It was not quite generous in Mr. Austin to assume that 'her Radical
friend' had been prompting her. However, she thanked him in her heart
for the calm he had given her. To be able to imagine Nevil Beauchamp
intellectually erratic was a tonic satisfaction to the proud young lady,
ashamed of a bondage that the bracing and pointing of her critical powers
helped her to forget. She had always preferred the society of men of Mr.
Austin's age. How old was he? Her father would know. And why was he
unmarried? A light frost had settled on the hair about his temples; his
forehead was lightly wrinkled; but his mouth and smile, and his eyes,
were lively as a young man's, with more in them. His age must be
something less than fifty. O for peace! she sighed. When he stepped
into his carriage, and stood up in it to wave adieu to her, she thought
his face and figure a perfect example of an English gentleman in his
prime.

Captain Baskelett requested the favour of five minutes of conversation
with Miss Halkett before he followed Mr. Austin, on his way to Steynham.

She returned from that colloquy to her father and Mr. Tuckham. The
colonel looked straight in her face, with an elevation of the brows.
To these points of interrogation she answered with a placid fall of her
eyelids. He sounded a note of approbation in his throat.

All the company having departed, Mr. Tuckham for the first time spoke of
his interview with his kinsman Beauchamp. Yesterday evening he had
slurred it, as if he had nothing to relate, except the finding of an old
schoolfellow at Dr. Shrapnel's named Lydiard, a man of ability fool
enough to have turned author on no income. But that which had appeared
to Miss Halkett a want of observancy, became attributable to depth of
character on its being clear that he had waited for the departure of the