n informed that Dr. Shrapnel was a big one. Lord
Croyston's favourite country residence was in the neighbourhood of
old Mrs. Beauchamp, on the Upper Thames. Speaking of Nevil Beauchamp a
second time, he alluded to his relations with his great-aunt, said his
prospects were bad, that she had interdicted her house to him, and was
devoted to her other great-nephew.

'And so she should be,' said Colonel Halkett. 'That's a young man who's
an Englishman without French gunpowder notions in his head. He works for
us down at the mine in Wales a good part of the year, and has tided us
over a threatening strike there: gratuitously: I can't get him to accept
anything. I can't think why he does it.'

'He'll have plenty,' said Lord Croyston, levelling his telescope to
sight the racing cutters.

Cecilia fancied she descried Nevil's Petrel, dubbed Curlew, to Eastward,
and had a faint gladness in the thought that his knowledge of his uncle
Everard's deed of violence would be deferred for another two or three
hours.

She tried to persuade her father to wait for Nevil, and invite him to
dine at Mount Laurels, and break the news to him gently. Colonel
Halkett argued that in speaking of the affair he should certainly not
commiserate the man who had got his deserts, and saying this he burst
into a petty fury against the epistle of Dr. Shrapnel, which appeared
to be growing more monstrous in proportion to his forgetfulness of the
details, as mountains gather vastness to the eye at a certain remove.
Though he could not guess the reason for Mr. Romfrey's visit to
Bevisham, he was, he said, quite prepared to maintain that Mr. Romfrey
had a perfect justification for his conduct.

Cecilia hinted at barbarism. The colonel hinted at high police duties
that gentlemen were sometimes called on to perform for the protection of
society. 'In defiance of its laws?' she asked; and he answered: 'Women
must not be judging things out of their sphere,' with the familiar
accent on 'women' which proves their inferiority. He was rarely guilty
of it toward his daughter. Evidently he had resolved to back Mr. Romfrey
blindly. That epistle of Dr. Shrapnel's merited condign punishment
and had met with it, he seemed to rejoice in saying: and this was his
abstract of the same: 'An old charlatan who tells his dupe to pray every
night of his life for the beheading of kings and princes, and scattering
of the clergy, and disbanding the army, that he and his rabble may fa