aroused it: and she was conscious that she had but shown obedience to
his wishes throughout the day, not sympathy with his feelings. Under
cover of a patient desire to please she had nursed irritation and
jealousy; the degradation of the sense of jealousy increasing the
irritation. Having consented to the ride to Dr. Shrapnel, should she
not, to be consistent, have dismounted there? O half heart! A whole
one, though it be an erring, like that of the French lady, does at least
live, and has a history, and makes music: but the faint and uncertain is
jarred in action, jarred in memory, ever behind the day and in the shadow
of it! Cecilia reviewed herself: jealous, disappointed, vexed, ashamed,
she had been all day a graceless companion, a bad actress: and at the
day's close she was loving Nevil the better for what had dissatisfied,
distressed, and wounded her. She was loving him in emulation of his
devotedness to another person: and that other was a revolutionary common
people's doctor! an infidel, a traitor to his country's dearest
interests! But Nevil loved him, and it had become impossible for her not
to covet the love, or to think of the old offender without the halo cast
by Nevil's attachment being upon him. So intensely was she moved by her
intertwisting reflections that in an access of bodily fever she stood up
and moved before the glass, to behold the image of the woman who could be
the victim of these childish emotions: and no wonderful contrast struck
her eyes; she appeared to herself as poor and small as they. How could
she aspire to a man like Nevil Beauchamp? If he had made her happy by
wooing her she would not have adored him as she did now. He likes my
hair, she said, smoothing it out, and then pressing her temples, like one
insane. Two minutes afterward she was telling Rosamund her head ached
less.

'This terrible Dr. Shrapnel!' Rosamund exclaimed, but reported that no
loud voices were raised in the dining-room.