perhaps thought the same, for he dashed out of his
mooning with a wave of the Tory standard, delighting the ladies, though
in that conflict of the Lion and the Unicorn (which was a Tory song) he
seemed rather to wish to goad the dear lion than crush the one-horned
intrusive upstart. His calling on the crack corps of Peers to enrol
themselves forthwith in the front ranks, and to anticipate opposition
by initiating measures, and so cut out that funny old crazy old galleon,
the People, from under the batteries of the enemy, highly amused the
gentlemen.

Before rejoining his ship, Nevil paid his customary short visit of
ceremony to his great-aunt Beauchamp--a venerable lady past eighty,
hitherto divided from him in sympathy by her dislike of his uncle
Everard, who had once been his living hero. That was when he was in
frocks, and still the tenacious fellow could not bear to hear his uncle
spoken ill of.

'All the men of that family are heartless, and he is a man of wood, my
dear, and a bad man,' the old lady said. 'He should have kept you at
school, and sent you to college. You want reading and teaching and
talking to. Such a house as that is should never be a home for you.'
She hinted at Rosamund. Nevil defended the persecuted woman, but with
no better success than from the attacks of the Romfrey ladies; with this
difference, however, that these decried the woman's vicious arts, and
Mistress Elizabeth Mary Beauchamp put all the sin upon the man. Such a
man! she said. 'Let me hear that he has married her, I will not utter
another word.' Nevil echoed, 'Married!' in a different key.

'I am as much of an aristocrat as any of you, only I rank morality
higher,' said Mrs. Beauchamp. 'When you were a child I offered to take
you and make you my heir, and I would have educated you. You shall see
a great-nephew of mine that I did educate; he is eating his dinners for
the bar in London, and comes to me every Sunday. I shall marry him to a
good girl, and I shall show your uncle what my kind of man-making is.'

Nevil had no desire to meet the other great-nephew, especially when
he was aware of the extraordinary circumstance that a Beauchamp
great-niece, having no money, had bestowed her hand on a Manchester man
defunct, whereof this young Blackburn Tuckham, the lawyer, was issue.
He took his leave of Mrs. Elizabeth Beauchamp, respecting her for her
constitutional health and brightness, and regretting for the sake of
the country tha