“I did not see him,” said Emilia.

“Are you not cold?” he asked, for a diversion, though he had one of her hands.

She gave him the other.

He could not quit them abruptly:  nor could he hold both without being drawn to her.

“What is it you say?” Wilfrid whispered:  “men kiss us when we are happy.  Is that right? and are you happy?”

She lifted a clear full face, to which he bent his mouth.  Over the flowering hawthorn the moon stood like a windblown white rose of the heavens.  The kiss was given and taken.  Strange to tell, it was he who drew away from it almost bashfully, and with new feelings.

Quite unaware that he played the feminine part, Wilfrid alluded to her flight from Richford, with the instinct to sting his heart by a revival of his jealous sensations previously experienced, and so taste the luxury of present satisfaction.

“Why did you run away from me?” he said, semi-reproachfully.

“I promised.”

“Would you not break a promise to stay with me?”

“Now I would!”

“You promised Captain Gambier?”

“No:  those poor people.”

“You are sorry that you went?”

No:  she was happy.

“You have lost your harp by it,” said Wilfrid.

“What do you think of me for not guessing—­not knowing who sent it?” she returned.  “I feel guilty of something all those days that I touched it, not thinking of you.  Wicked, filthy little creature that I was!  I despise ungrateful girls.”

“I detest anything that has to do with gratitude,” Wilfrid appended, “pray give me none.  Why did you go away with Captain Gambier?”

“I was very fond of him,” she replied unhesitatingly, but speaking as it were with numbed lips.  “I wanted to tell him, to thank him and hold his hand.  I told him of my promise.  He spoke to me a moment in the garden, you know.  He said he was leaving to go to London early, and would wait for me in the carriage:  then we might talk.  He did not wish to talk to me in the garden.”

“And you went with him in the carriage, and told him you were so grateful?”

“Yes; but men do not like us to be grateful.”

“So, he said he would do all sorts of things on condition that you were not grateful?”

“He said—­yes:  I forget:  I do forget!  How can I tell what he said?” Emilia added piteously.  “I feel as if I had been emptied out of a sack!”

Wilfrid was pierced with laughter; and then the plainspoken simile gave him a chilling sensation while he was rising to the jealous pitch.

“Did he talk about taking you to Italy?  Put your head into the sack, and think!”

“Yes,” she answered blandly, an affirmative that caused him some astonishment, for he had struck at once to the farthest end of his suspicions.

“He feels as I do about the Italian Schools,” said Emilia.  “He wishes me to owe my learning to him.  He says it will make him happy, and I thought so too.”  She threw in a “then.”