n contravention of a
wild lover's vaporous extravagances. Why had he not come with her? The
disappointed ox put the question in a wavering drop of the cheers of the
villagers at the sight of the carriage without their bleeding hero. Mr.
Romfrey, at his hall-doors, merely screwed his eyebrows; for it was the
quality of this gentleman to foresee most human events, and his capacity
to stifle astonishment when they trifled with his prognostics. Rosamund
had left Nevil fast bound in the meshes of the young French sorceress, no
longer leading, but submissively following, expecting blindly, seeing
strange new virtues in the lurid indication of what appeared to border on
the reverse. How could she plead for her infatuated darling to one who
was common sense in person?

Everard's pointed interrogations reduced her to speak defensively,
instead of attacking and claiming his aid for the poor enamoured young
man. She dared not say that Nevil continued to be absent because he was
now encouraged by the girl to remain in attendance on her, and was more
than half inspired to hope, and too artfully assisted to deceive the
count and the marquis under the guise of simple friendship. Letters
passed between them in books given into one another's hands with an
audacious openness of the saddest augury for the future of the pair, and
Nevil could be so lost to reason as to glory in Renee's intrepidity,
which he justified by their mutual situation, and cherished for a proof
that she was getting courage. In fine, Rosamund abandoned her task of
pleading. Nevil's communications gave the case a worse and worse aspect:
Renee was prepared to speak to her father; she delayed it; then the two
were to part; they were unable to perform the terrible sacrifice and slay
their last hope; and then Nevil wrote of destiny--language hitherto
unknown to him, evidently the tongue of Renee. He slipped on from Italy
to France. His uncle was besieged by a series of letters, and his cousin,
Cecil Baskelett, a captain in England's grand reserve force--her Horse
Guards, of the Blue division--helped Everard Romfrey to laugh over them.

It was not difficult, alack! Letters of a lover in an extremity of love,
crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of
the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening
ecclesiastical judges. Why go to the fire when a recantation will save
you from it? Why not break the excruciating faggot-ba