‘I came through it,’ said Beauchamp, and pointed to his little cutter labouring in the distance.  ’She’s mine for a month; I came from Holdesbury to try her; and then he stated how he had danced attendance on the schooner for a couple of hours before any notice was taken of him, and Cecilia with her graceful humour held up his presumption to scorn.

Her father was eyeing Beauchamp narrowly, and appeared troubled.

‘Did you see Mr. Romfrey yesterday, or this morning?’ the colonel asked him, mentioning that Mr. Romfrey had been somewhere about the island yesterday, at which Beauchamp expressed astonishment, for his uncle Everard seldom visited a yachting station.

Colonel Halkett exchanged looks with Cecilia.  Hers were inquiring, and he confirmed her side-glance at Beauchamp.  She raised her brows; he nodded, to signify that there was gravity in the case.  Here the signalling stopped short; she had to carry on a conversation with Lord Lockrace, one of those men who betray the latent despot in an exhibition of discontentment unless they have all a lady’s hundred eyes attentive to their discourse.

At last Beauchamp quitted the vessel.

When he was out of hearing, Colonel Halkett said to Cecilia:  ’Grancey Lespel tells me that Mr. Romfrey called on the man Shrapnel yesterday evening at six o’clock.’

‘Yes, Papa?’

‘Now come and see the fittings below,’ the colonel addressed Lord Lockrace, and murmured to his daughter: 

‘And soundly horsewhipped him!’

Cecilia turned on the instant to gaze after Nevil Beauchamp.  She could have wept for pity.  Her father’s emphasis on ‘soundly’ declared an approval of the deed, and she was chilled by a sickening abhorrence and dread of the cruel brute in men, such as, awakened by she knew not what, had haunted her for a year of her girlhood.

‘And he deserved it!’ the colonel pursued, on emerging from the cabin at Lord Lockrace’s heels.  ’I’ve no doubt he richly deserved it.  The writer of that letter we heard Captain Baskelett read the other day deserves the very worst he gets.’

’Baskelett bored the Club the other night with a letter of a Radical fellow,’ said Lord Lockrace.  ’Men who write that stuff should be strung up and whipped by the common hangman.’

‘It was a private letter,’ said Cecilia.

‘Public or private, Miss Halkett.’

Her mind flew back to Seymour Austin for the sense of stedfastness when she heard such language as this, which, taken in conjunction with Dr. Shrapnel’s, seemed to uncloak our Constitutional realm and show it boiling up with the frightful elements of primitive societies.

‘I suppose we are but half civilized,’ she said.

‘If that,’ said the earl.

Colonel Halkett protested that he never could quite make out what Radicals were driving at.

‘The rents,’ Lord Lockrace observed in the conclusive tone of brevity.  He did not stay very long.