“You will come to Italy to-morrow?—­Ze day after?—­not at all?” The last was given with a roar, for lack of her immediate response.  Emilia would find a tear on her eyelids at times.  Surround herself as she might with her illusions, she had no resting-place in Wilfrid’s heart, and knew it.  She knew it as the young know that they are to die on a future day, without feeling the sadness of it, but with a dimly prevalent idea that this life is therefore incomplete.  And again her blood, as with a wave of rich emotion, washed out the blank spot.  She thought:  “What can he want but my love?” And thus she satisfied her own hungry questioning by seeming to supply an answer to his.

The ladies of Brookfield by no means encouraged Emilia to refuse the generous offer of Mr. Pericles.  They thought, too, that she might—­might she?  Oh! certainly she might go to Italy under his protection.  “Would you let one of your blood?” asked Wilfrid brutally.  With some cunning he led them to admit that Emilia’s parents should rightly be consulted in such a case.

One day Mr. Pericles said to the ladies:  “I shall give a fete:  a party monstre.  In ze air:  on grass.  I beg you to invite friends of yours.”

Before the excogitation of this splendid resolve, he had been observed to wear for some period a conspiratorial aspect.  When it was delivered, and Arabella had undertaken the management of the “party monstre”—­(which was to be on Besworth Lawn, and, as it was not their own party, could be conducted with a sort of quasi-contemptuous superiority to incongruous gatherings)—­this being settled, the forehead of Mr. Pericles cleared and he ceased to persecute Emilia.

“I am not one that is wopped,” he said significantly; nodding to his English hearers, as if this piece of shrewd acquaintance with the expressive mysteries of their language placed them upon equal terms.

It was really ‘a providential thing’ (as devout people phrase it) that Laura Tinley and Mabel Copley should call shortly after this, and invite the ladies to a proposed picnic of theirs on Besworth Lawn.  On Besworth Lawn, of all places! and they used the word ‘picnic.’

“A word suggestive of gnawed drumstick and ginger-beer bottles.”  Adela quoted some scapegoat of her acquaintance, as her way was when she wished to be pungent without incurring the cold sisterly eye of reproof for a vulgarism.

Both Laura and Mabel, when they heard of the mighty entertainment fixed for Besworth Lawn by Mr. Pericles, looked down.  They were invited, and looked up.  There was the usual amount of fencing with the combative Laura, who gave ground at all points, and as she was separating, said (so sweetly!) “Of course you have heard of the arrest of your—­what does one call him?—­friend?—­or a French word?”

“You mean?” quoth Arabella.

“That poor, neatly brushed, nice creature whom you patronized—­who played the organ!” she jerked to Arabella’s dubious eyes.