shall see him. I
must see him. Let him know he is to come immediately."

"That is your decision."

"Yes."

"After what I have told you?"

"Oh, yes; yes! Write the letter."

Georgiana chid at an internal wrath that struggled to win her lips.
"Promise me simply that what I have told you of my brother, you will
consider yourself bound to keep secret. You will not speak of it to
others, nor to him."

Emilia gave the promise, but with the thought; "To him?--will not he
speak of it?"

"So, then, I am to write this letter?" said Georgiana.

"Do, do; at once!" Emilia put on her sweetest look to plead for it.

"Decidedly the wisest of men are fools in this matter," Georgiana's
reflection swam upon her anger.

"And dearest! my Georgey!" Emilia insisted on being blunt to the outward
indications to which she was commonly so sensitive and reflective; "my
Georgey! let me be alone this evening in my bedroom. The little Madre
comes, and--and I haven't the habit of being respectful to her. And, I
must be alone! Do not send up for me, whoever wishes it."

Georgiana could not stop her tongue: "Not if Mr. Wilfrid Pole--?"

"Oh, he! I will see him," said Emilia; and Georgiana went from her
straightway.

CHAPTER L

Emilia remained locked up with her mother all that evening. The good
little shrill woman, tender-eyed and slatternly, had to help try on
dresses, and run about for pins, and express her critical taste in
undertones, believing all the while that her daughter had given up music
to go mad with vanity. The reflection struck her, notwithstanding,
that it was a wiser thing for one of her sex to make friends among rich
people than to marry a foreign husband.

The girl looked a brilliant woman in a superb Venetian dress of purple
velvet, which she called 'the Branciani dress,' and once attired in it,
and the rich purges and swelling creases over the shoulders puffed
out to her satisfaction, and the run of yellow braid about it properly
inspected and flattened, she would not return to her more homely wear,
though very soon her mother began to whimper and say that she had lost
her so long, and now that she had found her it hardly seemed the same
child. Emilia would listen to no entreaties to put away her sumptuous
robe. She silenced her mother with a stamp of her foot, and then sighed:
"Ah! Why do I always feel such a tyrant with you?" kissing her.

"This dress," she said, and held up her mother's chin fondlingly