a Tory conspiracy of some sort,' said Beauchamp.

The colonel held his tongue.

The untiring young candidate chose to walk down to Bevisham at eleven
o'clock at night, that he might be the readier to continue his canvass of
the borough on Monday morning early. He was offered a bed or a
conveyance, and he declined both; the dog-cart he declined out of
consideration for horse and groom, which an owner of stables could not
but approve.

Colonel Halkett broke into exclamations of pity for so good a young
fellow so misguided.

The night was moonless, and Cecilia, looking through the window, said
whimsically, 'He has gone out into the darkness, and is no light in it!'

Certainly none shone. She however carried a lamp that revealed him
footing on with a wonderful air of confidence, and she was rather
surprised to hear her father regret that Nevil Beauchamp should be losing
his good looks already, owing to that miserable business of his in
Bevisham. She would have thought the contrary, that he was looking as
well as ever.

'He dresses just as he used to dress,' she observed.

The individual style of a naval officer of breeding, in which you see
neatness trifling with disorder, or disorder plucking at neatness, like
the breeze a trim vessel, had been caught to perfection by Nevil
Beauchamp, according to Cecilia. It presented him to her mind in a