'or go to him.'

'You remind me,' his uncle observed. 'I recommend you to ring that bell,
and have Mrs. Culling here.'

'If she comes she will hear what I think of her.'

'Then, out of the house!'

'Very well, sir. You decline to supply me with money?'

'I do.'

'I must have it!'

'I dare say. Money's a chain-cable for holding men to their senses.'

'I ask you, my lord, how I am to carry on Holdesbury?'

'Give it up.'

'I shall have to,' said Beauchamp, striving to be prudent.

'There isn't a doubt of it,' said his uncle, upon a series of nods
diminishing in their depth until his head assumed a droll interrogative
fixity, with an air of 'What next?'

CHAPTER XXXIX

BETWEEN BEAUCHAMP AND CECILIA

Beauchamp quitted the house without answering as to what next, and
without seeing Rosamund.

In the matter of money, as of his physical health, he wanted to do too
much at once; he had spent largely of both in his efforts to repair the
injury done to Dr. Shrapnel. He was overworked, anxious, restless,
craving for a holiday somewhere in France, possibly; he was all but
leaping on board the boat at times, and, unwilling to leave his dear old
friend who clung to him, he stayed, keeping his impulses below the
tide-mark which leads to action, but where they do not yield peace of
spirit. The tone of Renee's letters filled him with misgivings. She wrote
word that she had seen M. d'Henriel for the first time since his return
from Italy, and he was much changed, and inclined to thank Roland for the
lesson he had received from him at the sword's point. And next she urged
Beauchamp to marry, so that he and she might meet, as if she felt a
necessity for it. 'I shall love your wife; teach her to think amiably of
me,' she said. And her letter contained womanly sympathy for him in his
battle with his uncle. Beauchamp thought of his experiences of Cecilia's
comparative coldness. He replied that there was no prospect of his
marrying; he wished there were one of meeting! He forbore from writing
too fervently, but he alluded to happy days in Normandy, and proposed to
renew them if she would say she had need of him. He entreated her to deal
with him frankly; he reminded her that she must constantly look to him,
as she had vowed she would, when in any kind of trouble; and he declared
to her that he was unchanged. He meant, of an unchanged disposition to
shield and serve her; but the review of her situation, and his knowledg