n black earnest and have humour.' He cited his old favourite, the black
and bright lecturer on Heroes. 'You have read him, I know, Cecilia.
Well, Dr. Shrapnel is another, who writes in his own style, not the
leading-article style or modern pulpit stuff. He writes to rouse.'

'He does that to my temper,' said the colonel.

'Perhaps here and there he might offend Cecilia's taste,' Beauchamp
pursued for her behoof. 'Everything depends on the mouthpiece. I should
not like the letter to be read without my being by;--except by men: any
just-minded man may read it: Seymour Austin, for example. Every line is
a text to the mind of the writer. Let me call on you to-morrow.'

'To-morrow?' Colonel Halkett put on a thoughtful air. 'To-morrow we're
off to the island for a couple of days; and there's Lord Croyston's
garden party, and the Yacht Ball. Come this evening-dine with us. No
reading of letters, please. I can't stand it, Nevil.'

The invitation was necessarily declined by a gentleman who could not
expect to be followed by supplies of clothes and linen for evening wear
that day.

'Ah, we shall see you some day or other,' said the colonel.

Cecilia was less alive to Beauchamp's endeavour to prepare her for the
harsh words in the letter than to her father's insincerity. She would
have asked her friend to come in the morning next day, but for the dread
of deepening her blush.

'Do you intend to start so early in the morning, papa?' she ventured to
say; and he replied, 'As early as possible.'

'I don't know what news I shall have in Bevisham, or I would engage to
run over to the island,' said Beauchamp, with a flattering persistency
or singular obtuseness.

'You will dance,' he subsequently observed to Cecilia, out of the heart
of some reverie. He had been her admiring partner on the night before
the drive from Itchincope into Bevisham, and perhaps thought of her
graceful dancing at the Yacht Ball, and the contrast it would present to
his watch beside a sick man-struck down by one of his own family.

She could have answered, 'Not if you wish me not to'; while smiling at
the quaint sorrowfulness of his tone.

'Dance!' quoth Colonel Halkett, whose present temper discerned a healthy
antagonism to misanthropic Radicals in the performance, 'all young
people dance. Have you given over dancing?'

'Not entirely, colonel.'

Cecilia danced with Mr. Tuckham at the Yacht Ball, and was vividly
mindful of every slight incident lea