Captain Baskelett requested the favour of five minutes of conversation with Miss Halkett before he followed Mr. Austin, on his way to Steynham.

She returned from that colloquy to her father and Mr. Tuckham.  The colonel looked straight in her face, with an elevation of the brows.  To these points of interrogation she answered with a placid fall of her eyelids.  He sounded a note of approbation in his throat.

All the company having departed, Mr. Tuckham for the first time spoke of his interview with his kinsman Beauchamp.  Yesterday evening he had slurred it, as if he had nothing to relate, except the finding of an old schoolfellow at Dr. Shrapnel’s named Lydiard, a man of ability fool enough to have turned author on no income.  But that which had appeared to Miss Halkett a want of observancy, became attributable to depth of character on its being clear that he had waited for the departure of the transient guests of the house, to pour forth his impressions without holding up his kinsman to public scorn.  He considered Shrapnel mad and Beauchamp mad.  No such grotesque old monster as Dr. Shrapnel had he seen in the course of his travels.  He had never listened to a madman running loose who was at all up to Beauchamp.  At a loss for words to paint him, he said:  ’Beauchamp seems to have a head like a firework manufactory, he’s perfectly pyrocephalic.’  For an example of Dr. Shrapnel’s talk:  ’I happened,’ said Mr. Tuckham, ’casually, meaning no harm, and not supposing I was throwing a lighted match on powder, to mention the word Providence.  I found myself immediately confronted by Shrapnel—­ overtopped, I should say.  He is a lank giant of about seven feet in height; the kind of show man that used to go about in caravans over the country; and he began rocking over me like a poplar in a gale, and cries out:  “Stay there! away with that!  Providence?  Can you set a thought on Providence, not seeking to propitiate it?  And have you not there the damning proof that you are at the foot of an Idol?”—­The old idea about a special Providence, I suppose.  These fellows have nothing new but their trimmings.  And he went on with:  “Ay, invisible,” and his arm chopping, “but an Idol! an Idol!”—­I was to think of “nought but Laws.”  He admitted there might be one above the Laws.  “To realize him is to fry the brains in their pan,” says he, and struck his forehead—­a slap:  and off he walked down the garden, with his hands at his coat-tails.  I venture to say it may be taken for a proof of incipient insanity to care to hear such a fellow twice.  And Beauchamp holds him up for a sage and a prophet!’

‘He is a very dangerous dog,’ said Colonel Halkett.

’The best of it is—­and I take this for the strongest possible proof that Beauchamp is mad—­Shrapnel stands for an advocate of morality against him.  I’ll speak of it . . . .’

Mr. Tuckham nodded to the colonel, who said:  ’Speak out.  My daughter has been educated for a woman of the world.’