’That ‘s foolish.  I can stand the air for a few minutes.’

’I ‘ll go,’ said Jenny.

‘Unprotected?  No.’

‘Cook shall come with me.’

‘Two women!’

‘Nevil, if you care a little for me, be good, be kind, submit.’

’He is half an hour behind dinner-time, and he’s never late.  Something must have happened to him.  Way for me, my dear girl.’

She stood firm between him and the door.  It came to pass that she stretched her hands to arrest him, and he seized the hands.

‘Rather than you should go out in this cold weather, anything!’ she said, in the desperation of physical inability to hold him back.

‘Ah!’ Beauchamp crossed his arms round her.  ’I’ll wait for five minutes.’

One went by, with Jenny folded, broken and sobbing, senseless, against his breast.

They had not heard Dr. Shrapnel quietly opening the hall door and hanging up his hat.  He looked in.

‘Beauchamp!’ he exclaimed.

‘Come, doctor,’ said Beauchamp, and loosened his clasp of Jenny considerately.

She disengaged herself.

‘Beauchamp! now I die a glad man.’

’Witness, doctor, she ‘s mine by her own confession.’

‘Uncle!’ Jenny gasped.  ’Oh!  Captain Beauchamp, what an error! what delusion! . . .  Forget it.  I will.  Here are more misunderstandings!  You shall be excused.  But be . . .’

‘Be you the blessedest woman alive on this earth, my Jenny!’ shouted Dr. Shrapnel.  ’You have the choice man on all the earth for husband, sweetheart!  Ay, of all the earth!  I go with a message for my old friend Harry Denham, to quicken him in the grave; for the husband of his girl is Nevil Beauchamp!  The one thing I dared not dream of thousands is established.  Sunlight, my Jenny!’

Beauchamp kissed her hand.

She slipped away to her chamber, grovelling to find her diminished self somewhere in the mid-thunder of her amazement, as though it were to discover a pin on the floor by the flash of lightning.  Where was she!

This ensued from the apology of Lord Romfrey to Dr. Shrapnel.

CHAPTER LV

WITHOUT LOVE

At the end of November, Jenny Denham wrote these lines to Mr. Lydiard, in reply to his request that she should furnish the latest particulars of Nevil Beauchamp, for the satisfaction of the Countess of Romfrey: 

’There is everything to reassure Lady Romfrey in the state of Captain Beauchamp’s health, and I have never seen him so placidly happy as he has been since the arrival, yesterday morning, of a lady from France, Madame la Marquise de Rouaillout, with her brother, M. le Comte de Croisnel.  Her husband, I hear from M. de Croisnel, dreads our climate and coffee too much to attempt the voyage.  I understand that she writes to Lady Romfrey to-day.  Lady Romfrey’s letter to her, informing her of Captain Beauchamp’s alarming illness, went the round from Normandy to Touraine and Dauphiny, otherwise she would have come over earlier.