an exclamation of Blackburn
Tuckham's: 'Immorality of meat-eating? What nonsense are they up to
now?'

Beauchamp was inaudible, save in a word or two. As usual, he was the
solitary minority.

But how mournfully changed he was! She had not noticed it, agitated by
her own emotions as she had been, and at one time three parts frozen. He
was the ghost of the Nevil Beauchamp who had sprung on the deck of the
Esperanza out of Lieutenant Wilmore's boat, that sunny breezy day which
was the bright first chapter of her new life--of her late life, as it
seemed to her now, for she was dead to it, and another creature, the
coldest of the women of earth. She felt sensibly cold, coveted warmth,
flung a shawl on her shoulders, and sat in a corner of her room, hidden
and shivering beside the open window, till long after the gentlemen had
ceased to speak.

How much he must have suffered of late! The room she had looked to as
a refuge from Nevil was now her stronghold against the man whom she had
incredibly accepted. She remained there, the victim of a heart malady,
under the term of headache. Feeling entrapped, she considered that she
must have been encircled and betrayed. She looked back on herself as a
giddy figure falling into a pit: and in the pit she lay.

And how vile to have suspected of unfaithfulness and sordidness
the generous and stedfast man of earth! He never abandoned a common
friendship. His love of his country was love still, whatever the form it
had taken. His childlike reliance on effort and outspeaking, for which
men laughed at him, was beautiful.

Where am I? she cried amid her melting images of him, all dominated by
his wan features. She was bound fast, imprisoned and a slave. Even Mr.
Austin had conspired against him: for only she read Nevil justly. His
defence of Dr. Shrapnel filled her with an envy that no longer maligned
the object of it, but was humble, and like the desire of the sick to
creep into sunshine.

The only worthy thing she could think of doing was (it must be mentioned
for a revelation of her fallen state, and, moreover, she was not lusty
of health at the moment) to abjure meat. The body loathed it, and
consequently the mind of the invalided lady shrank away in horror of the
bleeding joints, and the increasingly fierce scramble of Christian souls
for the dismembered animals: she saw the innocent pasturing beasts, she
saw the act of slaughter. She had actually sweeping before her sight a
spect