that you should be beaten. And
now--can you throw off political Nevil, and be sailor Nevil? I
distinguish between my old friend, and my . . .our . . .'

'Dreadful antagonist?'

'Not so dreadful, except in the shock he gives us to find him in the
opposite ranks. I am grieved. But we will finish our sail in peace. I
detest controversy. I suppose, Nevil, you would have no such things as
yachts? they are the enjoyments of the rich!'

He reminded her that she wished to finish her sail in peace; and he had
to remind her of it more than once. Her scattered resources for
argumentation sprang up from various suggestions, such as the flight of
yachts, mention of the shooting season, sight of a royal palace; and
adopted a continually heightened satirical form, oddly intermixed with an
undisguised affectionate friendliness. Apparently she thought it possible
to worry him out of his adhesion to the wrong side in politics. She
certainly had no conception of the nature of his political views, for one
or two extreme propositions flung to him in jest, he swallowed with every
sign of a perfect facility, as if the Radical had come to regard
stupendous questions as morsels barely sufficient for his daily
sustenance. Cecilia reflected that he must be playing, and as it was not
a subject for play she tacitly reproved him by letting him be the last to
speak of it. He may not have been susceptible to the delicate
chastisement, probably was not, for when he ceased it was to look on the
beauty of her lowered eyelids, rather with an idea that the weight of his
argument lay on them. It breathed from him; both in the department of
logic and of feeling, in his plea for the poor man and his exposition of
the poor man's rightful claims, he evidently imagined that he had spoken
overwhelmingly; and to undeceive him in this respect, for his own good,
Cecilia calmly awaited the occasion when she might show the vanity of
arguments in their effort to overcome convictions. He stood up to take
his leave of her, on their return to the mouth of the Otley river,
unexpectedly, so that the occasion did not arrive; but on his mentioning
an engagement he had to give a dinner to a journalist and a tradesman of
the town of Bevisham, by way of excuse for not complying with her gentle
entreaty that he would go to Mount Laurels and wait to see the colonel
that evening, 'Oh! then your choice must be made irrevocably, I am sure,'
Miss Halkett said, relying upon intonatio