‘That there may be two victims?’ Cecilia said it smiling.

She was young in suffering, and thought, as the unseasoned and inexperienced do, that a mask is a concealment.

‘Married—­settled; to have him bound in honour,’ said Mrs. Lespel.  ’I had a conversation with him when he was at Itchincope; and his look, and what I know of his father, that gallant and handsome Colonel Richard Beauchamp, would give one a kind of confidence in him; supposing always that he is not struck with one of those deadly passions that are like snakes, like magic.  I positively believe in them.  I have seen them.  And if they end, they end as if the man were burnt out, and was ashes inside; as you see Mr. Stukely Culbrett, all cynicism.  You would not now suspect him of a passion!  It is true.  Oh, I know it!  That is what the men go to.  The women die.  Vera Winter died at twenty-three.  Caroline Ormond was hardly older.  You know her story; everybody knows it.  The most singular and convincing case was that of Lord Alfred Burnley and Lady Susan Gardiner, wife of the general; and there was an instance of two similarly afflicted—­a very rare case, most rare:  they never could meet to part!  It was almost ludicrous.  It is now quite certain that they did not conspire to meet.  At last the absolute fatality became so well understood by the persons immediately interested—­You laugh?’

‘Do I laugh?’ said Cecilia.

’We should all know the world, my dear, and you are a strong head.  The knowledge is only dangerous for fools.  And if romance is occasionally ridiculous, as I own it can be, humdrum, I protest, is everlastingly so.  By-the-by, I should have told you that Captain Beauchamp was one hundred and ninety below Captain Baskelett when the state of the poll was handed to me.  The gentleman driving with your father compared the Liberals to a parachute cut away from the balloon.  Is he army or navy?’

‘He is a barrister, and some cousin of Captain Beauchamp.’

‘I should not have taken him for a Beauchamp,’ said Mrs. Lespel; and, resuming her worldly sagacity, ’I should not like to be in opposition to that young man.’

She seemed to have a fancy unexpressed regarding Mr. Tuckham.  Reminding herself that she might be behind time at Itchincope, where the guests would be numerous that evening, and the song of triumph loud, with Captain Baskelett to lead it, she kissed the young lady she had unintentionally been torturing so long, and drove away.

Cecilia hoped it was not true.  Her heart sank heavily under the belief that it was.  She imagined the world abusing Nevil and casting him out, as those electors of Bevisham had just done, and impulsively she pleaded for him, and became drowned in criminal blushes that forced her to defend herself with a determination not to believe the dreadful story, though she continued mitigating the wickedness of it; as if, by a singular