k in hand. It's clear I can't do two things at a time--make love
and carry on my taskwork. I have been idle for weeks. I believed you were
mine and wanted no lovemaking. There's no folly in that, if you
understand me at all. As for vanity about women, I 've outlived it. In
comparison with you I'm poor, I know:--you look distressed, but one has
to allude to it:--I admit that wealth would help me. To see wealth
supporting the cause of the people for once would--but you say, too late!
Well, I don't renounce you till I see you giving your hand to a man who's
not myself. You have been offended: groundlessly, on my honour! You are
the woman of all women in the world to hold me fast in faith and pride in
you. It's useless to look icy: you feel what I say.'

'Nevil, I feel grief, and beg you to cease. I am----It is-----'

'"Too late" has not a rag of meaning, Cecilia! I love your name. I love
this too: this is mine, and no one can rob me of it.'

He drew forth a golden locket and showed her a curl of her hair.

Crimsoning, she said instantly: 'Language of the kind I used is open to
misconstruction, I fear. I have not even the right to listen to you. I am
. . . You ask me for what I have it no longer in my power to give. I am
engaged.'

The shot rang through him and partly stunned him; but incredulity made a
mocking effort to sustain him. The greater wounds do not immediately
convince us of our fate, though we may be conscious that we have been
hit.

'Engaged in earnest?' said he.

'Yes.'

'Of your free will?'

'Yes.'

Her father stepped out on the terrace, from one of the open windows,
trailing a newspaper like a pocket-handkerchief. Cecilia threaded the
flower-beds to meet him.

'Here's an accident to one of our ironclads,' he called to Beauchamp.

'Lives lost, sir?'

'No, thank heaven! but, upon my word, it's a warning. Read the telegram;
it's the Hastings. If these are our defences, at a cost of half a million
of money, each of them, the sooner we look to our land forces the
better.'

'The Shop will not be considered safe!' said Beauchamp, taking in the
telegram at a glance. 'Peppel's a first-rate officer too: she couldn't
have had a better captain. Ship seriously damaged!'

He handed back the paper to the colonel.

Cecilia expected him to say that he had foreseen such an event.

He said nothing; and with a singular contraction of the heart she
recollected how he had denounced our system of preparing ma