The colonel knew the pain and shame of that condition of weakness to a man who has been strong and swift, and said:  ’Seven-league boots are not to be caught.  You’ll see him soon.  Why, I thought some letter of yours had fetched him here!  I gave you all the credit of it.’

‘No, he deserves it all himself—­all,’ said Beauchamp and with a dubious eye on Jenny Denham:  ‘You see, we were unfair.’

The ‘we’ meant ‘you’ to her sensitiveness; and probably he did mean it for ‘you’:  for as he would have felt, so he supposed that his uncle must have felt, Jenny’s coldness was much the crueller.  Her features, which in animation were summer light playing upon smooth water, could be exceedingly cold in repose:  the icier to those who knew her, because they never expressed disdain.  No expression of the baser sort belonged to them.  Beauchamp was intimate with these delicately-cut features; he would have shuddered had they chilled on him.  He had fallen in love with his uncle; he fancied she ought to have done so too; and from his excess of sympathy he found her deficient in it.

He sat himself down to write a hearty letter to his ’dear old uncle Everard.’

Jenny left him, to go to her chamber and cry.

CHAPTER LIV

THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY

This clear heart had cause for tears.  Her just indignation with Lord Romfrey had sustained her artificially hitherto now that it was erased, she sank down to weep.  Her sentiments toward Lydiard had been very like Cecilia Halkett’s in favour of Mr. Austin; with something more to warm them on the part of the gentleman.  He first had led her mind in the direction of balanced thought, when, despite her affection for Dr. Shrapnel, her timorous maiden wits, unable to contend with the copious exclamatory old politician, opposed him silently.  Lydiard had helped her tongue to speak, as well as her mind to rational views; and there had been a bond of union in common for them in his admiration of her father’s writings.  She had known that he was miserably yoked, and had respected him when he seemed inclined for compassion without wooing her for tenderness.  He had not trifled with her, hardly flattered; he had done no more than kindle a young girl’s imaginative liking.  The pale flower of imagination, fed by dews, not by sunshine, was born drooping, and hung secret in her bosom, shy as a bell of the frail wood-sorrel.  Yet there was pain for her in the perishing of a thing so poor and lowly.  She had not observed the change in Lydiard after Beauchamp came on the scene:  and that may tell us how passionlessly pure the little maidenly sentiment was.  For do but look on the dewy wood-sorrel flower; it is not violet or rose inviting hands to pluck it:  still it is there, happy in the woods.  And Jenny’s feeling was that a foot had crushed it.

She wept, thinking confusedly of Lord Romfrey; trying to think he had made his amends tardily, and that Beauchamp prized him too highly for the act.  She had no longer anything to resent:  she was obliged to weep.  In truth, as the earl had noticed, she was physically depressed by the strain of her protracted watch over Beauchamp, as well as rather heartsick.