frocks, and still the tenacious fellow could not bear to hear his uncle
spoken ill of.

'All the men of that family are heartless, and he is a man of wood, my
dear, and a bad man,' the old lady said. 'He should have kept you at
school, and sent you to college. You want reading and teaching and
talking to. Such a house as that is should never be a home for you.'
She hinted at Rosamund. Nevil defended the persecuted woman, but with no
better success than from the attacks of the Romfrey ladies; with this
difference, however, that these decried the woman's vicious arts, and
Mistress Elizabeth Mary Beauchamp put all the sin upon the man. Such a
man! she said. 'Let me hear that he has married her, I will not utter
another word.' Nevil echoed, 'Married!' in a different key.

'I am as much of an aristocrat as any of you, only I rank morality
higher,' said Mrs. Beauchamp. 'When you were a child I offered to take
you and make you my heir, and I would have educated you. You shall see a
great-nephew of mine that I did educate; he is eating his dinners for the
bar in London, and comes to me every Sunday. I shall marry him to a good
girl, and I shall show your uncle what my kind of man-making is.'

Nevil had no desire to meet the other great-nephew, especially when he
was aware of the extraordinary circumstance that a Beauchamp great-niece,
having no money, had bestowed her hand on a Manchester man defunct,
whereof this young Blackburn Tuckham, the lawyer, was issue. He took his
leave of Mrs. Elizabeth Beauchamp, respecting her for her constitutional
health and brightness, and regretting for the sake of the country that
she had not married to give England men and women resembling her.
On the whole he considered her wiser in her prescription for the malady
besetting him than his uncle. He knew that action was but a temporary