and brain--desire for the
intoxication of the naked speech of love usurped her spirit of pride,
until she read with envious tears, half loathing herself, but fascinated
and subdued: "Mine! my angel! You will see me to-morrow.--Your Lover."

Of jealousy she felt very little--her chief thought coming like a wave
over her: "Here is a man that can love!"

She was a woman of chaste blood, which spoke to her as shyly as a girl's,
now that it was in tumult: so indeed that, pressing her heart, she
thought youth to have come back, and feasted on the exultation we have
when, at an odd hour, we fancy we have cheated time. The sensation of
youth and strength seemed to set a seal of lawfulness and naturalness,
hitherto wanting, on her feeling for Wilfrid. "I can help him," she
thought. "I know where he fails, and what he can do. I can give him
position, and be worth as much as any woman can be to a man." Thus she
justified the direction taken by the new force in her.

Two days later Wilfrid received a letter from Lady Charlotte, saying that
she, with a chaperon, had started to join her brother at the
yacht-station, according to appointment. Amazed and utterly discomfited,
he looked about for an escape; but his father, whose plea of sickness had
kept him from pursuing Emilia, petulantly insisted that he should go down
to Lady Charlotte. Adela was ready to go. There were numbers either going
or now on the spot, and the net was around him. Cornelia held back,
declaring that her place was by her father's side. Fine Shades were still
too dominant at Brookfield for anyone to tell her why she stayed.

With anguish so deep that he could not act indifference, Wilfrid went on
his miserable expedition--first setting a watch over Mr. Pericles, the
which, in connection with the electric telegraph, was to enable him to
join that gentleman speedily, whithersoever he might journey. He was not
one to be deceived by the Greek's mask in running down daily to
Brookfield. A manoeuvre like that was poor; and besides, he had seen the
sallow eyes give a twinkle more than once.

Now, on the Besworth night, Georgiana Ford had studied her brother
Merthyr's face when Emilia's voice called for Wilfrid. Her heart was
touched; and, in the midst of some little invidious wonder at the power
of a girl to throw her attraction upon such a man, she thought, as she
hoped, that probably it was due to the girl's Italian blood. Merthyr was
not unwilling to speak of he