to Lydiard, 'those parsons--not bad creatures in private
life: there was one in Madeira I took a personal liking to--but they're
utterly ignorant of what men feel to them--more ignorant than women!'
Mr. Tuckham and Mrs. Lydiard would not listen to his foolish objections;
nor were they ever mentioned to Jenny. Apparently the commission of the
act of marriage was to force Beauchamp from all his positions one by
one.

'The education of that child?' Mrs. Lydiard said to her husband.

He considered that the mother would prevail.

Cecilia feared she would not.

'Depend upon it, he'll make himself miserable if he can,' said Tuckham.

That gentleman, however, was perpetually coming fuming from arguments
with Beauchamp, and his opinion was a controversialist's. His common
sense was much afflicted. 'I thought marriage would have stopped
all those absurdities,' he said, glaring angrily, laughing, and then
frowning. 'I 've warned him I'll go out of my way to come across him if
he carries on his headlong folly. A man should accept his country for
what it is when he's born into it. Don't tell me he's a good fellow. I
know he is, but there 's an ass mounted on the good fellow. Talks of the
parsons! Why, they're men of education.'

'They couldn't steer a ship in a gale, though.'

'Oh! he's a good sailor. And let him go to sea,' said Tuckham. 'His
wife's a prize. He's hardly worthy of her. If she manages him she'll
deserve a monument for doing a public service.'

How fortunate it is for us that here and there we do not succeed in
wresting our temporary treasure from the grasp of the Fates!

This good old commonplace reflection came to Beauchamp while clasping
his wife's hand on the deck of the Esperanza, and looking up at the
mountains over the Gulf of Venice. The impression of that marvellous
dawn when he and Renee looked up hand-in-hand was ineffaceable, and pity
for the tender hand lost to him wrought in his blood, but Jenny was a
peerless wife; and though not in the music of her tongue, or in subtlety
of delicate meaning did she excel Renee, as a sober adviser she did, and
as a firm speaker; and she had homelier deep eyes, thoughtfuller brows.
The father could speculate with good hope of Jenny's child. Cecilia's
wealth, too, had gone over to the Tory party, with her incomprehensible
espousal of Tuckham. Let it go; let all go for dowerless Jenny!

It was (she dared to recollect it in her anguish) Jenny's choice to go
home