throughout which there was not an idea—­safest of addresses to canvass upon! perused likewise, at Captain Baskelett’s request, a broad sheet of an article introducing the new candidate to Bevisham with the battle-axe Romfreys to back him, in high burlesque of Timothy Turbot upon Beauchamp:  and Cecil hoped his cousin would not object to his borrowing a Romfrey or two for so pressing an occasion.  All very funny, and no doubt the presence of Mr. Everard Romfrey would have heightened the fun from the fountain-head; but he happened to be delayed, and Beauchamp had to leave directions behind him in the town, besides the discussion of a whole plan of conduct with Dr. Shrapnel, so he was under the necessity of departing without seeing his uncle, really to his regret.  He left word to that effect.

Taking leave of Cecilia, he talked of his return ‘home’ within three or four days as a certainty.

She said:  ‘Canvassing should not be neglected now.’

Her hostility was confused by what she had done to save him from annoyance, while his behaviour to his cousin Cecil increased her respect for him.  She detected a pathetic meaning in his mention of the word home; she mused on his having called her beautiful:  whither was she hurrying?  Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful of the elevation of her own, she thrilled secretly on hearing it stated by the jubilant young Tories at Mount Laurels, as a characteristic of Beauchamp, that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and slipping from the theme; he who with her gave out unguardedly the thoughts deepest in him.  And the thoughts!—­were they not of generous origin?  Where so true a helpmate for him as the one to whom his mind appealed?  It could not be so with the Frenchwoman.  Cecilia divined a generous nature by generosity, and set herself to believe that in honour he had not yet dared to speak to her from the heart, not being at heart quite free.  She was at the same time in her remains of pride cool enough to examine and rebuke the weakness she succumbed to in now clinging to him by that which yesterday she hardly less than loathed, still deeply disliked.

CHAPTER XXIII

TOURDESTELLE

On the part of Beauchamp, his conversation with Cecilia during the drive into Bevisham opened out for the first time in his life a prospect of home; he had felt the word in speaking it, and it signified an end to the distractions produced by the sex, allegiance to one beloved respected woman, and also a basis of operations against the world.  For she was evidently conquerable, and once matched with him would be the very woman to nerve and sustain him.  Did she not listen to him?  He liked her resistance.  That element of the barbarous which went largely to form his emotional nature was overjoyed in wresting such a woman from the enemy, and subduing her personally.  She was a prize.  She was a splendid prize, cut out from under the guns of the fort.  He rendered all that was due to his eminently good cause for its part in so signal a success, but individual satisfaction is not diminished by the thought that the individual’s discernment selected the cause thus beneficent to him.