t
thrown away. Let me be what Merthyr wishes me to be! That is my chief
prayer."

"Why, then, will you not do what Merthyr wishes you to do?"

Emilia's eyelids shut, while her face still fronted him.

"Oh! I will speak all out to you," she cried. "Merthyr, my friend, he
came to kiss me once, before I have only just understood it! He is going
to Austria. He came to touch me for the last time before his hand is
red with my blood. Stop him from going! I am ready to follow you:--I can
hear of his marrying that woman:--Oh! I cannot live and think of him in
that Austrian white coat. Poor thing!--my dear! my dear!" And she turned
away her head.

It is not unnatural that Merthyr hearing these soft epithets, should
disbelieve in the implied self-conquest of her preceding words. He had
no clue to make him guess that these were simply old exclamations of
hers brought to her lips by the sorrowful contrast in her mind.

"It will be better that you should see him," he said, with less of his
natural sincerity; so soon are we corrupted by any suspicion that our
egoism prompts.

"Here?" And she hung close to him, open-lipped, open-eyed, open-eared,
as if (Georgiana would think it, thought Merthyr) her savage senses had
laid the trap for this proposal, and now sprung up keen for their prey.
"Here, Merthyr? Yes! let me see him. You will! Let me see him, for he
cannot resist me. He tries. He thinks he does: but he cannot. I can
stretch out my finger--I can put it on the day when, if he has galloped
one way he will gallop another. Let him come."

She held up both her hands in petition, half dropping her eyelids, with
a shadowy beauty.

In Merthyr's present view, the idea of Wilfrid being in ranks opposed
to him was so little provocative of intense dissatisfaction, that it
was out of his power to believe that Emilia craved to see him simply to
dissuade the man from the obnoxious step. "Ah, well! See him; see him,
if you must," he said. "Arrange it with my sister."

He quitted the room, shrinking from the sound of her thanks, and still
more from the consciousness of his torment.

The business that detained him was to get money for Marini. Georgiana
placed her fortune at his disposal a second time. There was his own,
which he deemed it no excess of chivalry to fling into the gulf. The two
sat together, arranging what property should be sold, and how they would
share the sacrifice in common. Georgiana pressed him to dispose of a
li