nds, and escape,
when you have only to decide to do it? We naturally ask why. Those
martyrs of love or religion are madmen. Altogether, Nevil's adjurations
and supplications, his threats of wrath and appeals to reason, were an
odd mixture. 'He won't lose a chance while there's breath in his body,'
Everard said, quite good-humouredly, though he deplored that the chance
for the fellow to make his hero-parade in society, and haply catch an
heiress, was waning. There was an heiress at Steynham, on her way with
her father to Italy, very anxious to see her old friend Nevil--Cecilia
Halkett--and very inquisitive this young lady of sixteen was to know the
cause of his absence. She heard of it from Cecil.

'And one morning last week mademoiselle was running away with him, and
the next morning she was married to her marquis!'

Cecil was able to tell her that.

'I used to be so fond of him,' said the ingenuous young lady. She had to
thank Nevil for a Circassian dress and pearls, which he had sent to her
by the hands of Mrs. Culling--a pretty present to a girl in the nursery,
she thought, and in fact she chose to be a little wounded by the cause of
his absence.

'He's a good creature-really,' Cecil spoke on his cousin's behalf. 'Mad;
he always will be mad. A dear old savage; always amuses me. He does! I
get half my entertainment from him.'

Captain Baskelett was gifted with the art, which is a fine and a precious
one, of priceless value in society, and not wanting a benediction upon it
in our elegant literature, namely, the art of stripping his fellow-man
and so posturing him as to make every movement of the comical wretch
puppet-like, constrained, stiff, and foolish. He could present you
heroical actions in that fashion; for example:

'A long-shanked trooper, bearing the name of John Thomas Drew, was
crawling along under fire of the batteries. Out pops old Nevil, tries to
get the man on his back. It won't do. Nevil insists that it's exactly one
of the cases that ought to be, and they remain arguing about it like a
pair of nine-pins while the Muscovites are at work with the bowls. Very
well. Let me tell you my story. It's perfectly true, I give you my word.
So Nevil tries to horse Drew, and Drew proposes to horse Nevil, as at
school. Then Drew offers a compromise. He would much rather have crawled
on, you know, and allowed the shot to pass over his head; but he's a
Briton, old Nevil the same; but old Nevil's peculiarity is th