what had
dissatisfied, distressed, and wounded her. She was loving him in
emulation of his devotedness to another person: and that other was
a revolutionary common people's doctor! an infidel, a traitor to his
country's dearest interests! But Nevil loved him, and it had become
impossible for her not to covet the love, or to think of the old
offender without the halo cast by Nevil's attachment being upon him.
So intensely was she moved by her intertwisting reflections that in
an access of bodily fever she stood up and moved before the glass, to
behold the image of the woman who could be the victim of these childish
emotions: and no wonderful contrast struck her eyes; she appeared to
herself as poor and small as they. How could she aspire to a man like
Nevil Beauchamp? If he had made her happy by wooing her she would not
have adored him as she did now. He likes my hair, she said, smoothing
it out, and then pressing her temples, like one insane. Two minutes
afterward she was telling Rosamund her head ached less.

'This terrible Dr. Shrapnel!' Rosamund exclaimed, but reported that no
loud voices were raised in the dining-room.

Colonel Halkett came to see his daughter, full of anxiety and curiosity.
Affairs had been peaceful below, for he was ignorant of the expedition
to Bevisham. On hearing of it he frowned, questioned Cecilia as to
whether she had set foot on that man's grounds, then said: 'Ah! well, we
leave to-morrow: I must go, I have business at home; I can't delay it.
I sanctioned no calling there, nothing of the kind. From Steynham to
Bevisham? Goodness, it's rank madness. I'm not astonished you're sick
and ill.'

He waited till he was assured Cecilia had no special matter to relate,
and recommending her to drink the tea Mrs. Culling had made for her, and
then go to bed and sleep, he went down to the drawing-room, charged with
the worst form of hostility toward Nevil, the partly diplomatic.

Cecilia smiled at her father's mention of sleep. She was in the contest
of the two men, however inanimately she might be lying overhead, and the
assurance in her mind that neither of them would give ground, so similar
were they in their tenacity of will, dissimilar in all else, dragged her
this way and that till she swayed lifeless between them. One may be as
a weed of the sea while one's fate is being decided. To love is to be on
the sea, out of sight of land: to love a man like Nevil Beauchamp is to
be on the sea in tempe