t will be a disgust in her memory, and I wish her to
love her country and her Art when she recovers. So we treat the disease,
dear friend. Let your Italy have no sorrows for her ears till the storm
within is tranquil. I am with you speedily."

Marini's reply said: "Among all the things we have to thank our Merthyr
for, this treasure, if it is not the greatest he has given to us, makes
us grateful the most. We met her at the station. Ah! there was an elbow
when she gave her hand. She thought to be alone, and started, and hated,
till Giulia smothered her face. And there was dead fire in the eyes,
which is powder when you spring it. We go with her to her new lodging,
and the track is lost. This is your wish? It is pitching new camps to
avoid the enemy. But so! a man takes this disease and his common work at
once of a woman--she is all the disease, till it is extinct, or she! What
is this disease but a silly, a senseless waste? Giulia--woman that she
is!--will not call it so. See her eyes doze and her voice go a soft buzz
when she speaks it! As a dove of the woods! That it almost makes it sweet
to me! Yes, a daughter of Italy! So Giulia has been:--will be? I know
not! So will this your Emilia be in the time that comes to the young
people, she has this, as you say, malady very strong--ma, ogni male ha la
sua ricetta; I can say it of persons. Of nations to think my heart is as
an infidel--very heavy. Ah! till I turn to you--who revive to the
thought, as you were an army of deliverance. For you are Hope. You know
not Despair. You are Hope. And you love as myself a mother whose son you
are not! 'Oh!' is Giulia's cry, 'will our Italy reward him with a
daughter?'--the noblest that we have. Yes, for she would be Italian
always through you. We pray that you may not get old too soon, before she
grows for you and is found, only that you may know in her our love. See!
I am brought to talk this language. The woman is in me."

Merthyr said, as he read this, "I could wish no better." His feeling for
Emilia waxed toward a self-avowal as she advanced to womanhood; and the
last stage of it had struck among trembling strings in the inmost
chambers of his heart. That last stage of it--her passionate claiming of
Wilfrid before two women, one her rival--slept like a covered furnace
within him. "Can you remember none of her words?" he said more than once
to Georgiana, who replied: "I would try to give you an idea of what she
said, but I might as