The show of hands Mr. Seymour Austin declared to be the most delusive of electoral auspices; and it proved so.  A little later than four o’clock in the afternoon of the election-day, Cecilia received a message from her father telling her that both of the Liberals were headed; ’Beauchamp nowhere.’

Mrs. Grancey Lespel was the next herald of Beauchamp’s defeat.  She merely stated the fact that she had met the colonel and Mr. Blackburn Tuckham driving on the outskirts of the town, and had promised to bring Cecilia the final numbers of the poll.  Without naming them, she unrolled the greater business in her mind.

’A man who in the middle of an Election goes over to France to fight a duel, can hardly expect to win; he has all the morality of an English borough opposed to him,’ she said; and seeing the young lady stiffen:  ‘Oh! the duel is positive,’ she dropped her voice.  ’With the husband.  Who else could it be?  And returns invalided.  That is evidence.  My nephew Palmet has it from Vivian Ducie, and he is acquainted with her tolerably intimately, and the story is, she was overtaken in her flight in the night, and the duel followed at eight o’clock in the morning; but her brother insisted on fighting for Captain Beauchamp, and I cannot tell you how—­but his place in it I can’t explain—­there was a beau jeune homme, and it’s quite possible that he should have been the person to stand up against the marquis.  At any rate, he insulted Captain Beauchamp, or thought your hero had insulted him, and the duel was with one or the other.  It matters exceedingly little with whom, if a duel was fought, and you see we have quite established that.’

‘I hope it is not true,’ said Cecilia.

‘My dear, that is the Christian thing to do,’ said Mrs. Lespel.  ’Duelling is horrible:  though those Romfreys!—­and the Beauchamps were just as bad, or nearly.  Colonel Richard fought for a friend’s wife or sister.  But in these days duelling is incredible.  It was an inhuman practice always, and it is now worse—­it is a reach of manners.  I would hope it is not true; and you may mean that I have it from Lord Palmet.  But I know Vivian Ducie as well as I know my nephew, and if he distinctly mentions an occurrence, we may too surely rely on the truth of it; he is not a man to spread mischief.  Are you unaware that he met Captain Beauchamp at the chateau of the marquise?  The whole story was acted under his eyes.  He had only to take up his pen.  Generally he favours me with his French gossip.  I suppose there were circumstances in this affair more suitable to Palmet than to me.  He wrote a description of Madame de Rouaillout that set Palmet strutting about for an hour.  I have no doubt she must be a very beautiful woman, for a Frenchwoman:  not regular features; expressive, capricious.  Vivian Ducie lays great stress on her eyes and eyebrows, and, I think, her hair.  With a Frenchwoman’s figure, that is enough to make men crazy.  He says her husband