Cuff, on the heights from first to last, and not advanced a step!  But Prancer, and Plunger, and Lammakin were thoroughly well taken care of, this critic of the war wrote savagely, reviving an echo of a queer small circumstance occurring in the midst of the high dolour and anxiety of the whole nation, and which a politic country preferred to forget, as we will do, for it was but an instance of strong family feeling in high quarters; and is not the unity of the country founded on the integrity of the family sentiment?  Is it not certain, which the master tells us, that a line is but a continuation of a number of dots?  Nevil Beauchamp was for insisting that great Government officers had paid more attention to a dot or two than to the line.  He appeared to be at war with his country after the peace.  So far he had a lively ally in his uncle Everard; but these remarks of his were a portion of a letter, whose chief burden was the request that Everard Romfrey would back him in proposing for the hand of a young French lady, she being, Beauchamp smoothly acknowledged, engaged to a wealthy French marquis, under the approbation of her family.  Could mortal folly outstrip a petition of that sort?  And apparently, according to the wording and emphasis of the letter, it was the mature age of the marquis which made Mr. Beauchamp so particularly desirous to stop the projected marriage and take the girl himself.  He appealed to his uncle on the subject in a ‘really—­really’ remonstrative tone, quite overwhelming to read.  ’It ought not to be permitted:  by all the laws of chivalry, I should write to the girl’s father to interdict it:  I really am particeps criminis in a sin against nature if I don’t!’ Mr. Romfrey interjected in burlesque of his ridiculous nephew, with collapsing laughter.  But he expressed an indignant surprise at Nevil for allowing Rosamund to travel alone.

‘I can take very good care of myself,’ Rosamund protested.

’You can do hundreds of things you should never be obliged to do while he’s at hand, or I, ma’am,’ said Mr. Romfrey.  ’The fellow’s insane.  He forgets a gentleman’s duty.  Here’s his “humanity” dogging a French frock, and pooh!—­the age of the marquis!  Fifty?  A man’s beginning his prime at fifty, or there never was much man in him.  It’s the mark of a fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself-or he wouldn’t have written this letter to me.  He can’t come home yet, not yet, and he doesn’t know when he can!  Has he thrown up the service?  I am to preserve the alliance between England and France by getting this French girl for him in the teeth of her marquis, at my peril if I refuse!’

Rosamund asked, ‘Will you let me see where Nevil says that, sir?’