her own.

A period of maidenly distress not previously unknown to her ensued.
Proposals of marriage were addressed to her by two untitled gentlemen,
and by the Earl of Lockrace: three within a fortnight. The recognition
of the young heiress's beauty at the Yacht Ball was accountable for
the bursting out of these fires. Her father would not have deplored
her acceptance of the title of Countess of Lockrace. In the matter of
rejections, however, her will was paramount, and he was on her side
against relatives when the subject was debated among them. He called her
attention to the fact impressively, telling her that she should not
hear a syllable from him to persuade her to marry: the emphasis of which
struck the unspoken warning on her intelligence: Bring no man to me of
whom I do not approve!

'Worthier of you, as I hope to become,' Beauchamp had said. Cecilia lit
on that part of Dr. Shrapnel's letter where 'Fight this out within you,'
distinctly alluded to the unholy love. Could she think ill of the man
who thus advised him? She shared Beauchamp's painful feeling for him in
a sudden tremour of her frame; as it were through his touch. To the rest
of the letter her judgement stood opposed, save when a sentence here and
there reminded her of Captain Baskelett's insolent sing-song declamation
of it: and that would have turned Sacred Writing to absurdity.

Beauchamp had mentioned Seymour Austin as one to whom he would willingly
grant a perusal of the letter. Mr. Austin came to Mount Laurels about
the close of the yachting season, shortly after Colonel Halkett had
spent his customary days of September shooting at Steynham. Beauchamp's
folly was the colonel's theme, for the fellow had dragged Lord Palmet
there, and driven his uncle out of patience. Mr. Romfrey's monumental
patience had been exhausted by him. The colonel boiled over with
accounts of Beauchamp's behaviour toward his uncle, and Palmet, and
Baskelett, and Mrs. Culling: how he flew at and worried everybody who
seemed to him to have had a hand in the proper chastisement of that man
Shrapnel. That pestiferous letter of Shrapnel's was animadverted on, of
course; and, 'I should like you to have heard it, Austin,' the colonel
said, 'just for you to have a notion of the kind of universal blow-up
those men are scheming, and would hoist us with, if they could get a
little more blasting-powder than they mill in their lunatic heads.'

Now Cecilia wished for Mr. Austin's op