return.  The shortness of the interval made it appear the deeper gulf.  She noticed that her father particularly inquired of the man-servant whether Captain Beauchamp limped.  It seemed a piece of kindly anxiety on his part.  The captain was mounted, the man said.  Cecilia was conscious of rumours being abroad relating to Nevil’s expedition to France; but he had enemies, and was at war with them, and she held herself indifferent to tattle.  This card bearing his name, recently in his hand, was much more insidious and precise.  She took it to her room to look at it.  Nothing but his name and naval title was inscribed; no pencilled line; she had not expected to discover one.  The simple card was her dark light, as a handkerchief, a flower, a knot of riband, has been for men luridly illuminated by such small sparks to fling their beams on shadows and read the monstrous things for truths.  Her purer virgin blood was, not inflamed.  She read the signification of the card sadly as she did clearly.  What she could not so distinctly imagine was, how he could reconcile the devotion to his country, which he had taught her to put her faith in, with his unhappy subjection to Madame de Rouaillout.  How could the nobler sentiment exist side by side with one that was lawless?  Or was the wildness characteristic of his political views proof of a nature inclining to disown moral ties?  She feared so; he did not speak of the clergy respectfully.  Reading in the dark, she was forced to rely on her social instincts, and she distrusted her personal feelings as much as she could, for she wished to know the truth of him; anything, pain and heartrending, rather than the shutting of the eyes in an unworthy abandonment to mere emotion and fascination.  Cecilia’s love could not be otherwise given to a man, however near she might be drawn to love—­though she should suffer the pangs of love cruelly.

She placed his card in her writing-desk; she had his likeness there.  Commander Beauchamp encouraged the art of photography, as those that make long voyages do, in reciprocating what they petition their friends for.  Mrs. Rosamund Culling had a whole collection of photographs of him, equal to a visual history of his growth in chapters, from boyhood to midshipmanship and to manhood.  The specimen possessed by Cecilia was one of a couple that Beauchamp had forwarded to Mrs. Grancey Lespel on the day of his departure for France, and was a present from that lady, purchased, like so many presents, at a cost Cecilia would have paid heavily in gold to have been spared, namely, a public blush.  She was allowed to make her choice, and she chose the profile, repeating a remark of Mrs. Culling’s, that it suggested an arrow-head in the upflight; whereupon Mr. Stukely Culbrett had said, ’Then there is the man, for he is undoubtedly a projectile’; nor were politically-hostile punsters on an arrow-head inactive.  But Cecilia was thinking of the side-face she (less intently than Beauchamp at hers) had glanced at during the drive into Bevisham.  At that moment, she fancied Madame de Rouaillout might be doing likewise; and oh that she had the portrait of the French lady as well!