d up in it to wave adieu to her, she thought his
face and figure a perfect example of an English gentleman in his prime.

Captain Baskelett requested the favour of five minutes of conversation
with Miss Halkett before he followed Mr. Austin, on his way to Steynham.

She returned from that colloquy to her father and Mr. Tuckham. The
colonel looked straight in her face, with an elevation of the brows.
To these points of interrogation she answered with a placid fall of her
eyelids. He sounded a note of approbation in his throat.

All the company having departed, Mr. Tuckham for the first time spoke
of his interview with his kinsman Beauchamp. Yesterday evening he had
slurred it, as if he had nothing to relate, except the finding of an
old schoolfellow at Dr. Shrapnel's named Lydiard, a man of ability fool
enough to have turned author on no income. But that which had appeared
to Miss Halkett a want of observancy, became attributable to depth of
character on its being clear that he had waited for the departure of
the transient guests of the house, to pour forth his impressions without
holding up his kinsman to public scorn. He considered Shrapnel mad and
Beauchamp mad. No such grotesque old monster as Dr. Shrapnel had he seen
in the course of his travels. He had never listened to a madman running
loose who was at all up to Beauchamp. At a loss for words to paint him,
he said: 'Beauchamp seems to have a head like a firework manufactory,
he's perfectly pyrocephalic.' For an example of Dr. Shrapnel's talk:
'I happened,' said Mr. Tuckham, 'casually, meaning no harm, and not
supposing I was throwing a lighted match on powder, to mention the
word Providence. I found myself immediately confronted by
Shrapnel--overtopped, I should say. He is a lank giant of about seven
feet in height; the kind of show man that used to go about in caravans
over the country; and he began rocking over me like a poplar in a gale,
and cries out: "Stay there! away with that! Providence? Can you set a
thought on Providence, not seeking to propitiate it? And have you not
there the damning proof that you are at the foot of an Idol?"--The old
idea about a special Providence, I suppose. These fellows have nothing
new but their trimmings. And he went on with: "Ay, invisible," and his
arm chopping, "but an Idol! an Idol!"--I was to think of "nought but
Laws." He admitted there might be one above the Laws. "To realize him
is to fry the brains in their pan," says