His uncle was besieged by a series of letters, and his cousin, Cecil Baskelett, a captain in England's grand reserve force--her Horse Guards, of the Blue division--helped Everard Romfrey to laugh over them.
It was not difficult, alack! Letters of a lover in an extremity of love, crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening ecclesiastical judges.

Why go to the fire when a recantation will save you from it?
Why not break the excruciating faggot-bands, and escape, when you have only to decide to do it?
We naturally ask why.

Those martyrs of love or religion are madmen.

Altogether, Nevil's adjurations and supplications, his threats of wrath and appeals to reason, were an odd mixture.

'He won't lose a chance while there's breath in his body,' Everard said, quite good-humouredly, though he deplored that the chance for the fellow to make his hero-parade in society, and haply catch an heiress, was waning.