face, as she threw down
this gauntlet to sentimentalism.

"And if he objects?" said Georgiana.

"If he objects, what can happen? If he objects by letter, I am gone. I
shall not write for permission. I shall write what my will is. If I see
him, and he objects, I can look into his eyes and say what I think right.
Why, I have lived like a frozen thing ever since I gave him my word. I
have felt at times like a snake hissing at my folly. I think I have felt
something like men when they swear."

Georgiana's features expressed a slight but perceptible disgust. Emilia
continued humbly: "Forgive me. I wish you to know how I hate the word I
gave that separates me from Merthyr in my Italy, and makes you dislike
your poor Emilia. You do. I have pardoned it, though it was twenty stabs
a day."

"But, why, if this promise was so hateful to you, did you not break it
before?" asked Georgiana.

"I had not the courage," Emilia stooped her head to confess; "and
besides," she added, curiously half-closing her eyelids, as one does to
look on a minute object, "I could not see through it before."

"If," suggested Georgiana, "you break your word, you release him from
his."

"No! if he cannot see the difference," cried Emilia, wildly, "then let
him keep away from me for ever, and he shall not have the name of friend!
Is there no difference--I wish you would let me cry out as they do in
Shakespeare, Georgey!" Emilia laughed to cover her vehemence. "I want
something more than our way of talking, to witness that there is such a
difference between us. Am I to live here till all my feelings are burnt
out, and my very soul is only a spark in a log of old wood? and to keep
him from murdering my countrymen, or flogging the women of Italy! God
knows what those Austrians would make him do. He changes. He would easily
become an Austrian. I have heard him once or twice, and if I had shut my
eyes, I might have declared an Austrian spoke. I wanted to keep him here,
but it is not right that I--I should be caged till I scarcely feel my
finger-ends, or know that I breathe sensibly as you and others do. I am
with Merthyr. That is what I intend to tell him."

She smiled softly up to Georgiana's cold eyes, to get a look of
forgiveness for her fiery speaking.

"So, then, you love my brother?" said Georgiana.

Emilia could have retorted, "Cruel that you are!" The pain of having an
unripe feeling plucked at without warning, was bitter; but she repressed
a