‘I can take very good care of myself,’ Rosamund protested.

’You can do hundreds of things you should never be obliged to do while he’s at hand, or I, ma’am,’ said Mr. Romfrey.  ’The fellow’s insane.  He forgets a gentleman’s duty.  Here’s his “humanity” dogging a French frock, and pooh!—­the age of the marquis!  Fifty?  A man’s beginning his prime at fifty, or there never was much man in him.  It’s the mark of a fool to take everybody for a bigger fool than himself-or he wouldn’t have written this letter to me.  He can’t come home yet, not yet, and he doesn’t know when he can!  Has he thrown up the service?  I am to preserve the alliance between England and France by getting this French girl for him in the teeth of her marquis, at my peril if I refuse!’

Rosamund asked, ‘Will you let me see where Nevil says that, sir?’

Mr. Romfrey tore the letter to strips.  ’He’s one of your fellows who cock their eyes when they mean to be cunning.  He sends you to do the wheedling, that’s plain.  I don’t say he has hit on a bad advocate; but tell him I back him in no mortal marriage till he shows a pair of epaulettes on his shoulders.  Tell him lieutenants are fledglings—­he’s not marriageable at present.  It’s a very pretty sacrifice of himself he intends for the sake of the alliance, tell him that, but a lieutenant’s not quite big enough to establish it.  You will know what to tell him, ma’am.  And say, it’s the fellow’s best friend that advises him to be out of it and home quick.  If he makes one of a French trio, he’s dished.  He’s too late for his luck in England.  Have him out of that mire, we can’t hope for more now.’

Rosamund postponed her mission to plead.  Her heart was with Nevil; her understanding was easily led to side against him, and for better reasons than Mr. Romfrey could be aware of:  so she was assured by her experience of the character of Mademoiselle de Croisnel.  A certain belief in her personal arts of persuasion had stopped her from writing on her homeward journey to inform him that Nevil was not accompanying her, and when she drove over Steynham Common, triumphal arches and the odour of a roasting ox richly browning to celebrate the hero’s return afflicted her mind with all the solid arguments of a common-sense country in contravention of a wild lover’s vaporous extravagances.  Why had he not come with her?  The disappointed ox put the question in a wavering drop of the cheers of the villagers at the sight of the carriage without their bleeding hero.  Mr. Romfrey, at his hall-doors, merely screwed his eyebrows; for it was the quality of this gentleman to foresee most human events, and his capacity to stifle astonishment when they trifled with his prognostics.  Rosamund had left Nevil fast bound in the meshes of the young French sorceress, no longer leading, but submissively following, expecting blindly, seeing strange new virtues in the lurid indication of what appeared to border on the reverse.  How could she plead for her infatuated darling to one who was common sense in person?