Who cut off the lock?  Probably Cecilia herself; and thinking at the moment that he would see it, perhaps beg for it.  The lustrous little ring of hair wound round his heart; smiled both on its emotions and its aims; bound them in one.

But proportionately as he grew tender to Cecilia, his consideration for Renee increased; that became a law to him:  pity nourished it, and glimpses of self-contempt, and something like worship of her high-heartedness.

He wrote to the countess, forbidding her sharply and absolutely to attempt a vindication of him by explanations to any persons whomsoever; and stating that he would have no falsehoods told, he desired her to keep to the original tale of the visit of the French family to her as guests of the Countess of Romfrey.  Contradictory indeed.  Rosamund shook her head over him.  For a wilful character that is guilty of issuing contradictory commands to friends who would be friends in spite of him, appears to be expressly angling for the cynical spirit, so surely does it rise and snap at such provocation.  He was even more emphatic when they next met.  He would not listen to a remonstrance; and though, of course, her love of him granted him the liberty to speak to her in what tone he pleased, there were sensations proper to her new rank which his intemperateness wounded and tempted to revolt when he vexed her with unreason.  She had a glimpse of the face he might wear to his enemies.

He was quite as resolute, too, about that slight matter of the Jersey bull.  He had the bull in Bevisham, and would not give him up without the sign manual of Lord Romfrey to an agreement to resign him over to the American Quaker gentleman, after a certain term.  Moreover, not once had he, by exclamation or innuendo, during the period of his recent grief for the loss of his first love, complained of his uncle Everard’s refusal in the old days to aid him in suing for Renee.  Rosamund had expected that he would.  She thought it unloverlike in him not to stir the past, and to bow to intolerable facts.  This idea of him, coming in conjunction with his present behaviour, convinced her that there existed a contradiction in his nature:  whence it ensued that she lost her warmth as an advocate designing to intercede for him with Cecilia; and warmth being gone, the power of the scandal seemed to her unassailable.  How she could ever have presumed to combat it, was an astonishment to her.  Cecilia might be indulgent, she might have faith in Nevil.  Little else could be hoped for.

The occupations, duties, and ceremonies of her new position contributed to the lassitude into which Rosamund sank.  And she soon had a communication to make to her lord, the nature of which was more startling to herself, even tragic.  The bondwoman is a free woman compared with the wife.