‘I wager I match her,’ Cecil said to himself, pulling at his wristbands and letting his lower teeth shine out.  The means of matching her were not so palpable as the resolution.  First he took men into his confidence.  Then he touched lightly on the story to ladies, with the question, ‘What ought I to do?’ In consideration for the Earl of Romfrey he ought not to pass it over, he suggested.  The ladies of the family urged him to go to Steynham and boldly confront the woman.  He was not prepared for that.  Better, it seemed to him, to blow the rumour, and make it the topic of the season, until Lord Romfrey should hear of it.  Cecil had the ear of the town for a month.  He was in the act of slicing the air with his right hand in his accustomed style, one evening at Lady Elsea’s, to protest how vast was the dishonour done to the family by Mistress Culling, when Stukely Culbrett stopped him, saying, ’The lady you speak of is the Countess of Romfrey.  I was present at the marriage.’

Cecil received the shock in the attitude of those martial figures we see wielding two wooden swords in provincial gardens to tell the disposition of the wind:  abruptly abandoned by it, they stand transfixed, one sword aloft, the other at their heels.  The resemblance extended to his astonished countenance.  His big chest heaved.  Like many another wounded giant before him, he experienced the insufficiency of interjections to solace pain.  For them, however, the rocks were handy to fling, the trees to uproot; heaven’s concave resounded companionably to their bellowings.  Relief of so concrete a kind is not to be obtained in crowded London assemblies.

‘You are jesting?—­you are a jester,’ he contrived to say.

‘It was a private marriage, and I was a witness,’ replied Stukely.

‘Lord Romfrey has made an honest woman of her, has he?’

‘A peeress, you mean.’

Cecil bowed.  ‘Exactly.  I am corrected.  I mean a peeress.’

He got out of the room with as high an air as he could command, feeling as if a bar of iron had flattened his head.

Next day it was intimated to him by one of the Steynham servants that apartments were ready for him at the residence of the late earl:  Lord Romfrey’s house was about to be occupied by the Countess of Romfrey.  Cecil had to quit, and he chose to be enamoured of that dignity of sulking so seductive to the wounded spirit of man.

Rosamund, Countess of Romfrey, had worse to endure from Beauchamp.  He indeed came to the house, and he went through the formalities of congratulation, but his opinion of her step was unconcealed, that she had taken it for the title.  He distressed her by reviving the case of Dr. Shrapnel, as though it were a matter of yesterday, telling her she had married a man with a stain on him; she should have exacted the Apology as a nuptial present; ay, and she would have done it if she had cared for the earl’s honour or her own.  So little did he understand men! so tenacious was he of his ideas!  She had almost forgotten the case of Dr. Shrapnel, and to see it shooting up again in the new path of her life was really irritating.