So she went to Steynham, and for hours she heard talk of no one, of nothing, but her friend Nevil.  Cecilia was on her guard against Rosamund’s defence of his conduct in France.  The declaration that there had been no misbehaviour at all could not be accepted; but the news of Mr. Romfrey’s having installed Nevil in Holdesbury to manage that property, and of his having mooted to her father the question of an alliance between her and Nevil, was wonderful.  Rosamund could not say what answer her father had made:  hardly favourable, Cecilia supposed, since he had not spoken of the circumstance to her.  But Mr. Romfrey’s influence with him would certainly be powerful.

It was to be assumed, also, that Nevil had been consulted by his uncle.  Rosamund said full-heartedly that this alliance had for years been her life’s desire, and then she let the matter pass, nor did she once loop at Cecilia searchingly, or seem to wish to probe her.  Cecilia disagreed with Rosamund on an insignificant point in relation to something Mr. Romfrey and Captain Baskelett had done, and, as far as she could recollect subsequently, there was a packet of letters, or a pocket-book containing letters of Nevil’s which he had lost, and which had been forwarded to Mr. Romfrey; for the pocket-book was originally his, and his address was printed inside.  But among these letters was one from Dr. Shrapnel to Nevil:  a letter so horrible that Rosamund frowned at the reminiscence of it, holding it to be too horrible for the quotation of a sentence.  She owned she had forgotten any three consecutive words.  Her known dislike of Captain Baskelett, however, was insufficient to make her see that it was unjustifiable in him to run about London reading it, with comments of the cruellest.  Rosamund’s greater detestation of Dr. Shrapnel blinded her to the offence committed by the man she would otherwise have been very ready to scorn.  So small did the circumstance appear to Cecilia, notwithstanding her gentle opposition at the time she listened to it, that she never thought of mentioning it to her father, and only remembered it when Captain Baskelett, with Lord Palmet in his company, presented himself at Mount Laurels, and proposed to the colonel to read to him ’a letter from that scoundrelly old Shrapnel to Nevil Beauchamp, upon women, wives, thrones, republics, British loyalty, et caetera,’—­an et caetera that rolled a series of tremendous reverberations down the list of all things held precious by freeborn Englishmen.

She would have prevented the reading.  But the colonel would have it.

‘Read on,’ said he.  ‘Mr. Romfrey saw no harm.’

Captain Baskelett held up Dr. Shrapnel’s letter to Commander Beauchamp, at about half a yard’s distance on the level of his chin, as a big-chested singer in a concert-room holds his music-scroll.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE EPISTLE OF DR. SHRAPNEL TO COMMANDER BEAUCHAMP