‘Have you not eaten any food to-day, Miss Halkett?’ she said; for it might be the want of food which had broken her and changed her manner.

Cecilia replied that she had ridden for an hour to Mount Laurels.

‘Alone?  Mr. Romfrey must not hear of that,’ said Rosamund.

Cecilia consented to lie down on her bed.  She declined the dainties Rosamund pressed on her.  She was feverish with a deep and unconcealed affliction, and behaved as if her pride had gone.  But if her pride had gone she would have eased her heart by sobbing outright.  A similar division harassed her as when her friend Nevil was the candidate for Bevisham.  She condemned his extreme wrath with his uncle, yet was attracted and enchained by the fire of passionate attachment which aroused it:  and she was conscious that she had but shown obedience to his wishes throughout the day, not sympathy with his feelings.  Under cover of a patient desire to please she had nursed irritation and jealousy; the degradation of the sense of jealousy increasing the irritation.  Having consented to the ride to Dr. Shrapnel, should she not, to be consistent, have dismounted there?  O half heart!  A whole one, though it be an erring, like that of the French lady, does at least live, and has a history, and makes music:  but the faint and uncertain is jarred in action, jarred in memory, ever behind the day and in the shadow of it!  Cecilia reviewed herself:  jealous, disappointed, vexed, ashamed, she had been all day a graceless companion, a bad actress:  and at the day’s close she was loving Nevil the better for what had dissatisfied, distressed, and wounded her.  She was loving him in emulation of his devotedness to another person:  and that other was a revolutionary common people’s doctor! an infidel, a traitor to his country’s dearest interests!  But Nevil loved him, and it had become impossible for her not to covet the love, or to think of the old offender without the halo cast by Nevil’s attachment being upon him.  So intensely was she moved by her intertwisting reflections that in an access of bodily fever she stood up and moved before the glass, to behold the image of the woman who could be the victim of these childish emotions:  and no wonderful contrast struck her eyes; she appeared to herself as poor and small as they.  How could she aspire to a man like Nevil Beauchamp?  If he had made her happy by wooing her she would not have adored him as she did now.  He likes my hair, she said, smoothing it out, and then pressing her temples, like one insane.  Two minutes afterward she was telling Rosamund her head ached less.

‘This terrible Dr. Shrapnel!’ Rosamund exclaimed, but reported that no loud voices were raised in the dining-room.

Colonel Halkett came to see his daughter, full of anxiety and curiosity.  Affairs had been peaceful below, for he was ignorant of the expedition to Bevisham.  On hearing of it he frowned, questioned Cecilia as to whether she had set foot on that man’s grounds, then said:  ’Ah! well, we leave to-morrow:  I must go, I have business at home; I can’t delay it.  I sanctioned no calling there, nothing of the kind.  From Steynham to Bevisham?  Goodness, it’s rank madness.  I’m not astonished you’re sick and ill.’