ace for Mr. Austin.

She forgot to keep it kindled, and he suspected her to be a victim of one
of the forms of youthful melancholy, and laid stress on the benefit to
health of a change of scene.

'We have just returned from Wales,' she said.

He remarked that it was hardly a change to be within shot of our
newspapers.

The colour left her cheeks. She fancied her father had betrayed her to
the last man who should know her secret. Beauchamp and the newspapers
were rolled together in her mind by the fever of apprehension wasting her
ever since his declaration of Republicanism, and defence of it, and an
allusion to one must imply the other, she feared: feared, but far from
quailingly. She had come to think that she could read the man she loved,
and detect a reasonableness in his extravagance. Her father had
discovered the impolicy of attacking Beauchamp in her hearing. The fever
by which Cecilia was possessed on her lover's behalf, often overcame
discretion, set her judgement in a whirl, was like a delirium. How it had
happened she knew not. She knew only her wretched state; a frenzy seized
her whenever his name was uttered, to excuse, account for, all but
glorify him publicly. And the immodesty of her conduct was perceptible to
her while she thus made her heart bare. She exposed herself once of late
at Itchincope, and had tried to school her tongue before she went there.
She felt that she should inevitably be seen through by Seymour Austin if
he took the world's view of Beauchamp, and this to her was like a descent
on the rapids to an end one shuts eyes from.

He noticed her perturbation, and spoke of it to her father.

'Yes, I'm very miserable about her,' the colonel confessed. 'Girls don't
see . . . they can't guess . . . they have no idea of the right kind of
man for them. A man like Blackburn Tuckham, now, a man a father could
leave his girl to, with confidence! He works for me like a slave; I can't
guess why. He doesn't look as if he were attracted. There's a man! but,
no; harum-scarum fellows take their fancy.'

'Is she that kind of young lady?' said Mr. Austin.

'No one would have thought so. She pretends to have opinions upon
politics now. It's of no use to talk of it!'

But Beauchamp was fully indicated.

Mr. Austin proposed to Cecilia that they should spend Easter week in
Rome.

Her face lighted and clouded.

'I should like it,' she said, negatively.

'What's the objection?'

'None, except that