id of?"

The negative was not decisively enunciated or immediate; that is, it did
not come with the vehemence and volume that could alone have satisfied
Adela's expectation.

The "We are all of one family" was an offensive truism, of which Adela
might justly complain.

That night the ladies received their orders from Wilfrid--they were to
express no alarm before their father as to the state of his health, or to
treat him ostensibly as an invalid; they were to marvel publicly at Mrs.
Chump's continued absence, and a letter requesting her to return was to
be written. At the sign of an expostulation, Wilfrid smote them down by
saying that the old man's life hung on a thread, and it was for them to
cut it or not.

CHAPTER XXXIV

Lady Charlotte was too late for Emilia, when she went forth to her to
speak for Wilfrid. She found the youth Braintop resting heavily against a
tree, muttering to himself that he had no notion where he was, as an
excuse for his stationary posture, while the person he presumed he should
have detained was being borne away. Near him a scrap of paper lay on the
ground, struck out of darkness by long slips of light from the upper
windows. Thinking this might be something purposely dropped, she took
possession of it; but a glance subsequently showed her that the writing
was too fervid for a female hand. "Or does the girl write in that way?"
she thought. She soon decided that it was Wilfrid who had undone her work
in the line of thirsty love-speech. "How can a little fool read them and
not believe any lie that he may tell!" she cried to herself. She chose to
say contemptuously: "It's like a child proclaiming he is hungry." That it
was couched in bad taste she positively conceived--taking the paper up
again and again to correct her memory. The termination, "Your lover,"
appeared to her, if not laughable, revolting. She was uncertain in her
sentiments at this point.

Was it amusing? or simply execrable? Some charity for the unhappy
document Lady Charlotte found when she could say: "I suppose this is the
general run of the kind of again." "Was it?" she reflected; and drank at
the words again. "No," she came to think; "men don't commonly write as he
does, whoever wrote this." She had no doubt that it was Wilfrid. By fits
her wrath was directed against him. "It's villany," she said. But more
and more frequently a crouching abject longing to call the words her
own--to have them poured into her heart