ity of Emilia's design. She said: "I will tell you exactly how
I am placed. I do not know, that under any circumstances, I could
have given into your hands so large a sum as this that you ask for. My
brother has a fortune; and I have also a little property. When I say my
brother has a fortune, he has the remains of one. All that has gone has
been devoted to relieve your countrymen, and further the interests he
has nearest at heart. What is left to him, I believe, he has now thrown
into the gulf. You have heard Lady Charlotte call him a fanatic."

Emilia's lip quivered.

"You must not blame her for that," Georgiana continued. "Lady Gosstre
thinks much the same. The world thinks with them. I love him, and prove
my love by trusting him, and wish to prove my love by aiding him, and
being always at hand to succour, as I should be now, but that I obeyed
his dearest wish in resting here to watch over you. I am his other self.
I have taught him to feel that; so that in his devotion to this cause he
may follow every impulse he has, and still there is his sister to fall
back on. My child! see what I have been doing. I have been calculating
here." Georgiana took a scroll from her desk, and laid it under Emilia's
eyes. "I have reckoned our expenses as far as Turin, and have only
consented to take Lady Gosstre's valet for courier, just to please her.
I know that he will make the cost double, and I feel like a miser about
money. If Merthyr is ruined, he will require every farthing that I have
for our common subsistence. Now do you understand? I can hardly put the
case more plainly. It is out of my power to do what you ask me to do."

Emilia sighed lightly, and seemed not much cast down by the refusal. She
perceived that it was necessarily positive, and like all minds framed to
resolve to action, there was an instantaneous change of the current of
her thoughts in another direction.

"Then, my darling, my one prayer!" she said. "Postpone our going for a
week. I will try to get help for them elsewhere."

Georgiana was pleased by Emilia's manner of taking the rebuff; but it
required an altercation before she consented to this postponement; she
nodded her head finally in anger.

CHAPTER LVII

By the park-gates that evening, Wilfrid received a letter from the hands
of Tracy Runningbrook. It said: "I am not able to see you now. When I
tell you that I will see you before I leave England, I insist upon your
believing me. I have n