with it, he seemed to rejoice in saying: and this was his
abstract of the same: 'An old charlatan who tells his dupe to pray every
night of his life for the beheading of kings and princes, and scattering
of the clergy, and disbanding the army, that he and his rabble may fall
upon the wealthy, and show us numbers win; and he'll undertake to make
them moral!'

'I wish we were not going to Steynham,' said Cecilia.

'So do I. Well, no, I don't,' the colonel corrected himself, 'no; it 's
an engagement. I gave my consent so far. We shall see whether Nevil
Beauchamp's a man of any sense.'

Her heart sank. This was as much as to let her know that if Nevil broke
with his uncle, the treaty of union between the two families, which her
father submitted to entertain out of consideration for Mr. Romfrey, would
be at an end.

The wind had fallen. Entering her river, Cecilia gazed back at the smooth
broad water, and the band of golden beams flung across it from the
evening sun over the forest. No little cutter was visible. She could not
write to Nevil to bid him come and concert with her in what spirit to
encounter his uncle Everard at Steynham. And guests would be at Mount
Laurels next day; Lord Lockrace, Lord Croyston, and the Lespels; she
could not drive down to Bevisham on the chance of seeing him. Nor was it
to be acknowledged even to herself that she so greatly desired to see him
and advise him. Why not? Because she was one of the artificial creatures
called women (with the accent) who dare not be spontaneous, and cannot
act independently if they would continue to be admirable in the world's
eye, and who for that object must remain fixed on shelves, like other
marketable wares, avoiding motion to avoid shattering or tarnishing. This
is their fate, only in degree less inhuman than that of Hellenic and
Trojan princesses offered up to the Gods, or pretty slaves to the
dealers. Their artificiality is at once their bane and their source of
superior pride.

Seymour Austin might have reason for seeking to emancipate them, she
thought, and blushed in thought that she could never be learning anything
but from her own immediate sensations.

Of course it was in her power to write to Beauchamp, just as it had been
in his to speak to her, but the fire was wanting in her blood and absent
from his mood, so they were kept apart.

Her father knew as little as she what was the positive cause of Mr.
Romfrey's chastisement of Dr. Shrapnel. '