’Dr. Shrapnel is persuasive to those who go partly with him, or whose condition of mind calls on him for great patience,’ Miss Denham said at last.

’I am only trying to comprehend how it was that he should so rapidly have won Captain Beauchamp to his views,’ Rosamund explained; and the young lady did not reply.

Dr. Shrapnel’s house was about a mile beyond the town, on a common of thorn and gorse, through which the fir-bordered highway ran.  A fence waist-high enclosed its plot of meadow and garden, so that the doctor, while protecting his own, might see and be seen of the world, as was the case when Rosamund approached.  He was pacing at long slow strides along the gravel walk, with his head bent and bare, and his hands behind his back, accompanied by a gentleman who could be no other than Nevil, Rosamund presumed to think; but drawing nearer she found she was mistaken.

‘That is not Captain Beauchamp’s figure,’ she said.

‘No, it is not he,’ said Miss Denham.

Rosamund saw that her companion was pale.  She warmed to her at once; by no means on account of the pallor in itself.

‘I have walked too fast for you, I fear.’

‘Oh no; I am accused of being a fast walker.’

Rosamund was unwilling to pass through the demagogue’s gate.  On second thoughts, she reflected that she could hardly stipulate to have news of Nevil tossed to her over the spikes, and she entered.

While receiving Dr. Shrapnel’s welcome to a friend of Captain Beauchamp, she observed the greeting between Miss Denham and the younger gentleman.  It reassured her.  They met like two that have a secret.

The dreaded doctor was an immoderately tall man, lean and wiry, carelessly clad in a long loose coat of no colour, loose trowsers, and huge shoes.

He stooped from his height to speak, or rather swing the stiff upper half of his body down to his hearer’s level and back again, like a ship’s mast on a billowy sea.  He was neither rough nor abrupt, nor did he roar bullmouthedly as demagogues are expected to do, though his voice was deep.  He was actually, after his fashion, courteous, it could be said of him, except that his mind was too visibly possessed by distant matters for Rosamund’s taste, she being accustomed to drawing-room and hunting and military gentlemen, who can be all in the words they utter.  Nevertheless he came out of his lizard-like look with the down-dropped eyelids quick at a resumption of the dialogue; sometimes gesturing, sweeping his arm round.  A stubborn tuft of iron-grey hair fell across his forehead, and it was apparently one of his life’s labours to get it to lie amid the mass, for his hand rarely ceased to be in motion without an impulsive stroke at the refractory forelock.  He peered through his eyelashes ordinarily, but from no infirmity of sight.  The truth was, that the man’s nature counteracted his spirit’s intenser eagerness and restlessness by alternating a state of repose that resembled dormancy, and so preserved him.  Rosamund was obliged to give him credit for straightforward eyes when they did look out and flash.  Their filmy blue, half overflown with grey by age, was poignant while the fire in them lasted.  Her antipathy attributed something electrical to the light they shot.