‘But do you tell me,’ said Mr. Lespel, when the shouts of the gentlemen were subsiding, ‘do you tell me that young Beauchamp is going ahead?’

‘That he is.  They flock to him in the street.’

‘He stands there, then, and jingles a money-bag.’

Palmet resumed his mimicry of Beauchamp:  ’Not a stiver; purity of election is the first condition of instruction to the people!  Principles!  Then they’ve got a capital orator:  Turbot, an Irishman.  I went to a meeting last night, and heard him; never heard anything finer in my life.  You may laugh he whipped me off my legs; fellow spun me like a top; and while he was orationing, a donkey calls, “Turbot! ain’t you a flat fish?” and he swings round, “Not for a fool’s hook!” and out they hustled the villain for a Tory.  I never saw anything like it.’

‘That repartee wouldn’t have done with a Dutchman or a Torbay trawler,’ said Stukely Culbrett.  ‘But let us hear more.’

‘Is it fair?’ Miss Halkett murmured anxiously to Mrs. Lespel, who returned a flitting shrug.

‘Charming women follow Beauchamp, you know,’ Palmet proceeded, as he conceived, to confirm and heighten the tale of success.  ’There’s a Miss Denham, niece of a doctor, a Dr . . . .  Shot—­Shrapnel! a wonderfully good-looking, clever-looking girl, comes across him in half-a-dozen streets to ask how he’s getting on, and goes every night to his meetings, with a man who ’s a writer and has a mad wife; a man named Lydia-no, that’s a woman—­Lydiard.  It’s rather a jumble; but you should see her when Beauchamp’s on his legs and speaking.’

‘Mr. Lydiard is in Bevisham?’ Mrs. Wardour-Devereux remarked.

‘I know the girl,’ growled Mr. Lespel.  ’She comes with that rascally doctor and a bobtail of tea-drinking men and women and their brats to Northeden Heath—­my ground.  There they stand and sing.’

’Hymns?’inquired Mr. Culbrett.

’I don’t know what they sing.  And when it rains they take the liberty to step over my bank into my plantation.  Some day I shall have them stepping into my house.’

‘Yes, it’s Mr. Lydiard; I’m sure of the man’s name,’ Palmet replied to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux.

‘We met him in Spain the year before last,’ she observed to Cecilia.

The ‘we’ reminded Palmet that her husband was present.

‘Ah, Devereux, I didn’t see you,’ he nodded obliquely down the table.  ’By the way, what’s the grand procession?  I hear my man Davis has come all right, and I caught sight of the top of your coach-box in the stableyard as I came in.  What are we up to?’

‘Baskelett writes, it’s to be for to-morrow morning at ten-the start.’  Mr. Wardour-Devereux addressed the table generally.  He was a fair, huge, bush-bearded man, with a voice of unvarying bass:  a squire in his county, and energetic in his pursuit of the pleasures of hunting, driving, travelling, and tobacco.