“It’s so heavy,” she complained.

“Heavy?”

“I mean, to carry about.”

“If you want to ‘carry it about,’ the boy shall follow you with it.”

She understood that she was being laughed at.  Languor, coupled with the consciousness of ridicule, overwhelmed her.

“I feel I can’t learn,” she said.

“Feel, that you must,” was replied to her.

“No; don’t take any more trouble with me!”

“Yes; I expect you to distinguish Scipio from Cicero, and not make the mistake of the other evening, when you were talking to Mrs. Cameron.”

Emilia left him, abashed, to dread shrewdly their meeting within five minutes at the breakfast-table; to dread eating under his eyes, with doubts of the character of her acts generally.  She was, indeed, his humble scholar, though she seemed so full of weariness and revolt.  He, however, when alone, looked fixedly at the door through which she had passed, and said, “She loves that man still.  Similar ages, similar tastes, I suppose!  She is dressed to be ready for him.  She can’t learn:  she can do nothing.  My work mayn’t be lost, but it’s lost for me.”

Merthyr did not know that Georgiana had betrayed him, but in no case would he have given Emilia the signs she expected:  in the first place, because he had self-command; and, secondly, because of those years he counted in advance of her.  So she had the full mystery of his loving her to think over, without a spot of the weakness to fasten on.

Georgiana’s first sight of Emilia in her Branciani dress shut her heart against the girl with iron clasps.  She took occasion to remark, “We need not expect visitors so very early;” but the offender was impervious.  Breakfast finished, the reading with Merthyr recommenced, when Emilia, having got over her surprise at the sameness of things this day, acquitted herself better, and even declaimed the verses musically.  Seeing him look pleased, she spoke them out sonorously.  Merthyr applauded.  Upon which Emilia said, with odd abruptness and solemnity, “Will he come to-day?” It was beyond Merthyr’s power of self-control to consent to be taken into a consultation on this matter, and he attempted to put it aside.  “He may or he may not—­probably to-morrow.”

“No; to-day, in the afternoon,” said Emilia, “be near me.”

“I have engagements.”

“Some word, say, that will seem to be you with me.”

“Some flattery, or you won’t remember it.”

“Yes, I like flattery.”

“Well, you look like Countess Branciani when, after thinking her husband the basest of men, she discovered him to be the noblest.”

Emilia blushed.  “That’s not easily forgotten!  But she must have looked braver, bolder, not so under a burden as I feel.”

“The comparison was meant to suit the moment of your reciting.”

“Yes,” said Emilia, half-mournfully, “then ‘myself’ doesn’t sit on my shoulders:  I don’t even care what I am.”