CHAPTER L

Emilia remained locked up with her mother all that evening.  The good little shrill woman, tender-eyed and slatternly, had to help try on dresses, and run about for pins, and express her critical taste in undertones, believing all the while that her daughter had given up music to go mad with vanity.  The reflection struck her, notwithstanding, that it was a wiser thing for one of her sex to make friends among rich people than to marry a foreign husband.

The girl looked a brilliant woman in a superb Venetian dress of purple velvet, which she called ‘the Branciani dress,’ and once attired in it, and the rich purges and swelling creases over the shoulders puffed out to her satisfaction, and the run of yellow braid about it properly inspected and flattened, she would not return to her more homely wear, though very soon her mother began to whimper and say that she had lost her so long, and now that she had found her it hardly seemed the same child.  Emilia would listen to no entreaties to put away her sumptuous robe.  She silenced her mother with a stamp of her foot, and then sighed:  “Ah!  Why do I always feel such a tyrant with you?” kissing her.

“This dress,” she said, and held up her mother’s chin fondlingly between her two hands, “this dress was designed by my friend Merthyr—­that is, Mr. Powys—­from what he remembered of a dress worn by Countess Branciani, of Venice.  He had it made to give to me.  It came from Paris.  Countess Branciani was one of his dearest friends.  I feel that I am twice as much his friend with this on me.  Mother, it seems like a deep blush all over me.  I feel as if I looked out of a rose.”

She spread her hands to express the flower magnified.

“Oh! what silly talk,” said her mother:  “it does turn your head, this dress does!”

“I wish it would give me my voice, mother.  My father has no hope.  I wish he would send me news to make me happy about him; or come and run his finger up the strings for hours, as he used to.  I have fancied I heard him at times, and I had a longing to follow the notes, and felt sure of my semi-tones.  He won’t see me!  Mother! he would think something of me if he saw me now!”

Her mother’s lamentations reached that vocal pitch at last which Emilia could not endure, and the little lady was despatched to her home under charge of a servant.

Emilia feasted on the looking-glass when alone.  Had Merthyr, in restoring her to health, given her an overdose of the poison?

“Countess Branciani made the Austrian Governor her slave,” she uttered, planting one foot upon a stool to lend herself height.  “He told her who were suspected, and who would be imprisoned, and gave her all the State secrets.  Beauty can do more than music.  I wonder whether Merthyr loved her?  He loves me!”