sentiment Cecilia entertained
for the foreign lady; and having now one idea in common with him, she
conceived the possibility that there might be more. There must be many,
for he loved England, and she no less. She clung, however, to the topic
of Bevisham, preferring to dream of the many more, rather than run
risks. Undoubtedly the town was of an ignoble aspect; and it was
declining in prosperity; and it was consequently over-populated.
And undoubtedly (so she was induced to coincide for the moment) a
Government, acting to any extent like a supervising head, should aid
and direct the energies of towns and ports and trades, and not leave
everything everywhere to chance: schools for the people, public
morality, should be the charge of Government. Cecilia had surrendered
the lead to him, and was forced to subscribe to an equivalent of
'undoubtedly' the Tories just as little as the Liberals had done these
good offices. Party against party, neither of them had a forethoughtful
head for the land at large. They waited for the Press to spur a great
imperial country to be but defensively armed, and they accepted the
so-called volunteers, with a nominal one-month's drill per annum, as a
guarantee of defence!

Beauchamp startled her, actually kindled her mind to an activity of
wonder and regret, with the statement of how much Government, acting
with some degree of farsightedness, might have won to pay the public
debt and remit taxation, by originally retaining the lines of railway,
and fastening on the valuable land adjoining stations. Hundreds of
millions of pounds!

She dropped a sigh at the prodigious amount, but inquired, 'Who has
calculated it?'

For though perfectly aware that this kind of conversation was a special
compliment paid to her by her friend Nevil, and dimly perceiving that it
implied something beyond a compliment-in fact, that it was his manner of
probing her for sympathy, as other men would have conducted the process
preliminary to deadly flattery or to wooing, her wits fenced her heart
about; the exercise of shrewdness was an instinct of self-preservation.
She had nothing but her poor wits, daily growing fainter, to resist
him with. And he seemed to know it, and therefore assailed them, never
trying at the heart.

That vast army of figures might be but a phantom army conjured out of
the Radical mists, might it not? she hinted. And besides, we cannot
surely require a Government to speculate in the future,