‘Grapes take one back to the South,’ said he.  ’How do you bear compliments?  You have been in Italy some years, and it must be the South that has worked the miracle.’

‘In my growth?’ said Cecilia, smiling.  ’I have grown out of my Circassian dress, Nevil.’

‘You received it, then?’

’I wrote you a letter of thanks—­and abuse, for your not coming to Steynham.  You may recognize these pearls.’

The pearls were round her right wrist.  He looked at the blue veins.

‘They’re not pearls of price,’ he said.

‘I do not wear them to fascinate the jewellers,’ rejoined Miss Halkett.  ’So you are a candidate at an Election.  You still have a tinge of Africa, do you know?  But you have not abandoned the navy?’

‘—­Not altogether.’

’Oh! no, no:  I hope not.  I have heard of you, . . . but who has not?  We cannot spare officers like you.  Papa was delighted to hear of your promotion.  Parliament!’

The exclamation was contemptuous.

‘It’s the highest we can aim at,’ Beauchamp observed meekly.

’I think I recollect you used to talk politics when you were a midshipman,’ she said.  ‘You headed the aristocracy, did you not?’

‘The aristocracy wants a head,’ said Beauchamp.

‘Parliament, in my opinion, is the best of occupations for idle men,’ said she.

‘It shows that it is a little too full of them.’

‘Surely the country can go on very well without so much speech-making?’

‘It can go on very well for the rich.’

Miss Halkett tapped with her foot.

‘I should expect a Radical to talk in that way, Nevil.’

‘Take me for one.’

‘I would not even imagine it.’

‘Say Liberal, then.’

’Are you not’—­her eyes opened on him largely, and narrowed from surprise to reproach, and then to pain—­are you not one of us?  Have you gone over to the enemy, Nevil?’

’I have taken my side, Cecilia; but we, on our side, don’t talk of an enemy.’

’Most unfortunate!  We are Tories, you know, Nevil.  Papa is a thorough Tory.  He cannot vote for you.  Indeed I have heard him say he is anxious to defeat the plots of an old Republican in Bevisham—­some doctor there; and I believe he went to London to look out for a second Tory candidate to oppose to the Liberals.  Our present Member is quite safe, of course.  Nevil, this makes me unhappy.  Do you not feel that it is playing traitor to one’s class to join those men?’

Such was the Tory way of thinking, Nevil Beauchamp said:  the Tories upheld their Toryism in the place of patriotism.