the reports are false.  We shall know what Blackburn makes of the story when we hear of the legacy.  I have been obliged to write word to Mrs. Beauchamp that I believe Nevil to have made a true statement of the facts.  But I distinctly say, and so I told Blackburn, I don’t think money will do Nevil Beauchamp a farthing’s worth of good.  Blackburn follows his own counsel.  He induced the old lady to send him; so I suppose he intends to let her share the money between them.  I thought better of him; I thought him a wiser man.’

Gratitude to Mr. Tuckham on Beauchamp’s behalf caused Cecilia to praise him, in the tone of compliments.  The difficulty of seriously admiring two gentlemen at once is a feminine dilemma, with the maidenly among women.

‘He has disappointed me,’ said Colonel Halkett.

’Would you have had him allow a falsehood to enrich him and ruin Nevil, papa?’

’My dear child, I’m sick to death of romantic fellows.  I took Blackburn for one of our solid young men.  Why should he share his aunt’s fortune?’

‘You mean, why should Nevil have money?’

’Well, I do mean that.  Besides, the story was not false as far as his intentions went:  he confessed it, and I ought to have put it in a postscript.  If Nevil wants money, let him learn to behave himself like a gentleman at Steynham.’

‘He has not failed.’

’I’ll say, then, behave himself, simply.  He considers it a point of honour to get his uncle Everard to go down on his knees to Shrapnel.  But he has no moral sense where I should like to see it:  none:  he confessed it.’

‘What were his words, papa?’

’I don’t remember words.  He runs over to France, whenever it suits him, to carry on there . . .’  The colonel ended in a hum and buzz.

‘Has he been to France lately?’ asked Cecilia.

Her breath hung for the answer, sedately though she sat.

‘The woman’s father is dead, I hear,’ Colonel Halkett remarked.

‘But he has not been there?’

‘How can I tell?  He’s anywhere, wherever his passions whisk him.’

‘No!’

’I say, yes.  And if he has money, we shall see him going sky-high and scattering it in sparks, not merely spending; I mean living immorally, infidelizing, republicanizing, scandalizing his class and his country.’

‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Cecilia, rising and moving to the window to feast her eyes on driving clouds, in a strange exaltation of mind, secretly sure now that her idea of Nevil’s having gone over to France was groundless; and feeling that she had been unworthy of him who strove to be ’worthier of her, as he hoped to become.’

Colonel Halkett scoffed at her ‘Oh no,’ and called it woman’s logic.

She could not restrain herself.  ’Have you forgotten Mr. Austin, papa?  It is Nevil’s perfect truthfulness that makes him appear worse to you than men who are timeservers.  Too many time-servers rot the State, Mr. Austin said.  Nevil is not one of them.  I am not able to judge or speculate whether he has a great brain or is likely to distinguish himself out of his profession:  I would rather he did not abandon it:  but Mr. Austin said to me in talking of him . . .’