‘None so urgent as this of mine,’ said Rosamund.

‘But we have excellent news of Nevil:  you have Gannet’s word for it,’ he argued.  ‘There’s really nothing to distress you.’

‘My heart:  I must be worthy of good news, to know happiness,’ she answered.  ’I will say, let me go to Bevisham two, three, four days hence, if you like, but there is peace for me, and nowhere else.’

’My precious Rosamund! have you set your two eyes on it?  What you are asking, is for permission to make an apology to Shrapnel!’

‘That is the word.’

‘That’s Nevil’s word.’

‘It is a prescription to me.’

‘An apology?’

The earl’s gorge rose.  Why, such an act was comparable to the circular mission of the dog!

‘If I do not make the apology, the mother of your child is a coward,’ said Rosamund.

‘She’s not.’

‘I trust not.’

’You are a reasonable woman, my dear.  Now listen the man insulted you.  It’s past:  done with.  He insulted you . . .’

‘He did not.’

‘What?’

’He was courteous to me, hospitable to me, kind to me.  He did not insult me.  I belied him.’

‘My dear saint, you’re dreaming.  He spoke insultingly of you to Cecil.’

’Is my lord that man’s dupe?  I would stand against him before the throne of God, with what little I know of his interview with Dr. Shrapnel, to confront him and expose his lie.  Do not speak of him.  He stirs my evil passions, and makes me feel myself the creature I was when I returned to Steynham from my first visit to Bevisham, enraged with jealousy of Dr. Shrapnel’s influence over Nevil, spiteful, malicious:  Oh! such a nest of vileness as I pray to heaven I am not now, if it is granted me to give life to another.  Nevil’s misfortunes date from that,’ she continued, in reply to the earl’s efforts to soothe her.  ’Not the loss of the Election:  that was no misfortune, but a lesson.  He would not have shone in Parliament:  he runs too much from first principles to extremes.  You see I am perfectly reasonable, Everard:  ’I can form an exact estimate of character and things.’  She smiled in his face.  ’And I know my husband too:  what he will grant; what he would not, and justly would not.  I know to a certainty that vexatious as I must be to you now, you are conscious of my having reason for being so.’

‘You carry it so far—­fifty miles beyond the mark,’ said he.  ’The man roughed you, and I taught him manners.’

‘No!’ she half screamed her interposition.  ’I repeat, he was in no way discourteous or disobliging to me.  He offered me a seat at his table, and, heaven forgive me!  I believe a bed in his house, that I might wait and be sure of seeing Nevil, because I was very anxious to see him.’

‘All the same, you can’t go to the man.’

‘I should have said so too, before my destiny touched me.’

’A certain dignity of position, my dear, demands a corresponding dignity of conduct:  you can’t go.’