The colour left her cheeks.  She fancied her father had betrayed her to the last man who should know her secret.  Beauchamp and the newspapers were rolled together in her mind by the fever of apprehension wasting her ever since his declaration of Republicanism, and defence of it, and an allusion to one must imply the other, she feared:  feared, but far from quailingly.  She had come to think that she could read the man she loved, and detect a reasonableness in his extravagance.  Her father had discovered the impolicy of attacking Beauchamp in her hearing.  The fever by which Cecilia was possessed on her lover’s behalf, often overcame discretion, set her judgement in a whirl, was like a delirium.  How it had happened she knew not.  She knew only her wretched state; a frenzy seized her whenever his name was uttered, to excuse, account for, all but glorify him publicly.  And the immodesty of her conduct was perceptible to her while she thus made her heart bare.  She exposed herself once of late at Itchincope, and had tried to school her tongue before she went there.  She felt that she should inevitably be seen through by Seymour Austin if he took the world’s view of Beauchamp, and this to her was like a descent on the rapids to an end one shuts eyes from.

He noticed her perturbation, and spoke of it to her father.

‘Yes, I’m very miserable about her,’ the colonel confessed.  ’Girls don’t see . . . they can’t guess . . . they have no idea of the right kind of man for them.  A man like Blackburn Tuckham, now, a man a father could leave his girl to, with confidence!  He works for me like a slave; I can’t guess why.  He doesn’t look as if he were attracted.  There’s a man! but, no; harum-scarum fellows take their fancy.’

‘Is she that kind of young lady?’ said Mr. Austin.

’No one would have thought so.  She pretends to have opinions upon politics now.  It’s of no use to talk of it!’

But Beauchamp was fully indicated.

Mr. Austin proposed to Cecilia that they should spend Easter week in
Rome.

Her face lighted and clouded.

‘I should like it,’ she said, negatively.

‘What’s the objection?’

’None, except that Mount Laurels in Spring has grown dear to me; and we have engagements in London.  I am not quick, I suppose, at new projects.  I have ordered the yacht to be fitted out for a cruise in the Mediterranean early in the Summer.  There is an objection, I am sure—­ yes; papa has invited Mr. Tuckham here for Easter.’

‘We could carry him with us.’

‘Yes, but I should wish to be entirely under your tutelage in Rome.’

‘We would pair:  your father and he; you and I.’

’We might do that.  But Mr. Tuckham is like you, devoted to work; and, unlike you, careless of Antiquities and Art.’

’He is a hard and serious worker, and therefore the best of companions for a holiday.  At present he is working for the colonel, who would easily persuade him to give over, and come with us.’