worship; to
which the lady was woman and artist enough to have had no objection, but that
therein visibly she discerned the retributive vain longings, in the guise of
high individual superiority and distinction, that had thwarted her with Nevil
Beauchamp, never permitting her to love single-mindedly or whole-heartedly, but
always in reclaiming her rights and sighing for the loss of her ideal; adoring
her own image, in fact, when she pretended to cherish, and regret that she could
not sufficiently cherish, the finer elements of nature. What was this ideal she
had complained of losing? It was a broken mirror: she could think of it in no
other form.
    Dr. Shrapnel's Ego-Ego yelped and gave chase to her through the pure
beatitudes of her earlier days down to her present regrets. It hunted all the
saints in the calendar till their haloes top-sided on their heads - her
favourite St. Francis of Assisi excepted.
    The doctor was called up from Bevisham next day, and pronounced her bilious.
He was humorous over Captain Beauchamp, who had gone to the parents of the dead
girl, and gathered the information that they were a consumptive family, to
vindicate Dr. Shrapnel. »The very family to require strong nourishment,« said
the doctor.
    Cecilia did not rest in her sick-room before, hunting through one book and
another, she had found arguments on the contrary side; a waste of labour that
heaped oppression on her chest, as with the world's weight. Apparently one had
only to be in Beauchamp's track to experience that. She horrified her father by
asking questions about consumption. Homoeopathy, hydropathy, - the
revolutionaries of medicine attracted her. Blackburn Tuckham, a model for an
elected lover who is not beloved, promised to procure all sorts of treatises for
her: no man could have been so deferential to a diseased mind. Beyond calling
her by her Christian name, he did nothing to distress her with the broad aspect
of their new relations together. He and Mr. Austin departed from Mount Laurels,
leaving her to sink into an agreeable stupor, like one deposited on a mudbank
after buffeting the waves. She learnt that her father had seen Captain
Baskelett, and remembered, marvelling, how her personal dread of an interview,
that threatened to compromise her ideal of her feminine and peculiar dignity,
had assisted to precipitate her where she now lay helpless, almost inanimate.
    She was unaware of the passage of time save when her father spoke of a
marriage-day. It told her that she lived and was moving.