He began to conceive a vague respect for the fellow who had proved him wrong upon a matter of fact.  Beauchamp came from Africa rather worn by the climate, and immediately obtained the command of the Ariadne corvette, which had been some time in commission in the Mediterranean, whither he departed, without visiting Steynham; allowing Rosamund to think him tenacious of his wrath as well as of love.  Mr. Romfrey considered him to be insatiable for service.  Beauchamp, during his absence, had shown himself awake to the affairs of his country once only, in an urgent supplication he had forwarded for all his uncle’s influence to be used to get him appointed to the first vacancy in Robert Hall’s naval brigade, then forming a part of our handful in insurgent India.  The fate of that chivalrous Englishman, that born sailor-warrior, that truest of heroes, imperishable in the memory of those who knew him, and in our annals, young though he was when death took him, had wrung from Nevil Beauchamp such a letter of tears as to make Mr. Romfrey believe the naval crown of glory his highest ambition.  Who on earth could have guessed him to be bothering his head about politics all the while!  Or was the whole stupid business a freak of the moment?

It became necessary for Mr. Romfrey to contemplate his eccentric nephew in the light of a mannikin once more.  Consequently he called to mind, and bade Rosamund Culling remember, that he had foreseen and had predicted the mounting of Nevil Beauchamp on his political horse one day or another; and perhaps the earlier the better.  And a donkey could have sworn that when he did mount he would come galloping in among the Radical rough-riders.  Letters were pouring upon Steynham from men and women of Romfrey blood and relationship concerning the positive tone of Radicalism in the commander’s address.  Everard laughed at them.  As a practical man, his objection lay against the poor fool’s choice of the peccant borough of Bevisham.  Still, in view of the needfulness of his learning wisdom, and rapidly, the disbursement of a lot of his money, certain to be required by Bevisham’s electors, seemed to be the surest method for quickening his wits.  Thus would he be acting as his own chirurgeon, gaily practising phlebotomy on his person to cure him of his fever.  Too much money was not the origin of the fever in Nevil’s case, but he had too small a sense of the value of what he possessed, and the diminishing stock would be likely to cry out shrilly.

To this effect, never complaining that Nevil Beauchamp had not come to him to take counsel with him, the high-minded old gentleman talked.  At the same time, while indulging in so philosophical a picture of himself as was presented by a Romfrey mildly accounting for events and smoothing them under the infliction of an offence, he could not but feel that Nevil had challenged him:  such was the reading of it; and he waited for some justifiable excitement to fetch him out of the magnanimous mood, rather in the image of an angler, it must be owned.