icked up silly stories of him--a man who made enemies
recklessly!

Cecilia was petrified by a gentle tapping at her door. Her father called
to her, and she threw on her dressing-gown, and opened the door.

The colonel was in his riding-suit.

'I haven't slept a wink, and I find it's the same with you,' he said,
paining her with his distressed kind eyes. 'I ought not to have hinted
anything last night without proofs. Austin's as unhappy as I am.'

'At what, my dear papa, at what?' cried Cecilia.

'I ride over to Steynham this morning, and I shall bring you proofs, my
poor child, proofs. That foreign tangle of his...'

'You speak of Nevil, papa?'

'It's a common scandal over London. That Frenchwoman was found at Lord
Romfrey's house; Lady Romfrey cloaked it. I believe the woman would
swear black's white to make Nevil Beauchamp appear an angel; and he's a
desperately cunning hand with women. You doubt that.'

She had shuddered slightly.

'You won't doubt if I bring you proofs. Till I come back from Steynham,
I ask you not to see him alone: not to go out to him.'

The colonel glanced at her windows.

Cecilia submitted to the request, out of breath, consenting to feel like
a tutored girl, that she might conceal her guilty knowledge of what was
to be seen through the windows.

'Now I'm off,' said he, and kissed her.

'If you would accept Nevil's word!' she murmured.

'Not where women are concerned!'

He left her with this remark, which found no jealous response in her
heart, yet ranged over certain dispersed inflammable grains, like a
match applied to damp powder; again and again running in little leaps
of harmless firm keeping her alive to its existence, and surprising her
that it should not have been extinguished.

Beauchamp presented himself rather late in the afternoon, when Mr.
Austin and Blackburn Tuckham were sipping tea in Cecilia's boudoir with
that lady, and a cousin of her sex, by whom she was led to notice a
faint discoloration over one of his eyes, that was, considering whence
it came, repulsive to compassion. A blow at a Radical meeting! He spoke
of Dr. Shrapnel to Tuckham, and assuredly could not complain that the
latter was unsympathetic in regard to the old man's health, though when
he said, 'Poor old man! he fears he will die!' Tuckham rejoined: 'He had
better make his peace.'

'He fears he will die, because of his leaving Miss Denham unprotected,'
said Beauchamp.

'Well, she's a good-