uchamp's face haunted her in her room. She heard the controversy proceeding below, and an exc

in a word or two. As usual,

eranza out of Lieutenant Wilmore's boat, that sunny breezy day which was the bright first chapter of her new life-of her late life, as it seemed to her now, for she was dead to it, and another creature, the coldest of

had incredibly accepted. She remained there, the victim of a heart malady, under the term of headache. Feeling entrapped, she considered

He never abandoned a common friendship. His love of his country was love still, whatever the form it h

a slave. Even Mr. Austin had conspired against him: for only she read Nevil justly. His defence of Dr. Shrapnel filled her w

bleeding joints, and the increasingly fierce scramble of Christian souls for the dismembered animals: she saw the innocent pasturing beasts, she saw the act of slaughter. She had actually sweeping before her sight a spectacle of the ludicrous-terrific, in the shape of an entire co

treated the subject without question of man's taking that which he has conquered. Poets and philosophers did the same. Again she beheld Nevil Beauchamp solitary in the adverse rank to the world;-to his countrymen especially. But that it was no material cause

t to be t

ement and her sin in worshipping herself, and recognized that the aim at an ideal life closely approaches, or easily inclines, to self-worship; to which the lady was woman and artist enough to have had no objection, but that therein visibly she discerned the retributive vain longings, in the guise of high individual superiority and distinction, that had thwarted her with Nevil Beauchamp, nev

er earlier days down to her present regrets. It hunted all the saints in the calendar

eauchamp, who had gone to the parents of the dead girl, and gathered the information that they were a consu

onaries of medicine attracted her. Blackburn Tuckham, a model for an elected lover who is not beloved, promised to procure all sorts of treatises for her: no man could have been so deferential to a diseased mind. Beyond calling her by her Christian name, he did nothing to distress her with the broad aspect of their new relations together. He and Mr. Austin departed from Mount Laurel

nor the desire to put it off, than Cecilia's shunning of such a day. The naming of it numbed her blood like a snakebite. Yet she openly acknowledged her engagement; an

her admit to herself that she belonged irrevocably to him, while her thoughts were upon Beauchamp. With a respectful gravity he submitted to her perusal a collection of treatises on diet, classed pro and con., and paged and pencil-marked to simplify her study of the question. They sketched in company; she played music to hi

are like the majority of religious minds: they can't believe without seeing and touching. That is to say, they don't believe in the abstract at all, but they go to work blindly by agitating, and proselytizing, and persecuting to get together a mass they can believe in. You see it in their way of arguing; it's half done with the fist. Lydiard tells me he left him last in a horrib

ut "the shadow of an old hat and

Republicans are

eauchamp, that what we've grown up well with, powerfully wit

s, who had, he affirmed of his own knowledge, marr

f the earl's expectations of a son and heir. The earl wrote to Colonel H

ve news!' the co

ears in the peace of home, where her father would perpetually speak of the day to be fixed. Sailing the sea on a cruise was like the gazing at wonderful colours of a Western sky: an oblivion of earthly dates and obligations. What mattered it that there were gales in August?

e first wall-waves of the chalk-race, a throw beyond the peaked cliffs edged with cormorants, and were really tasting sea. Cecilia reclined on deck, wrapped in shawl and waterproof. As the Alpine climber claims the upper air, she had t

lling us in these times, upon an appreciation of which this history depends, one turns at whiles a languishing glance toward the vast potential mood, pluperfect tense. For Nevil Beauchamp was on board the cutter, steering her, with Dr. Shrapnel and Lydiard in the well, and if an accident had happened to cutter or schooner, what else might not have happened? Cecilia gathered it from Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, whom, to her surprise and pleasure, she found at Romfrey Castle. H

