we can
get.'

'My best wishes for your success, and you and I will not talk of politics
any more, papa. I hope Nevil will come often, for his own good; he will
meet his own set of people here. And if he should dogmatize so much as to
rouse our apathy to denounce his principles, we will remember that we are
British, and can be sweet-blooded in opposition. Perhaps he may change,
even tra le tre ore a le quattro: electioneering should be a lesson. From
my recollection of Blackburn Tuckham, he was a boisterous boy.'

'He writes uncommonly clever letters home to his aunt Beauchamp. She has
handed them to me to read,' said the colonel. 'I do like to see tolerably
solid young fellows: they give one some hope of the stability of the
country.'

'They are not so interesting to study, and not half so amusing,' said
Cecilia.

Colonel Halkett muttered his objections to the sort of amusement
furnished by firebrands.

'Firebrand is too strong a word for poor Nevil,' she remonstrated.

In that estimate of the character of Nevil Beauchamp, Cecilia soon had to
confess that she had been deceived, though not by him.

CHAPTER XVII

HIS FRIEND AND FOE

Looking from her window very early on a Sunday morning, Miss Halkett saw
Beauchamp strolling across the grass of the park. She dressed hurriedly
and went out to greet him, smiling and thanking him for his friendliness
in coming.

He said he was delighted, and appeared so, but dashed the sweetness. 'You
know I can't canvass on Sundays!

'I suppose not,' she replied. 'Have you walked up from Bevisham? You must
be tired.'

'Nothing tires me,' said he.

With that they stepped on together.

Mount Laurels, a fair broad house backed by a wood of beeches and firs,
lay open to view on the higher grassed knoll of a series of descending
turfy mounds dotted with gorseclumps, and faced South-westerly along the
run of the Otley river to the gleaming broad water and its opposite
border of forest, beyond which the downs of the island threw long
interlapping curves. Great ships passed on the line of the water to and
fro; and a little mist of masts of the fishing and coasting craft by
Otley village, near the river's mouth, was like a web in air. Cecilia led
him to her dusky wood of firs, where she had raised a bower for a place
of poetical contemplation and reading when the clear lapping salt river
beneath her was at high tide. She could hail the Esperanza from that
cover; she could s