lly to throw over.'

He blamed Beauchamp for ingratitude to the countess, who had, he affirmed
of his own knowledge, married Lord Romfrey to protect Beauchamp's
interests.

A curious comment on this allegation was furnished by the announcement of
the earl's expectations of a son and heir. The earl wrote to Colonel
Halkett from Romfrey Castle inviting him to come and spend some time
there.

'Now, that's brave news!' the colonel exclaimed.

He proposed a cruise round by the Cornish coast to the Severn, and so to
Romfrey Castle, to squeeze the old lord's hand and congratulate him with
all his heart. Cecilia was glad to acquiesce, for an expedition of any
description was a lull in the storm that hummed about her ears in the
peace of home, where her father would perpetually speak of the day to be
fixed. Sailing the sea on a cruise was like the gazing at wonderful
colours of a Western sky: an oblivion of earthly dates and obligations.
What mattered it that there were gales in August? She loved the sea, and
the stinging salt spray, and circling gull and plunging gannet, the sun
on the waves, and the torn cloud. The revelling libertine open sea wedded
her to Beauchamp in that veiled cold spiritual manner she could muse on
as a circumstance out of her life.

Fair companies of racing yachts were left behind. The gales of August
mattered frightfully to poor Blackburn Tuckham, who was to be dropped at
a town in South Wales, and descended greenish to his cabin as soon as
they had crashed on the first wall-waves of the chalk-race, a throw
beyond the peaked cliffs edged with cormorants, and were really tasting
sea. Cecilia reclined on deck, wrapped in shawl and waterproof. As the
Alpine climber claims the upper air, she had the wild sea to herself
through her love of it; quite to herself. It was delicious to look round
and ahead, and the perturbation was just enough to preserve her from
thoughts too deep inward in a scene where the ghost of Nevil was abroad.

The hard dry gale increased. Her father, stretched beside her, drew her
attention to a small cutter under double-reefed main-sail and small jib
on the Esperanza's weather bow--a gallant boat carefully handled. She
watched it with some anxiety, but the Esperanza was bound for a Devon
bay, and bore away from the black Dorsetshire headland, leaving the
little cutter to run into haven if she pleased. The passing her was no
event.--In a representation of the common events befall