the
venerable lady, without once afflicting Cecilia with a shiver of
well-founded apprehension, and she was grateful to him almost to friendly
affection in the vanishing of her unjust suspicion, until her father
hinted that there was the man of his heart. Then she closed all avenues
to 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 yo