’No, but what I feel is that he—­our Nevil!—­has accomplished hardly anything, if anything!’

’He hasn’t marched on London with a couple of hundred thousand men:  no, he hasn’t done that,’ the earl said, glancing back in his mind through Beauchamp’s career.  ’And he escapes what Stukely calls his nation’s scourge, in the shape of a statue turned out by an English chisel.  No:  we haven’t had much public excitement out of him.  But one thing he did do:  he got me down on my knees!’

Lord Romfrey pronounced these words with a sober emphasis that struck the humour of it sharply into Rosamund’s heart, through some contrast it presented between Nevil’s aim at the world and hit of a man:  the immense deal thought of it by the earl, and the very little that Nevil would think of it—­the great domestic achievement to be boasted of by an enthusiastic devotee of politics!

She embraced her husband with peals of loving laughter:  the last laughter heard in Romfrey Castle for many a day.

CHAPTER LVI

THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP

Not before Beauchamp was flying with the Winter gales to warmer climes could Rosamund reflect on his career unshadowed by her feminine mortification at the thought that he was unloved by the girl he had decided to marry.  But when he was away and winds blew, the clouds which obscured an embracing imagination of him—­such as, to be true and full and sufficient, should stretch like the dome of heaven over the humblest of lives under contemplation—­broke, and revealed him to her as one who had other than failed:  rather as one in mid career, in mid forest, who, by force of character, advancing in self-conquest, strikes his impress right and left around him, because of his aim at stars.  He had faults, and she gloried to think he had; for the woman’s heart rejoiced in his portion of our common humanity while she named their prince to men:  but where was he to be matched in devotedness and in gallantry? and what man of blood fiery as Nevil’s ever fought so to subject it?  Rosamund followed him like a migratory bird, hovered over his vessel, perched on deck beside the helm, where her sailor was sure to be stationed, entered his breast, communed with him, and wound him round and round with her love.  He has mine! she cried.  Her craving that he should be blest in the reward, or flower-crown, of his wife’s love of him lessened in proportion as her brooding spirit vividly realized his deeds.  In fact it had been but an example of our very general craving for a climax, palpable and scenic.  She was completely satisfied by her conviction that his wife would respect and must be subordinate to him.  So it had been with her.  As for love, let him come to his Rosamund for love, and appreciation, adoration!

Rosamund drew nigh to her hour of peril with this torch of her love of Beauchamp to illuminate her.