‘Then we should hear wisdom coming out of the mouth of the wild beast.’

‘Men have the phrase, “fair play."’

’Fair play, I say, is not applicable to a man who deliberately goes about to stir the wild beast.  He is laughed at, plucked, hustled, and robbed, by those who deafen him with their “plaudits”—­their roars.  Did you see his advertisement of a great-coat, lost at some rapscallion gathering down in the North, near my part of the country?  A great-coat and a packet of letters.  He offers a reward of L10.  But that’s honest robbery compared with the bleeding he’ll get.’

‘Do you know Mr. Seymour Austin?’ Miss Halkett asked him.

‘I met him once at your father’s table.  Why?’

‘I think you would like to listen to him.’

‘Yes, my fault is not listening enough,’ said Mr. Tuckham.

He was capable of receiving correction.

Her father told her he was indebted to Mr. Tuckham past payment in coin, for services rendered by him on a trying occasion among the miners in Wales during the first spring month.  ’I dare say he can speak effectively to miners,’ Cecilia said, outvying the contemptuous young man in superciliousness, but with effort and not with satisfaction.

She left London in July, two days before her father could be induced to return to Mount Laurels.  Feverish, and strangely subject to caprices now, she chose the longer way round by Sussex, and alighted at the station near Steynham to call on Mrs. Culling, whom she knew to be at the Hall, preparing it for Mr. Romfrey’s occupation.  In imitation of her father she was Rosamund’s fast friend, though she had never quite realized her position, and did not thoroughly understand her.  Would it not please her father to hear that she had chosen the tedious route for the purpose of visiting this lady, whose champion he was?

So she went to Steynham, and for hours she heard talk of no one, of nothing, but her friend Nevil.  Cecilia was on her guard against Rosamund’s defence of his conduct in France.  The declaration that there had been no misbehaviour at all could not be accepted; but the news of Mr. Romfrey’s having installed Nevil in Holdesbury to manage that property, and of his having mooted to her father the question of an alliance between her and Nevil, was wonderful.  Rosamund could not say what answer her father had made:  hardly favourable, Cecilia supposed, since he had not spoken of the circumstance to her.  But Mr. Romfrey’s influence with him would certainly be powerful.

It was to be assumed, also, that Nevil had been consulted by his uncle.  Rosamund said full-heartedly that this alliance had for years been her life’s desire, and then she let the matter pass, nor did she once loop at Cecilia searchingly, or seem to wish to probe her.  Cecilia disagreed with Rosamund on an insignificant point in relation to something Mr. Romfrey and Captain Baskelett had done, and, as