always ended in their coming down; Emilia verified that fact repeatedly.  However high they flew, the ground awaited them.  Madame entertained her with talk of Italy, and Tuscan wine, and Lombard bread, and Turin chocolate.  Marini never alluded to his sufferings for the loss of these cruelly interdicted dainties, never!  But Madame knew how his exile affected him.  And in England the sums one paid for everything!  “One fancies one pays for breath,” said Madame, shivering.

One day the ex-organist of Hillford Church passed before them.  Emilia let him go.  The day following he passed again, but turned at the end of the alley and simulated astonishment at the appearance of Emilia, as he neared her.  They shook hands and talked, while Madame zealously eyed any chance person promenading the neighbourhood.  She wrote for instructions concerning this gentleman calling himself Sir Purcell Barrett, and receiving them, she permitted Emilia to invite him to their house.  “He is an Englishman under a rope, ready for heaven,” Madame described him to her husband, who, though more at heart with Englishmen, could not but admit that this one wore a look that appeared as a prognostication of sadness.

Sir Purcell informed Emilia of his accession to title; and in reply to her “Are you not glad?” smiled and said that a mockery could scarcely make him glad; indicating nevertheless how feeble the note of poverty was in his grand scale of sorrow.  He came to the house and met them in the gardens frequently.  With some perversity he would analyze to herself Emilia’s spirit of hope, partly perhaps for the sake of probing to what sort of thing it might be in its nature and defences; and, as against an accomplished disputant she made but a poor battle, he injured what was precious to her without himself gaining any good whatever.

“Why, what do you look forward to?” she said wondering, at the end of one of their arguments, as he courteously termed this play of logical foils with a baby.

“Death,” answered the grave gentleman, striding on.

Emilia pitied him, thinking:  “I might feel as he does, if I had not my voice.”  Seeing that calamity very remote, she added:  “I should!”

She knew of his position toward Cornelia:  that is, she knew as much as he did:  for the want of a woman’s heart over which to simmer his troubles was urgent within him and Emilia’s, though it lacked experience, was a woman’s regarding love.  And moreover, she did not weep, but practically suggested his favourable chances, which it was a sad satisfaction to him to prove baseless, and to knock utterly over.  The grief in which the soul of a human creature is persistently seeking (since it cannot be thrown off) to clothe itself comfortably, finds in tears an irritating expression of sympathy.  Hints of a brighter future are its nourishment.  Such embryos are not tenacious of existence, and when destroyed they are succulent food for a space to the moody grief I am describing.