's not enough?"

"I don't want any, ma'am."

"Ma'am, to the deuce with ye! I'll be callin' ye a forr'ner in a minute,
I will."

Emilia walked away from a volley of terrific threats.

For some reason, unfathomed by her, she wanted to be alone with Wilfrid
and put a question to him. No other, in sooth, than the infallible test.
Not, mind you, that she wished to be married. But something she had heard
(she had forgotten what it was) disturbed her, and that recent trifling
with pain, in her excess of happiness, laid her open to it. Her heart was
weaker, and fluttered, as if with a broken wing. She thought, "if I can
be near him to lean against him for one full hour!" it would make her
strong again. For, she found that if her heart was rising on a broad
breath, suddenly, for no reason that she knew, it seemed to stop in its
rise, break, and sink, like a wind-beaten billow. Once or twice, in a
quick fear, she thought: "What is this? Is this a malady coming before
death?" She walked out gloomily, thinking of the darkness of the world to
Wilfrid, if she should die. She plucked flowers, and then reproached
herself with plucking them. She tried to sing. "No, not till I have been
with him alone;" she said, chiding her voice to silence. A shadow crossed
her mind, as a Spring-mist dulls the glory of May. "Suppose all singing
has gone from me--will he love wretched me?"

By-and-by she met him in the house. "Come out of doors to-night," she
whispered.

Wilfrid's spirit of intrigue was never to be taken by surprise. "In the
wood, under the pine, at nine," he replied.

"Not there," said Emilia, seeing this place mournfully dark from
Cornelia's grief. "It is too still; say, where there's water falling. One
can't be unhappy by noisy water."

Wilfrid considered, and named Wilming Weir. "And there we'll sit and
you'll sing to me. I won't dine at home, so they won't susp-a-fancy
anything.--Soh! and you want very much to be with me, my bird? What am
I?" He bent his head.

"My lover."

He pressed her hand rapturously, half-doubting whether her pronunciation
of the word had not a rather too confident twang.

Was it not delightful, he asked her, that they should be thus one to the
other, and none know of it. She thought so too, and smiled happily,
promising secresy, at his request; for the sake of continuing so
felicitous a life.

"You, you know, have an appointment with Captain Gambier, and, I with
Lady Charlotte Chillingworth,"