-night, as you have done
before with me, and profited, I think. If I write to bid him come, what
will it mean?"

"Nothing more," breathed Emilia.

"To him--for in his way he seems to care for you fitfully--it will
mean--stop! hear me. The words you speak will have no part of the
meaning, even if you restrain your tongue. To him it will imply that his
power over you is unaltered. I suppose that the task of making you
perceive the effect it really will have on you is hopeless."

"I have seen him, and I know," said Emilia, in a corresponding tone.

"You saw him that night of our return from Penarvon? Judge of him by
that. He would not spare you. To gratify I know not what wildness in his
nature, he did not hesitate to open your old wound. And to what purpose?
A freak of passion!"

"He could not help it. I told him he would come, and he came."

"This, possibly, you call love; do you not?"

Emilia was about to utter a plain affirmative, but it was checked. The
novelty of the idea of its not being love arrested her imagination.

"If he comes to you here," resumed Georgiana--

"He must come!" cried Emilia.

"My brother has sanctioned it, so his coming or not will rest with him.
If he comes, let me know the good that you think will result from an
interview? Ah! you have not weighed that question. Do so;--or you give no
heed to it? In any ease, try to look into your own breast. You were not
born to live unworthily. You can be, or will be, if you follow your
better star, self-denying and noble. Do you not love your country? Judge
of this love by that. Your love, if you have this power over him, is
merely a madness to him; and his--what has it done for you? If he comes,
and this begins again, there will be a similar if not the same destiny
for you."

Emilia panted in her reply. "No; it will not begin again." She threw out
both arms, shaking her head. "It cannot, I know. What am I now? It is
what I was that he loves. He will not know what I am till he sees me. And
I know that I have done things that he cannot forgive. You have forgiven
it, and Merthyr, because he is my friend; but I am sure Wilfrid will not.
He might pardon the poor 'me,' but not his Emilia! I shall have to tell
him what I did; so" (and she came closer to Georgiana) "there is some
pain for me in seeing him."

Georgiana was not proof against this simplicity of speech, backed by a
little dying dimple, which seemed a continuation of the plain sadness of