She walked in the passage for half an hour, thinking it possible she might meet him; not the most lady-like of proceedings, but her head was bewildered.  An arm-chair in her room invited her to rest and think—­the mask of a natural desire for sleep.  At eight in the morning she was awakened by her maid, and at a touch exclaimed, ‘Have they gone?’ and her heart still throbbed after hearing that most of the gentlemen were in and about the stables.  Cecilia was down-stairs at a quarter to nine.  The breakfast-room was empty of all but Lord Palmet and Mr. Wardour-Devereux; one selecting a cigar to light out of doors, the other debating between two pipes.  She beckoned to Palmet, and commissioned him to inform Beauchamp that she wished him to drive her down to Bevisham in her pony-carriage.  Palmet brought back word from Beauchamp that he had an appointment at ten o’clock in the town.  ‘I want to see him,’ she said; so Palmet ran out with the order.  Cecilia met Beauchamp in the entrance-hall.

‘You must not go,’ she said bluntly.

‘I can’t break an appointment,’ said he—­’for the sake of my own pleasure,’ was implied.

‘Will you not listen to me, Nevil, when I say you cannot go?’

A coachman’s trumpet blew.

’I shall be late.  That’s Colonel Millington’s team.  He starts first, then Wardour-Devereux, then Cecil, and I mount beside him; Palmet’s at our heels.’

’But can’t you even imagine a purpose for their driving into Bevisham so pompously?’

‘Well, men with drags haven’t commonly much purpose,’ he said.

’But on this occasion!  At an Election time!  Surely, Nevil, you can guess at a reason.’

A second trumpet blew very martially.  Footmen came in search of Captain Beauchamp.  The alternative of breaking her pledged word to her father, or of letting Nevil be burlesqued in the sight of the town, could no longer be dallied with.

Cecilia said, ‘Well, Nevil, then you shall hear it.’

Hereupon Captain Baskelett’s groom informed Captain Beauchamp that he was off.

‘Yes,’ Nevil said to Cecilia, ‘tell me on board the yacht.’

’Nevil, you will be driving into the town with the second Tory candidate of the borough.’

‘Which? who?’ Nevil ’asked.

‘Your cousin Cecil.’

‘Tell Captain Baskelett that I don’t drive down till an hour later,’ Nevil said to the groom.  ’Cecilia, you’re my friend; I wish you were more.  I wish we didn’t differ.  I shall hope to change you—­make you come half-way out of that citadel of yours.  This is my uncle Everard!  I might have made sure there’d be a blow from him!  And Cecil! of all men for a politician!  Cecilia, think of it!  Cecil Baskelett!  I beg Seymour Austin’s pardon for having suspected him . . .’

Now sounded Captain Baskelett’s trumpet.

Angry though he was, Beauchamp laughed.  ’Isn’t it exactly like the baron to spring a mine of this kind?’