“Ye dare to compar’ me—!”

“Contrast you, ma’am.”

“It’s just as imp’dent.”

“I say, our servants, ma’am...”

“Oh! to the deuce with your ‘ma’am;’ I hate the word.  It’s like fittin’ a cap on me.  Ye want to make one a turbaned dow’ger, ye malicious young woman!”

“Those are personages that are, I believe, accepted in society!”

So the contest raged, Mrs. Chump being run clean through the soul twenty times, without touching the consciousness of that sensitive essence.  Mr. Pole appeared to take the part of his daughters, and by-and-by Mrs. Chump, having failed to arouse Mrs. Lupin’s involuntary laugh (which always consoled her in such cases), huffed out of the room.  Then Mr. Pole, in an abruptly serious way, bashfully entreated the ladies to be civil to Martha, who had the best heart in the world.  It sounded as if he were going to say more.  After a pause, he added emphatically, “Do!” and went.  He was many days absent:  nor did he speak to Adela of the money she had asked for when he returned.  Adela had not the courage to allude to it.

CHAPTER XVII

Emilia sat in her old place under the dwarf pine.  Mr. Powys had brought her back to Brookfield, where she heard that Wilfrid had been seen; and now her heart was in contest with an inexplicable puzzle:  “He was here, and did not come to me!” Since that night when they had walked home from Ipley Green, she had not suffered a moment of longing.  Her senses had lain as under a charm, with heart at anchor and a mind free to work.  No one could have guessed that any human spell was on the girl.  “Wherever he is, he thinks of me.  I find him everywhere.  He is safe, for I pray for him and have my arms about him.  He will come.”  So she waited, as some grey lake lies, full and smooth, awaiting the star below the twilight.  If she let her thoughts run on to the hour of their meeting, she had to shut her eyes and press at her heart; but as yet she was not out of tune for daily life, and she could imagine how that hour was to be strewn with new songs and hushed surprises.  And ‘thus’ he would look:  and ‘thus.’  “My hero!” breathed Emilia, shuddering a little.  But now she was perplexed.  Now that he had come and gone, she began to hunger bitterly for the sight of his face, and that which had hitherto nourished her grew a sickly phantom of delight.  She wondered how she had forced herself to be patient, and what it was that she had found pleasure in.

None of the ladies were at home when Emilia returned.  She went out to the woods, and sat, shadowed by the long bent branch; watching mechanically the slow rounding and yellowing of the beam of sunlight over the thick floor of moss, up against the fir-stems.  The chaffinch and the linnet flitted off the grey orchard twigs, singing from new stations; and the bee seemed to come questioning the silence of the woods and droning disappointed away.  The first excess of any sad feeling is half voluntary.  Emilia could not help smiling, when she lifted her head out of a musing fit, to find that she had composed part of a minuet for the languid dancing motes in the shaft of golden light at her feet.  “Can I remember it?” she thought, and forgot the incident with the effort.