Colonel Halkett turned to him.

’I had your promise to come over the kennels with me and see how I treat a cry of mad dog, which is ninety-nine times out of a hundred mad fool man,’ Mr. Romfrey added.

By that the colonel knew he meant to stand by Nevil still and offer him his chance of winning Cecilia.

Having pledged his word not to interfere, Colonel Halkett submitted, and muttered, ‘Ah! the kennels.’  Considering however what he had been witnessing of Nevil’s behaviour to his uncle, the colonel was amazed at Mr. Romfrey’s magnanimity in not cutting him off and disowning him.

‘Why the downs?’ he said.

‘Why the deuce, colonel?’ A question quite as reasonable, and Mr. Romfrey laughed under his breath.  To relieve an uncertainty in Cecilia’s face, that might soon have become confusion, he described the downs fronting the paleness of earliest dawn, and then their arch and curve and dip against the pearly grey of the half-glow; and then, among their hollows, lo, the illumination of the East all around, and up and away, and a gallop for miles along the turfy thymy rolling billows, land to left, sea to right, below you.  ’It’s the nearest hit to wings we can make, Cecilia.’  He surprised her with her Christian name, which kindled in her the secret of something he expected from that ride on the downs.  Compare you the Alps with them?  If you could jump on the back of an eagle, you might.  The Alps have height.  But the downs have swiftness.  Those long stretching lines of the downs are greyhounds in full career.  To look at them is to set the blood racing!  Speed is on the downs, glorious motion, odorous air of sea and herb, exquisite as in the isles of Greece.  And the Continental travelling ninnies leave England for health!—­run off and forth from the downs to the steamboat, the railway, the steaming hotel, the tourist’s shivering mountain-top, in search of sensations!  There on the downs the finest and liveliest are at their bidding ready to fly through them like hosts of angels.

He spoke somewhat in that strain, either to relieve Cecilia or prepare the road for Nevil, not in his ordinary style; on the contrary, with a swing of enthusiasm that seemed to spring of ancient heartfelt fervours.  And indeed soon afterward he was telling her that there on those downs, in full view of Steynham, he and his wife had first joined hands.

Beauchamp sat silent.  Mr. Romfrey despatched orders to the stables, and Rosamund to the kitchen.  Cecilia was rather dismayed by the formal preparations for the ride.  She declined the early cup of coffee.  Mr. Romfrey begged her to take it.  ’Who knows the hour when you ‘ll be back?’ he said.  Beauchamp said nothing.