d of his return 'home' within three or
four days as a certainty.

She said: 'Canvassing should not be neglected now.'

Her hostility was confused by what she had done to save him from
annoyance, while his behaviour to his cousin Cecil increased her respect
for him. She detected a pathetic meaning in his mention of the word
home; she mused on his having called her beautiful: whither was she
hurrying? Forgetful of her horror of his revolutionary ideas, forgetful
of the elevation of her own, she thrilled secretly on hearing it stated
by the jubilant young Tories at Mount Laurels, as a characteristic
of Beauchamp, that he was clever in parrying political thrusts, and
slipping from the theme; he who with her gave out unguardedly the
thoughts deepest in him. And the thoughts!--were they not of generous
origin? Where so true a helpmate for him as the one to whom his mind
appealed? It could not be so with the Frenchwoman. Cecilia divined a
generous nature by generosity, and set herself to believe that in honour
he had not yet dared to speak to her from the heart, not being at heart
quite free. She was at the same time in her remains of pride cool enough
to examine and rebuke the weakness she succumbed to in now clinging to
him by that which yesterday she hardly less than loathed, still deeply
disliked.

CHAPTER XXIII. TOURDESTELLE

On the part of Beauchamp, his conversation with Cecilia during the drive
into Bevisham opened out for the first time in his life a prospect of
home; he had felt the word in speaking it, and it signified an end
to the distractions produced by the sex, allegiance to one beloved
respected woman, and also a basis of operations against the world. For
she was evidently conquerable, and once matched with him would be the
very woman to nerve and sustain him. Did she not listen to him? He liked
her resistance. That element of the barbarous which went largely to form
his emotional nature was overjoyed in wresting such a woman from the
enemy, and subduing her personally. She was a prize. She was a splendid
prize, cut out from under the guns of the fort. He rendered all that was
due to his eminently good cause for its part in so signal a success,
but individual satisfaction is not diminished by the thought that the
individual's discernment selected the cause thus beneficent to him.

Beauchamp's meditations were diverted by the sight of the coast of
France dashed in rain-lines across a weed-strewn sea.