RIAL OF HIM
XLI. A LAME VICTORY
BOOK 6.
XLII. THE TWO PASSIONS
XLIII. THE EARL OF ROMFREY AND THE COUNTESS
XLIV. THE NEPHEWS OF THE EARL, AND ANOTHER EXHIBITION OF THE TWO
PASSIONS IN BEAUCHAMP.
XLV. A LITTLE PLOT AGAINST CECILIA
XLVI. AS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN FORESEEN
XLVII. THE REFUSAL OF HIM
XLVIII. OF THE TRIAL AWAITING THE EARL OF ROMFREY
XLIX. A FABRIC OF BARONIAL DESPOTISM CRUMBLES
BOOK 7.
L. AT THE COTTAGE ON THE COMMON
LI. IN THE NIGHT
LII. QUESTION OF A PILGRIMAGE AND AN ACT OF PENANCE
LIII. THE APOLOGY TO DR. SHRAPNEL
LIV. THE FRUITS OF THE APOLOGY
LV. WITHOUT LOVE
LVI. THE LAST OF NEVIL BEAUCHAMP
CHAPTER I. THE CHAMPION OF HIS COUNTRY
When young Nevil Beauchamp was throwing off his midshipman's jacket for
a holiday in the garb of peace, we had across Channel a host of dreadful
military officers flashing swords at us for some critical observations
of ours upon their sovereign, threatening Afric's fires and savagery.
The case occurred in old days now and again, sometimes, upon imagined
provocation, more furiously than at others. We were unarmed, and the
spectacle was distressing. We had done nothing except to speak our minds
according to the habit of the free, and such an explosion appeared
as irrational and excessive as that of a powder-magazine in reply to
nothing more than the light of a spark. It was known that a valorous
General of the Algerian wars proposed to make a clean march to the
capital of the British Empire at the head of ten thousand men; which
seems a small quantity to think much about, but they wore wide red
breeches blown out by Fame, big as her cheeks, and a ten thousand of
that sort would never think of retreating. Their spectral advance on
quaking London through Kentish hopgardens, Sussex corn-fields, or by the
pleasant hills of Surrey, after a gymnastic leap over the riband of salt
water, haunted many pillows. And now those horrid shouts of the legions
of Caesar, crying to the inheritor of an invading name to lead them
against us, as the origin of his title had led the army of Gaul of old
gloriously, scared sweet sleep. We saw them in imagination lining the
opposite shore; eagle and standard-bearers, and gallifers, brandishing
their fowls and their banners in a manner to frighten the decorum of the
universe. Where were our men?
The returns of the cen
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