n for women is to teach them to
rely on themselves.'

'Ah! well, I don't object, if I'm the man.'

'Because you and your set are absolutely uncivilized in your views of
women.'

'Common sense, Beauchamp!'

'Prey. You eye them as prey. And it comes of an idle aristocracy. You
have no faith in them, and they repay you for your suspicion.'

'All the same, Beauchamp, she ought not to be allowed to go about at
night with that fellow. "Rich and rare were the gems she wore": but that
was in Erin's isle, and if we knew the whole history, she'd better have
stopped at home. She's marvellously pretty, to my mind. She looks a
high-bred wench. Odd it is, Beauchamp, to see a lady's-maid now and then
catch the style of my lady. No, by Jove! I've known one or two--you
couldn't tell the difference! Not till you were intimate. I know one
would walk a minuet with a duchess. Of course--all the worse for her. If
you see that uncle of Miss Denham's--upon my honour, I should advise him:
I mean, counsel him not to trust her with any fellow but you.'

Beauchamp asked Lord Palmet how old he was.

Palmet gave his age; correcting the figures from six-and-twenty to one
year more. 'And never did a stroke of work in my life,' he said, speaking
genially out of an acute guess at the sentiments of the man he walked
with.

It seemed a farcical state of things.

There was a kind of contrition in Palmet's voice, and to put him at his
ease, as well as to stamp something in his own mind, Beauchamp said:
'It's common enough.'

CHAPTER XX

A DAY AT ITCHINCOPE

An election in Bevisham was always an exciting period at Itchincope, the
large and influential old estate of the Lespels, which at one time, with
but a ceremonious drive through the town, sent you two good Whig men to
Parliament to sit at Reform banquets; two unswerving party men, blest
subscribers to the right Review, and personally proud of its trenchancy.
Mr. Grancey Lespel was the survivor of them, and well could he remember
the happier day of his grandfather, his father, and his own hot youth. He
could be carried so far by affectionate regrets as to think of the Tories
of that day benignly:--when his champion Review of the orange and blue
livery waved a wondrous sharp knife, and stuck and bled them, proving to
his party, by trenchancy alone, that the Whig was the cause of
Providence. Then politics presented you a table whereat two parties
feasted, with no fear of the intrusion