the three for each of them in
turn to lead the other, by an excess of some sort of the quality constituting
their men's natures, to wreck a calm life and stand in contention! Had Shrapnel
been commonly reasonable he would have apologized to Mr. Romfrey, or had Mr.
Romfrey, he would not have resorted to force to punish the supposed offender, or
had Nevil, he would have held his peace until he had gained his bride. As it
was, the folly of the three knocked at her heart, uniting to bring the heavy
accusation against one poor woman, quite in the old way: the Who is she? of the
mocking Spaniard at mention of a social catastrophe. Rosamund had a great deal
of the pride of her sex, and she resented any slur on it. She felt almost
superciliously toward Mr. Romfrey and Nevil for their not taking hands to
denounce the plotter, Cecil Baskelett. They seemed a pair of victims to him,
nearly as much so as the wretched man Shrapnel. It was their senselessness which
made her guilty! And simply because she had uttered two or three exclamations of
dislike of a revolutionary and infidel she was compelled to groan under her
present oppression! Is there anything to be hoped of men? Rosamund thought
bitterly of Nevil's idea of their progress. Heaven help them! But the unhappy
creatures have ceased to look to a heaven for help.
    We see the consequence of it in this Shrapnel complication.
    Three men: and one struck down; the other defeated in his benevolent
intentions; the third sacrificing fortune and happiness: all three owing their
mischance to one or other of the vague ideas disturbing men's heads! Where shall
we look for mother wit? - or say, common suckling's instinct? Not to men,
thought Rosamund.
    She was listening to the voices of Mr. Romfrey and Beauchamp in a fever.
Ordinarily the lord of Steynham was not out of his bed later than twelve o'clock
at night. His door opened at half-past one. Not a syllable was exchanged by the
couple in the hall. They had fought it out. Mr. Romfrey came upstairs alone, and
on the closing of his chamber-door she slipped down to Beauchamp and had a
dreadful hour with him that subdued her disposition to sit in judgement upon
men. The unavailing attempt to move his uncle had wrought him to the state in
which passionate thoughts pass into speech like heat to flame. Rosamund strained
her mental sight to gain a conception of his prodigious horror of the treatment
of Dr. Shrapnel, that