’Perhaps he has not thought it worth while.  It is not his way.  He has asked you to come.  You and Miss Halkett will be left to yourselves.  Her father assured Mr. Romfrey that he should not go beyond advising her.  His advice might not be exactly favourable to you at present, but if you sued and she accepted—­and she would, I am convinced she would; she was here with me, talking of you a whole afternoon, and I have eyes—­then he would not oppose the match, and then I should see you settled, the husband of the handsomest wife and richest heiress in England.’

A vision of Cecilia swam before him, gracious in stateliness.

Two weeks back Renee’s expression of a wish that he would marry had seemed to him an idle sentence in a letter breathing of her own intolerable situation.  The marquis had been struck down by illness.  What if she were to be soon suddenly free?  But Renee could not be looking to freedom, otherwise she never would have written the wish for him to marry.  She wrote perhaps hearing temptation whisper; perhaps wishing to save herself and him by the aid of a tie that would bring his honour into play and fix his loyalty.  He remembered Dr. Shrapnel’s written words:  ‘Rebellion against society and advocacy of humanity run counter.’  They had a stronger effect on him than when he was ignorant of his uncle Everard’s plan to match him with Cecilia.  He took refuge from them in the image of that beautiful desolate Renee, born to be beloved, now wasted, worse than trodden under foot—­perverted; a life that looked to him for direction and resuscitation.  She was as good as dead in her marriage.  It was impossible for him ever to think of Renee without the surprising thrill of his enchantment with her, and tender pity that drew her closer to him by darkening her brightness.

Still a man may love his wife.  A wife like Cecilia was not to be imagined coldly.  Let the knot once be tied, it would not be regretted, could not be; hers was a character, and hers a smile, firmly assuring him of that.

He told Mr. Romfrey that he should be glad to meet Colonel Halkett and Cecilia.  Business called him to Holdesbury.  Thence he betook himself to Dr. Shrapnel’s cottage to say farewell to Jenny Denham previous to her departure for Switzerland with her friend Clara Sherwin.  She had never seen a snow-mountain, and it was pleasant to him to observe in her eyes, which he had known weighing and balancing intellectual questions more than he quite liked, a childlike effort to conjure in imagination the glories of the Alps.  She appeared very happy, only a little anxious about leaving Dr. Shrapnel with no one to take care of him for a whole month.  Beauchamp promised he would run over to him from Holdesbury, only an hour by rail, as often as he could.  He envied her the sight of the Alps, he said, and tried to give her an idea of them, from which he broke off to boast of a famous little Jersey bull that he had won from a rival, an American, deeply in love with