health; he fears you have overdone it in nursing Captain Beauchamp!

'I must be off after him,' said Beauchamp, and began trembling so that
he could not stir.

The colonel knew the pain and shame of that condition of weakness to a
man who has been strong and swift, and said: 'Seven-league boots are not
to be caught. You'll see him soon. Why, I thought some letter of yours
had fetched him here! I gave you all the credit of it.'

'No, he deserves it all himself--all,' said Beauchamp and with a dubious
eye on Jenny Denham: 'You see, we were unfair.'

The 'we' meant 'you' to her sensitiveness; and probably he did mean it
for 'you': for as he would have felt, so he supposed that his uncle must
have felt, Jenny's coldness was much the crueller. Her features, which
in animation were summer light playing upon smooth water, could be
exceedingly cold in repose: the icier to those who knew her, because
they never expressed disdain. No expression of the baser sort belonged
to them. Beauchamp was intimate with these delicately-cut features; he
would have shuddered had they chilled on him. He had fallen in love with
his uncle; he fancied she ought to have done so too; and from his excess
of sympathy he found her deficient in it.

He sat himself down to write a hearty letter to his 'dear old uncle
Everard.'

Jenny left him, to go to her chamber and cry.

CHAPTER LIV. THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY

This clear heart had cause for tears. Her just indignation with Lord
Romfrey had sustained her artificially hitherto now that it was erased,
she sank down to weep. Her sentiments toward Lydiard had been very like
Cecilia Halkett's in favour of Mr. Austin; with something more to warm
them on the part of the gentleman. He first had led her mind in the
direction of balanced thought, when, despite her affection for Dr.
Shrapnel, her timorous maiden wits, unable to contend with the copious
exclamatory old politician, opposed him silently. Lydiard had helped her
tongue to speak, as well as her mind to rational views; and there
had been a bond of union in common for them in his admiration of her
father's writings. She had known that he was miserably yoked, and had
respected him when he seemed inclined for compassion without wooing her
for tenderness. He had not trifled with her, hardly flattered; he had
done no more than kindle a young girl's imaginative liking. The pale
flower of imagination, fed by dews, not by sunshine, was born droopi