after Miss Belloni's
health."

Wilfrid tore a leaf from his pocket-book, and wrote:

"I can be free to-morrow. One word! I shall expect it, with your name in
full."

But even in the red heat of passion his born diplomacy withheld his own
signature. It was not difficult to override Braintop's scruples about
presenting himself, and Wilfrid paced a sentinel measure awaiting the
reply. "Free to-morrow," he repeated, with a glance at his watch under a
lamp: and thus he soliloquized: "What a time that fellow is! Yes, I can
be free to-morrow if I will. I wonder what the deuce Gambier had to do in
Monmouthshire. If he has been playing with my sister's reputation, he
shall have short shrift. That fellow Braintop sees her now--my little
Emilia! my bird! She won't have changed her dress till she has dined. If
she changes it before she goes out--by Jove, if she wears it to-night
before all those people, that'll mean 'Good-bye' to me: 'Addio, caro,' as
those olive women say, with their damned cold languor, when they have
given you up. She's not one of them! Good God! she came into the room
looking like a little Empress. I'll swear her hand trembled when I went,
though! My sisters shall see her in that dress. She must have a clever
lady's maid to have done that knot to her back hair. She's getting as
full of art as any of them--Oh! lovely little darling! And when she
smiles and holds out her hand! What is it--what is it about her? Her
upper lip isn't perfectly cut, there's some fault with her nose, but I
never saw such a mouth, or such a face. 'Free to-morrow?' Good God!
she'll think I mean I'm free to take a walk!"

At this view of the ghastly shortcoming of his letter as regards
distinctness, and the prosaic misinterpretation it was open to, Wilfrid
called his inventive wits to aid, and ran swiftly to the end of the
street. He had become--as like unto a lunatic as resemblance can approach
identity. Commanding the length of the pavement for an instant, to be
sure that no Braintop was in sight, he ran down a lateral street, but the
stationer's shop he was in search of beamed nowhere visible for him, and
he returned at the same pace to experience despair at the thought that he
might have missed Braintop issuing forth, for whom he scoured the
immediate neighbourhood, and overhauled not a few quiet gentlemen of all
ages. "An envelope!" That was the object of his desire, and for that he
wooed a damsel passing jauntily with a jug in h