Cecilia was thinking that he tempted her to be the apologist of even such a letter.

‘One likes to know the worst, and what’s possible,’ said the colonel.

After Captain Baskelett had gone, Colonel Halkett persisted in talking of the letter, and would have impressed on his daughter that the person to whom the letter was addressed must be partly responsible for the contents of it.  Cecilia put on the argumentative air of a Court of Equity to discuss the point with him.

‘Then you defend that letter?’ he cried.

Oh, no:  she did not defend the letter; she thought it wicked and senseless.  ‘But,’ said she, ’the superior strength of men to women seems to me to come from their examining all subjects, shrinking from none.  At least, I should not condemn Nevil on account of his correspondence.’

‘We shall see,’ said her father, sighing rather heavily.  ’I must have a talk with Mr. Romfrey about that letter.’

CHAPTER XXX

THE BAITING OF DR. SHRAPNEL

Captain Baskelett went down from Mount Laurels to Bevisham to arrange for the giving of a dinner to certain of his chief supporters in the borough, that they might know he was not obliged literally to sit in Parliament in order to pay a close attention to their affairs.  He had not distinguished himself by a speech during the session, but he had stored a political precept or two in his memory, and, as he told Lord Palmet, he thought a dinner was due to his villains.  ’The way to manage your Englishman, Palmet, is to dine him.’  As the dinner would decidedly be dull, he insisted on having Lord Palmet’s company.

They crossed over to the yachting island, where portions of the letter of Commander Beauchamp’s correspondent were read at the Club, under the verandah, and the question put, whether a man who held those opinions had a right to wear his uniform.

The letter was transmitted to Steynham in time to be consigned to the pocket-book before Beauchamp arrived there on one of his rare visits.  Mr. Romfrey handed him the pocketbook with the frank declaration that he had read Shrapnel’s letter.  ‘All is fair in war, Sir!’ Beauchamp quoted him ambiguously.

The thieves had amused Mr. Romfrey by their scrupulous honesty in returning what was useless to them, while reserving the coat:  but subsequently seeing the advertized reward, they had written to claim it; and, according to Rosamund Culling, he had been so tickled that he had deigned to reply to them, very briefly, but very comically.

Speaking of the matter with her, Beauchamp said (so greatly was he infatuated with the dangerous man) that the reading of a letter of Dr. Shrapnel’s could do nothing but good to any reflecting human creature:  he admitted that as the lost pocket-book was addressed to Mr. Romfrey, it might have been by mistake that he had opened it, and read the topmost letter lying open.  But he pressed Rosamund to say whether that one only had been read.