The schooner was boarded subsequently by another nobleman, an Admiral of the Fleet and ex-minister of the Whig Government, Lord Croyston, who was a friend of Mr. Romfrey’s, and thought well of Nevil Beauchamp as a seaman and naval officer, but shook an old head over him as a politician.  He came to beg a passage across the water to his marine Lodge, an accident having happened early in the morning to his yacht, the Lady Violet.  He was able to communicate the latest version of the horsewhipping of Dr. Shrapnel, from which it appeared that after Mr. Romfrey had handsomely flogged the man he flung his card on the prostrate body, to let men know who was responsible for the act.  He expected that Mr. Romfrey would be subjected to legal proceedings.  ’But if there’s a pleasure worth paying for it’s the trouncing of a villain,’ said he; and he had been informed that Dr. Shrapnel was a big one.  Lord Croyston’s favourite country residence was in the neighbourhood of old Mrs. Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames.  Speaking of Nevil Beauchamp a second time, he alluded to his relations with his great-aunt, said his prospects were bad, that she had interdicted her house to him, and was devoted to her other great-nephew.

‘And so she should be,’ said Colonel Halkett.  ’That’s a young man who’s an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head.  He works for us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us over a threatening strike there:  gratuitously:  I can’t get him to accept anything.  I can’t think why he does it.’

‘He’ll have plenty,’ said Lord Croyston, levelling his telescope to sight the racing cutters.

Cecilia fancied she descried Nevil’s Petrel, dubbed Curlew, to Eastward, and had a faint gladness in the thought that his knowledge of his uncle Everard’s deed of violence would be deferred for another two or three hours.

She tried to persuade her father to wait for Nevil, and invite him to dine at Mount Laurels, and break the news to him gently.  Colonel Halkett argued that in speaking of the affair he should certainly not commiserate the man who had got his deserts, and saying this he burst into a petty fury against the epistle of Dr. Shrapnel, which appeared to be growing more monstrous in proportion to his forgetfulness of the details, as mountains gather vastness to the eye at a certain remove.  Though he could not guess the reason for Mr. Romfrey’s visit to Bevisham, he was, he said, quite prepared to maintain that Mr. Romfrey had a perfect justification for his conduct.

Cecilia hinted at barbarism.  The colonel hinted at high police duties that gentlemen were sometimes called on to perform for the protection of society.  ‘In defiance of its laws?’ she asked; and he answered:  ’Women must not be judging things out of their sphere,’ with the familiar accent on ‘women’ which proves their inferiority.  He was rarely guilty of it toward his daughter.  Evidently he had resolved to back Mr. Romfrey blindly.