Oh! Nevil, whatever you
intend to do to overcome your uncle, trust to time, be friends with him;
be a little worldly! for her sake! to ensure her happiness!'

Beauchamp obtained the information that his cousin Cecil had read out the
letter of Dr. Shrapnel at Mount Laurels.

The bell rang.

'Do you imagine I should sit at my uncle's table if I did not intend to
force him to repair the wrong he has done to himself and to us?' he said.

'Oh! Nevil, do you not see Captain Baskelett at work here?'

'What amends can Cecil Baskelett make? My uncle is a man of honour: it is
in his power. There, I leave you to speak to him; you will do it
to-night, after we break up in the drawing-room.'

Rosamund groaned: 'An apology to Dr. Shrapnel from Mr. Romfrey! It is an
impossibility, Nevil! utter!'

'So you say to sit idle: but do as I tell you.'

He went downstairs.

He had barely reproached her. She wondered at that; and then remembered
his alien sad half-smile in quitting the room.

Rosamund would not present herself at her lord's dinner-table when there
were any guests at Steynham. She prepared to receive Miss Halkett in the
drawing-room, as the guests of the house this evening chanced to be her
friends.

Madame de Rouaillout's present to her was a photograph of M. de Croisnel,
his daughter and son in a group. Rosamund could not bear to look at the
face of Renee, and she put it out of sight. But she had looked. She was
reduced to look again.

Roland stood beside his father's chair; Renee sat at his feet, clasping
his right hand. M. de Croisnel's fallen eyelids and unshorn white chin
told the story of the family reunion. He was dying: his two children were
nursing him to the end.

Decidedly Cecilia was a more beautiful woman than Renee: but on which
does the eye linger longest--which draws the heart? a radiant landscape,
where the tall ripe wheat flashes between shadow and shine in the stately
march of Summer, or the peep into dewy woodland on to dark water?

Dark-eyed Renee was not beauty but attraction; she touched the double
chords within us which are we know not whether harmony or discord, but a
divine discord if an uncertified harmony, memorable beyond plain
sweetness or majesty. There are touches of bliss in anguish that
superhumanize bliss, touches of mystery in simplicity, of the eternal in
the variable. These two chords of poignant antiphony she struck
throughout the range of the hearts of men, and strangely