e for her father, and
ultimately induce him, if she could, to give a gentleman's opinion of the
case to Mr. Romfrey.

Her sensitive ear caught a change of tone in the directions she received.
'Your father will say so and so: answer him with this and that.'
Beauchamp supplied her with phrases. She was to renew and renew the
attack; hammer as he did. Yesterday she had followed him: to-day she was
to march beside him--hardly as an equal. Patience! was the word she would
have uttered in her detection of the one frailty in his nature which this
hurrying of her off her feet opened her eyes to with unusual
perspicacity. Still she leaned to him sufficiently to admit that he had
grounds for a deep disturbance of his feelings.

He said: 'I go to Dr. Shrapnel's cottage, and don't know how to hold up
my head before Miss Denham. She confided him to me when she left for
Switzerland!'

There was that to be thought of, certainly.

Colonel Halkett came round a box-bush and discovered them pacing together
in a fashion to satisfy his paternal scrutiny.

'I've been calling you several times, my dear,' he complained. 'We start
in seven minutes. Bustle, and bonnet at once. Nevil, I'm sorry for this
business. Good-bye. Be a good boy, Nevil,' he murmured kindheartedly, and
shook Beauchamp's hand with the cordiality of an extreme relief in
leaving him behind.

The colonel and Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp were standing on the hall-steps
when Rosamund beckoned the latter and whispered a request for that letter
of Dr. Shrapnel's. 'It is for Miss Halkett, Nevil.'

He plucked the famous epistle from his bulging pocketbook, and added a
couple of others in the same handwriting.

'Tell her, a first reading--it's difficult to read at first,' he said,
and burned to read it to Cecilia himself: to read it to her with his
comments and explanations appeared imperative. It struck him in a flash
that Cecilia's counsel to him to quit Steynham for awhile was good. And
if he went to Bevisham he would be assured of Dr. Shrapnel's condition:
notes and telegrams from the cottage were too much tempered to console
and deceive him.

'Send my portmanteau and bag after me to Bevisham,' he said Rosamund, and
announced to the woefully astonish colonel that he would have the
pleasure of journeying in his company as far as the town.

'Are you ready? No packing?' said the colonel.

'It's better to have your impediments in the rear of you, and march!'
said Mr. Romfr