They were not thoughts of triumph absolutely.  In her cooler mind she felt that it was a bad finish of a gallant battle.  Few women had risen against a tattling and pelting world so stedfastly; and would it not have been better to keep her own ground, which she had won with tears and some natural strength, and therewith her liberty, which she prized?  The hateful Cecil, a reminder of whom set her cheeks burning and turned her heart to serpent, had forced her to it.  So she honestly conceived, owing to the circumstance of her honestly disliking the pomps of life and not desiring to occupy any position of brilliancy.  She thought assuredly of her hoard of animosity toward the scandalmongers, and of the quiet glance she would cast behind on them, and below.  That thought came as a fruit, not as a reflection.

But if ever two offending young gentlemen, nephews of a long-suffering uncle, were circumvented, undermined, and struck to earth, with one blow, here was the instance.  This was accomplished by Lord Romfrey’s resolution to make the lady he had learnt to esteem his countess:  and more, it fixed to him for life one whom he could not bear to think of losing:  and still more, it might be; but what more was unwritten on his tablets.

Rosamund failed to recollect that Everard Romfrey never took a step without seeing a combination of objects to be gained by it.

CHAPTER XLIV

The nephews of the earl, and another exhibition of the two passions in Beauchamp

It was now the season when London is as a lighted tower to her provinces, and, among other gentlemen hurried thither by attraction, Captain Baskelett arrived.  Although not a personage in the House of Commons, he was a vote; and if he never committed himself to the perils of a speech, he made himself heard.  His was the part of chorus, which he performed with a fairly close imitation of the original cries of periods before parliaments were instituted, thus representing a stage in the human development besides the borough of Bevisham.  He arrived in the best of moods for the emission of high-pitched vowel-sounds; otherwise in the worst of tempers.  His uncle had notified an addition of his income to him at Romfrey, together with commands that he should quit the castle instantly:  and there did that woman, Mistress Culling, do the honours to Nevil Beauchamp’s French party.  He assured Lord Palmet of his positive knowledge of the fact, incredible as the sanction of such immoral proceedings by the Earl of Romfrey must appear to that young nobleman.  Additions to income are of course acceptable, but in the form of a palpable stipulation for silence, they neither awaken gratitude nor effect their purpose.  Quite the contrary; they prick the moral mind to sit in judgement on the donor.  It means, she fears me!  Cecil confidently thought and said of the intriguing woman who managed his patron.