She read it to him.

‘Now read, “The Ascent from the Inferno."’

That she read:  and also ‘Soul and Brute,’ another of his favourites.

He wanted more, and told her to read ‘First Love—­Last Love.’

‘I fear I have not the tone of voice for love-poems,’ Jenny said, returning the book to him.

‘I’ll read it,’ said he.

He read with more impressiveness than effect.  Lydiard’s reading thrilled her:  Beauchamp’s insisted too much on particular lines.  But it was worth while observing him.  She saw him always as in a picture, remote from herself.  His loftier social station and strange character precluded any of those keen suspicions by which women learn that a fire is beginning to glow near them.

‘How I should like to have known your father!’ he said.  ’I don’t wonder at Dr. Shrapnel’s love of him.  Yes, he was one of the great men of his day! and it’s a higher honour to be of his blood than any that rank can give.  You were ten years old when you lost him.  Describe him to me.’

‘He used to play with me like a boy,’ said Jenny.  She described her father from a child’s recollection of him.

’Dr. Shrapnel declares he would have been one of the first surgeons in Europe:  and he was one of the first of poets,’ Beauchamp pursued with enthusiasm.  ’So he was doubly great.  I hold a good surgeon to be in the front rank of public benefactors—­where they put rich brewers, bankers, and speculative manufacturers now.  Well! the world is young.  We shall alter that in time.  Whom did your father marry?’

Jenny answered, ’My mother was the daughter of a London lawyer.  She married without her father’s approval of the match, and he left her nothing.’

Beauchamp interjected:  ‘Lawyer’s money!’

’It would have been useful to my mother’s household when I was an infant,’ said Jenny.

‘Poor soul!  I suppose so.  Yes; well,’ Beauchamp sighed.  ’Money! never mind how it comes.  We’re in such a primitive condition that we catch at anything to keep us out of the cold; dogs with a bone!—­instead of living, as Dr. Shrapnel prophecies, for and, with one another.  It’s war now, and money’s the weapon of war.  And we’re the worst nation in Europe for that.  But if we fairly recognize it, we shall be the first to alter our ways.  There’s the point.  Well, Jenny, I can look you in the face to-night.  Thanks to my uncle Everard at last!’

‘Captain Beauchamp, you have never been blamed.’

’I am Captain Beauchamp by courtesy, in public.  My friends call me Nevil.  I think I have heard the name on your lips?’

‘When you were very ill.’

He stood closer to her, very close.

’Which was the arm that bled for me?  May I look at it?  There was a bruise.’

’Have you not forgotten that trifle?  There is the faintest possible mark of it left.’