to herself, and some time afterward Beauchamp went to Mount Laurels, where Colonel Halkett mounted guard over his daughter, and behaved, to her thinking, cruelly.  ’Now you have ruined yourself there’s nothing ahead for you but to go to the Admiralty and apply for a ship,’ he said, sugaring the unkindness with the remark that the country would be the gainer.  He let fly a side-shot at London men calling themselves military men who sought to repair their fortunes by chasing wealthy widows, and complimented Beauchamp:  ’You’re not one of that sort.’

Cecilia looked at Beauchamp stedfastly.  ‘Speak,’ said the look.

But he, though not blind, was keenly wounded.

‘Money I must have,’ he said, half to the colonel, half to himself.

Colonel Halkett shrugged.  Cecilia waited for a directness in Beauchamp’s eyes.

Her father was too wary to leave them.

Cecilia’s intuition told her that by leading to a discussion of politics, and adopting Beauchamp’s views, she could kindle him.  Why did she refrain?  It was that the conquered young lady was a captive, not an ally.  To touch the subject in cold blood, voluntarily to launch on those vexed waters, as if his cause were her heart’s, as much as her heart was the man’s, she felt to be impossible.  He at the same time felt that the heiress, endowing him with money to speed the good cause, should be his match in ardour for it, otherwise he was but a common adventurer, winning and despoiling an heiress.

They met in London.  Beauchamp had not vacated either Holdesbury or the town-house; he was defying his uncle Everard, and Cecilia thought with him that it was a wise temerity.  She thought with him passively altogether.  On this occasion she had not to wait for directness in his eyes; she had to parry it.  They were at a dinner-party at Lady Elsea’s, generally the last place for seeing Lord Palmet, but he was present, and arranged things neatly for them, telling Beauchamp that he acted under Mrs. Wardour-Devereux’s orders.  Never was an opportunity, more propitious for a desperate lover.  Had it been Renee next him, no petty worldly scruples of honour would have held him back.  And if Cecilia had spoken feelingly of Dr. Shrapnel, or had she simulated a thoughtful interest in his pursuits, his hesitations would have vanished.  As it was, he dared to look what he did not permit himself to speak.  She was nobly lovely, and the palpable envy of men around cried fool at his delays.  Beggar and heiress he said in his heart, to vitalize the three-parts fiction of the point of honour which Cecilia’s beauty was fast submerging.  When she was leaving he named a day for calling to see her.  Colonel Halkett stood by, and she answered, ‘Come.’

Beauchamp kept the appointment.  Cecilia was absent.

He was unaware that her father had taken her to old Mrs. Beauchamp’s death-bed.  Her absence, after she had said, ‘Come,’ appeared a confirmation of her glacial manner when they met at the house of Mrs. Wardour-Devereux; and he charged her with waywardness.  A wound of the same kind that we are inflicting is about the severest we can feel.