to his eating remarkably well-royally.  Rosamund’s more than half-cynical ideas of men, and her custom of wringing unanimous verdicts from a jury of temporary impressions, inclined her to imagine him a lover that had not to be so very much condoled with, and a politician less alarming in practice than in theory:—­somewhat a gentleman of domestic tirades on politics:  as it is observed of your generous young Radical of birth and fortune, that he will become on the old high road to a round Conservatism.

He pitched one of the morning papers to the floor in disorderly sheets, muttering:  ‘So they’re at me!’

‘Is Dr. Shrapnel better?’ she asked.  ’I hold to a good appetite as a sign of a man’s recovery.’

Beauchamp was confronting the fog at the window.  He swung round:  ’Dr. Shrapnel is better.  He has a particularly clever young female cook.’

‘Ah! then . . .’

’Yes, then, naturally!  He would naturally hasten to recover to partake of the viands, ma’am.’

Rosamund murmured of her gladness that he should be able to enjoy them.

‘Oddly enough, he is not an eater of meat,’ said Beauchamp.

‘A vegetarian!’

’I beg you not to mention the fact to my lord.  You see, you yourself can scarcely pardon it.  He does not exclude flesh from his table.  Blackburn Tuckham dined there once.  “You are a thorough revolutionist, Dr. Shrapnel,” he observed.  The doctor does not exclude wine, but he does not drink it.  Poor Tuckham went away entirely opposed to a Radical he could not even meet as a boon-fellow.  I begged him not to mention the circumstances, as I have begged you.  He pledged me his word to that effect solemnly; he correctly felt that if the truth were known, there would be further cause for the reprobation of the man who had been his host.’

‘And that poor girl, Nevil?’

’Miss Denham?  She contracted the habit of eating meat at school, and drinking wine in Paris, and continues it, occasionally.  Now run upstairs.  Insist on food.  Inform Madame de Rouaillout that her brother M. le comte de Croisnel will soon be here, and should not find her ill.  Talk to her as you women can talk.  Keep the blinds down in her room; light a dozen wax-candles.  Tell her I have no thought but of her.  It’s a lie:  of no woman but of her:  that you may say.  But that you can’t say.  You can say I am devoted—­ha, what stuff!  I’ve only to open my mouth!—­ say nothing of me:  let her think the worst—­unless it comes to a question of her life:  then be a merciful good woman . . .’  He squeezed her fingers, communicating his muscular tremble to her sensitive woman’s frame, and electrically convincing her that he was a lover.