‘I too; but he will write, and I really can wait no longer,’ Rosamund replied, in extreme apprehension lest a certain degree of pressure should overbear her repugnance to the doctor’s dinner-table.  Miss Denham’s look was fixed on her; but, whatever it might mean, Rosamund’s endurance was at an end.  She was invited to dine; she refused.  She was exceedingly glad to find herself on the high-road again, with a prospect of reaching Steynham that night; for it was important that she should not have to confess a visit to Bevisham now when she had so little of favourable to tell Mr. Everard Romfrey of his chosen nephew.  Whether she had acted quite wisely in not remaining to see Nevil, was an agitating question that had to be silenced by an appeal to her instincts of repulsion, and a further appeal for justification of them to her imaginary sisterhood of gossips.  How could she sit and eat, how pass an evening in that house, in the society of that man?  Her tuneful chorus cried, ‘How indeed.’  Besides, it would have offended Mr. Romfrey to hear that she had done so.  Still she could not refuse to remember Miss Denham’s marked intimations of there being a reason for Nevil’s friend to seize the chance of an immediate interview with him; and in her distress at the thought, Rosamund reluctantly, but as if compelled by necessity, ascribed the young lady’s conduct to a strong sense of personal interests.

’Evidently she has no desire he should run the risk of angering a rich uncle.’

This shameful suspicion was unavoidable:  there was no other opiate for Rosamund’s blame of herself after letting her instincts gain the ascendancy.

It will be found a common case, that when we have yielded to our instincts, and then have to soothe conscience, we must slaughter somebody, for a sacrificial offering to our sense of comfort.

CHAPTER XIII

A SUPERFINE CONSCIENCE

However much Mr. Everard Romfrey may have laughed at Nevil Beauchamp with his ‘banana-wreath,’ he liked the fellow for having volunteered for that African coast-service, and the news of his promotion by his admiral to the post of commander through a death vacancy, had given him an exalted satisfaction, for as he could always point to the cause of failures, he strongly appreciated success.  The circumstance had offered an occasion for the new commander to hit him hard upon a matter of fact.  Beauchamp had sent word of his advance in rank, but requested his uncle not to imagine him wearing an additional epaulette; and he corrected the infallible gentleman’s error (which had of course been reported to him when he was dreaming of Renee, by Mrs. Culling) concerning a lieutenant’s shoulder decorations, most gravely; informing him of the anchor on the lieutenant’s pair of epaulettes, and the anchor and star on a commander’s, and the crown on a captain’s, with a well-feigned solicitousness to save his uncle from blundering further.  This was done in the dry neat manner which Mr. Romfrey could feel to be his own turned on him.