That gentleman, however, was perpetually coming fuming from arguments with Beauchamp, and his opinion was a controversialist’s.  His common sense was much afflicted.  ’I thought marriage would have stopped all those absurdities,’ he said, glaring angrily, laughing, and then frowning.  ’I ’ve warned him I’ll go out of my way to come across him if he carries on his headlong folly.  A man should accept his country for what it is when he’s born into it.  Don’t tell me he’s a good fellow.  I know he is, but there ’s an ass mounted on the good fellow.  Talks of the parsons!  Why, they’re men of education.’

‘They couldn’t steer a ship in a gale, though.’

‘Oh! he’s a good sailor.  And let him go to sea,’ said Tuckham.  ’His wife’s a prize.  He’s hardly worthy of her.  If she manages him she’ll deserve a monument for doing a public service.’

How fortunate it is for us that here and there we do not succeed in wresting our temporary treasure from the grasp of the Fates!

This good old commonplace reflection came to Beauchamp while clasping his wife’s hand on the deck of the Esperanza, and looking up at the mountains over the Gulf of Venice.  The impression of that marvellous dawn when he and Renee looked up hand-in-hand was ineffaceable, and pity for the tender hand lost to him wrought in his blood, but Jenny was a peerless wife; and though not in the music of her tongue, or in subtlety of delicate meaning did she excel Renee, as a sober adviser she did, and as a firm speaker; and she had homelier deep eyes, thoughtfuller brows.  The father could speculate with good hope of Jenny’s child.  Cecilia’s wealth, too, had gone over to the Tory party, with her incomprehensible espousal of Tuckham.  Let it go; let all go for dowerless Jenny!

It was (she dared to recollect it in her anguish) Jenny’s choice to go home in the yacht that decided her husband not to make the journey by land in company with the Lydiards.

The voyage was favourable.  Beauchamp had a passing wish to land on the Norman coast, and take Jenny for a day to Tourdestelle.  He deferred to her desire to land baby speedily, now they were so near home.  They ran past Otley river, having sight of Mount Laurels, and on to Bevisham, with swelling sails.  There they parted.  Beauchamp made it one of his ’points of honour’ to deliver the vessel where he had taken her, at her moorings in the Otley.  One of the piermen stood before Beauchamp, and saluting him, said he had been directed to inform him that the Earl of Romfrey was with Colonel Halkett, expecting him at Mount Laurels.  Beauchamp wanted his wife to return in the yacht.  She turned her eyes to Dr. Shrapnel.  It was out of the question that the doctor should think of going.  Husband and wife parted.  She saw him no more.