's a sailor!' sa

e from her chair

id he was a sailor, I said nothing else. He is a sailor, and he's fit for noth

moment, and wen

, at a window overlooking the swelling woods of

to me,' sa

her, startled. Ros

chanced that Beauchamp's name was mentioned did she cast that quick supplicating nervous glance a

all belief, there was a kernel of doubt in it, which was lively when her frame was enlivened, and she then thought of the giving birth to this unloved child, which was to disinherit the man she loved, in whose interest solely (so she could presume to think, because it had been her motive reason) she had married the earl. She had no wish to be a mother; but that prospect, and the dread attaching to it at her time of life, she could have submitted to for Lord Romfrey's sake. It struck her like a scoffer's blow that she, the one woman on earth loving Nevil, should have become the instrument for dispossessing him. The revulsion of her feelings enlightened her so far as to suggest, without enabling her to fathom him, that instead of having cleverly swayed Lord Romfrey, she had been his dupe, or a blind accomplice; and though she was too humane a woman to think of punishing him, she had so much to forgive that the trifles daily and at any instant added to the load, flushed her resentment, like fresh lights showing new features and gigantic outlines. Nevil's loss of Cecilia she had anticipated; she had heard of it when she was lying in physical and mental apathy at Steynham. Lord Romfrey had repeated to her the nature of his replies to the searching parental questions

significant evasiveness. She put her arms round Cecilia's neck:

Cecilia, musically clea

tude to let her weep. Bound thus to a weaker man than Blackburn Tuckham, though he had been more warmly esteemed, her fancy would have drifted away over the deeps, perhaps her cherished loyal

he could practise, not explain it. She bowed to Lady Romfrey's praises of Nevil, suffered her hands to be wrung, her heart to be touched, all but an avowal of her love of him to be wrested from her, and not the less did she retain her cold resolution to marry to please her father and fulfil her pledge. In truth, it was too late to speak of Renee to her now. It did not beseem Cecilia to remember that she had ever been a victim of jealousy; and while confessing to many errors, because she felt them, and gained a necessary strength from them-in the comfort of the consciousness of pain, for example, wh

of that story of Renee. A wooden young woman, or a galvanized (sweet to the writer, either of them, as to the reader-so moveable they are!) would have s

, wasted, ill, unloved; he has lost you-I am

ere is nothing to lead us to suppose that Nevil is unwell

o, to get nearer to Nevil-I cannot have peace! His heart has turned from me. He despises me. If I had spoken to Lord Romfrey at Steynham, as he

he is very ill

laimed; 'it is by not

. There had been a correspondence between Miss Denham and the countess. Letters from Bevisham had su

e blame of Lord Ro

it, and I hope he will. There'll be a crisis, and then he can tell her good news-a little illness and all right now! Of course,' the colonel continued buoyantly, 'Nevil will recover; he's a tough wiry young fellow, but p

cowardice to conceal

rom fretting,'

y would confide in her and trust to

ought that Lord Ro

ons for the regulating of her habits, walked with him, lay down for the afternoon's rest, appeared amused when he laboured to that effect, and did her utmost to subdue the worm devouring her heart but the hours of the delivery of the letter-post were fatal to her. Her woeful: 'No letter for me!' was piteous. When that was heard no longer, her silence and famished gaze chilled Cecilia. At night Rosamund eyed her husband expressionlessly, with her head leaning back in her chair, to the sorrow of the ladies beholding her. Ultimately the contagion of her settled misery took hold of Cecilia. Colonel Halkett was induced by

ee-shore. You don't see what frets her, colonel. For years she has been bent on Nevil's marriage. It's off: but if you catch Cecilia by the hand and bring he

impossible, Romfrey

s of the den died starving, and the man sickened of a fever; and Nevil goes in and sits with him! Out of that tangle of folly is my house to be struck down? It looks as if the fellow with his infernal "humanity," were the bad genius of an old nurse's tale. He's a good fellow, colonel, he means well. This fever will cure him, they say it sobers like bloodletting. He's a gallant fellow; you know that. He fought to the skeleton in our last big war. On

s the truth she ought to hear, Romfrey; indeed it is, if you 'l

nd saw your schooner pass, and put into some port, and began falling right and left, and they got him back to Shrapnel's: and here it is-that if you

me to force my daughter's i

loves the

gaged to M

the man

, my de

onth's past. You'll own,' he added mildly after his thunder, 'I'm not much of the despot Nevil calls me. She has not a wish I don't supply. I'm at her

this young son springing up on an earth decaying and dark, absorbed him. This reviver of his ancient line must not be lost.

growing apprehension concerning the countess and Nevil, tore her to pieces. Even if she could have conspired with the earl to hoodwink his wife, her strong sense told her it would be fruitl

d the moveless flag that hung in folds by the mast above it. 'She has given me her promise to avoid

own, and gave way to so