’I am afraid I am too indifferent; I am too luxurious.  That reminds me:  you want to meet your uncle Everard and if you will sleep at Mount Laurels to-night, the Esperanza shall take you to France to-morrow morning, and can wait to bring you back.’

As she spoke she perceived a flush mounting over Nevil’s face.  Soon it was communicated to hers.

The strange secret of the blood electrified them both, and revealed the burning undercurrent running between them from the hearts of each.  The light that showed how near they were to one another was kindled at the barrier dividing them.  It remained as good as a secret, unchallenged until they had separated, and after midnight Cecilia looked through her. chamber windows at the driving moon of a hurricane scud, and read clearly his honourable reluctance to be wafted over to his French love by her assistance; and Beauchamp on board the tossing steamboat perceived in her sympathetic reddening that she had divined him.

This auroral light eclipsed the other events of the day.  He drove into a town royally decorated, and still humming with the ravishment of the Tory entrance.  He sailed in the schooner to Mount Laurels, in the society of Captain Baskelett and his friends, who, finding him tamer than they expected, bantered him in the cheerfullest fashion.  He waited for his uncle Everard several hours at Mount Laurels, perused the junior Tory’s address to the Electors, throughout which there was not an idea—­safest of addresses to canvass upon! perused likewise, at Captain Baskelett’s request, a broad sheet of an article introducing the new candidate to Bevisham with the battle-axe Romfreys to back him, in high burlesque of Timothy Turbot upon Beauchamp:  and Cecil hoped his cousin would not object to his borrowing a Romfrey or two for so pressing an occasion.  All very funny, and no doubt the presence of Mr. Everard Romfrey would have heightened the fun from the fountain-head; but he happened to be delayed, and Beauchamp had to leave directions behind him in the town, besides the discussion of a whole plan of conduct with Dr. Shrapnel, so he was under the necessity of departing without seeing his uncle, really to his regret.  He left word to that effect.

Taking leave of Cecilia, he talked of his return ‘home’ within three or four days as a certainty.

She said:  ‘Canvassing should not be neglected now.’

Her hostility was confused by what she had done to save him from annoyance, while his behaviour to his cousin Cecil increased her respect for him.  She detected a pathetic meaning in his mention of the word home; she mused on his having called her beautiful:  whither was she hurrying?  Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful of the elevation of her own, she thrilled secretly on hearing it stated by the jubilant young Tories at Mount Laurels, as a characteristic of Beauchamp, that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and slipping from the