Devereux
to endeavour to combat a system that threatened consequences worse than
those it was planned to avert. He by this time was aware of the serious
character of the malady which had prostrated Nevil. Lord Romfrey had
directed his own medical man to go down to Bevisham, and Dr. Gannet's
report of Nevil was grave. The colonel made light of it to his daughter,
after the fashion he condemned in Lord Romfrey, to whom however he spoke
earnestly of the necessity for partially taking his wife into his
confidence to the extent of letting her know that a slight fever was
running its course with Nevil.

'There will be no slight fever in my wife's blood,' said the earl. 'I
stand to weather the cape or run to wreck, and it won't do to be taking
in reefs on a lee-shore. You don't see what frets her, colonel. For years
she has been bent on Nevil's marriage. It's off: but if you catch Cecilia
by the hand and bring her to us--I swear she loves the fellow!--that's
the medicine for my wife. Say: will you do it? Tell Lady Romfrey it shall
be done. We shall stand upright again!'

'I'm afraid that's impossible, Romfrey,' said the colonel.

'Play at it, then! Let her think it. You're helping me treat an invalid.
Colonel! my old friend! You save my house and name if you do that. It's a
hand round a candle in a burst of wind. There's Nevil dragged by a woman
into one of their reeking hovels--so that Miss Denham at Shrapnel's
writes to Lady Romfrey--because the woman's drunken husband voted for him
at the Election, and was kicked out of employment, and fell upon the
gin-bottle, and the brats of the den died starving, and the man sickened
of a fever; and Nevil goes in and sits with him! Out of that tangle of
folly is my house to be struck down? It looks as if the fellow with his
infernal "humanity," were the bad genius of an old nurse's tale. He's a
good fellow, colonel, he means well. This fever will cure him, they say
it sobers like bloodletting. He's a gallant fellow; you know that. He
fought to the skeleton in our last big war. On my soul, I believe he's
good for a husband. Frenchwoman or not, that affair's over. He shall have
Steynham and Holdesbury. Can I say more? Now, colonel, you go in to the
countess. Grasp my hand. Give me that help, and God bless you! You light
up my old days. She's a noble woman: I would not change her against the
best in the land. She has this craze about Nevil. I suppose she'll never
get over it. But there