“If one could only imagine Mr. Romfrey doing it!” Rosamund groaned.
“He shall: and you will help him,” said Beauchamp.
“If you loved a woman half as much as you do that man!”
“If I knew a woman as good, as wise, as noble as he!”
“You are losing her.”
“You expect me to go through ceremonies of courtship at a time like this! If she cares for me she will feel with me. Simple compassion—but let Miss Halkett be. I’m afraid I overtasked her in taking her to Bevisham. She remained outside the garden. Ma’am, she is unsullied by contact with a single shrub of Dr. Shrapnel’s territory.”
“Do not be so bitterly ironical, Nevil. You have not seen her as I have.”
Rosamund essayed a tender sketch of the fair young lady, and fancied that she drew forth a sigh; she would have coloured the sketch, but he commanded her to hurry off to bed, and think of her morning’s work.
A commission of which we feel we can accurately forecast the unsuccessful end is not likely to be undertaken with an ardour that might perhaps astound the presageing mind with unexpected issues. Rosamund fulfilled hers in the style of one who has learnt a lesson, and, exactly as she had anticipated, Mr. Romfrey accused her of coming to him from a conversation with that fellow Nevil overnight. He shrugged and left the house for his morning’s walk across the fields.
Colonel Halkett and Cecilia beheld him from the breakfast-room returning with Beauchamp, who had waylaid him and was hammering his part in the now endless altercation. It could be descried at any distance; and how fine was Mr. Romfrey’s bearing!—truly noble by contrast, as of a grave big dog worried by a small barking dog. There is to an unsympathetic observer an intense vexatiousness in the exhibition of such pertinacity. To a soldier accustomed at a glance to estimate powers of attack and defence, this repeated puny assailing of a fortress that required years of siege was in addition ridiculous. Mr. Romfrey appeared impregnable, and Beauchamp mad. “He’s foaming again!” said the colonel, and was only ultra-pictorial. “Before breakfast!” was a further slur on Beauchamp.