously.  Miss Denham could interpret looks, and said, ’Dr. Shrapnel is very fond of those verses.’

Rosamund’s astonishment caused her to say, ’Are they his own?’—­a piece of satiric innocency at which Miss Denham laughed softly as she answered, ‘No.’

Rosamund pleaded that she had not heard them with any distinctness.

‘Are they written by the gentleman at his side?’

‘Mr. Lydiard?  No.  He writes, but the verses are not his.’

‘Does he know—­has he met Captain Beauchamp?’

‘Yes, once.  Captain Beauchamp has taken a great liking to his works.’

Rosamund closed her eyes, feeling that she was in a nest that had determined to appropriate Nevil.  But at any rate there was the hope and the probability that this Mr. Lydiard of the pen had taken a long start of Nevil in the heart of Miss Denham:  and struggling to be candid, to ensure some meditative satisfaction, Rosamund admitted to herself that the girl did not appear to be one of the wanton giddy-pated pusses who play two gentlemen or more on their line.  Appearances, however, could be deceptive:  never pretend to know a girl by her face, was one of Rosamund’s maxims.

She was next informed of Dr. Shrapnel’s partiality for music toward the hour of sunset.  Miss Denham mentioned it, and the doctor, presently sauntering up, invited Rosamund to a seat on a bench near the open window of the drawing-room.  He nodded to his ward to go in.