‘Captain Baskelett stays at the Castle?’ she asked.

‘He likes his quarters there.’

’Nevil could not go down to Romfrey, my lord.  He was obliged to wait, and see, and help me to entertain, her brother and her husband.’

’Why, ma’am?  But I have no objection to his making the marquis a happy husband.’

’He has done what few men would have done, that she may be a self-respecting wife.’

‘The parson’s in that fellow!’ Lord Romfrey exclaimed.  ’Now I have the story.  She came to him, he declined the gift, and you were turned into the curtain for them.  If he had only been off with her, he would have done the country good service.  Here he’s a failure and a nuisance; he’s a common cock-shy for the journals.  I’m tired of hearing of him; he’s a stench in our nostrils.  He’s tired of the woman.’

‘He loves her.’

’Ma’am, you’re hoodwinked.  If he refused to have her, there ’s a something he loves better.  I don’t believe we’ve bred a downright lackadaisical donkey in our family:  I know him.  He’s not a fellow for abstract morality:  I know him.  It’s bargain against bargain with him; I’ll do him that justice.  I hear he has ordered the removal of the Jersey bull from Holdesbury, and the beast is mine,’ Lord Romfrey concluded in a lower key.

‘Nevil has taken him.’

‘Ha! pull and pull, then!’

’He contends that he is bound by a promise to give an American gentleman the refusal of the bull, and you must sign an engagement to keep the animal no longer than two years.’

‘I sign no engagement.  I stick to the bull.’

‘Consent to see Nevil to-night, my lord.’

‘When he has apologized to you, I may, ma’am.’

‘Surely he did more, in requesting me to render him a service.’

’There’s not a creature living that fellow wouldn’t get to serve him, if he knew the trick.  We should all of us be marching on London at Shrapnel’s heels.  The political mania is just as incurable as hydrophobia, and he’s bitten.  That’s clear.’

’Bitten perhaps:  but not mad.  As you have always contended, the true case is incurable, but it is very rare:  and is this one?’

’It’s uncommonly like a true case, though I haven’t seen him foam at the mouth, and shun water-as his mob does.’

Rosamund restrained some tears, betraying the effort to hide the moisture.  ’I am no match for you, my lord.  I try to plead on his behalf;—­I do worse than if I were dumb.  This I most earnestly say:  he is the Nevil Beauchamp who fought for his country, and did not abandon her cause, though he stood there—­we had it from Colonel Halkett—­a skeleton:  and he is the Nevil who—­I am poorly paying my debt to him!—­defended me from the aspersions of his cousin.’

‘Boys!’ Lord Romfrey ejaculated.

‘It is the same dispute between them as men.’

’Have you forgotten my proposal to shield you from liars and scandalmongers?’