‘But if we do!’

‘Then, Nevil, there is a difference between us.’

‘But if we keep our lips closed?’

‘We should have to shut our eyes as well!’

A lovely melting image of her stole over him; all the warmer for her unwittingness in producing it:  and it awakened a tenderness toward the simple speaker.

Cecilia’s delicate breeding saved her from running on figuratively.  She continued:  ’Intellectual differences do not cause wounds, except when very unintellectual sentiments are behind them:—­my conceit, or your impatience, Nevil?  “Noi veggiam come quei, che ha mala luce.” . . .  I can confess my sight to be imperfect:  but will you ever do so?’

Her musical voice in Italian charmed his hearing.

‘What poet was that you quoted?’

‘The wisest:  Dante.’

‘Dr. Shrapnel’s favourite!  I must try to read him.’

‘He reads Dante?’ Cecilia threw a stress on the august name; and it was manifest that she cared not for the answer.

Contemptuous exclusiveness could not go farther.

‘He is a man of cultivation,’ Beauchamp said cursorily, trying to avoid dissension, but in vain.  ’I wish I were half as well instructed, and the world half as charitable as he!—­You ask me if I shall admit my sight to be imperfect.  Yes; when you prove to me that priests and landlords are willing to do their duty by the people in preference to their churches and their property:  but will you ever shake off prejudice?’

Here was opposition sounding again.  Cecilia mentally reproached Dr. Shrapnel for it.

’Indeed, Nevil, really, must not—­may I not ask you this?—­must not every one feel the evil spell of some associations?  And Dante and Dr. Shrapnel!’

‘You don’t know him, Cecilia.’

‘I saw him yesterday.’

‘You thought him too tall?’

‘I thought of his character.’

‘How angry I should be with you if you were not so beautiful!’

‘I am immensely indebted to my unconscious advocate.’

’You are clad in steel; you flash back; you won’t answer me out of the heart.  I ‘m convinced it is pure wilfulness that makes you oppose me.’

’I fancy you must be convinced because you cannot imagine women to have any share of public spirit, Nevil.’

A grain of truth in that remark set Nevil reflecting.

‘I want them to have it,’ he remarked, and glanced at a Tory placard, probably the puppet’s fresh-printed address to the electors, on one of the wayside fir-trees.  ’Bevisham looks well from here.  We might make a North-western Venice of it, if we liked.’

‘Papa told you it would be money sunk in mud.’

’Did I mention it to him?—­Thoroughly Conservative!—­So he would leave the mud as it is.  They insist on our not venturing anything—­those Tories! exactly as though we had gained the best of human conditions, instead of counting crops of rogues, malefactors, egoists, noxious and lumbersome creatures that deaden the country.  Your town down there is one of the ugliest and dirtiest in the kingdom:  it might be the fairest.’