Committee?

'The Liberals are as bad, and worse,' her father said.

She became more and more distressed. 'It seems so very mean, papa; so
base. Ungenerous is no word for it. And how vulgar! Now I remember,
Nevil said he wished to see Mr. Austin.'

'Seymour Austin would not sanction it.'

'No, but Nevil might hold him responsible for it.'

'I suspect Mr. Stukely Culbrett, whom he quotes, and that smoking-room
lot at Lespel's. I distinctly discountenance it. So I shall tell them
on Wednesday night. Can you keep a secret?'

'And after all Nevil Beauchamp is very young, papa!--of course I can keep
a secret.'

The colonel exacted no word of honour, feeling quite sure of her.

He whispered the secret in six words, and her cheeks glowed vermilion.

'But they will meet on Wednesday after this,' she said, and her sight
went dancing down the column of verse, of which the following trotting
couplet is a specimen:--

'O did you ever, hot in love, a little British middy see,
Like Orpheus asking what the deuce to do without Eurydice?'