‘Not suicide though,’ Colonel Halkett muttered.

‘No, that’s only incidental.’

The casual word ‘love’ led Colonel Halkett to speak to Cecilia of an old love-affair of Seymour Austin’s, in discussing the state of his health with her.  The lady was the daughter of a famous admiral, handsome, and latterly of light fame.  Mr. Austin had nothing to regret in her having married a man richer than himself.

‘I wish he had married a good woman,’ said the colonel.

‘He looks unwell, papa.’

‘He thinks you’re looking unwell, my dear.’

‘He thinks that of me?’

Cecilia prepared a radiant face for Mr. Austin.

She forgot to keep it kindled, and he suspected her to be a victim of one of the forms of youthful melancholy, and laid stress on the benefit to health of a change of scene.

‘We have just returned from Wales,’ she said.

He remarked that it was hardly a change to be within shot of our newspapers.

The colour left her cheeks.  She fancied her father had betrayed her to the last man who should know her secret.  Beauchamp and the newspapers were rolled together in her mind by the fever of apprehension wasting her ever since his declaration of Republicanism, and defence of it, and an allusion to one must imply the other, she feared:  feared, but far from quailingly.  She had come to think that she could read the man she loved, and detect a reasonableness in his extravagance.  Her father had discovered the impolicy of attacking Beauchamp in her hearing.  The fever by which Cecilia was possessed on her lover’s behalf, often overcame discretion, set her judgement in a whirl, was like a delirium.  How it had happened she knew not.  She knew only her wretched state; a frenzy seized her whenever his name was uttered, to excuse, account for, all but glorify him publicly.  And the immodesty of her conduct was perceptible to her while she thus made her heart bare.  She exposed herself once of late at Itchincope, and had tried to school her tongue before she went there.  She felt that she should inevitably be seen through by Seymour Austin if he took the world’s view of Beauchamp, and this to her was like a descent on the rapids to an end one shuts eyes from.

He noticed her perturbation, and spoke of it to her father.

‘Yes, I’m very miserable about her,’ the colonel confessed.  ’Girls don’t see . . . they can’t guess . . . they have no idea of the right kind of man for them.  A man like Blackburn Tuckham, now, a man a father could leave his girl to, with confidence!  He works for me like a slave; I can’t guess why.  He doesn’t look as if he were attracted.  There’s a man! but, no; harum-scarum fellows take their fancy.’

‘Is she that kind of young lady?’ said Mr. Austin.

’No one would have thought so.  She pretends to have opinions upon politics now.  It’s of no use to talk of it!’

But Beauchamp was fully indicated.