When he was out of hearing, Colonel Halkett said to Cecilia: “Grancey Lespel tells me that Mr. Romfrey called on the man Shrapnel yesterday evening at six o’clock.”
“Yes, Papa?”
“Now come and see the fittings below,” the colonel addressed Lord Lockrace, and murmured to his daughter:
“And soundly horsewhipped him!”
Cecilia turned on the instant to gaze after Nevil Beauchamp. She could have wept for pity. Her father’s emphasis on “soundly” declared an approval of the deed, and she was chilled by a sickening abhorrence and dread of the cruel brute in men, such as, awakened by she knew not what, had haunted her for a year of her girlhood.
“And he deserved it!” the colonel pursued, on emerging from the cabin at Lord Lockrace’s heels. “I’ve no doubt he richly deserved it. The writer of that letter we heard Captain Baskelett read the other day deserves the very worst he gets.”
“Baskelett bored the Club the other night with a letter of a Radical fellow,” said Lord Lockrace. “Men who write that stuff should be strung up and whipped by the common hangman.”
“It was a private letter,” said Cecilia.
“Public or private, Miss Halkett.”
Her mind flew back to Seymour Austin for the sense of stedfastness when she heard such language as this, which, taken in conjunction with Dr. Shrapnel’s, seemed to uncloak our Constitutional realm and show it boiling up with the frightful elements of primitive societies.