subdued; but turning to Cornelia, he fired up: "It's
preposterous to tell a man who carries on a business like mine, you've
observed for a long while that he's queer!--There, my dear child, I know
that you mean well. I shall look all right the day you're married."

This allusion, and the sudden kindness, drew a storm of tears to
Cornelia's eyelids.

"Papa! if you will but tell me what it is!" she moaned.

A nervous frenzy seemed to take possession of him. He ordered her out of
the room.

She was gone, but his arm was still stretched out, and his expression of
irritated command did not subside.

Wilfrid took his arm and put it gently down on the chair, saying:
"You're not quite the thing to-day, sir."

"Are you a fool as well?" Mr. Pole retorted. "What do you know of, to
make me ill? I live a regular life. I eat and drink just as you all do;
and if I have a headache, I'm stunned with a whole family screaming as
hard as they can that I'm going to die. Damned hard! I say, sir, it's--"
He fell into a feebleness.

"A little glass of brandy, I think," Wilfrid suggested; and when Mr.
Pole had gathered his mind he assented, begging his son particularly to
take precautions to prevent any one from entering the room until he had
tasted the reviving liquor.

CHAPTER XX

A half-circle of high-banked greensward, studded with old park-trees,
hung round the roar of the water; distant enough from the white-twisting
fall to be mirrored on a smooth-heaved surface, while its out-pushing
brushwood below drooped under burdens of drowned reed-flags that caught
the foam. Keen scent of hay, crossing the dark air, met Emilia as
she entered the river-meadow. A little more, and she saw the white
weir-piles shining, and the grey roller just beginning to glisten to
the moon. Eastward on her left, behind a cedar, the moon had cast off
a thick cloud, and shone through the cedar-bars with a yellowish hazy
softness, making rosy gold of the first passion of the tide, which,
writhing and straining on through many lights, grew wide upon the
wonderful velvet darkness underlying the wooded banks. With the full
force of a young soul that leaps from beauty seen to unimagined beauty,
Emilia stood and watched the picture. Then she sat down, hushed,
awaiting her lover.

Wilfrid, as it chanced, was ten minutes late. She did not hear his voice
till he had sunk on his knee by her side.

"What a reverie!" he said half jealously. "Isn't it lovely h