ctly true that I do not look with the same eyes on my
country. He seems to delight in destroying one's peaceful contemplation
of life. The truth is that he blows a perpetual gale, and is all
agitation,' Cecilia concluded, affecting with a smile a slight shiver.

'Yes, one tires of that,' said Mrs. Lespel. 'I was determined I would
have him here if we could get him to come. Grancey objected. We shall
have to manage Captain Beauchamp and the rest as well. He is sure to come
late to-morrow, and will leave early on Thursday morning for his canvass;
our driving into Bevisham is for Friday or Saturday. I do not see that he
need have any suspicions. Those verses you are so angry about cannot be
traced to Itchincope. My dear, they are a childish trifle. When my
husband stood first for Bevisham, the whole of his University life
appeared in print. What we have to do is to forewarn the gentlemen to be
guarded, and especially in what they say to my nephew Lord Palmet, for
that boy cannot keep a secret; he is as open as a plate.'

'The smoking-room at night?' Cecilia suggested, remembering her father's
words about Itchincope's tobacco-hall.

'They have Captain Beauchamp's address hung up there, I have heard,' said
Mrs. Lespel. 'There may be other things--another address, though it is
not yet, placarded. Come with me. For fifteen years I have never once put
my head into that room, and now I 've a superstitious fear about it.'

Mrs. Lespel led the way to the deserted smoking-room, where the stale
reek of tobacco assailed the ladies, as does that dire place of Customs
the stranger visiting savage (or too natural) potentates.

In silence they tore down from the wall Beauchamp's electoral
Address--flanked all its length with satirical pen and pencil comments
and sketches; and they consigned to flames the vast sheet of animated
verses relating to the FRENCH MARQUEES. A quarter-size chalk-drawing of a
slippered pantaloon having a duck on his shoulder, labelled to say
'Quack-quack,' and offering our nauseated Dame Britannia (or else it was
the widow Bevisham) a globe of a pill to swallow, crossed with the
consolatory and reassuring name of Shrapnel, they disposed of likewise.
And then they fled, chased forth either by the brilliancy of the
politically allusive epigrams profusely inscribed around them on the
walls, or by the atmosphere. Mrs. Lespel gave her orders for the walls to
be scraped, and said to Cecilia: 'A strange air to breathe