or the Winter. Adieu, dear countess. Nevil promises me
a visit after his marriage. I shall not set foot on England again: but
you, should you ever come to our land of France, will find my heart open
to you at the gates of undying grateful recollection. I am not skilled in
writing. You have looked into me once; look now; I am the same. Only I
have succeeded in bringing myself to a greater likeness to the dead, as
it becomes a creature to be who is coupled with one of their body.
Meanwhile I shall have news of you. I trust that soon I may be warranted
in forwarding congratulations to Lord Romfrey.'

Rosamund handed the letters to her husband. Not only did she think Miss
Denham disingenuous, she saw that the girl was not in love with
Beauchamp: and the idea of a loveless marriage for him threw the
mournfullest of Hecate's beams along the course of a career that the
passionate love of a bride, though she were not well-born and not
wealthy, would have rosily coloured.

'Without love!' she exclaimed to herself. She asked the earl's opinion of
the startling intelligence, and of the character of that Miss Denham, who
could pen such a letter, after engaging to give her hand to Nevil.

Lord Romfrey laughed in his dumb way. 'If Nevil must have a wife--and the
marquise tells you so, and she ought to know--he may as well marry a girl
who won't go all the way down hill with him at his pace. He'll be
cogged.'

'You do not object to such an alliance?'

'I 'm past objection. There's no law against a man's marrying his nurse.'

'But she is not even in love with him!'

'I dare say not. He wants a wife: she accepts a husband. The two women
who were in love with him he wouldn't have.'

Lady Romfrey sighed deeply: 'He has lost Cecilia! She might still have
been his: but he has taken to that girl. And Madame de Rouaillout praises
the girl because--oh! I see it--she has less to be jealous of in Miss
Denham: of whose birth and blood we know nothing. Let that pass! If only
she loved him! I cannot endure the thought of his marrying a girl who is
not in love with him.'

'Just as you like, my dear.'

'I used to suspect Mr. Lydiard.'

'Perhaps he's the man.'

'Oh, what an end of so brilliant a beginning!'

'It strikes me, my dear,' said the earl, 'it's the proper common sense
beginning that may have a fairish end.'

'No, but what I feel is that he--our Nevil!--has accomplished hardly
anything, if anything!'

'He hasn't marched on