“True, if you like; hot, if you like; but I old?” cried Tracy.

“Yes, because I seem to have got to the other side of you; I mean, I know you, and am always sure of you,” said Emilia.  “You don’t care for music; I don’t care for poetry, but we’re friends, and I am quite certain of you, and think you ‘old friend’ always.”

“And I,” said Tracy, better up to the mark by this time, “I think of you, you dear little woman, that I ought to be grateful to you, for, by heaven! you give me, every time I see you, the greatest temptation to be a fool and let me prove that I’m not.  Altro! altro!”

“A fool!” said Emilia caressingly; showing that his smart insinuation had slipped by her.

The tale of Brookfield was told over again by Tracy, and Emilia shuddered, though Merthyr and her country held her heart and imagination active and in suspense, from moment to moment.  It helped mainly to discolour the young world to her eyes.  She was under the spell of an excitement too keen and quick to be subdued, by the sombre terrors of a tragedy enacted in a house that she had known.  Brookfield was in the talk of all who came to Richford.  Emilia got the vision of the wretched family seated in the library as usual, when upon midnight they were about to part, and a knock came at the outer door, and two men entered the hall, bearing a lifeless body with a red spot above the heart.  She saw Cornelia fall to it.  She saw the pale-faced family that had given her shelter, and moaned for lack of a way of helping them and comforting them.  She reproached herself for feeling her own full physical life so warmly, while others whom she had loved were weeping.  It was useless to resist the tide of fresh vitality in her veins, and when her thoughts turned to their main attraction, she was rejoicing at the great strength she felt coming to her gradually.  Her face was smooth and impassive:  this new joy of strength came on her like the flowing of a sea to a, land-locked water.  “Poor souls!” she sighed for her friends, while irrepressible exultation filled her spirit.

That afternoon, in the midst of packing and preparations for the journey, at all of which Lady Gosstre smiled with a complacent bewilderment, a card, bearing the name of Miss Laura Tinley, was sent up to Emilia.  She had forgotten this person, and asked Lady Gosstre who it was.  Arabella’s rival presented herself most winningly.  For some time, Emilia listened to her, with wonder that a tongue should be so glib on matters of no earthly interest.  At last, Laura said in an undertone:  “I am the bearer of a message from Mr. Pericles; do you walk at all in the garden?”

Emilia read her look, and rose.  Her thoughts struck back on the creature that she was when she had last seen Mr. Pericles, and again, by contrast, on what she was now.  Eager to hear of him, or rather to divine the mystery in her bosom aroused by the unexpected mention of his name, she was soon alone with Laura in the garden.