trances to
see things as they were.

Yet Beauchamp, with a daring and cunning at which her soul exulted, and
her feminine nature trembled, as at the divinely terrible, had managed to
convey to her no less than if they had been alone together.

His parting words were: 'I must have five minutes with your father
to-morrow.'

How had she behaved? What could be Seymour Austin's idea of her?

She saw the blind thing that she was, the senseless thing, the shameless;
and vulture-like in her scorn of herself, she alighted on that disgraced
Cecilia and picked her to pieces hungrily. It was clear: Beauchamp had
meant nothing beyond friendly civility: it was only her abject greediness
pecking at crumbs. No! he loved her. Could a woman's heart be mistaken?
She melted and wept, thanking him: she offered him her remnant of pride,
pitiful to behold.

And still she asked herself between-whiles whether it could be true of an
English lady of our day, that she, the fairest stature under sun, was
ever knowingly twisted to this convulsion. She seemed to look forth from
a barred window on flower, and field, and hill. Quietness existed as a
vision. Was it impossible to embrace it? How pass into it? By
surrendering herself to the flames, like a soul unto death! For why, if
they were overpowering, attempt to resist them? It flattered her to
imagine that she had been resisting them in their present burning might
ever since her lover stepped on the Esperanza's deck at the mouth of
Otley River. How foolish, seeing that they are fatal! A thrill of
satisfaction swept her in reflecting that her ability to reason was thus
active. And she was instantly rewarded for surrendering; pain fled, to
prove her reasoning good; the flames devoured her gently they cared not
to torture so long as they had her to themselves.

At night, candle in hand, on the corridor, her father told her he had
come across Grancey Lespel in Bevisham, and heard what he had not quite
relished of the Countess of Romfrey. The glittering of Cecilia's eyes
frightened him. Taking her for the moment to know almost as much as he,
the colonel doubted the weight his communication would have on her; he
talked obscurely of a scandalous affair at Lord Romfrey's house in town,
and Beauchamp and that Frenchwoman. 'But,' said he, 'Mrs. Grancey will be
here to-morrow.'

'So will Nevil, papa,' said Cecilia.

'Ah! he's coming, yes; well!' the colonel puffed. 'Well, I shall see him,
of course,