stiff for me when I'm bound on business."

Emilia found it impossible to fathom the sensations of the man, and
their common desire for speed bewildered her more. She was relieved
when the train was lightened of him. Soon the skirts of red vapour were
visible, and when the guard took poor Braintop's return-ticket from her
petulant hand, all of the journey that she bore in mind was the sight
of a butcher-boy in blue, with a red cap, mounted on a white horse, who
rode gallantly along a broad highroad, and for whom she had struck out
some tune to suit the measure of his gallop.

She accepted her capture by the Marinis more calmly than Merthyr had
been led to suppose. The butcher-boy's gallop kept her senses in motion
for many hours, and that reckless equestrian embodied the idea of the
vivifying pace from which she had dropped. He went slower and slower.
By degrees the tune grew dull, and jarred; and then Emilia looked out
on the cold grey skies of our autumn, the rain and the fogs, and roaring
London filled her ears. So had ended a dream, she thought. She would
stand at the window listening to street-organs, whose hideous discord
and clippings and drawls did not madden her, and whose suggestion of
a lovely tune rolled out no golden land to her. That treasure of her
voice, to which no one in the house made allusion, became indeed a
buried treasure.

In the South-western suburb where the Marinis lived, plots of foliage
were to be seen, and there were lanes not so black but that they showed
the hues of the season. These led to the parks and to noble gardens.
Emilia daily went out to keep the dying colours of the year in view, and
walked to get among the trees, where, with Madame attendant on her, she
sat counting the leaves as each one curved, and slid, and spun to earth,
or on a gust of air hosts went aloft; but it always ended in their
coming down; Emilia verified that fact repeatedly. However high they
flew, the ground awaited them. Madame entertained her with talk of
Italy, and Tuscan wine, and Lombard bread, and Turin chocolate.
Marini never alluded to his sufferings for the loss of these cruelly
interdicted dainties, never! But Madame knew how his exile affected him.
And in England the sums one paid for everything! "One fancies one pays
for breath," said Madame, shivering.

One day the ex-organist of Hillford Church passed before them. Emilia
let him go. The day following he passed again, but turned at the end of
t