tears burnt to her heart.

Merthyr and Georgiana remained in Devonshire till a letter from Madame
Marini one morning told them that Emilia had disappeared.

"You delayed too long to go to her, Merthyr," said his sister,
astonishing him. "I understand why; but you may trust to time and scorn
chance too much. Let us go now and find her, if it is not too late."

Marini met them at the station in London, and they heard that Wilfrid
had discovered Marini's new abode, and had called there that morning. "I
had my eye on him. It was not a piece of love-play," said Marini: "and
today she should have seen my Chief, which would have cured her of sis
pestilence of a love, to give her sublime thoughts. Do you love her,
Miss Ford? Aha! it will be Christian names in Italy again."

"I like her very much," said Georgiana; "but I confess it mystifies
me to see you all so excited about her. It must be some attraction
possessed by her--what, I cannot say. I like her, certainly."

"Figlia mia! she is an element--she is fire!" said Marini. "My sought,
when our Mertyr brought her, was, it is Italy he sees in her face--her
voice--name--anysing! And a day passed, and I could not lose her for my
own sake, and felt a somesing, too! She is half man."

"A singular reason for an attraction." Georgiana smiled.

"She is not," Marini put out his fingers like claws to explain, while
his eyelashes met over his eyes--"she is not what man has made of your
sex; and she is brave of heart."

"Can you possibly tell what such a child can be?" questioned Georgiana,
almost irritably.

Marini did not reply to her.

"A face to find a home in!--eh, Mertyr?"

"Let's discover where that face has found a home," said Merthyr. "She is
a very plain and unpretending person, if people will not insist upon her
being more. This morbid admiration of heroines puts a trifle too much
weight upon their shoulders, does it not?"

Georgiana knew that to call Emilia 'child' was to wound the most
sensitive nerve in Merthyr's system, if he loved her, and she had
determined to try harshly whether he did. Nevertheless, though the
expression succeeded, and was designedly cruel, she could not forgive
the insincerity of his last speech; craving in truth for confidence
as her smallest claim on him now. So, at all the consultations, she
acquiesced in any scheme that was proposed; the advertizings and the use
of detectives; the communication with Emilia's mother and father; and
th