ish I were eloquent; I wish I
could move you.'

Cecilia turned her face to him. 'I listen to you with pleasure, Nevil;
but please do not read the letter.'

'Yes; a paragraph or two I must read.'

She rose.

He was promptly by her side. 'If I say I ask you for one sign that you
care for me in some degree?'

'I have not for a moment ceased to be your friend, Nevil, since I was a
child.'

'But if you allow yourself to be so prejudiced against my best friend
that you will not hear a word of his writing, are you friendly?'

'Feminine, and obstinate,' said Cecilia.

'Give me your eyes an instant. I know you think me reckless and lawless:
now is not that true? You doubt whether, if a lady gave me her hand I
should hold to it in perfect faith. Or, perhaps not that: but you do
suspect I should be capable of every sophism under the sun to persuade a
woman to break her faith, if it suited me: supposing some passion to be
at work. Men who are open to passion have to be taught reflection before
they distinguish between the woman they should sue for love because she
would be their best mate, and the woman who has thrown a spell on them.
Now, what I beg you to let me read you in this letter is a truth nobly
stated that has gone into my blood, and changed me. It cannot fail, too,
in changeing your opinion of Dr. Shrapnel. It makes me wretched that
you should be divided from me in your ideas of him. I, you see--and I
confess I think it my chief title to honour--reverence him.'

'I regret that I am unable to utter the words of Ruth,' said Cecilia, in
a low voice. She felt rather tremulously; opposed only to the letter
and the writer of it, not at all to Beauchamp, except on account of
his idolatry of the wicked revolutionist. Far from having a sense of
opposition to Beauchamp; she pitied him for his infatuation, and in her
lofty mental serenity she warmed to him for the seeming boyishness
of his constant and extravagant worship of the man, though such an
enthusiasm cast shadows on his intellect.

He was reading a sentence of the letter.

'I hear nothing but the breeze, Nevil,' she said.

The breeze fluttered the letter-sheets: they threatened to fly. Cecilia
stepped two paces away.

'Hark; there is a military band playing on the pier,' said she. 'I am so
fond of hearing music a little off shore.'

Beauchamp consigned the letter to his pocket.

'You are not offended, Nevil?'

'Dear me, no. You haven't a mind for tonic