dela.

"No. I--I'll guess what it cost!"

Surely the ladies had reason to think her commonplace!

She explained herself better to Wilfrid, when he returned to Brookfield
after a short absence. Showing the harp, "See what Mr. Pericles thinks me
worth!" she said.

"Not more than that?" was his gallant rejoinder. "Does it suit you?"

"Yes; in every way."

This was all she said about it.

In the morning after breakfast, she sat at harp or piano, and then ran
out to gather wild flowers and learn the names of trees and birds. On
almost all occasions Wilfrid was her companion. He laughed at the little
sisterly revelations the ladies confided concerning her too heartily for
them to have any fear that she was other than a toy to him. Few women are
aware with how much ease sentimental men can laugh outwardly at what is
internal torment. They had apprised him of their wish to know what her
origin was, and of her peculiar reserve on that topic: whereat he assured
them that she would have no secrets from him. His conduct of affairs was
so open that none could have supposed the gallant cornet entangled in a
maze of sentiment. For, veritably, this girl was the last sort of girl to
please his fancy; and he saw not a little of fair ladies: by virtue of
his heroic antecedents, he was himself well seen of them. The gallant
cornet adored delicacy and a gilded refinement. The female flower could
not be too exquisitely cultivated to satisfy him. And here he was,
running after a little unformed girl, who had no care to conceal the fact
that she was an animal, nor any notion of the necessity for doing so! He
had good reason to laugh when his sisters talked of her. It was not a
pleasant note which came from the gallant cornet then. But, in the
meadows, or kindly conducting Emilia's horse, he yielded pretty music.
Emilia wore Arabella's riding-habit, Adela's hat, and Cornelia's gloves.
Politic as the ladies of Brookfield were, they were full of natural
kindness; and Wilfrid, albeit a diplomatist, was not yet mature enough to
control and guide a very sentimental heart. There was an element of dim
imagination in all the family: and it was this that consciously elevated
them over the world in prospect, and made them unconsciously subject to
what I must call the spell of the poetic power.

Wilfrid in his soul wished that Emilia should date from the day she had
entered Brookfield. But at times it seemed to him that a knowledge of her
anteced