Her father entered the library.  He embraced her, and ‘Well?’ he said.

‘I must think, papa, I must think.’

She pressed her hand across her eyes.  Disillusioned by Seymour Austin, she was utterly defenceless before Beauchamp:  and possibly Beauchamp was in the house.  She fancied he was, by the impatient brevity of her father’s voice.

Seymour Austin and Colonel Halkett left the room, and Blackburn Tuckham walked in, not the most entirely self-possessed of suitors, puffing softly under his breath, and blinking eyes as rapidly as a skylark claps wings on the ascent.

Half an hour later Beauchamp appeared.  He asked to see the colonel, delivered himself of his pretensions and wishes to the colonel, and was referred to Cecilia; but Colonel Halkett declined to send for her.  Beauchamp declined to postpone his proposal until the following day.  He went outside the house and walked up and down the grass-plot.

Cecilia came to him at last.

‘I hear, Nevil, that you are waiting to speak to me.’

‘I’ve been waiting some weeks.  Shall I speak here?’

‘Yes, here, quickly.’

‘Before the house?  I have come to ask you for your hand.’

‘Mine?  I cannot . . .’

‘Step into the park with me.  I ask you to marry me.’

‘It is too late.’

CHAPTER XLVII

THE REFUSAL OF HIM

Passing from one scene of excitement to another, Cecilia was perfectly steeled for her bitter task; and having done that which separated her a sphere’s distance from Beauchamp, she was cold, inaccessible to the face of him who had swayed her on flood and ebb so long, incapable of tender pity, even for herself.  All she could feel was a harsh joy to have struck off her tyrant’s fetters, with a determination to cherish it passionately lest she should presently be hating herself:  for the shadow of such a possibility fell within the narrow circle of her strung sensations.  But for the moment her delusion reached to the idea that she had escaped from him into freedom, when she said, ‘It is too late.’  Those words were the sum and voice of her long term of endurance.  She said them hurriedly, almost in a whisper, in the manner of one changeing a theme of conversation for subjects happier and livelier, though none followed.

The silence bore back on her a suspicion of a faint reproachfulness in the words; and perhaps they carried a poetical tone, still more distasteful.

‘You have been listening to tales of me,’ said Beauchamp.

‘Nevil, we can always be friends, the best of friends.’