’If I am walking in the very eye of heaven, and feeling it shining on me where I go, there is no question for me of human dignity.’

Such flighty talk offended Lord Romfrey.

‘It comes to this:  you’re in want of a parson.’

Rosamund was too careful to hint that she would have expected succour and seconding from one or other of the better order of clergymen.

She shook her head.  ’To this, my dear lord:  I have a troubled mind; and it is not to listen nor to talk, that I am in need of, but to act.’

’Yes, my dear girl, but not to act insanely.  I do love soundness of head.  You have it, only just now you’re a little astray.  We’ll leave this matter for another time.’

Rosamund held him by the arm.  ‘Not too long!’

Both of them applied privately to Mrs. Wardour-Devereux for her opinion and counsel on the subject of the proposal to apologize to Dr. Shrapnel.  She was against it with the earl, and became Rosamund’s echo when with her.  When alone, she was divided into two almost equal halves:  deeming that the countess should not insist, and the earl should not refuse:  him she condemned for lack of sufficient spiritual insight to perceive the merits of his wife’s request:  her she accused of some vestige of something underbred in her nature, for putting such fervid stress upon the supplication:  i.e. making too much of it—­a trick of the vulgar:  and not known to the languid.

She wrote to Lydiard for advice.

He condensed a paragraph into a line: 

‘It should be the earl.  She is driving him to it, intentionally or not.’

Mrs. Devereux doubted that the countess could have so false an idea of her husband’s character as to think it possible he would ever be bent to humble himself to the man he had castigated.  She was right.  It was by honestly presenting to his mind something more loathsome still, the humbling of herself, that Rosamund succeeded in awakening some remote thoughts of a compromise, in case of necessity.  Better I than she!

But the necessity was inconceivable.

He had really done everything required of him, if anything was really required, by speaking to Shrapnel civilly.  He had spoken to Shrapnel twice.

Besides, the castle was being gladdened by happier tidings of Beauchamp.  Gannet now pledged his word to the poor fellow’s recovery, and the earl’s particular friends arrived, and the countess entertained them.  October passed smoothly.

She said once:  ’Ancestresses of yours, my lord, have undertaken pilgrimages as acts of penance for sin, to obtain heaven’s intercession in their extremity.’

‘I dare say they did,’ he replied.  ‘The monks got round them.’

‘It is not to be laughed at, if it eased their hearts.’

Timidly she renewed her request for permission to perform the pilgrimage to Bevisham.

‘Wait,’ said he, ‘till Nevil is on his legs.’