Meantime, it is a bad business when the double-man goes about kneeling at the feet of more than one lady.  Society (to give that institution its due) permits him to seek partial invulnerability by dipping himself in a dirty Styx, which corrects, as we hear said, the adolescent tendency to folly.  Wilfrid’s sentiment had served him (well or ill as it may be), by keeping him from a headlong plunge in the protecting river; and his folly was unchastened.  He did not even contemplate an escape from the net at Emilia’s expense.  The idea came.  The idea will come to a young man in such a difficulty.  “My mistress!  My glorious stolen fruit!  My dark angel of love!” He deserves a little credit for seeing that Emilia never could be his mistress, in the debased sense of the term.  Union with her meant life-long union, he knew.  Ultimate mental subjection he may also have seen in it, unconsciously.  For, hazy thoughts of that nature may mix with the belief that an alliance with her degrades us, in this curious hotch-potch of emotions known to the world as youthful man.  A wife superior to her husband makes him ridiculous wilfully, if the wretch is to be laughed at; but a mistress thus ill-matched cannot fail to cast the absurdest light on her monstrous dwarf-custodian.  Wilfrid had the sagacity to perceive, and the keen apprehension of ridicule to shrink from, the picture.  Besides, he was beginning to love Emilia.  His struggle now was to pluck his passion from his heart; and such was already his plight that he saw no other way of attempting it than by taking horse and riding furiously in the direction of Besworth.

CHAPTER XXXI

“I am curious to see what you will make of this gathering.  I can cook a small company myself.  It requires the powers of a giantess to mix a body of people in the open air; and all that is said of commanders of armies shall be said of you, if you succeed.”

This was Lady Gosstre’s encouragement to the fair presidents of the fete on Besworth Lawn.  There had been a time when they would have cried out internally:  “We will do it, fail who may.”  That fallow hour was over.  Their sole thought was to get through the day.  A little feverish impulse of rivalry with her great pattern may have moved Arabella; but the pressure of grief and dread, and the contrast between her actions and feelings, forcibly restrained a vain display.  As a consequence, she did her duty better, and won applause from the great lady’s moveable court on eminences of the ground.

“These girls are clever,” she said to Lady Charlotte.  “They don’t bustle too much.  They don’t make too distinct a difference of tone with the different sets.  I shall propose Miss Pole as secretary to our Pin and Needle Relief Society.”

“Do,” was the reply.  “There is also the Polish Dance Committee; and, if she has any energy left, she might be treasurer to the Ladies’ General Revolution Ball.”