Why had he not sprung up on a radiant aquiline ambition, whither one might have followed him, with eyes and prayers for him, if it was not possible to do so companionably?  At present, in the shape of a canvassing candidate, it was hardly honourable to let imagination dwell on him, save compassionately.

When he rose to take his leave, Cecilia said, ’Must you go to Itchincope on Wednesday, Nevil?’

Colonel Halkett added:  ’I don’t think I would go to Lespel’s if I were you.  I rather suspect Seymour Austin will be coming on Wednesday, and that ’ll detain me here, and you might join us and lend him an ear for an evening.’

’I have particular reasons for going to Lespel’s; I hear he wavers toward a Tory conspiracy of some sort,’ said Beauchamp.

The colonel held his tongue.

The untiring young candidate chose to walk down to Bevisham at eleven o’clock at night, that he might be the readier to continue his canvass of the borough on Monday morning early.  He was offered a bed or a conveyance, and he declined both; the dog-cart he declined out of consideration for horse and groom, which an owner of stables could not but approve.

Colonel Halkett broke into exclamations of pity for so good a young fellow so misguided.

The night was moonless, and Cecilia, looking through the window, said whimsically, ‘He has gone out into the darkness, and is no light in it!’

Certainly none shone.  She however carried a lamp that revealed him footing on with a wonderful air of confidence, and she was rather surprised to hear her father regret that Nevil Beauchamp should be losing his good looks already, owing to that miserable business of his in Bevisham.  She would have thought the contrary, that he was looking as well as ever.

‘He dresses just as he used to dress,’ she observed.

The individual style of a naval officer of breeding, in which you see neatness trifling with disorder, or disorder plucking at neatness, like the breeze a trim vessel, had been caught to perfection by Nevil Beauchamp, according to Cecilia.  It presented him to her mind in a cheerful and a very undemocratic aspect, but in realizing it, the thought, like something flashing black, crossed her—­how attractive such a style must be to a Frenchwoman!

‘He may look a little worn,’ she acquiesced.

CHAPTER XVIII

CONCERNING THE ACT OF CANVASSING

Tories dread the restlessness of Radicals, and Radicals are in awe of the organization of Tories.  Beauchamp thought anxiously of the high degree of confidence existing in the Tory camp, whose chief could afford to keep aloof, while he slaved all day and half the night to thump ideas into heads, like a cooper on a cask:—­an impassioned cooper on an empty cask! if such an image is presentable.  Even so enviously sometimes the writer and the barrister,