feel, dear.
Ah! I need not tell you that. Their tears are not the witnesses. When
they do not weep, but the hot drops stream inwardly:--and, oh! Wilfrid,
let this never happen to me. I shall not disgrace you, because I intend
to see you happy with...with her, whoever she is; and I would leave
you happy. But I should not survive it. I can look on Death. A marriage
without love is dishonour."

Sentiment enjoys its splendid moods. Wilfrid having had the figure of
his beloved given to him under nuptial benediction, cloaked, even as
he wished it to be, could afford now to commiserate his sister, and
he admired her at the same time. "I'll take care you are not made a
sacrifice of when the event is fixed," he said--as if it had never been
in contemplation.

"Oh! I have not known happiness for years, till this hour," Cornelia
whispered to him bashfully; and set him wondering why she should be
happy when she had nothing but his sanction to reject a man.

On the other hand, her problem was to gain lost ground by letting him
know that, of the pair, it was not she who would marry beneath her
station. She tried it mentally in various ways. In the end she thought
it best to give him this positive assurance. "No," he rejoined, "a woman
never should." There was no admission of equality to be got out of him,
so she kissed him. Of their father's health a few words were said--of
Emilia nothing further. She saw that Wilfrid's mind was resolved upon
some part to play, but shrank from asking his confidence, lest facts
should be laid bare.

At the breakfast-table Mr. Pole was a little late. He wore some of his
false air of briskness on a hazy face, and read prayers--drawing breath
between each sentence and rubbing his forehead; but the work was done by
a man in ordinary health, if you chose to think so, as Mrs. Chump did.
She made favourable remarks on his appearance, begging the ladies to
corroborate her. They were silent.

"Now take a chop, Pole, and show your appetite," she said. "'A
Chump-chop, my love?' my little man used to invite me of a mornin'; and
that was the onnly joke he had, so it's worth rememberin'."

A chop was placed before Mr. Pole. He turned it in his plate, and
wonderingly called to mind that he had once enjoyed chops. At a loss to
account for the distressing change, he exclaimed to himself, "Chump! I
wish the woman wouldn't thrust her husband between one's teeth. An egg!"

The chop was displaced for an egg, whic