‘I don’t much congratulate myself,’ said the colonel.

’Here’s a letter from Mrs. Beauchamp informing me that her boy Blackburn will be home in a month.  There would have been plenty of time for him.  However, we must make up our minds to it.  Those two ’ll be meeting on Wednesday, so keep your secret.  It will be out tomorrow week.’

‘But Nevil will be accusing Mr. Austin.’

’Austin won’t be at Lespel’s.  And he must bear it, for the sake of peace.’

‘Is Nevil ruined with his uncle, papa?’

‘Not a bit, I should imagine.  It’s Romfrey’s fun.’

‘And this disgraceful squib is a part of the fun?’

’That I know nothing about, my dear.  I’m sorry, but there’s pitch and tar in politics as well as on shipboard.’

‘I do not see that there should be,’ said Cecilia resolutely.

‘We can’t hope to have what should be.’

‘Why not?  I would have it:  I would do my utmost to have it,’ she flamed out.

‘Your utmost?’ Her father was glancing at her foregone mimicry of Beauchamp’s occasional strokes of emphasis.  ’Do your utmost to have your bonnet on in time for us to walk to church.  I can’t bear driving there.’

Cecilia went to her room with the curious reflection, awakened by what her father had chanced to suggest to her mind, that she likewise could be fervid, positive, uncompromising—­who knows?  Radicalish, perhaps, when she looked eye to eye on an evil.  For a moment or so she espied within herself a gulf of possibilities, wherein black night-birds, known as queries, roused by shot of light, do flap their wings.—­Her utmost to have be what should be!  And why not?

But the intemperate feeling subsided while she was doing duty before her mirror, and the visionary gulf closed immediately.

She had merely been very angry on Nevil Beauchamp’s behalf, and had dimly seen that a woman can feel insurgent, almost revolutionary, for a personal cause, Tory though her instinct of safety and love of smoothness make her.

No reflection upon this casual piece of self or sex revelation troubled her head.  She did, however, think of her position as the friend of Nevil in utter antagonism to him.  It beset her with contradictions that blew rough on her cherished serenity; for she was of the order of ladies who, by virtue of their pride and spirit, their port and their beauty, decree unto themselves the rank of princesses among women, before our world has tried their claim to it.  She had lived hitherto in upper air, high above the clouds of earth.  Her ideal of a man was of one similarly disengaged and lofty-loftier.  Nevil, she could honestly say, was not her ideal; he was only her old friend, and she was opposed to him in his present adventure.  The striking at him to cure him of his mental errors and excesses was an obligation; she could descend upon him calmly with the chastening rod, pointing to the better way; but