Cecilia gazed abstractedly at a passing schooner.

‘He works too hard,’ said Beauchamp.

‘Who does?’

‘Dr. Shrapnel.’

Some one else whom we have heard of works too hard, and it would be happy for mankind if he did not.

Cecilia named the schooner; an American that had beaten our crack yachts.  Beauchamp sprang up to spy at the American.

‘That’s the Corinne, is she!’

Yankee craftiness on salt water always excited his respectful attention as a spectator.

‘And what is the name of your boat, Nevil?’

’The fool of an owner calls her the Petrel.  It’s not that I’m superstitious, but to give a boat a name of bad augury to sailors appears to me . . . however, I ’ve argued it with him and I will have her called the Curlew.  Carrying Dr. Shrapnel and me, Petrel would be thought the proper title for her isn’t that your idea?’

He laughed and she smiled, and then he became overcast with his political face, and said, ’I hope—­I believe—­you will alter your opinion of him.  Can it be an opinion when it’s founded on nothing?  You know really nothing of him.  I have in my pocket what I believe would alter your mind about him entirely.  I do think so; and I think so because I feel you would appreciate his deep sincerity and real nobleness.’

‘Is it a talisman that you have, Nevil?’

‘No, it’s a letter.’

Cecilia’s cheeks took fire.

‘I should so much like to read it to you,’ said he.

‘Do not, please,’ she replied with a dash of supplication in her voice.

’Not the whole of it—­an extract here and there?  I want you so much to understand him.’

‘I am sure I should not.’

‘Let me try you!’

‘Pray do not.’

‘Merely to show you...’

‘But, Nevil, I do not wish to understand him.’

’But you have only to listen for a few minutes, and I want you to know what good reason I have to reverence him as a teacher and a friend.’

Cecilia looked at Beauchamp with wonder.  A confused recollection of the contents of the letter declaimed at Mount Laurels in Captain Baskelett’s absurd sing-song, surged up in her mind revoltingly.  She signified a decided negative.  Something of a shudder accompanied the expression of it.

But he as little as any member of the Romfrey blood was framed to let the word no stand quietly opposed to him.  And the no that a woman utters!  It calls for wholesome tyranny.  Those old, those hoar-old duellists, Yes and No, have rarely been better matched than in Beauchamp and Cecilia.  For if he was obstinate in attack she had great resisting power.  Twice to listen to that letter was beyond her endurance.  Indeed it cast a shadow on him and disfigured him; and when, affecting to plead, he said:  ’You must listen to it to please me, for my sake, Cecilia,’ she answered:  ’It is for your sake, Nevil, I decline to.’