y? Ghastly as a minority is in an Election, in a
lifelong struggle it is refreshing and encouraging. The young world and
its triumph is with the minority. Oh to be speaking! Condemned to silence
beside his uncle, Beauchamp chafed for a loosed tongue and an audience
tossing like the well-whipped ocean, or open as the smooth sea-surface to
the marks of the breeze. Let them be hostile or amicable, he wanted an
audience as hotly as the humped Richard a horse.

At Romfrey Castle he fell upon an audience that became transformed into a
swarm of chatterers, advisers, and reprovers the instant his lips were
parted. The ladies of the family declared his pursuit of the Apology to
be worse and vainer than his politics. The gentlemen said the same, but
they were not so outspoken to him personally, and indulged in asides,
with quotations of some of his uncle Everard's recent observations
concerning him: as for example, 'Politically he's a mad harlequin jumping
his tights and spangles when nobody asks him to jump; and in private life
he's a mad dentist poking his tongs at my sound tooth:' a highly
ludicrous image of the persistent fellow, and a reminder of situations in
Moliere, as it was acted by Cecil Baskelett and Lord Welshpool. Beauchamp
had to a certain extent restored himself to favour with his uncle Everard
by offering a fair suggestion on the fatal field to account for the
accident, after the latter had taken measurements and examined the place
in perplexity. His elucidation of the puzzle was referred to by Lord
Avonley at Romfrey, and finally accepted as possible and this from a
wiseacre who went quacking about the county, expecting to upset the order
of things in England! Such a mixing of sense and nonsense in a fellow's
noddle was never before met with, Lord Avonley said. Cecil took the hint.
He had been unworried by Beauchamp: Dr. Shrapnel had not been mentioned:
and it delighted Cecil to let it be known that he thought old Nevil had
some good notions, particularly as to the duties of the aristocracy--that
first war-cry of his when a midshipman. News of another fatal accident in
the hunting-field confirmed Cecil's higher opinion of his cousin. On the
day of Craven's funeral they heard at Romfrey that Mr. Wardour-Devereux
had been killed by a fall from his horse. Two English gentlemen
despatched by the same agency within a fortnight! 'He smoked,' Lord
Avonley said of the second departure, to allay some perturbation in the
b