am
dinner furnished an excuse for demanding one. He would have preferred a
positive sum annually. Mr. Romfrey, however, though he wrote his cheques
out like the lord he was by nature, exacted the request for them; a
system that kept the gallant gentleman on his good behaviour, probably at
a lower cost than the regular stipend. In handing the cheque to Cecil
Baskelett, Mr. Romfrey spoke of a poacher, of an old poaching family
called the Dicketts, who wanted punishment and was to have it, but Mr.
Romfrey's local lawyer had informed him that the man Shrapnel was, as
usual, supplying the means of defence. For his own part, Mr. Romfrey
said, he had no objection to one rascal's backing another, and Shrapnel
might hit his hardest, only perhaps Nevil might somehow get mixed up in
it, and Nevil was going on quietly now--he had in fact just done
capitally in lassoing with a shot of the telegraph a splendid little
Jersey bull that a Yankee was after: and on the whole it was best to try
to keep him quiet, for he was mad about that man Shrapnel; Shrapnel was
his joss: and if legal knocks came of this business Nevil might be
thinking of interfering: 'Or he and I may be getting to exchange a lot of
shindy letters,' Mr. Romfrey said. 'Tell him I take Shrapnel just like
any other man, and don't want to hear apologies, and I don't mix him up
in it. Tell him if he likes to have an explanation from me, I'll give it
him when he comes here. You can run over to Holdesbury the morning after
your dinner.'

Captain Baskelett said he would go. He was pleased with his cheque at the
time, but hearing subsequently that Nevil was coming to Steynham to meet
Colonel Halkett and his daughter, he became displeased, considering it a
very silly commission. The more he thought of it the more ridiculous and
unworthy it appeared. He asked himself and Lord Palmet also why he should
have to go to Nevil at Holdesbury to tell him of circumstances that he
would hear of two or three days later at Steynham. There was no sense in
it. The only conclusion for him was that the scheming woman Culling had
determined to bring down every man concerned in the Bevisham election,
and particularly Mr. Romfrey, on his knees before Nevil. Holdesbury had
been placed at his disposal, and the use of the house in London, which
latter would have been extremely serviceable to Cecil as a place of
dinners to the Parliament of Great Britain in lieu of the speech-making
generally expected