t!'

'I dare say. Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses.'

'I ask you, my lord, how I am to carry on Holdesbury?'

'Give it up.'

'I shall have to,' said Beauchamp, striving to be prudent.

'There isn't a doubt of it,' said his uncle, upon a series of nods
diminishing in their depth until his head assumed a droll interrogative
fixity, with an air of 'What next?'

CHAPTER XXXIX. BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA

Beauchamp quitted the house without answering as to what next, and
without seeing Rosamund.

In the matter of money, as of his physical health, he wanted to do too
much at once; he had spent largely of both in his efforts to repair
the injury done to Dr. Shrapnel. He was overworked, anxious, restless,
craving for a holiday somewhere in France, possibly; he was all but
leaping on board the boat at times, and, unwilling to leave his dear
old friend who clung to him, he stayed, keeping his impulses below the
tide-mark which leads to action, but where they do not yield peace of
spirit. The tone of Renee's letters filled him with misgivings. She
wrote word that she had seen M. d'Henriel for the first time since his
return from Italy, and he was much changed, and inclined to thank Roland
for the lesson he had received from him at the sword's point. And next
she urged Beauchamp to marry, so that he and she might meet, as if she
felt a necessity for it. 'I shall love your wife; teach her to think
amiably of me,' she said. And her letter contained womanly sympathy for
him in his battle with his uncle. Beauchamp thought of his experiences
of Cecilia's comparative coldness. He replied that there was no prospect
of his marrying; he wished there were one of meeting! He forbore from
writing too fervently, but he alluded to happy days in Normandy,
and proposed to renew them if she would say she had need of him. He
entreated her to deal with him frankly; he reminded her that she must
constantly look to him, as she had vowed she would, when in any kind of
trouble; and he declared to her that he was unchanged. He meant, of an
unchanged disposition to shield and serve her; but the review of her
situation, and his knowledge of her quick blood, wrought him to some
jealous lover's throbs, which led him to impress his unchangeableness
upon her, to bind her to that standard.

She declined his visit: not now; 'not yet': and for that he presumed to
chide her, half-sincerely. As far as he knew he stood against