s. All the gentlemen
were against him, excepting perhaps that chattering pie Lord Palmet, who
did him more mischief than his enemies. She could not sleep. She walked
out on the terrace with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux, in a dream, hearing that
lady breathe remarks hardly less than sentimental, and an unwearied
succession of shouts from the smoking-room.

'They are not going to bed to-night,' said Mrs. Devereux.

'They are mystifying Captain Beauchamp,' said Cecilia.

'My husband tells me they are going to drive him into the town
to-morrow.'

Cecilia flushed: she could scarcely get her breath.

'Is that their plot?' she murmured.

Sleep was rejected by her, bed itself. The drive into Bevisham had been
fixed for nine A.M. She wrote two lines on note-paper in her room:
but found them overfervid and mysterious. Besides, how were they to be
conveyed to Nevil's chamber.

She walked in the passage for half an hour, thinking it possible she
might meet him; not the most lady-like of proceedings, but her head was
bewildered. An arm-chair in her room invited her to rest and think--the
mask of a natural desire for sleep. At eight in the morning she was
awakened by her maid, and at a touch exclaimed, 'Have they gone?' and
her heart still throbbed after hearing that most of the gentlemen were
in and about the stables. Cecilia was down-stairs at a quarter to
nine. The breakfast-room was empty of all but Lord Palmet and Mr.
Wardour-Devereux; one selecting a cigar to light out of doors, the other
debating between two pipes. She beckoned to Palmet, and commissioned him
to inform Beauchamp that she wished him to drive her down to Bevisham in
her pony-carriage. Palmet brought back word from Beauchamp that he had
an appointment at ten o'clock in the town. 'I want to see him,' she
said; so Palmet ran out with the order. Cecilia met Beauchamp in the
entrance-hall.

'You must not go,' she said bluntly.

'I can't break an appointment,' said he--'for the sake of my own
pleasure,' was implied.

'Will you not listen to me, Nevil, when I say you cannot go?'

A coachman's trumpet blew.

'I shall be late. That's Colonel Millington's team. He starts first,
then Wardour-Devereux, then Cecil, and I mount beside him; Palmet's at
our heels.'

'But can't you even imagine a purpose for their driving into Bevisham so
pompously?'

'Well, men with drags haven't commonly much purpose,' he said.

'But on this occasion! At an Election time! Surely,