, they were now filled with the idea that he was possibly
acting--a notion that had never been kindled in them before; or,
otherwise, how came these rapid, almost instantaneous, recoveries?

Cornelia alone sounded near the keynote. Since the night that she had met
him in the passage, and the next morning when Mrs. Chump had raised the
hubbub about her loss, Cornelia's thoughts had been troubled by some
haunting spectral relationship with money. It had helped to make her
reckless in granting interviews to Purcell Barrett. "If we are poor, I am
free;" and that she might then give herself to whomever she pleased, was
her logical deduction. The exposure at Besworth, and the partial
confirmation of her suspicions, were not without their secret comfort to
her. In the carriage, coming home, Wilfrid had touched her hand by
chance, and pressed it with good heart. She went to the library,
imagining that if he wished to see her he would appear, and by exposing
his own weakness learn to excuse hers. She was right in her guess;
Wilfrid came. He came sauntering into the room with "Ah! you here?"
Cornelia consented to play into his hypocrisy. "Yes, I generally think
better here," she replied.

"And what has this pretty head got to do with thinking?"

"Not much, I suppose, my lord," she replied, affecting nobly to
acknowledge the weakness of the female creature.

Wilfrid kissed her with an unaccustomed fervour. This delicate mumming
was to his taste. It was yet more so when she spoke playfully to him of
his going soon to be a married man. He could answer to that in a smiling
negative, playing round the question, until she perceived that he really
desired to have his feeling for the odd dark girl who had recently shot
across their horizon touched, if only it were led to by the muffled ways
of innuendo.

As a dog, that cannot ask you verbally to scratch his head, but wishes
it, will again and again thrust his head into your hand, petitioning
mutely that affection may divine him, so:--but we deal with a
sentimentalist, and the simile is too gross to be exact. For no sooner
was Wilfrid's head scratched, than the operation stuck him as
humiliating; in other words, the moment he felt his sisters fingers in
the ticklish part, he flew to another theme, then returned, and so
backward and forward--mystifying her not slightly, and making her think,
"Then he has no heart." She by no means intended to encourage love for
Emilia, but she hoped f