The bent of his mind, nevertheless, was to please Miss Halkett.  He would be smiling, and intimately smiling.  Aware that she had a kind of pitiful sentiment for Nevil, he smiled over Nevil—­poor Nevil!  ’I give you my word, Miss Halkett, old Nevil was off his head yesterday.  I daresay he meant to be civil.  I met him; I called out to him, “Good day, cousin, I’m afraid you’re beaten” and says he, “I fancy you’ve gained it, uncle.”  He didn’t know where he was; all abroad, poor boy.  Uncle!—­to me!’

Miss Halkett would have accepted the instance for a proof of Nevil’s distraction, had not Mr. Seymour Austin, who sat beside her, laughed and said to her:  ’I suppose “uncle” was a chance shot, but it’s equal to a poetic epithet in the light it casts on the story.’  Then it seemed to her that Nevil had been keenly quick, and Captain Baskelett’s impenetrability was a sign of his density.  Her mood was to think Nevil Beauchamp only too quick, too adventurous and restless:  one that wrecked brilliant gifts in a too general warfare; a lover of hazards, a hater of laws.  Her eyes flew over Captain Baskelett as she imagined Nevil addressing him as uncle, and, to put aside a spirit of mockery rising within her, she hinted a wish to hear Seymour Austin’s opinion of Mr. Tuckham.  He condensed it in an interrogative tone:  ‘The other extreme?’ The Tory extreme of Radical Nevil Beauchamp.  She assented.  Mr. Tuckham was at that moment prophesying the Torification of mankind; not as the trembling venturesome idea which we cast on doubtful winds, but as a ship is launched to ride the waters, with huzzas for a thing accomplished.  Mr. Austin raised his shoulders imperceptibly, saying to Miss Halkett:  ’The turn will come to us as to others—­and go.  Nothing earthly can escape that revolution.  We have to meet it with a policy, and let it pass with measures carried and our hands washed of some of our party sins.  I am, I hope, true to my party, but the enthusiasm of party I do not share.  He is right, however, when he accuses the nation of cowardice for the last ten years.  One third of the Liberals have been with us at heart, and dared not speak, and we dared not say what we wished.  We accepted a compact that satisfied us both—­satisfied us better than when we were opposed by Whigs—­that is, the Liberal reigned, and we governed:  and I should add, a very clever juggler was our common chief.  Now we have the consequences of hollow peacemaking, in a suffrage that bids fair to extend to the wearing of hats and boots for a qualification.  The moral of it seems to be that cowardice is even worse for nations than for individual men, though the consequences come on us more slowly.’

‘You spoke of party sins,’ Miss Halkett said incredulously.

‘I shall think we are the redoubtable party when we admit the charge.’

‘Are you alluding to the landowners?’