“Oh! that river is like a great black snake with a sick eye, and will come round me!” said Emilia, talking as from sleep; then started, with fright in her face:  “Oh! my hunger again!”

“Hunger!” said he, horrified.

“It comes worse than ever,” she moaned.  “I was half dead just now, and didn’t feel it.  There’s—­there’s no pain in death.  But this—­it’s like fire and frost!  I feel being eaten up.  Give me something.”

Merthyr set his teeth and enveloped her in a tight hug that relieved her from the sharper pangs; and so held her, the tears bursting through his shut eyelids, till at the first hotel they reached he managed to get food for her.  She gave a little gasping cry when he put bread through the window of the cab.  Bit by bit he handed her the morsels.  It was impossible to procure broth.  When they drove on, she did not complain of suffering, but her chest rose and fell many times heavily.  She threw him out in the reading of her character, after a space, by excusing herself for having eaten with such eagerness; and it was long before he learnt what Wilfrid’s tyrannous sentiment had done to this simple nature.  He understood better the fear she expressed of meeting Georgiana.  Nevertheless, she exhibited none on entering the house, and returned Georgiana’s embrace with what strength was left to her.

CHAPTER XLII

Up the centre aisle of Hillford Church, the Tinleys (late as usual) were seen trooping for morning service in midwinter.  There was a man in the rear known to be a man by the sound of his boots and measure of his stride, for the ladies of Brookfield, having rejected the absurd pretensions of Albert Tinley, could not permit curiosity to encounter the risk of meeting his gaze by turning their heads.  So, with charitable condescension they returned the slight church nod of prim Miss Tinley passing, of the detestable Laura Tinley, of affected Rose Tinley (whose complexion was that of a dust-bin), and of Madeline Tinley (too young for a character beyond what the name bestowed), and then they arranged their prayer-books, and apparently speculated as to the possible text that morning to be given forth from the pulpit.  But it seemed to them all that an exceedingly bulky object had passed as guardian of the light-footed damsels preceding him.  Though none of the ladies had looked up as he passed, they were conscious of a stature and a circumference which they had deemed to be entirely beyond the reach of the Tinleys, and a scornful notion of the Tinleys having hired a guardsman, made Arabella smile at the stretch of her contempt, that could help her to conceive the ironic possibility.  Relieved on the suspicion that Albert was in attendance of his sisters, they let their eyes fall calmly on the Tinley pew.  Could two men upon this earthly sphere possess such a bearskin?  There towered the shoulders of Mr. Pericles; his head looking diminished