his figuring feebly, he put on his ever-ready other self:--

"Categorically I reply: Have I loved Miss Emilia Belloni?--No. Do I?--No.
Do I love Charlotte Chillingworth?--Yes, ten thousand times! And now let
Britomart disarm."

He sought to get his reward by gentle muscular persuasion. Her arms alone
yielded: and he judged from the angle of the neck, ultra-sharp though it
was, that her averted face might be her form of exhibiting maidenly
reluctance, feminine modesty. Suddenly the fingers in his grasp twisted,
and not being at once released, she turned round to him.

"For God's sake, spare the girl!"

Emilia stood in the doorway.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A knock at Merthyr's chamber called him out while he sat writing to
Marini on the national business. He heard Georgiana's voice begging him
to come to her quickly. When he saw her face the stain of tears was
there.

"Anything the matter with Charlotte?" was his first question.

"No. But, come: I will tell you on the way. Do not look at me."

"No personal matter of any kind?"

"Oh, no! I can have none;" and she took his hand for a moment.

They passed into the dark windy street smelling of the sea.

"Emilia is here," said Georgiana. "I want you to persuade her--you will
have influence with her. Oh, Merthyr! my darling brother! I thank God I
love my brother with all my love! What a dreadful thing it is for a woman
to love a man:"

"I suppose it is, while she has nothing else to do," said Merthyr. "How
did she come?--why?"

"If you had seen Emilia to-night, you would have felt that the difference
is absolute." Georgiana dealt first with the general case, "she came, I
think, by some appointment."

"Also just as absolute between her and her sex," he rejoined, controlling
himself, not to be less cool. "What has happened?"

Georgiana pointed to the hotel whither their steps were bent. "That is
where Charlotte sleeps. Her going there was not a freak; she had an
object. She wished to cure Emilia of her love for Mr. Wilfrid Pole.
Emilia had come down to see him. Charlotte put her in an adjoining room
to hear him say--what I presume they do say when the fit is on them! Was
it not singular folly?"

It was a folly that Merthyr could not understand in his friend Charlotte.
He said so, and then he gave a kindly sad exclamation of Emilia's name.

"You do pity her still!" cried Georgiana, her heart leaping to hear it
expressed so simply.

"Why, what other feeling