“You are not cruel.  I knew it.  I should have died, if you had come between us.  Oh, Wilfrid’s father, I love you!—­I have never had a very angry word on my mouth.  Think! think! if you had made me curse you.  For, I could!  You would have stopped my life, and Wilfrid’s.  What would our last thoughts have been?  We could not have forgiven you.  Take up dead birds killed by frost.  You cry:  Cruel winter! murdering cold!  But I knew better.  You are Wilfrid’s father, whom I can kneel to.  My lover’s father! my own father! my friend next to heaven!  Oh! bless my love, for him.  You have only to know what my love for him is!  The thought of losing him goes like perishing cold through my bones;—­my heart jerks, as if it had to pull up my body from the grave every time it beats....”

“God in heaven!” cried the horrified merchant, on whose susceptible nerves these images wrought with such a force that he absolutely had dread of her.  He gasped, and felt at his heart, and then at his pulse; rubbed the moisture from his forehead, and throwing a fixedly wild look on her eyes, he jumped up and left her kneeling.

His caress had implied mercy to Emilia:  for she could not reconcile it with the rejection of the petition of her soul.  She was now a little bewildered to see him trotting the room, frowning and blinking, and feeling at one wrist, at momentary pauses, all his words being:  “Let’s be quiet.  Let’s be good.  Let’s go to bed, and say our prayers;” mingled with short ejaculations.

“I may say,” she intercepted him, “I may tell my dear lover that you bless us both, and that we are to live.  Oh, speak! sir! let me hear you!”

“Let’s go to bed,” iterated Mr. Pole.  “Come, candles! do light them.  In God’s name! light candles.  And let’s be off and say our prayers.”

“You consent, sir?”

“What’s that your heart does?” Mr. Pole stopped to enquire; adding:  “There, don’t tell me.  You’ve played the devil with mine.  Who’d ever have made me believe that I should feel more at ease running up and down the room, than seated in my arm-chair!  Among the wonders of the world, that!”

Emilia put up her lips to kiss him, as he passed her.  There was something deliciously soothing and haven-like to him in the aspect of her calmness.

“Now, you’ll be a good girl,” said he, when he had taken her salute.

“And you,” she rejoined, “will be happier!”

His voice dropped.  “If you go on like this, you’ve done for me!”

But she could make no guess at any tragic meaning in his words.  “My father—­let me call you so!”

“Will you see that you can’t have him?” he stamped the syllables into her ears:  and, with a notion of there being a foreign element about her, repeated:—­“No!—­not have him!—­not yours!—­somebody else’s!”

This was clear enough.

“Only you can separate us,” said Emilia, with a brow levelled intently.