ying in her lap.

"You shall not go!" he breathed imperiously in her ear.

"Then you will marry me quite soon?" And Emilia looked as if she would
be smiling April, at a word.

"My dear girl!" he had an air of caressing remonstrance.

"Because," she continued, "if my father finds me out, I must go
to Italy, or go to that life of torment in London--seeing those
Jew-people--horrible!--or others and the thought of it is like being
under the earth, tasting bitter gravel! I could almost bear it before
you kissed me, my lover! It would kill me now. Say! say! Tell me we
shall be together. I shudder all day and night, and feel frozen hands
catching at me. I faint--my heart falls deep down, in the dark...I think
I know what dying is now!"

She stopped on a tearless sob; and, at her fingers' ends, Wilfrid felt
the quivering of her frame.

"My darling!" he interjected. He wished to explain the situation to her,
as he then conceived it. But he had, in his calculation, failed also to
count on a peculiar nervous fretfulness, that the necessity to reiterate
an explanation in whispers must superinduce. So, when Emilia looked
vacant of the intelligence imparted to her, he began anew, and
emphatically; and ere he was half through it, Mr. Marter, from the
pulpit underneath, sent forth a significant reprimand to the conscience
of a particular culprit of his congregation, in the form of a solemn
cough. Emilia had to remain unenlightened, and she proceeded to build on
her previous assumption; doing the whispering easily and sweetly; in
the prettiest way from her tongue's tip, with her chin lifted up; and
sending the vowels on a prolonged hushed breath, that seemed to print
them on the hearing far more distinctly than a volume of sound. Wilfrid
fell back on monosyllables. He could not bring his mouth to utter flinty
negatives, so it appeared that he assented; and then his better nature
abused him for deluding her. He grew utterly ashamed of his aimless
selfish double-dealing. "Can it be?" he questioned his own mind, and
listened greedily to any mental confirmations of surpassing excellence
in her, that the world might possibly acknowledge. Having, with great
zeal, created a set of circumstances, he cursed them heartily, after the
fashion of little people. He grew resigned to abandon Lady Charlotte,
and to give his name to this subduing girl; but a comfortable quieting
sensation came over him, at the thought that his filial duty stood in