tion! Had Shrapnel been commonly
reasonable he would have apologized to Mr. Romfrey, or had Mr. Romfrey,
he would not have resorted to force to punish the supposed offender, or
had Nevil, he would have held his peace until he had gained his bride.
As it was; the folly of the three knocked at her heart, uniting to bring
the heavy accusation against one poor woman, quite in the old way: the
Who is she? of the mocking Spaniard at mention of a social catastrophe.
Rosamund had a great deal of the pride of her sex, and she resented any
slur on it. She felt almost superciliously toward Mr. Romfrey and Nevil
for their not taking hands to denounce the plotter, Cecil Baskelett.
They seemed a pair of victims to him, nearly as much so as the wretched
man Shrapnel. It was their senselessness which made her guilty! And
simply because she had uttered two or three exclamations of dislike of
a revolutionary and infidel she was compelled to groan under her present
oppression! Is there anything to be hoped of men? Rosamund thought
bitterly of Nevil's idea of their progress. Heaven help them! But the
unhappy creatures have ceased to look to a heaven for help.

We see the consequence of it in this Shrapnel complication.

Three men: and one struck down; the other defeated in his benevolent
intentions; the third sacrificing fortune and happiness: all three owing
their mischance to one or other of the vague ideas disturbing men's
heads! Where shall we look for mother wit?--or say, common suckling's
instinct? Not to men, thought Rosamund.

She was listening to the voices of Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp in a fever.
Ordinarily the lord of Steynham was not out of his bed later than twelve
o'clock at night. His door opened at half-past one. Not a syllable was
exchanged by the couple in the hall. They had fought it out. Mr. Romfrey
came upstairs alone, and on the closing of his chamber-door she slipped
down to Beauchamp and had a dreadful hour with him that subdued her
disposition to sit in judgement upon men. The unavailing attempt to move
his uncle had wrought him to the state in which passionate thoughts pass
into speech like heat to flame. Rosamund strained her mental sight
to gain a conception of his prodigious horror of the treatment of Dr.
Shrapnel that she might think him sane: and to retain a vestige of
comfort in her bosom she tried to moderate and make light of as much as
she could conceive. Between the two efforts she had no sense but that