’Ma’am, you’re hoodwinked.  If he refused to have her, there ’s a something he loves better.  I don’t believe we’ve bred a downright lackadaisical donkey in our family:  I know him.  He’s not a fellow for abstract morality:  I know him.  It’s bargain against bargain with him; I’ll do him that justice.  I hear he has ordered the removal of the Jersey bull from Holdesbury, and the beast is mine,’ Lord Romfrey concluded in a lower key.

‘Nevil has taken him.’

‘Ha! pull and pull, then!’

’He contends that he is bound by a promise to give an American gentleman the refusal of the bull, and you must sign an engagement to keep the animal no longer than two years.’

‘I sign no engagement.  I stick to the bull.’

‘Consent to see Nevil to-night, my lord.’

‘When he has apologized to you, I may, ma’am.’

‘Surely he did more, in requesting me to render him a service.’

’There’s not a creature living that fellow wouldn’t get to serve him, if he knew the trick.  We should all of us be marching on London at Shrapnel’s heels.  The political mania is just as incurable as hydrophobia, and he’s bitten.  That’s clear.’

’Bitten perhaps:  but not mad.  As you have always contended, the true case is incurable, but it is very rare:  and is this one?’

’It’s uncommonly like a true case, though I haven’t seen him foam at the mouth, and shun water-as his mob does.’

Rosamund restrained some tears, betraying the effort to hide the moisture.  ’I am no match for you, my lord.  I try to plead on his behalf;—­I do worse than if I were dumb.  This I most earnestly say:  he is the Nevil Beauchamp who fought for his country, and did not abandon her cause, though he stood there—­we had it from Colonel Halkett—­a skeleton:  and he is the Nevil who—­I am poorly paying my debt to him! —­defended me from the aspersions of his cousin.’

‘Boys!’ Lord Romfrey ejaculated.

‘It is the same dispute between them as men.’

’Have you forgotten my proposal to shield you from liars and scandalmongers?’

‘Could I ever forget it?’ Rosamund appeared to come shining out of a cloud.  ’Princeliest and truest gentleman, I thought you then, and I know you to be, my dear lord.  I fancied I had lived the scandal down.  I was under the delusion that I had grown to be past backbiting:  and that no man could stand before me to insult and vilify me.  But, for a woman in any so-called doubtful position, it seems that the coward will not be wanting to strike her.  In quitting your service, I am able to affirm that only once during the whole term of it have I consciously overstepped the line of my duties:  it was for Nevil:  and Captain Baskelett undertook to defend your reputation, in consequence.’

‘Has the rascal been questioning your conduct?’ The earl frowned.

’Oh, no! not questioning:  he does not question, he accuses:  he never doubted:  and what he went shouting as a boy, is plain matter of fact to him now.  He is devoted to you.  It was for your sake that he desired me to keep my name from being mixed up in a scandal he foresaw the occurrence of in your house.’