’He will marry Mlle. Denham.  If I may foretell events, she will steady him.  She is a young person who will not feel astray in society of his rank; she possesses the natural grace we do not expect to see out of our country—­from sheer ignorance of what is beyond it.  For the moment she affects to consider herself unworthy; and it is excuseable that she should be slightly alarmed at her prospect.  But Nevil must have a wife.  I presume to think that he could not have chosen better.  Above all, make him leave England for the Winter.  Adieu, dear countess.  Nevil promises me a visit after his marriage.  I shall not set foot on England again:  but you, should you ever come to our land of France, will find my heart open to you at the gates of undying grateful recollection.  I am not skilled in writing.  You have looked into me once; look now; I am the same.  Only I have succeeded in bringing myself to a greater likeness to the dead, as it becomes a creature to be who is coupled with one of their body.  Meanwhile I shall have news of you.  I trust that soon I may be warranted in forwarding congratulations to Lord Romfrey.’

Rosamund handed the letters to her husband.  Not only did she think Miss Denham disingenuous, she saw that the girl was not in love with Beauchamp:  and the idea of a loveless marriage for him threw the mournfullest of Hecate’s beams along the course of a career that the passionate love of a bride, though she were not well-born and not wealthy, would have rosily coloured.

‘Without love!’ she exclaimed to herself.  She asked the earl’s opinion of the startling intelligence, and of the character of that Miss Denham, who could pen such a letter, after engaging to give her hand to Nevil.

Lord Romfrey laughed in his dumb way.  ’If Nevil must have a wife—­and the marquise tells you so, and she ought to know—­he may as well marry a girl who won’t go all the way down hill with him at his pace.  He’ll be cogged.’

‘You do not object to such an alliance?’

’I ’m past objection.  There’s no law against a man’s marrying his nurse.’

‘But she is not even in love with him!’

’I dare say not.  He wants a wife:  she accepts a husband.  The two women who were in love with him he wouldn’t have.’

Lady Romfrey sighed deeply:  ’He has lost Cecilia!  She might still have been his:  but he has taken to that girl.  And Madame de Rouaillout praises the girl because—­oh!  I see it—­she has less to be jealous of in Miss Denham:  of whose birth and blood we know nothing.  Let that pass!  If only she loved him!  I cannot endure the thought of his marrying a girl who is not in love with him.’

‘Just as you like, my dear.’

‘I used to suspect Mr. Lydiard.’

‘Perhaps he’s the man.’

‘Oh, what an end of so brilliant a beginning!’

‘It strikes me, my dear,’ said the earl, ’it’s the proper common sense beginning that may have a fairish end.’