“No, Nevil, no,” she breathed a rich contralto note of denial: “but if the country is the patient, and you will have it swallow your prescription...”
“There’s nothing like a metaphor for an evasion,” said Nevil, blinking over it.
She drew him another analogy, longer than was at all necessary; so tedious that her father struck through it with the remark:
“Concerning that quack—that’s one in the background, though!”
“I know of none,” said Beauchamp, well-advised enough to forbear mention of the name of Shrapnel.
Cecilia petitioned that her stumbling ignorance, which sought the road of wisdom, might be heard out. She had a reserve entanglement for her argumentative friend. “You were saying, Nevil, that you were for principles rather than for individuals, and you instanced Mr. Cougham, the senior Liberal candidate of Bevisham, as one whom you would prefer to see in Parliament instead of Seymour Austin, though you confess to Mr. Austin’s far superior merits as a politician and servant of his country: but Mr. Cougham supports Liberalism while Mr. Austin is a Tory. You are for the principle.”
“I am,” said he, bowing.
She asked: “Is not that equivalent to the doctrine of election by Grace?”
Beauchamp interjected: “Grace! election?”
Cecilia was tender to his inability to follow her allusion.