a brave woman, likely to be an incomparable mother.  At present her very virtues excited her to fancifulness nevertheless she was in his charge, and he was bound to break the neck of his will, to give her perfect peace of wind.  The child suffers from the mother’s mental agitation.  It might be a question of a nervous or an idiot future Earl of Romfrey.  Better death to the House than such a mockery of his line!  These reflections reminded him of the heartiness of his whipping of that poor old tumbled signpost Shrapnel, in the name of outraged womankind.  If there was no outrage?

Assuredly if there was no outrage, consideration for the state of his wife would urge him to speak the apology in the most natural manner possible.  She vowed there was none.

He never thought of blaming her for formerly deceiving him, nor of blaming her for now expediting him.

In the presence of Colonel Halkett, Mr. Tuckham, and Mr. Lydiard, on a fine November afternoon, standing bareheaded in the fir-bordered garden of the cottage on the common, Lord Romfrey delivered his apology to Dr. Shrapnel, and he said: 

’I call you to witness, gentlemen, I offer Dr. Shrapnel the fullest reparation he may think fit to demand of me for an unprovoked assault on him, that I find was quite unjustified, and for which I am here to ask his forgiveness.’

Speech of man could not have been more nobly uttered.

Dr. Shrapnel replied: 

’To the half of that, sir—­’tis over!  What remains is done with the hand.’

He stretched his hand out.

Lord Romfrey closed his own on it.

The antagonists, between whom was no pretence of their being other after the performance of a creditable ceremony, bowed and exchanged civil remarks:  and then Lord Romfrey was invited to go into the house and see Beauchamp, who happened to be sitting with Cecilia Halkett and Jenny Denham.  Beauchamp was thin, pale, and quiet; but the sight of him standing and conversing after that scene of the skinny creature struggling with bareribbed obstruction on the bed, was an example of constitutional vigour and a compliment to the family very gratifying to Lord Romfrey.  Excepting by Cecilia, the earl was coldly received.  He had to leave early by special express for London to catch the last train to Romfrey.  Beauchamp declined to fix a day for his visit to the castle with Lydiard, but proposed that Lydiard should accompany the earl on his return.  Lydiard was called in, and at once accepted the earl’s invitation, and quitted the room to pack his portmanteau.

A faint sign of firm-shutting shadowed the corners of Jenny’s lips.

‘You have brought my nephew to life,’ Lord Romfrey said to her.

‘My share in it was very small, my lord.’

‘Gannet says that your share in it was very great.’

‘And I say so, with the authority of a witness,’ added Cecilia.