in the line of thirsty love-speech. "How can a little
fool read them and not believe any lie that he may tell!" she cried to
herself. She chose to say contemptuously: "It's like a child proclaiming
he is hungry." That it was couched in bad taste she positively
conceived--taking the paper up again and again to correct her memory.
The termination, "Your lover," appeared to her, if not laughable,
revolting. She was uncertain in her sentiments at this point.

Was it amusing? or simply execrable? Some charity for the unhappy
document Lady Charlotte found when she could say: "I suppose this is the
general run of the kind of again." "Was it?" she reflected; and drank at
the words again. "No," she came to think; "men don't commonly write as
he does, whoever wrote this." She had no doubt that it was Wilfrid. By
fits her wrath was directed against him. "It's villany," she said. But
more and more frequently a crouching abject longing to call the words
her own--to have them poured into her heart and brain--desire for the
intoxication of the naked speech of love usurped her spirit of pride,
until she read with envious tears, half loathing herself, but fascinated
and subdued: "Mine! my angel! You will see me to-morrow.--Your Lover."

Of jealousy she felt very little--her chief thought coming like a wave
over her: "Here is a man that can love!"

She was a woman of chaste blood, which spoke to her as shyly as a
girl's, now that it was in tumult: so indeed that, pressing her heart,
she thought youth to have come back, and feasted on the exultation we
have when, at an odd hour, we fancy we have cheated time. The
sensation of youth and strength seemed to set a seal of lawfulness and
naturalness, hitherto wanting, on her feeling for Wilfrid. "I can help
him," she thought. "I know where he fails, and what he can do. I can
give him position, and be worth as much as any woman can be to a man."
Thus she justified the direction taken by the new force in her.

Two days later Wilfrid received a letter from Lady Charlotte, saying
that she, with a chaperon, had started to join her brother at the
yacht-station, according to appointment. Amazed and utterly discomfited,
he looked about for an escape; but his father, whose plea of sickness
had kept him from pursuing Emilia, petulantly insisted that he should go
down to Lady Charlotte. Adela was ready to go. There were numbers either
going or now on the spot, and the net was around him. Cornelia held