Nevil, you can guess
at a reason.'

A second trumpet blew very martially. Footmen came in search of Captain
Beauchamp. The alternative of breaking her pledged word to her father,
or of letting Nevil be burlesqued in the sight of the town, could no
longer be dallied with.

Cecilia said, 'Well, Nevil, then you shall hear it.'

Hereupon Captain Baskelett's groom informed Captain Beauchamp that he
was off.

'Yes,' Nevil said to Cecilia, 'tell me on board the yacht.'

'Nevil, you will be driving into the town with the second Tory candidate
of the borough.'

'Which? who?' Nevil 'asked.

'Your cousin Cecil.'

'Tell Captain Baskelett that I don't drive down till an hour later,'
Nevil said to the groom. 'Cecilia, you're my friend; I wish you were
more. I wish we didn't differ. I shall hope to change you--make you come
half-way out of that citadel of yours. This is my uncle Everard! I might
have made sure there'd be a blow from him! And Cecil! of all men for
a politician! Cecilia, think of it! Cecil Baskelett! I beg Seymour
Austin's pardon for having suspected him...'

Now sounded Captain Baskelett's trumpet.

Angry though he was, Beauchamp laughed. 'Isn't it exactly like the baron
to spring a mine of this kind?'

There was decidedly humour in the plot, and it was a lusty quarterstaff
blow into the bargain. Beauchamp's head rang with it. He could not
conceal the stunning effect it had on him. Gratitude and tenderness
toward Cecilia for saving him, at the cost of a partial breach of faith
that he quite understood, from the scandal of the public entry into
Bevisham on the Tory coach-box, alternated with his interjections
regarding his uncle Everard.

At eleven, Cecilia sat in her pony-carriage giving final directions to
Mrs. Devereux where to look out for the Esperanza and the schooner's
boat. 'Then I drive down alone,' Mrs. Devereux said.

The gentlemen were all off, and every available maid with them on
the coach-boxes, a brilliant sight that had been missed by Nevil and
Cecilia.

'Why, here's Lydiard!' said Nevil, supposing that Lydiard must be
approaching him with tidings of the second Tory candidate. But
Lydiard knew nothing of it. He was the bearer of a letter on foreign
paper--marked urgent, in Rosamund's hand--and similarly worded in the
well-known hand which had inscribed the original address of the letter
to Steynham.

Beauchamp opened it and read:

Chateau Tourdestelle