live unworthily. You can be, or will be, if you follow your
better star, self-denying and noble. Do you not love your country? Judge
of this love by that. Your love, if you have this power over him, is
merely a madness to him; and his--what has it done for you? If he comes,
and this begins again, there will be a similar if not the same destiny
for you."

Emilia panted in her reply. "No; it will not begin again." She threw out
both arms, shaking her head. "It cannot, I know. What am I now? It is
what I was that he loves. He will not know what I am till he sees me.
And I know that I have done things that he cannot forgive. You have
forgiven it, and Merthyr, because he is my friend; but I am sure Wilfrid
will not. He might pardon the poor 'me,' but not his Emilia! I shall
have to tell him what I did; so" (and she came closer to Georgiana)
"there is some pain for me in seeing him."

Georgiana was not proof against this simplicity of speech, backed by a
little dying dimple, which seemed a continuation of the plain sadness of
Emilia's tone.

She said, "My poor child!" almost fondly, and then Emilia looked in her
face, murmuring, "You sometimes doubt me."

"Not your truth, but the accuracy of your perceptions and your knowledge
of your real designs. You are certainly deceiving yourself at this
instant. In the first place, the relation of that madness--no, poor
child, not wickedness--but if you tell it to him, it is a wilful and
unnecessary self-abasement. If he is to be your husband, unburden your
heart at once. Otherwise, why? why? You are but working up a scene,
provoking needless excesses: you are storing misery in retrospect, or
wretchedness to be endured. Had you the habit of prayer! By degrees it
will give you the thirst for purity, and that makes you a fountain of
prayer, in whom these blind deceits cannot hide."

Georgiana paused emphatically; as when, by our unrolling out of our
ideas, we have more thoroughly convinced ourselves.

"You pray to heaven," said Emilia, and then faltered, and blushed. "I
must be loved!" she cried. "Will you not put your arms round me?"

Georgiana drew her to her bosom, bidding her continue. Emilia lay
whispering under her chin. "You pray, and you wish to be seen as you
are, do you not? You do. Well, if you knew what love is, you would see
it is the same. You wish him to see and know you: you wish to be sure
that he loves nothing but exactly you; it must be yourself. You are
jealous