ings in the most horrible caterwaul, up and
down. It is really like a thousand lunatics questioning and answering,
and is enough to make you mad; but there that girl sits, listening.
Exactly in this attitude--so. She scarcely ever looks up. My brother
talks, and occasionally steals a glance that way. We passed one whole
hour as I have described. In the middle of it, I happened to look at
Wilfrid's face, while the violin was wailing down. I fancied I heard the
despair of one of those huge masks in a pantomime. I was almost choked."

When Adela had related thus much, she had to prevent downright revolt,
and spoil her own game, by stating that Wilfrid did not leave the house
for his special pleasure, and a word, as to the efforts he was making to
see Mr. Pericles, convinced the ladies that his situation was as pitiable
as their own.

Cornelia refused to obey her lover's mandate, and wrote briefly. She
would not condescend to allude to the unutterable wretchedness afflicting
her, but spoke of her duty to her father being foremost in her prayers
for strength. Sir Purcell interpreted this as indicating the beginning of
their alienation. He chided her gravely in an otherwise pleasant letter.
She was wrong to base her whole reply upon the little sentence of
reproach, but self-justification was necessary to her spirit. Indeed, an
involuntary comparison of her two suitors was forced on her, and, dry as
was Sir Twickenham's mind, she could not but acknowledge that he had
behaved with an extraordinary courtesy, amounting to chivalry, in his
suit. On two occasions he had declined to let her be pressed to decide.
He came to the house, and went, like an ordinary visitor. She was
indebted to him for that splendid luxury of indecision, which so few of
the maids of earth enjoy for a lengthened term. The rude shakings given
her by Sir Purcell, at a time when she needed all her power of dreaming,
to support the horror of accumulated facts, was almost resented. "He as
much as says he doubts me, when this is what I endure!" she cried to
herself, as Mrs. Chump ordered her champagne-glass to be filled, with
"Now, Cornelia, my dear; if it's bad luck we're in for, there's nothin'
cheats ut like champagne," and she had to put the (to her) nauseous
bubbles to her lips. Sir Purcell had not been told of her tribulations,
and he had not expressed any doubt of her truth; but sentimentalists can
read one another with peculiar accuracy through their bew