under his eyes. He had only to take up his pen. Generally he favours
me with his French gossip. I suppose there were circumstances in this
affair more suitable to Palmet than to me. He wrote a description of
Madame de Rouaillout that set Palmet strutting about for an hour. I have
no doubt she must be a very beautiful woman, for a Frenchwoman: not
regular features; expressive, capricious. Vivian Ducie lays great stress
on her eyes and eyebrows, and, I think, her hair. With a Frenchwoman's
figure, that is enough to make men crazy. He says her husband deserves--
but what will not young men write? It is deeply to be regretted that
Englishmen abroad--women the same, I fear--get the Continental tone in
morals. But how Captain Beauchamp could expect to carry on an Election
and an intrigue together, only a head like his can tell us. Grancey is
in high indignation with him. It does not concern the Election, you can
imagine. Something that man Dr. Shrapnel has done, which he says Captain
Beauchamp could have prevented. Quarrels of men! I have instructed
Palmet to write to Vivian Ducie for a photograph of Madame de Rouaillout.
Do you know, one has a curiosity to see the face of the woman for whom a
man ruins himself. But I say again, he ought to be married.'

'That there may be two victims?' Cecilia said it smiling.

She was young in suffering, and thought, as the unseasoned and
inexperienced do, that a mask is a concealment.

'Married--settled; to have him bound in honour,' said Mrs. Lespel.
'I had a conversation with him when he was at Itchincope; and his look,
and what I know of his father, that gallant and handsome Colonel Richard
Beauchamp, would give one a kind of confidence in him; supposing always
that he is not struck with one of those deadly passions that are like
snakes, like magic. I positively believe in them. I have seen them.