or having to live," said Emilia.

And so their duett dropped to a finish. He liked her phrase better than
his own, and being denied any privileges, and feeling stupefied by a
position which both enticed and stung him, he remarked that he presumed
he must not detain her any longer; whereupon she gave him her hand. He
clutched the ready hand reproachfully.

"Good-bye," said she.

"You are the first to say it," he complained.

"Will you write to that Austrian colonel, your cousin, to say 'Never!
never!' to-morrow, Wilfrid?"

"While you are in England, I shall stay, be sure of that."

She bade him give her love to all Brookfield.

"Once you had none to give but what I let you take back for the purpose!"
he said. "Farewell! I shall see the harp to-night. It stands in the old
place. I will not have it moved or touched till you--"

"Ah! how kind you were, Wilfrid!"

"And how lovely you are!"

There was no struggle to preserve the backs of her fingers from his lips,
and, as this time his phrase was not palpably obscured by the one it
countered, artistic sentiment permitted him to go.

CHAPTER LIII

A minute after his parting with Emilia, Wilfrid swung round in the street
and walked back at great strides. "What a fool I was not to see that she
was acting indifference!" he cried. "Let me have two seconds with her!"
But how that was to be contrived his diplomatic brain refused to say.
"And what a stiff, formal fellow I was all the time!" He considered that
he had not uttered a sentence in any way pointed to touch her heart. "She
must think I am still determined to marry that woman."

Wilfrid had taken his stand on the opposite side of the street, and
beheld a male figure in the dusk, that went up to the house and then
stood back scanning the windows. Wounded by his audacious irreverence
toward the walls behind which his beloved was sheltered, Wilfrid crossed
and stared at the intruder. It proved to be Braintop.

"How do you do, sir!--no! that can't be the house," stammered Braintop,
with a very earnest scrutiny.

"What house? what do you want?" enquired Wilfrid.

"Jenkinson," was the name that won the honour of rescuing Braintop from
this dilemma.

"No; it is Lady Gosstre's house: Miss Belloni is living there; and stop:
you know her. Just wait, and take in two or three words from me, and
notice particularly how she is looking, and the dress she wears. You can
say--say that Mrs. Chump sent you to enquire