that, we all think, was particularly ungrateful: now, was it not?'

'If the countess--if ingratitude had anything to do with it,' said
Cecilia.

She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently.

Her boudoir was empty: Beauchamp had departed. She recollected his
look at her, and turned over the leaves of the book he had been hastily
scanning, and had condescended to approve of. On the two pages where
the paper-cutter was fixed she perceived small pencil dots under certain
words. Read consecutively, with a participle termination struck out to
convey his meaning, they formed the pathetically ungrammatical line:

'Hear: none: but: accused: false.'

Treble dots were under the word 'to-morrow.' He had scored the margin of
the sentences containing his dotted words, as if in admiration of their
peculiar wisdom.

She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of
communication. The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the adept
intriguer--French-taught!

In the course of the evening her cousin remarked:

'Captain Beauchamp must see merit in things undiscoverable by my poor
faculties. I will show you a book he has marked.'

'Did you see it? I was curious to examine it,' interposed Cecilia; 'and
I am as much at a loss as you to understand what could have attracted
him. One sentence...'

'About the sheikh in the stables, where he accused the pretended
physician? Yes, what was there in that?'

'Where is the book?' said Mrs. Grancey.

'Not here, I think.' Cecilia glanced at the drawing-room book-table,
and then at Mr. Austin, the victim of an unhappy love in his youth, and
unhappy about her, as her father had said. Seymour Austin was not one
to spread the contagion of intrigue! She felt herself caught by it, even
melting to feel enamoured of herself in consequence, though not loving
Beauchamp the more.

'This newspaper, if it's not merely an airy project, will be ruination,'
said Tuckham. 'The fact is, Beauchamp has no bend in him. He can't meet
a man without trying a wrestle, and as long as he keeps his stiffness,
he believes he has won. I've heard an oculist say that the eye that
doesn't blink ends in blindness, and he who won't bend breaks. It's
a pity, for he's a fine fellow. A Radical daily Journal of Shrapnel's
colour, to educate the people by giving them an interest in the country!
Goodness, what a delusion! and what a waste of money! He'll not be able
to carry it on a couple of years. And the