strangely in error, to be in need of conversion, and he proselytized with
the ardour of the Moslem. His uncle Everard was proud of his good looks,
fire, and nonsense, during the boy's extreme youth. He traced him by
cousinships back to the great Earl Beauchamp of Froissart, and would have
it so; and he would have spoilt him had not the young fellow's mind been
possessed by his reverence for men of deeds. How could he think of
himself, who had done nothing, accomplished nothing, so long as he
brooded on the images of signal Englishmen whose names were historic for
daring, and the strong arm, and artfulness, all given to the service of
the country?--men of a magnanimity overcast with simplicity, which Nevil
held to be pure insular English; our type of splendid manhood, not
discoverable elsewhere. A method of enraging him was to distinguish one
or other of them as Irish, Scottish, or Cambrian. He considered it a
dismemberment of the country. And notwithstanding the pleasure he had in
uniting in his person the strong red blood of the chivalrous Lord
Beauchamp with the hard and tenacious Romfrey blood, he hated the title
of Norman. We are English--British, he said. A family resting its pride
on mere ancestry provoked his contempt, if it did not show him one of his
men. He had also a disposition to esteem lightly the family which,
having produced a man, settled down after that effort for generations to
enjoy the country's pay. Boys are unjust; but Nevil thought of the
country mainly, arguing that we should not accept the country's money for
what we do not ourselves perform. These traits of his were regarded as
characteristics hopeful rather than the reverse; none of his friends and
relatives foresaw danger in them. He was a capital boy for his elders to
trot out and banter.

Mrs. Rosamund Culling usually went to his room to see him and doat on him
before he started on his rounds of an evening. She suspected that his
necessary attention to his toilet would barely have allowed him time to