a certain extent restored himself to favour with his uncle Everard by offering a fair suggestion on the fatal field to account for the accident, after the latter had taken measurements and examined the place in perplexity.  His elucidation of the puzzle was referred to by Lord Avonley at Romfrey, and finally accepted as possible and this from a wiseacre who went quacking about the county, expecting to upset the order of things in England!  Such a mixing of sense and nonsense in a fellow’s noddle was never before met with, Lord Avonley said.  Cecil took the hint.  He had been unworried by Beauchamp:  Dr. Shrapnel had not been mentioned:  and it delighted Cecil to let it be known that he thought old Nevil had some good notions, particularly as to the duties of the aristocracy—­that first war-cry of his when a midshipman.  News of another fatal accident in the hunting-field confirmed Cecil’s higher opinion of his cousin.  On the day of Craven’s funeral they heard at Romfrey that Mr. Wardour-Devereux had been killed by a fall from his horse.  Two English gentlemen despatched by the same agency within a fortnight!  ‘He smoked,’ Lord Avonley said of the second departure, to allay some perturbation in the bosoms of the ladies who had ceased to ride, by accounting for this particular mishap in the most reassuring fashion.  Cecil’s immediate reflection was that the unfortunate smoker had left a rich widow.  Far behind in the race for Miss Halkett, and uncertain of a settled advantage in his other rivalry with Beauchamp, he fixed his mind on the widow, and as Beauchamp did not stand in his way, but on the contrary might help him—­for she, like the generality of women, admired Nevil Beauchamp in spite of her feminine good sense and conservatism—­Cecil began to regard the man he felt less opposed to with some recognition of his merits.  The two nephews accompanied Lord Avonley to London, and slept at his town-house.

They breakfasted together the next morning on friendly terms.  Half an hour afterward there was an explosion; uncle and nephews were scattered fragments:  and if Cecil was the first to return to cohesion with his lord and chief, it was, he protested energetically, common policy in a man in his position to do so:  all that he looked for being a decent pension and a share in the use of the town-house.  Old Nevil, he related, began cross-examining him and entangling him with the cunning of the deuce, in my lord’s presence, and having got him to make an admission, old Nevil flung it at the baron, and even crossed him and stood before him when he was walking out of the room.  A furious wrangle took place.  Nevil and the baron gave it to one another unmercifully.  The end of it was that all three flew apart, for Cecil confessed to having a temper, and in contempt of him for the admission wrung out of him, Lord Avonley had pricked it.  My lord went down to Steynham, Beauchamp to Holdesbury, and Captain Baskelett to his quarters; whence in a few days he repaired penitently to my lord—­the most placable of men when a full submission was offered to him.