. 'Well,' said he, 'that's like sighting the
cliffs. But I don't feel home round me while the colonel is so strangely
prepossessed. For a high-spirited gentleman like your father to approve,
or at least accept, an act so barbarous is incomprehensible. Speak to
him, Cecilia, will you? Let him know your ideas.'

She assented. He said instantly, 'Persuade him to speak to my uncle
Everard.'

She was tempted to smile.

'I must do only what I think wise, if I am to be of service, Nevil.'

'True, but paint that scene to him. An old man, utterly defenceless,
making no defence! a cruel error. The colonel can't, or he doesn't,
clearly get it inside him, otherwise I'm certain it would revolt him:
just as I am certain my uncle Everard is at this moment a stone-blind
man. If he has done a thing, he can't question it, won't examine it. The
thing becomes a part of him, as much as his hand or his head. He 's a
man of the twelfth century. Your father might be helped to understand
him first.'

'Yes,' she said, not very warmly, though sadly.

'Tell the colonel how it must have been brought about. For Cecil
Baskelett called on Dr. Shrapnel two days before Mr. Romfrey stood at
his gate.'

The name of Cecil caused her to draw in her shoulders in a half-shudder.
'It may indeed be Captain Baskelett who set this cruel thing in motion!'

'Then point that out to your father, said he, perceiving a chance of
winning her to his views through a concrete object of her dislike, and
cooling toward the woman who betrayed a vulgar characteristic of her
sex; who was merely woman, unable sternly to recognize the doing of a
foul wrong because of her antipathy, until another antipathy enlightened
her.

He wanted in fact a ready-made heroine, and did not give her credit
for the absence of fire in her blood, as well as for the unexercised
imagination which excludes young women from the power to realize
unwonted circumstances. We men walking about the world have perhaps no
more imagination of matters not domestic than they; but what we have is
quick with experience: we see the thing we hear of: women come to it how
they can.

Cecilia was recommended to weave a narrative for her father, and
ultimately induce him, if she could, to give a gentleman's opinion of
the case to Mr. Romfrey.

Her sensitive ear caught a change of tone in the directions she
received. 'Your father will say so and so: answer him with this and
that.' Beauchamp supplied her with