rgive me!
forgive me!"

Emilia was about to put her hand over to him, but the prompt impulse was
checked by a simultaneous feminine warning within. She smiled, saying:
"'I forgive' seems such a strange thing for me to say;" and to convey any
further meaning that might comfort him, better than words could do, she
held on her smile. The smile was of the acceptedly feigned, conventional
character; a polished Surface: belonging to the passage of the discourse,
and not to the emotions. Wilfrid's swelling passion slipped on it.
Sensitively he discerned an ease in its formation and disappearance that
shot a first doubt through him, whether he really maintained his empire
in her heart. If he did not reign there, why had she sent for him? He
attributed the unheated smile to a defect in her manner, that was always
chargeable with something, as he remembered. He began systematically to
account for his acts: but the man was so constituted that as he laid them
out for pardon, he himself condemned them most; and looking back at his
weakness and double play, he broke through his phrases to cry without
premeditation: "Can you have loved me then?"

Emilia's cheeks tingled: "Don't speak of that night in Devon," she
replied.

"Ah!" sighed he. "I did not mean then. Then you must have hated me."

"No; for, what did I say? I said that you would come to me--nothing more.
I hated that woman. You? Oh, no!"

"You loved me, then?"

"Did I not offer to work for you, if you were poor? And--I can't remember
what I said. Please, do not speak of that night."

"Emilia! as a man of honour, I was bound--"

She lifted her hands: "Oh! be silent, and let that night die."

"I may speak of that night when you drove home from Penarvon Castle, and
a robber? You have forgotten him, perhaps! What did he steal? not what he
came for, but something dearer to him than anything he possesses. How can
I say--? Dear to me? If it were dipped in my heart's blood!--"

Emilia was far from being carried away by the recollection of the scene;
but remembering what her emotion had then been, she wondered at her
coolness now.

"I may speak of Wilming Weir?" he insinuated.

Her bosom rose softly and heavily. As if throwing off some cloak of
enchantment that clogged her spirit! "I was telling you of this dress,"
she said: "I mean, of Countess Branciani. She thought her husband was the
Austrian spy who had betrayed them, and she said, 'He is not worthy to
live.' Every