The old Radical's not the thing in health. He's anxious about leaving her alone in the world; he said so to me. Beauchamp's for rigging out a yacht to give him a sail. It seems that salt water did him some good last year. They're both of them rather the worse for a row at one of their meetings in the North in support of that public nuisance, the democrat and atheist Roughleigh. The Radical doctor lost a hat, and Beauchamp almost lost an eye. He would have been a Nelson of politics, if he had been a monops, with an excuse for not seeing. It's a trifle to them; part of their education. They call themselves students. Rome will be capital, Miss Halkett. You're an Italian scholar, and I beg to be accepted as a pupil.'

'I fear we have postponed the expedition too long,' said Cecilia. She could have sunk with languor.

'Too long?' cried Colonel Halkett, mystified.

'Until too late, I mean, papa. Do you not think, Mr. Austin, that a fortnight in Rome is too short a time?'

'Not if we make it a month, my dear Cecilia.'

'Is not our salt air better for you? The yacht shall be fitted out.'

'I'm a poor sailor!'

'Besides, a hasty excursion to Italy brings one's antic.i.p.ated regrets at the farewell too close to the pleasure of beholding it, for the enjoyment of that luxury of delight which I a.s.sociate with the name of Italy.'

'Why, my dear child,' said her father, 'you were all for going, the other day.'

'I do not remember it,' said she. 'One plans agreeable schemes. At least we need not hurry from home so very soon after our return. We have been travelling incessantly. The cottage in Wales is not home. It is hardly fair to Mount Laurels to quit it without observing the changes of the season in our flowers and birds here. And we have visitors coming. Of course, papa, I would not chain you to England. If I am not well enough to accompany you, I can go to Louise for a few weeks.'

Was ever transparency so threadbare? Cecilia shrank from herself in contemplating it when she was alone; and Colonel Halkett put the question to Mr. Austin, saying to him privately, with no further reserve: 'It's that fellow Beauchamp in the neighbourhood; I'm not so blind. He'll be knocking at my door, and I can't lock him out. Austin, would you guess it was my girl speaking? I never in my life had such an example of intoxication before me. I 'm perfectly miserable at the sight. You know her; she was the proudest girl living. Her ideas were orderly and sound; she had a good intellect. Now she more than half defends him--a naval officer! good Lord!--for getting up in a public room to announce that he 's a Republican, and writing heaps of mad letters to justify himself. He's ruined in his profession: hopeless! He can never get a ship: his career's cut short, he's a rudderless boat. A gentleman drifting to Bedlam, his uncle calls him. I call his treatment of Grancey Lespel anything but gentlemanly. This is the sort of fellow my girl worships! What can I do? I can't interdict the house to him: it would only make matters worse. Thank G.o.d, the fellow hangs fire somehow, and doesn't come to me. I expect it every day, either in a letter or the man in person. And I declare to heaven I'd rather be threading a Khyber Pa.s.s with my poor old friend who fell to a shot there.'

'She certainly has another voice,' Mr. Austin a.s.sented gravely.

He did not look on Beauchamp as the best of possible husbands for Cecilia.

'Let her see that you're anxious, Austin,' said the colonel. 'I'm her old opponent in this affair. She loves me, but she's accustomed to think me prejudiced: you she won't. You may have a good effect.'

'Not by speaking.'

'No, no; no a.s.sault: not a word, and not a word against him. Lay the wind to catch a gossamer. I've had my experience of blowing cold, and trying to run her down. He's at Shrapnel's. He'll be up here to-day, and I have an engagement in the town. Don't quit her side. Let her fancy you are interested in some discussion--Radicalism, if you like.'

Mr. Austin readily undertook to mount guard over her while her father rode into Bevisham on business.

The enemy appeared.

Cecilia saw him, and could not step to meet him for trouble of heart. It was bliss to know that he lived and was near.

A transient coldness following the fit of ecstasy enabled her to swin through the terrible first minutes face to face with him.

He folded her round like a mist; but it grew a problem to understand why Mr. Austin should be perpetually at hand, in the garden, in the woods, in the drawing-room, wheresoever she wakened up from one of her trances to see things as they were.

Yet Beauchamp, with a daring and cunning at which her soul exulted, and her feminine nature trembled, as at the divinely terrible, had managed to convey to her no less than if they had been alone together.

His parting words were: 'I must have five minutes with your father to-morrow.'

How had she behaved? What could be Seymour Austin's idea of her?

She saw the blind thing that she was, the senseless thing, the shameless; and vulture-like in her scorn of herself, she alighted on that disgraced Cecilia and picked her to pieces hungrily. It was clear: Beauchamp had meant nothing beyond friendly civility: it was only her abject greediness pecking at crumbs. No! he loved her. Could a woman's heart be mistaken? She melted and wept, thanking him: she offered him her remnant of pride, pitiful to behold.

