lse. It pained her now that Tracy should not be coming. "Can I send for
him?" she thought, as she looked winningly into the glass, trying to feel
what sort of a feeling it was to be in love with a face like that one
fronting her, so familiar in its aspects, so strange when scrutinized
studiously! She drew a chair, and laying her elbow on the toilet-table,
gazed hard, until the thought: "What face did Wilfrid see last?"
(meaning, "when he saw me last") drove her away.

Not only did she know herself now a face of many faces; but the life
within her likewise as a soul of many souls. The one Emilia, so
unquestioning, so sure, lay dead; and a dozen new spirits, with but a dim
likeness to her, were fighting for possession of her frame, now occupying
it alone, now in couples; and each casting grim reflections on the other.
Which is only a way of telling you that the great result of mortal
suffering--consciousness--had fully set in; to ripen; perhaps to debase;
at any rate, to prove her.

To be of worth was still her fixed idea--all that was clear in the
thickening mist. "I cannot be ugly," she said, and reproved herself for
simulating a childish tone. "Why do I talk in that way? I know I am not
ugly. But if a fire scorched my face? There is nothing that seems safe!"
The love of friends was suggested to her as something to rely on; and the
loving them. "But if I have nothing to give!" said Emilia, and opened
both her empty hands. She had diverted her mind from the pressure upon
it, by this colloquy with a looking-glass, and gave herself a great
rapture by running up notes to this theme:--

"No, no, no, no, no!--nothing! nothing!"

Clear, full, sonant notes; the notes of her true voice. She did not
attempt them a second time; nor, when Sir Purcell requested her to sing
in the course of the evening, did she comply. "The Signora thinks I have
a cold," she said. Madame Marini protested that she hoped not, she even
thought not, though none could avoid it at this season in this climate,
and she turned to Sir Purcell to petition for any receipts he might have
in his possession, specifics for warding off the frightful affliction of
households in England.

"I have now twenty," said Madame, and throwing up her eyes; "I have tried
all! oh! so many lozenge!"

Marini and Emilia laughed. While Sir Purcell was maintaining the fact of
his total ignorance of the subject against Madame's incredulity, Emilia
left the room. When she came bac