“You have your eye on a man.  And I know him, zat man!  When he is tired of you—­whiff, away you go, a puff of smoke!  And you zat I should make a Queen of Opera!  A Queen?  You shall have more rule zan twenty Queens—­ forty!  See” (Mr. Pericles made his hand go like an aspen-leaf from his uplifted wrist); “So you shall set ze hearts of sossands!  To dream of you, to adore you! and flowers, flowers everywhere, on your head, at your feet.  You choose your lofer from ze world.  A husband, if it is your taste.  Bose, if you please.  Zen, I say, you shall, you shall lofe a man.  Let him tease and sting—­ah! it will be magnifique:  Aha! ze voice will sharpen, go deep; yeas! to be a tale of blood.  Lofe till you could stab yourself:—­Brava!  But now?  Little fool, I say!”

Emilia believed that she was verily forfeiting an empire.  Her face wore a soft look of delight.  This renunciation of a splendid destiny for Wilfrid’s sake, seemed to make her worthier of him, and as Mr. Pericles unrolled the list of her rejected treasures, her bosom heaved without a regret.

“Ha!” Mr. Pericles flung away from her:  “go and be a little gutter-girl!”

The musical connoisseur drew on his own disappointment alone for eloquence.  Had he been thinking of her, he might have touched cunningly on her love for Italy.  Music was the passion of the man; and a millionaire’s passion is something that can make a stir.  He knew that in Emilia he had discovered a pearl of song rarely to be found, and his object was to polish and perfect her at all cost:  perhaps, as a secondary and far removed consideration, to point to her as a thing belonging to him, for which Emperors might envy him.  The thought of losing her drove him into fits of rage.  He took the ladies one by one, and treated them each to a horrible scene of gesticulation and outraged English.  H accused their brother of conduct which they were obliged to throw (by a process of their own) into the region of Fine Shades, before they dared venture to comprehend him.  Gross facts in relationship with the voice, this grievous “machine, not man,”—­as they said—­stated to them, harshly, impetuously.  The ladies felt that he had bored their ears with hot iron pins.  Adela tried laughter as a defence from his suggestion against Wilfrid, but had shortly afterwards to fly from the fearful anatomist.  She served her brother thoroughly in the Council of Three; so that Mr. Pericles was led by them to trust that there had; been mere fooling in his absence, and that the emotions he looked to as the triumphant reserve in Emilia’s bosom, to be aroused at some crisis when she was before the world, slumbered still.  She, on her part, contrasting her own burning sensations with this quaint, innocent devotion to Art and passion for music, felt in a manner guilty; and whenever he stormed with additional violence, she became suppliant, and seemed to bend and have regrets.  Mr. Pericles would then say, with mollified irritability: