y heterodox will not do! It makes him interesting to women,
if you like, but he won't soon hear the last of it, if he is for a public
career. Grancey literally crowed at the story. And the wonderful part of
it is, that Captain Beauchamp refused to be present at the earl's first
ceremonial dinner in honour of his countess. Now, that, we all think, was
particularly ungrateful: now, was it not?'

'If the countess--if ingratitude had anything to do with it,' said
Cecilia.

She escaped to her room and dressed impatiently.

Her boudoir was empty: Beauchamp had departed. She recollected his look
at her, and turned over the leaves of the book he had been hastily
scanning, and had condescended to approve of. On the two pages where the
paper-cutter was fixed she perceived small pencil dots under certain
words. Read consecutively, with a participle termination struck out to
convey his meaning, they formed the pathetically ungrammatical line:

'Hear: none: but: accused: false.'

Treble dots were under the word 'to-morrow.' He had scored the margin of
the sentences containing his dotted words, as if in admiration of their
peculiar wisdom.

She thought it piteous that he should be reduced to such means of
communication. The next instant Cecilia was shrinking from the adept
intriguer--French-taught!

In the course of the evening her cousin remarked:

'Captain Beauchamp must see merit in things undiscoverable by my poor
faculties. I will show you a book he has marked.'

'Did you see it? I was curious to examine it,' interposed Cecilia; 'and I
am as much at a loss as you to understand what could have attracted him.
One sentence . . .'

'About the sheikh in the stables, where he accused the pretended
physician? Yes, what was there in that?'

'Where is the book?' said Mrs. Grancey.

'Not here, I think.' Cecilia glanced at the drawing-room book-table, and
then at Mr. Austin, the victim of an unhappy love in his youth, and
unhappy about her, as her father had said. Seymour Austin was not one to
spread the contagion of intrigue! She felt herself caught by it, even
melting to feel enamoured of herself in consequence, though not loving
Beauchamp the more.

'This newspaper, if it's not merely an airy project, will be ruination,'
said Tuckham. 'The fact is, Beauchamp has no bend in him. He can't meet a
man without trying a wrestle, and as long as he keeps his stiffness, he
believes he has won. I've heard an oculist say that the e