And still she asked herself between-whiles whether it could be true of an English lady of our day, that she, the fairest stature under sun, was ever knowingly twisted to this convulsion. She seemed to look forth from a barred window on flower, and field, and hill. Quietness existed as a vision. Was it impossible to embrace it? How pa.s.s into it? By surrendering herself to the flames, like a soul unto death! For why, if they were overpowering, attempt to resist them? It flattered her to imagine that she had been resisting them in their present burning might ever since her lover stepped on the Esperanza's deck at the mouth of Otley River. How foolish, seeing that they are fatal! A thrill of satisfaction swept her in reflecting that her ability to reason was thus active. And she was instantly rewarded for surrendering; pain fled, to prove her reasoning good; the flames devoured her gently they cared not to torture so long as they had her to themselves.

At night, candle in hand, on the corridor, her father told her he had come across Grancey Lespel in Bevisham, and heard what he had not quite relished of the Countess of Romfrey. The glittering of Cecilia's eyes frightened him. Taking her for the moment to know almost as much as he, the colonel doubted the weight his communication would have on her; he talked obscurely of a scandalous affair at Lord Romfrey's house in town, and Beauchamp and that Frenchwoman. 'But,' said he, 'Mrs. Grancey will be here to-morrow.'

'So will Nevil, papa,' said Cecilia.

'Ah! he's coming, yes; well!' the colonel puffed. 'Well, I shall see him, of course, but I... I can only say that if his oath 's worth having, I ... and I think you too, my dear, if you... but it's no use antic.i.p.ating. I shall stand out for your honour and happiness. There, your cheeks are flushed. Go and sleep.'

Some idle tale! Cecilia murmured to herself a dozen times, undisturbed by the recurrence of it. Nevil was coming to speak to her father tomorrow! Adieu to doubt and division! Happy to-morrow! and dear Mount Laurels! The primroses were still fair in the woods: and soon the cowslips would come, and the nightingale; she lay lapt in images of everything innocently pleasing to Nevil. Soon the Esperanza would be spreading wings. She revelled in a picture of the yacht on a tumbling Mediterranean Sea, meditating on the two specks near the tiller,--who were blissful human creatures, blest by heaven and in themselves--with luxurious Olympian benevolence.

For all that, she awoke, starting up in the first cold circle of twilight, her heart in violent action. She had dreamed that the vessel was wrecked. 'I did not think myself so cowardly,' she said aloud, pressing her side and then, with the dream in her eyes, she gasped: 'It would be together!'

Strangely chilled, she tried to recover some fallen load. The birds of the dawn twittered, chirped, dived aslant her window, fluttered back. Instead of a fallen load, she fancied presently that it was an expectation she was desiring to realize: but what? What could be expected at that hour? She quitted her bed, and paced up and down the room beneath a gold-starred ceiling. Her expectation, she resolved to think, was of a splendid day of the young Spring at Mount Laurels--a day to praise to Nevil.

She raised her window-blind at a window letting in sweet air, to gather indications of promising weather. Her lover stood on the gra.s.s-plot among the flower-beds below, looking up, as though it had been his expectation to see her which had drawn her to gaze out with an idea of some expectation of her own. So visionary was his figure in the grey solitariness of the moveless morning that she stared at the apparition, scarce putting faith in him as man, until he kissed his hand to her, and had softly called her name.

Impulsively she waved a hand from her lips.

Now there was no retreat for either of them!

She awoke to this conviction after a flight of blushes that burnt her thoughts to ashes as they sprang. Thoughts born blushing, all of the crimson colour, a rose-garden, succeeded, and corresponding with their speed her feet paced the room, both slender hands crossed at her throat under an uplifted chin, and the curves of her dark eyelashes dropped as in a swoon.

'He loves me!' The attestation of it had been visible. 'No one but me!'

Was that so evident?

Her father picked up silly stories of him--a man who made enemies recklessly!

Cecilia was petrified by a gentle tapping at her door. Her father called to her, and she threw on her dressing-gown, and opened the door.

The colonel was in his riding-suit.

'I haven't slept a wink, and I find it's the same with you,' he said, paining her with his distressed kind eyes. 'I ought not to have hinted anything last night without proofs. Austin's as unhappy as I am.'

'At what, my dear papa, at what?' cried Cecilia.

'I ride over to Steynham this morning, and I shall bring you proofs, my poor child, proofs. That foreign tangle of his...'

'You speak of Nevil, papa?'

'It's a common scandal over London. That Frenchwoman was found at Lord Romfrey's house; Lady Romfrey cloaked it. I believe the woman would swear black's white to make Nevil Beauchamp appear an angel; and he's a desperately cunning hand with women. You doubt that.'

She had shuddered slightly.

'You won't doubt if I bring you proofs. Till I come back from Steynham, I ask you not to see him alone: not to go out to him.'

The colonel glanced at her windows.

Cecilia submitted to the request, out of breath, consenting to feel like a tutored girl, that she might conceal her guilty knowledge of what was to be seen through the windows.

'Now I'm off,' said he, and kissed her.