manfully, at the full outstretch of their arms, in a way so like them, to Rosamund’s thinking—­that is, in a way so unlike any other possible couple of men so situated—­that the humour of the sight eclipsed all the pleasantries of Captain Baskelett.  ‘Good-bye, sir,’ Nevil said heartily; and Everard Romfrey was not behind-hand with the cordial ring of his ’Good-bye, Nevil’; and upon that they separated.  Rosamund would have been willing to speak to her beloved of his false Renee—­the Frenchwoman, she termed her, i.e. generically false, needless to name; and one question quivered on her tongue’s tip:  ’How, when she had promised to fly with you, how could she the very next day step to the altar with him now her husband?’ And, if she had spoken it, she would have added, ’Your uncle could not have set his face against you, had you brought her to England.’  She felt strongly the mastery Nevil Beauchamp could exercise even over his uncle Everard.  But when he was gone, unquestioned, merely caressed, it came to her mind that he had all through insisted on his possession of this particular power, and she accused herself of having wantonly helped to ruin his hope—­a matter to be rejoiced at in the abstract; but what suffering she had inflicted on him!  To quiet her heart, she persuaded herself that for the future she would never fail to believe in him and second him blindly, as true love should; and contemplating one so brave, far-sighted, and self-assured, her determination seemed to impose the lightest of tasks.

Practically humane though he was, and especially toward cattle and all kinds of beasts, Mr. Romfrey entertained no profound fellow-feeling for the negro, and, except as the representative of a certain amount of working power commonly requiring the whip to wind it up, he inclined to despise that black spot in the creation, with which our civilization should never have had anything to do.  So he pronounced his mind, and the long habit of listening to oracles might grow us ears to hear and discover a meaning in it.  Nevil’s captures and releases of the grinning freights amused him for awhile.  He compared them to strings of bananas, and presently put the vision of the whole business aside by talking of Nevil’s banana-wreath.  He desired to have Nevil out of it.  He and Cecil handed Nevil in his banana-wreath about to their friends.  Nevil, in his banana-wreath, was set preaching ‘humanitomtity.’  At any rate, they contrived to keep the remembrance of Nevil Beauchamp alive during the period of his disappearance from the world, and in so doing they did him a service.