own, besides the
discussion of a whole plan of conduct with Dr. Shrapnel, so he was under
the necessity of departing without seeing his uncle, really to his
regret. He left word to that effect.

Taking leave of Cecilia, he talked of his return 'home' within three or
four days as a certainty.

She said: 'Canvassing should not be neglected now.'

Her hostility was confused by what she had done to save him from
annoyance, while his behaviour to his cousin Cecil increased her respect
for him. She detected a pathetic meaning in his mention of the word home;
she mused on his having called her beautiful: whither was she hurrying?
Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful of the
elevation of her own, she thrilled secretly on hearing it stated by the
jubilant young Tories at Mount Laurels, as a characteristic of Beauchamp,
that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and slipping from the
theme; he who with her gave out unguardedly the thoughts deepest in him.
And the thoughts!--were they not of generous origin? Where so true a
helpmate for him as the one to whom his mind appealed? It could not be so
with the Frenchwoman. Cecilia divined a generous nature by generosity,
and set herself to believe that in honour he had not yet dared to speak
to her from the heart, not being at heart quite free. She was at the same
time in her remains of pride cool enough to examine and rebuke the
weakness she succumbed to in now clinging to him by that which yesterday
she hardly less than loathed, still deeply disliked.

CHAPTER XXIII

TOURDESTELLE

On the part of Beauchamp, his conversation with Cecilia during the drive
into Bevisham opened out for the first time in his life a prospect of
home; he had felt the word in speaking it, and it signified an end to the
distractions produced by the sex, allegiance to one beloved respected
woman, and also a basis of operations against the world. For she was
evidently conquerable, and once matched with him would be the very woman
to nerve and sustain him. Did she not listen to him? He liked her
resistance. That element of the barbarous which went largely to form his
emotional nature was overjoyed in wresting such a woman from the enemy,
and subduing her personally. She was a prize. She was a splendid prize,
cut out from under the guns of the fort. He rendered all that was due to
his eminently good cause for its part in so signal a success, but
individual satisfaction i