the poor anxious people of a little hope while he lives. Let
me have note paper and envelopes quickly: not black-edged.'

'Plain; that's right,' said Lord Romfrey.

Black appeared to him like the torch of death flying over the country.

'There may be hope,' he added.

She sighed: 'Oh! yes.'

'Gannet will do everything that man can do to save him.'

'He will, I am sure.'

'You don't keep watch in the room, my dear, do you?'

'Miss Denham allows me an hour there in the day: it is the only rest she
takes. She gives me her bedroom.'

'Ha: well: women!' ejaculated the earl, and paused. 'That sounded like
him!'

'At times,' murmured Cecilia. 'All yesterday! all through the night! and
to-day!'

'He'll be missed.'

Any sudden light of happier expectation that might have animated him
was extinguished by the flight of chatter following the cry which had
sounded like Beauchamp.

He went out into the rain, thinking that Beauchamp would be missed. The
fellow had bothered the world, but the world without him would be heavy
matter.

The hour was mid-day, workmen's meal-time. A congregation of shipyard
workmen and a multitude of children crowded near the door. In passing
through them, Lord Romfrey was besought for the doctor's report of
Commander Beauchamp, variously named Beesham, Bosham, Bitcham, Bewsham.
The earl heard his own name pronounced as he particularly disliked to
hear it--Rumfree. Two or three men scowled at him.

It had not occurred to him ever before in his meditations to separate
his blood and race from the common English; and he was not of a
character to dwell on fantastical and purposeless distinctions, but the
mispronunciation of his name and his nephew's at an instant when he was
thinking of Nevil's laying down his life for such men as these gross
excessive breeders, of ill shape and wooden countenance, pushed him to
reflections on the madness of Nevil in endeavouring to lift them up and
brush them up; and a curious tenderness for Nevil's madness worked in
his breast as he contrasted this much-abused nephew of his with our
general English--the so-called nobles, who were sunk in the mud of the
traders: the traders, who were sinking in the mud of the workmen: the
workmen, who were like harbour-flats at ebb tide round a stuck-fast
fleet of vessels big and little.

Decidedly a fellow like Nevil would be missed by him!

These English, huddling more and more in flocks, turning to lumps,
getting to b