Cecilia reflected that he must be playing, and as it was not a subject for play she tacitly reproved him by letting him be the last to speak of it.  He may not have been susceptible to the delicate chastisement, probably was not, for when he ceased it was to look on the beauty of her lowered eyelids, rather with an idea that the weight of his argument lay on them.  It breathed from him; both in the department of logic and of feeling, in his plea for the poor man and his exposition of the poor man’s rightful claims, he evidently imagined that he had spoken overwhelmingly; and to undeceive him in this respect, for his own good, Cecilia calmly awaited the occasion when she might show the vanity of arguments in their effort to overcome convictions.  He stood up to take his leave of her, on their return to the mouth of the Otley river, unexpectedly, so that the occasion did not arrive; but on his mentioning an engagement he had to give a dinner to a journalist and a tradesman of the town of Bevisham, by way of excuse for not complying with her gentle entreaty that he would go to Mount Laurels and wait to see the colonel that evening, ‘Oh! then your choice must be made irrevocably, I am sure,’ Miss Halkett said, relying upon intonation and manner to convey a great deal more, and not without a minor touch of resentment for his having dragged her into the discussion of politics, which she considered as a slime wherein men hustled and tussled, no doubt worthily enough, and as became them; not however to impose the strife upon the elect ladies of earth.  What gentleman ever did talk to a young lady upon the dreary topic seriously?  Least of all should Nevil Beauchamp have done it.  That object of her high imagination belonged to the exquisite sphere of the feminine vision of the pure poetic, and she was vexed by the discord he threw between her long-cherished dream and her unanticipated realization of him:, if indeed it was he presenting himself to her in his own character, and not trifling, or not passing through a phase of young man’s madness.

Possibly he might be the victim of the latter and more pardonable state, and so thinking she gave him her hand.

‘Good-bye, Nevil.  I may tell papa to expect you tomorrow?’

‘Do, and tell him to prepare for a field-day.’

She smiled.  ’A sham fight that will not win you a vote!  I hope you will find your guests this evening agreeable companions.’

Beauchamp half-shrugged involuntarily.  He obliterated the piece of treason toward them by saying that he hoped so; as though the meeting them, instead of slipping on to Mount Laurels with her, were an enjoyable prospect.

He was dropped by the Esperanza’s boat near Otley ferry, to walk along the beach to Bevisham, and he kept eye on the elegant vessel as she glided swan-like to her moorings off Mount Laurels park through dusky merchant craft, colliers, and trawlers, loosely shaking her towering snow-white sails, unchallenged in her scornful supremacy; an image of a refinement of beauty, and of a beautiful servicelessness.