him out of the house when he had made a discovery, was monstrous—­fiendishly cunning.  However, Lady Romfrey, as that woman appears to be at last, covered it all.  You know she has one of those passions for Captain Beauchamp which completely blind women to right and wrong.  He is her saint, let him sin ever so!  The story’s in everybody’s mouth.  By the way, Palmet saw her.  He describes her pale as marble, with dark long eyes, the most innocent look in the world, and a walk, the absurd fellow says, like a statue set gliding.  No doubt Frenchwomen do walk well.  He says her eyes are terrible traitors; I need not quote Palmet.  The sort of eyes that would look fondly on a stone, you know.  What her reputation is in France I have only indistinctly heard.  She has one in England by this time, I can assure you.  She found her match in Captain Beauchamp for boldness.  Where any other couple would have seen danger, they saw safety; and they contrived to accomplish it, according to those horrid talebearers.  You have plenty of time to dress, my dear; I have an immense deal to talk about.  There are half-a-dozen scandals in London already, and you ought to know them, or you will be behind the tittle-tattle when you go to town; and I remember, as a girl, I knew nothing so excruciating as to hear blanks, dashes, initials, and half words, without the key.  Nothing makes a girl look so silly and unpalatable.  Naturally, the reason why Captain Beauchamp is more talked about than the rest is the politics.  Your grand reformer should be careful.  Doubly heterodox will not do!  It makes him interesting to women, if you like, but he won’t soon hear the last of it, if he is for a public career.  Grancey literally crowed at the story.  And the wonderful part of it is, that Captain Beauchamp refused to be present at the earl’s first ceremonial dinner in honour of his countess.  Now, that, we all think, was particularly ungrateful:  now, was it not?’

‘If the countess—­if ingratitude had anything to do with it,’ said Cecilia.

She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently.

Her boudoir was empty:  Beauchamp had departed.  She recollected his look at her, and turned over the leaves of the book he had been hastily scanning, and had condescended to approve of.  On the two pages where the paper-cutter was fixed she perceived small pencil dots under certain words.  Read consecutively, with a participle termination struck out to convey his meaning, they formed the pathetically ungrammatical line: 

‘Hear:  none:  but:  accused:  false.’

Treble dots were under the word ‘to-morrow.’  He had scored the margin of the sentences containing his dotted words, as if in admiration of their peculiar wisdom.

She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of communication.  The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the adept intriguer—­French-taught!

In the course of the evening her cousin remarked: