‘No, I cannot enjoy it,’ Cecilia said to Mrs. Devereux; ’I don’t mind the grey light; cloud and water, and halftones of colour, are homely English and pleasant, and that opal where the sun should be has a suggestiveness richer than sunlight.  I’m quite northern enough to understand it; but with me it must be either peace or strife, and that Election down there destroys my chance of peace.  I never could mix reverie with excitement; the battle must be over first, and the dead buried.  Can you?’

Mrs. Devereux answered:  ’Excitement?  I am not sure that I know what it is.  An Election does not excite me.’

‘There’s Nevil Beauchamp himself!’ Palmet sang out, and the ladies discerned Beauchamp under a fir-tree, down by the road, not alone.  A man, increasing in length like a telescope gradually reaching its end for observation, and coming to the height of a landmark, as if raised by ropes, was rising from the ground beside him.  ’Shall we trot on, Miss Halkett?’

Cecilia said, ‘No.’

‘Now I see a third fellow,’ said Palmet.  ’It’s the other fellow, the Denham-Shrapnel-Radical meeting . . .  Lydiard’s his name:  writes books.!

‘We may as well ride on,’ Mrs. Devereux remarked, and her horse fretted singularly.

Beauchamp perceived them, and lifted his hat.  Palmet made demonstrations for the ladies.  Still neither party moved nearer.

After some waiting, Cecilia proposed to turn back.

Mrs. Devereux looked into her eyes.  ‘I’ll take the lead,’ she said, and started forward, pursued by Palmet.  Cecilia followed at a sullen canter.

Before they came up to Beauchamp, the long-shanked man had stalked away townward.  Lydiard held Beauchamp by the hand.  Some last words, after the manner of instructions, passed between them, and then Lydiard also turned away.

‘I say, Beauchamp, Mrs. Devereux wants to hear who that man is,’ Palmet said, drawing up.

‘That man is Dr. Shrapnel,’ said Beauchamp, convinced that Cecilia had checked her horse at the sight of the doctor.

‘Dr. Shrapnel,’ Palmet informed Mrs. Devereux.

She looked at him to seek his wits, and returning Beauchamp’s admiring salutation with a little bow and smile, said, ’I fancied it was a gentleman we met in Spain.’

‘He writes books,’ observed Palmet, to jog a slow intelligence.

‘Pamphlets, you mean.’

‘I think he is not a pamphleteer’, Mrs. Devereux said.

‘Mr. Lydiard, then, of course; how silly I am!  How can you pardon me!’ Beauchamp was contrite; he could not explain that a long guess he had made at Miss Halkett’s reluctance to come up to him when Dr. Shrapnel was with him had preoccupied his mind.  He sent off Palmet the bearer of a pretext for bringing Lydiard back, and then said to Cecilia, ’You recognized Dr. Shrapnel?’

‘I thought it might be Dr. Shrapnel’, she was candid enough to reply.  ‘I could not well recognize him, not knowing him.’