of the tree.
Tracy felt a sudden grasp of his arm. It was momentary, coming
simultaneously with a burst of Wilfrid's voice.

"Do I know what I love, you ask? I love your footprints! Everything you
have touched is like fire to me. Emilia! Emilia!"

"Then," came the clear reply, "you do not love Lady Charlotte?"

"Love her!" he shouted scornfully, and subdued his voice to add: "she has
a good heart, and whatever scandal is talked of her and Lord Eltham, she
is a well-meaning friend. But, love her! You, you I love!"

"Theatrical business," Lady Charlotte murmured, and imagined she had
expected it when she promised Emilia she would step out into the night
air, as possibly she had.

The lady walked straight up to them.

"Well, little one!" she addressed Emilia; "I am glad you have recovered
your voice. You play the game of tit-for-tat remarkably well. We will now
sheath our battledores. There is my hand."

The unconquerable aplomb in Lady Charlotte, which Wilfrid always
artistically admired, and which always mastered him; the sight of her
pale face and courageous eyes; and her choice of the moment to come
forward and declare her presence;--all fell upon the furnace of Wilfrid's
heart like a quenching flood. In a stupefaction, he confessed to himself
that he could say actually nothing. He could hardly look up.

Emilia turned her eyes from the outstretched hand, to the lady's face.

"What will it mean?" she said.

"That we are quits, I presume; and that we bear no malice. At any rate,
that I relinquish the field. I like a hand that can deal a good stroke. I
conceived you to be a mere little romantic person, and correct my
mistake. You win the prize, you see."

"You would have made him an Austrian, and he is now safe from that. I win
nothing more," said Emilia.

When Tracy and Emilia stood alone, he cried out in a rapture of praise,
"Now I know what a power you have. You may bid me live or die."

The recent scene concerned chiefly the actors who had moved onward: it
had touched Emilia but lightly, and him not at all. But, while he
magnified the glory of her singing, the imperishable note she had sounded
this night, and the power and the triumph that would be hers, Emilia's
bosom began to heave, and she checked him with a storm of tears.
"Triumph! yes! what is this I have done? Oh, Merthyr, my, true hero! He
praises me and knows nothing of how false I have been to you. I am a
slave! I have sold myself--sold myself