“And you make my Cornelia marry, though she loves another, as Wilfrid loves me, and if they do not obey you they are to be beggars!  Is it you who can pray?  Can you ever have good dreams?  I saved my father from the sin, by leaving him.  He wished to sell me.  But my poor father had no money at all, and I can pardon him.  Money was a bright thing to him:  like other things to us.  Mr. Pole!  What will any one say for you!”

The unhappy merchant had made vehement efforts to perplex his hearing, that her words might be empty and not future dragons round his couch.  He was looking forward to a night of sleep as a cure for the evil sensations besetting him—­his only chance.  The chance was going; and with the knowledge that it was unjustly torn from him—­this one gleam of clear reason in his brain undimmed by the irritable storm which plucked him down—­he cried out, to clear himself:—­

“They are beggars, both, and all, if they don’t marry before two months are out.  I’m a beggar then.  I’m ruined.  I shan’t have a penny.  I’m in a workhouse.  They are in good homes.  They are safe, and thank their old father.  Now, then; now.  Shall I sleep?”

Emilia caught his staggering arm.  The glazed light of his eyes went out.  He sank into a chair; white as if life had issued with the secret of his life.  Wonderful varying expressions had marked his features and the tones of his voice, while he was uttering that sharp, succinct confession; so that, strange as it sounded, every sentence fixed itself on her with incontrovertible force, and the meaning of the whole flashed through her mind.  It struck her too awfully for speech.  She held fast to his nerveless hand, and kneeling before him, listened for his long reluctant breathing.

The ‘Shall I sleep?’ seemed answered.

CHAPTER XXVII

For days after the foregoing scene, Brookfield was unconscious of what had befallen it.  Wilfrid was trying his yacht, the ladies were preparing for the great pleasure-gathering on Besworth lawn, and shaping astute designs to exclude the presence of Mrs. Chump, for which they partly condemned themselves; but, as they said, “Only hear her!” The excitable woman was swelling from conjecture to certainty on a continuous public cry of, “’Pon my hon’r!—­d’ye think little Belloni’s gone and marrud Pole?”

Emilia’s supposed flight had deeply grieved the ladies, when alarm and suspicion had subsided.  Fear of some wretched male baseness on the part of their brother was happily diverted by a letter, wherein he desired them to come to him speedily.  They attributed her conduct to dread of Mr. Pericles.  That fervid devotee of Euterpe received the tidings with an obnoxious outburst, which made them seriously ask themselves (individually and in secret) whether he was not a moneyed brute, and nothing more.  Nor could they satisfactorily answer the question.  He raved:  “You let her go.  Ha! what creatures you are—­hein?  But you find not anozer in fifty years, I say; and here you stop, and forty hours pass by, and not a sing in motion.  What blood you have!  It is water—­not blood.  Such a voice, a verve, a style, an eye, a devil, zat girl! and all drawn up and out before ze time by a man:  she is spoilt!”