The allusion to Beauchamp occurred a few hours after Cecilia’s arrival at Itchincope.

Cecilia begged for the French lady’s name to be repeated; she had not heard it before, and she tasted the strange bitter relish of realization when it struck her ear to confirm a story that she believed indeed, but had not quite sensibly felt.

‘And it is not over yet, they say,’ Mrs. Grancey Lespel added, while softly flipping some spots of the colour proper to radicals in morals on the fame of the French lady.  She possessed fully the grave judicial spirit of her countrywomen, and could sit in judgement on the personages of tales which had entranced her, to condemn the heroines:  it was impolitic in her sex to pity females.  As for the men—­poor weak things!  As for Nevil Beauchamp, in particular, his case, this penetrating lady said, was clear:  he ought to be married.  ‘Could you make a sacrifice?’ she asked Cecilia playfully.

’Nevil Beauchamp and I are old friends, but we have agreed that we are deadly political enemies,’ Miss Halkett replied.

‘It is not so bad for a beginning,’ said Mrs. Lespel.

‘If one were disposed to martyrdom.’

The older woman nodded.  ‘Without that.’

’My dear Mrs. Lespel, wait till you have heard him.  He is at war with everything we venerate and build on.  The wife you would give him should be a creature rooted in nothing—­in sea-water.  Simply two or three conversations with him have made me uncomfortable ever since; I can see nothing durable; I dream of surprises, outbreaks, dreadful events.  At least it is perfectly true that I do not look with the same eyes on my country.  He seems to delight in destroying one’s peaceful contemplation of life.  The truth is that he blows a perpetual gale, and is all agitation,’ Cecilia concluded, affecting with a smile a slight shiver.

‘Yes, one tires of that,’ said Mrs. Lespel.  ’I was determined I would have him here if we could get him to come.  Grancey objected.  We shall have to manage Captain Beauchamp and the rest as well.  He is sure to come late to-morrow, and will leave early on Thursday morning for his canvass; our driving into Bevisham is for Friday or Saturday.  I do not see that he need have any suspicions.  Those verses you are so angry about cannot be traced to Itchincope.  My dear, they are a childish trifle.  When my husband stood first for Bevisham, the whole of his University life appeared in print.  What we have to do is to forewarn the gentlemen to be guarded, and especially in what they say to my nephew Lord Palmet, for that boy cannot keep a secret; he is as open as a plate.’

‘The smoking-room at night?’ Cecilia suggested, remembering her father’s words about Itchincope’s tobacco-hall.

‘They have Captain Beauchamp’s address hung up there, I have heard,’ said Mrs. Lespel.  ’There may be other things—­another address, though it is not yet, placarded.  Come with me.  For fifteen years I have never once put my head into that room, and now I ‘ve a superstitious fear about it.’