‘Do you intend to start so early in the morning, papa?’ she ventured to say; and he replied, ‘As early as possible.’

’I don’t know what news I shall have in Bevisham, or I would engage to run over to the island,’ said Beauchamp, with a flattering persistency or singular obtuseness.

‘You will dance,’ he subsequently observed to Cecilia, out of the heart of some reverie.  He had been her admiring partner on the night before the drive from Itchincope into Bevisham, and perhaps thought of her graceful dancing at the Yacht Ball, and the contrast it would present to his watch beside a sick man-struck down by one of his own family.

She could have answered, ‘Not if you wish me not to’; while smiling at the quaint sorrowfulness of his tone.

‘Dance!’ quoth Colonel Halkett, whose present temper discerned a healthy antagonism to misanthropic Radicals in the performance, ’all young people dance.  Have you given over dancing?’

‘Not entirely, colonel.’

Cecilia danced with Mr. Tuckham at the Yacht Ball, and was vividly mindful of every slight incident leading to and succeeding her lover’s abrupt, ‘You will dance’ which had all passed by her dream-like up to that hour his attempt to forewarn her of the phrases she would deem objectionable in Dr. Shrapnel’s letter; his mild acceptation of her father’s hostility; his adieu to her, and his melancholy departure on foot from the station, as she drove away to Mount Laurels and gaiety.  Why do I dance? she asked herself.  It was not in the spirit of happiness.  Her heart was not with Dr. Shrapnel, but very near him, and heavy as a chamber of the sick.  She was afraid of her father’s favourite, imagining, from the colonel’s unconcealed opposition to Beauchamp, that he had designs in the interests of Mr. Tuckham.  But the hearty gentleman scattered her secret terrors by his bluffness and openness.  He asked her to remember that she had recommended him to listen to Seymour Austin, and he had done so, he said.  Undoubtedly he was much improved, much less overbearing.

He won her confidence by praising and loving her father, and when she alluded to the wonderful services he had rendered on the Welsh estate, he said simply that her father’s thanks repaid him.  He recalled his former downrightness only in speaking of the case of Dr. Shrapnel, upon which, both with the colonel and with her, he was unreservedly condemnatory of Mr. Romfrey.  Colonel Halkett’s defence of the true knight and guardian of the reputation of ladies, fell to pieces in the presence of Mr. Tuckham.  He had seen Dr. Shrapnel, on a visit to Mr. Lydiard, whom he described as hanging about Bevisham, philandering as a married man should not, though in truth he might soon expect to be released by the death of his crazy wife.  The doctor, he said, had been severely shaken by the monstrous assault made on him, and had been most unrighteously handled.  The doctor