The gravely sceptical smile on Emilia’s face changed to a blank pallor.

“Then, you make him, sir—­you?”

“He’ll be a beggar, if he don’t.”

“You will keep him without money?”

Mr. Pole felt that he gazed on strange deeps in that girl’s face.  Her voice had the wire-like hum of a rising wind.  There was no menace in her eyes:  the lashes of them drooped almost tenderly, and the lips were but softly closed.  The heaving of the bosom, though weighty, was regular:  the hands hung straight down, and were open.  She looked harmless; but his physical apprehensiveness was sharpened by his nervous condition, and he read power in her:  the capacity to concentrate all animal and mental vigour into one feeling—­this being the power of the soul.

So she stood, breathing quietly, steadily eyeing him.

“No, no;” went on Mr. Pole.  “Come, come.  We’ll sit down, and see, and talk—­see what can be done.  You know I always meant kindly by you.”

“Oh, yes!” Emilia musically murmured, and it cost her nothing to smile again.

“Now, tell me how this began.”  Mr. Pole settled himself comfortably to listen, all irritation having apparently left him, under the influence of the dominant nature.  “You need not be ashamed to talk it over to me.”

“I am not ashamed,” Emilia led off, and told her tale simply, with here and there one of her peculiar illustrations.  She had not thought of love till it came to life suddenly, she said; and then all the world looked different.  The relation of Wilfrid’s bravery in fighting for her, varied for a single instant the low monotony of her voice.  At the close of the confession, Mr. Pole wore an aspect of distress.  This creature’s utter unlikeness to the girls he was accustomed to, corroborated his personal view of the case, that Wilfrid certainly could not have been serious, and that she was deluded.  But he pitied her, for he had sufficient imagination to prevent him from despising what he did not altogether comprehend.  So, to fortify the damsel, he gave her a lecture:  first, on young men—­their selfish inconsiderateness, their weakness, the wanton lives they led, their trick of lying for any sugar-plum, and how they laughed at their dupes.  Secondly, as to the conduct consequently to be prescribed to girls, who were weaker, frailer, by disposition more confiding, and who must believe nothing but what they heard their elders say.

Emilia gave patient heed to the lecture.

“But I am safe,” she remarked, when he had finished; “for my lover is not as those young men are.”