 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 cheerful and a very
undemocratic aspect, but in realizing it, the thought, like something flashing
black, crossed her - how attractive such a style must be to a Frenchwoman!
    »He may look a little worn,« she acquiesced.
 

                                 Chapter XVIII

                        Concerning the Act of Canvassing

Tories dread the restlessness of Radicals, and Radicals are in awe of the
organization of Tories. Beauchamp thought anxiously of the high degree of
confidence existing in the Tory camp, whose chief could afford to keep aloof,
while he slaved all day and half the night to thump ideas into heads, like a
cooper on a cask: - an impassioned cooper on an empty cask! if such an image is
presentable. Even so enviously sometimes the writer and the barrister, men
dependent on their active wits, regard the man with a business fixed in an
office managed by clerks. That man seems by comparison celestially seated. But
he has his fits of trepidation; for new tastes prevail and new habits are
formed, and the structure of his business will not allow him to adapt himself to
them in a minute. The secure and comfortable have to pay in occasional panics
for the serenity they enjoy. Mr. Seymour Austin candidly avowed to Colonel
Halkett, on his arrival at Mount Laurels, that he was advised to take up his
quarters in the neighbourhood of Bevisham by a recent report of his committee,
describing the young Radical's canvass as redoubtable. Cougham he did not fear:
he could make a sort of calculation of the votes for the Liberal thumping on the
old drum of Reform; but the number for him who appealed to feelings and
quickened the romantic sentiments of the common people now huddled within our
electoral penfold, was not calculable. Tory and Radical have an eye for one
another, which overlooks the Liberal at all times except when he is, as they
imagine, playing the game of either of them.
    »Now we shall see the passions worked,« Mr. Austin said, deploring the
extension of the franchise.
    He asked whether Beauchamp spoke well.
    Cecilia left it to her father to reply; but the colonel appealed to her,
saying, »Inclined to dragoon one
