Thus she was assisted to endure a journey down to Wales, where Nevil would surely not be.  She passed a Winter without seeing him.  She returned to Mount Laurels from London at Easter, and went on a visit to Steynham, and back to London, having sight of him nowhere, still firm in the thought that she loved ethereally, to bless, forgive, direct, encourage, pray for him, impersonally.  She read certain speeches delivered by Nevil at assemblies of Liberals or Radicals, which were reported in papers in the easy irony of the style of here and there a sentence, here and there a summary:  salient quotations interspersed with running abstracts:  a style terrible to friends of the speaker so reported, overwhelming if they differ in opinion:  yet her charity was a match for it.  She was obliged to have recourse to charity, it should be observed.  Her father drew her attention to the spectacle of R. C. S. Nevil Beauchamp, Commander R.N., fighting those reporters with letters in the newspapers, and the dry editorial comment flanked by three stars on the left.  He was shocked to see a gentleman writing such letters to the papers.  ’But one thing hangs on another,’ said he.

‘But you seem angry with Nevil, papa,’ said she.

‘I do hate a turbulent, restless fellow, my dear,’ the colonel burst out.

‘Papa, he has really been unfairly reported.’

Cecilia laid three privately-printed full reports of Commander Beauchamp’s speeches (very carefully corrected by him) before her father.

He suffered his eye to run down a page.  ’Is it possible you read this?—­this trash!—­dangerous folly, I call it.’

Cecilia’s reply, ‘In the interests of justice, I do,’ was meant to express her pure impartiality.  By a toleration of what is detested we expose ourselves to the keenness of an adverse mind.

‘Does he write to you, too?’ said the colonel.

She answered:  ‘Oh, no; I am not a politician.’

‘He seems to have expected you to read those tracts of his, though.’

‘Yes, I think he would convert me if he could,’ said Cecilia.

‘Though you’re not a politician.’

’He relies on the views he delivers in public, rather than on writing to persuade; that was my meaning, papa.’

‘Very well,’ said the colonel, not caring to show his anxiety.

Mr. Tuckham dined with them frequently in London.  This gentleman betrayed his accomplishments one by one.  He sketched, and was no artist; he planted, and was no gardener; he touched the piano neatly, and was no musician; he sang, and he had no voice.  Apparently he tried his hand at anything, for the privilege of speaking decisively upon all things.  He accompanied the colonel and his daughter on a day’s expedition to Mrs. Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames, and they agreed that he shone to great advantage in her society.  Mrs. Beauchamp said she had seen her great-nephew Nevil, but without a comment on his