couple; so he determines on a marriage. 'You can't get it out of his
head; he must be married instantly, and to her, because she is going to
marry somebody else. Sticks to her, follows her, will have her, in spite
of her father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins, religion,
country, and the young woman herself. I assure you, a perfect model of
male fidelity! She is married. He is on her track. He knows his time
will come; he has only to be handy. You see, old Nevil believes in
Providence, is perfectly sure he will one day hear it cry out, "Where's
Beauchamp?"--"Here I am!"--"And here's your marquise!"--"I knew I should
have her at last," says Nevil, calm as Mont Blanc on a reduced scale.'

The secret of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the
automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at
remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like
action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of
our little wooden images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics, under
restrictions from which they shall not escape, though they attempt it
with the enterprising vigour of an extended leg, or a pair of raised
arms, or a head awry, or a trick of jumping; and some of them are
extraordinarily addicted to these feats; but for all they do the end is
the same, for necessity rules, that exactly so, under stress of activity
must the doll Nevil, the doll Everard, or the dolliest of dolls, fair
woman, behave. The automatic creature is subject to the laws of its
construction, you perceive. It can this, it can that, but it cannot leap
out of its mechanism. One definition of the art is, humour made easy,
and that may be why Cecil Baskelett indulged in it, and why it is popular
with those whose humour consists of a readiness to laugh.

The fun between Cecil Baskelett and Mr. Romfrey over the doll Nevil
threatened an intimacy and community of sentiment that alarmed Rosamund