Beauchamp bent to her, saying mock-dolefully, ’I’m sorry to tell you that if ever he was a sincere Whig, he has years of remorse before him.’

‘Promise me, Captain Beauchamp,’ she answered, ’promise you will give us no more politics to-day.’

‘If none provoke me.’

‘None shall.’

‘And as to Bevisham,’ said Mr. Culbrett, ’it’s the identical borough for a Radical candidate, for every voter there demands a division of his property, and he should be the last to complain of an adoption of his principles.’

‘Clever,’ rejoined Beauchamp; ‘but I am under government’; and he swept a bow to Mrs. Lespel.

As they were breaking up the group, Captain Baskelett appeared.

‘Ah!  Nevil,’ said he, passed him, saluted Miss Halkett through the window, then cordially squeezed his cousin’s hand.  ’Having a holiday out of Bevisham?  The baron expects to meet you at Mount Laurels to-morrow.  He particularly wishes me to ask you whether you think all is fair in war.’

‘I don’t,’ said Nevil.

‘Not?  The canvass goes on swimmingly.’

’Ask Palmet!

’Palmet gives you two-thirds of the borough.  The poor old Tory tortoise is nowhere.  They’ve been writing about you, Nevil.’

’They have.  And if there ’s a man of honour in the party I shall hold him responsible for it.’

’I allude to an article in the Bevisham Liberal paper; a magnificent eulogy, upon my honour.  I give you my word, I have rarely read an article so eloquent.  And what is the Conservative misdemeanour which the man of honour in the party is to pay for?’

‘I’ll talk to you about it by-and-by,’ said Nevil.

He seemed to Cecilia too trusting, too simple, considering his cousin’s undisguised tone of banter.  Yet she could not put him on his guard.  She would have had Mr. Culbrett do so.  She walked on the terrace with him near upon sunset, and said, ’The position Captain Beauchamp is in here is most unfair to him.’

‘There’s nothing unfair in the lion’s den,’ said Stukely Culbrett; adding, ’Now, observe, Miss Halkett; he talks for effect.  He discovers that Lespel is a Torified Whig; but that does not make him a bit more alert.  It’s to say smart things.  He speaks, but won’t act, as if he were among enemies.  He’s getting too fond of his bow-wow.  Here he is, and he knows the den, and he chooses to act the innocent.  You see how ridiculous?  That trick of the ingenu, or peculiarly heavenly messenger, who pretends that he ought never to have any harm done to him, though he carries the lighted match, is the way of young Radicals.  Otherwise Beauchamp would be a dear boy.  We shall see how he takes his thrashing.’

‘You feel sure he will be beaten?’

’He has too strong a dose of fool’s honesty to succeed—­stands for the game laws with Radicals, for example.  He’s loaded with scruples and crotchets, and thinks more of them than of his winds and his tides.  No public man is to be made out of that.  His idea of the Whigs being dead shows a head that can’t read the country.  He means himself for mankind, and is preparing to be the benefactor of a country parish.’