feel, while
perhaps one or two she did feel, at the summons. The effect was that she
lost the true wording of her blunt petition for release: she could no
longer put it bluntly. But her heart revolted the more, and gave her
sharp eyes to see into his selfishness. The purgatory of her days with
Georgiana, when the latter was kept back from her brother in his peril,
spurred Emilia to renew her appeal; but she found that all she said drew
her into unexpected traps and pitfalls. There was only one thing she
could say plainly: "I want to go." If she repeated this, Wilfrid was
ready with citations from her letters, wherein she had said 'this,'
and 'that,' and many other phrases. His epistolary power and skill in
arguing his own case were creditable to him. Affected as Emilia was by
other sensations, she could not combat the idea strenuously suggested
by him, that he had reason to complain of her behaviour. He admitted
his special faults, but, by distinctly tracing them to their origin,
he complacently hinted the excuse for them. Moreover, and with artistic
ability, he painted such a sentimental halo round the 'sacredness of her
pledged word,' that Emilia could not resist a superstitious notion about
it, and about what the breaking of it would imply. Georgiana had removed
her down to Monmouth to be out of his way. A constant flight of letters
pursued them both, for Wilfrid was far too clever to allow letters
in his hand-writing to come for one alone of two women shut up in
a country-house together. He saw how the letterless one would sit
speculating shrewdly and spitefully; so he was careful to amuse his
mystified Dragon, while he drew nearer and nearer to his gold apple.
Another object was, that by getting Georgiana to consent to become in
part his confidante, he made it almost a point of honour for her to be
secret with Lady Charlotte.

At last a morning came with no Brookfield letter for either of them. The
letters stopped from that time. It was almost as if a great buzzing had
ceased in Emilia's ears, and she now heard her own sensations clearly.
To Georgiana's surprise, she manifested no apprehension or regret. "Or
else," the lady thought, "she wears a mask to me;" and certainly it was
a pale face that Emilia was beginning to wear. At last came April and
its wild morning. No little female hypocrisies passed between them when
they met; they shook hands at arm's length by the breakfast-table. Then
Emilia said: "I am ready t