Cecilia laid three privately-printed full reports of Commander Beauchamp’s speeches (very carefully corrected by him) before her father.

He suffered his eye to run down a page.  ’Is it possible you read this?—­ this trash!—­dangerous folly, I call it.’

Cecilia’s reply, ‘In the interests of justice, I do,’ was meant to express her pure impartiality.  By a toleration of what is detested we expose ourselves to the keenness of an adverse mind.

‘Does he write to you, too?’ said the colonel.

She answered:  ‘Oh, no; I am not a politician.’

‘He seems to have expected you to read those tracts of his, though.’

‘Yes, I think he would convert me if he could,’ said Cecilia.

‘Though you’re not a politician.’

’He relies on the views he delivers in public, rather than on writing to persuade; that was my meaning, papa.’

‘Very well,’ said the colonel, not caring to show his anxiety.

Mr. Tuckham dined with them frequently in London.  This gentleman betrayed his accomplishments one by one.  He sketched, and was no artist; he planted, and was no gardener; he touched the piano neatly, and was no musician; he sang, and he had no voice.  Apparently he tried his hand at anything, for the privilege of speaking decisively upon all things.  He accompanied the colonel and his daughter on a day’s expedition to Mrs. Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames, and they agreed that he shone to great advantage in her society.  Mrs. Beauchamp said she had seen her great-nephew Nevil, but without a comment on his conduct or his person; grave silence.  Reflecting on it, Cecilia grew indignant at the thought that Mr. Tuckham might have been acting a sinister part.  Mrs. Beauchamp alluded to a newspaper article of her favourite great-nephew Blackburn, written, Cecilia knew through her father, to controvert some tremendous proposition of Nevil’s.  That was writing, Mrs. Beauchamp said.  ’I am not in the habit of fearing a conflict, so long as we have stout defenders.  I rather like it,’ she said.

The colonel entertained Mrs. Beauchamp, while Mr. Tuckham led Miss Halkett over the garden.  Cecilia considered that his remarks upon Nevil were insolent.

’Seriously, Miss Halkett, to take him at his best, he is a very good fellow, I don’t doubt; I am told so; and a capital fellow among men, a good friend and not a bad boon-fellow, and for that matter, the smoking-room is a better test than the drawing-room; all he wants is emphatically school—­school—­school.  I have recommended the simple iteration of that one word in answer to him at his meetings, and the printing of it as a foot-note to his letters.’

Cecilia’s combative spirit precipitated her to say, ’I hear the mob in it shouting Captain Beauchamp down.’

‘Ay,’ said Mr. Tuckham, ’it would be setting the mob to shout wisely at last.’

‘The mob is a wild beast.’