hy dream." So, as in a prison-house, did her soul now recall the
blissful hours by Wilming Weir. She sickened but an instant. The blood in
her veins was too strong a tide for her to crouch in that imagined
corpse-like universe which alternates with an irradiated Eden in the
brain of the passionate young.

"Why should I lose him!" The dry sob choked her.

She struggled with the emotion in her throat, and Mr. Pole, who had
previously dreaded supplication and appeals for pity, caressed her.
Instantly the flood poured out.

"You are not cruel. I knew it. I should have died, if you had come
between us. Oh, Wilfrid's father, I love you!--I have never had a very
angry word on my mouth. Think! think! if you had made me curse you. For,
I could! You would have stopped my life, and Wilfrid's. What would our
last thoughts have been? We could not have forgiven you. Take up dead
birds killed by frost. You cry: Cruel winter! murdering cold! But I knew
better. You are Wilfrid's father, whom I can kneel to. My lover's father!
my own father! my friend next to heaven! Oh! bless my love, for him. You
have only to know what my love for him is! The thought of losing him goes
like perishing cold through my bones;--my heart jerks, as if it had to
pull up my body from the grave every time it beats...."

"God in heaven!" cried the horrified merchant, on whose susceptible
nerves these images wrought with such a force that he absolutely had
dread of her. He gasped, and felt at his heart, and then at his pulse;
rubbed the moisture from his forehead, and throwing a fixedly wild look
on her eyes, he jumped up and left her kneeling.

His caress had implied mercy to Emilia: for she could not reconcile it
with the rejection of the petition of her soul. She was now a little
bewildered to see him trotting the room, frowning and blinking, and
feeling at one wrist, at momentary pauses, all his words being: "Let's be
quiet. Let's be good. Let's go to bed, and say our prayers;" mingled with
short ejaculations.

"I may say," she intercepted him, "I may tell my dear lover that you
bless us both, and that we are to live. Oh, speak! sir! let me hear you!"

"Let's go to bed," iterated Mr. Pole. "Come, candles! do light them. In
God's name! light candles. And let's be off and say our prayers."

"You consent, sir?"

"What's that your heart does?" Mr. Pole stopped to enquire; adding:
"There, don't tell me. You've played the devil with mine. Who'd ever have