Mr. Powys now asked where this place was that she had hurried to.

The unhappy ladies of Brookfield, quick as they were to read every sign surrounding them, were for the moment too completely thrown off their balance by Emilia’s extraordinary exhibition of will, to see that no reflex of her shameful and hideous proceeding had really fallen upon them.  Their exclamations were increasing, until Adela, who had been the noisiest, suddenly adopted Lady Gosstre’s tone.  “If she has gone, I suppose she must be simply fetched away.”

“Do you see what has happened?” Lady Charlotte murmured to Wilfrid, between a phrase.

He stumbled over a little piece of gallantry.

“Excellent!  But, say those things in French.—­Your dark-eyed maid has eloped.  She left the room five minutes after Captain Gambier.”

Wilfrid sprang to his feet, looking eagerly to the corners of the room.

“Pardon me,” he said, and moved up to Lady Gosstre.  On the way he questioned himself why his heart should be beating at such a pace.  Standing at her ladyship’s feet, he could scarcely speak.

“Yes, Wilfrid; go after her,” said Adela, divining his object.

“By all means go,” added Lady Gosstre.  “Now she is there, you may as well let her keep her promise; and then hurry her home.  They will saddle you a horse down below, if you care to have one.”

Wilfrid thanked her ladyship, and declined the horse.  He was soon walking rapidly under a rough sky in the direction of Ipley, with no firm thought that he would find Emilia there.

CHAPTER XI

At half-past nine of the clock on the evening of this memorable day, a body of five-and-twenty stout young fellows, prize-winners, wrestlers, boxers, and topers, of the Hillford Club, set forth on a march to Ipley Common.

Now, a foreigner, hearing of their destination and the provocation they had endured, would have supposed that they were bent upon deeds of vengeance; and it requires knowledge of our countrymen to take it as a fact that the idea and aim of the expedition were simply to furnish the offending Ipley boys a little music.  Such were the idea and the aim.  Hillford had nothing to do with consequences:  no more than our England is responsible when she sails out among the empires and hemispheres, saying, ‘buy’ and ‘sell,’ and they clamour to be eaten up entire.  Foreigners pertinaciously misunderstand us.  They have the barbarous habit of judging by results.  Let us know ourselves better.  It is melancholy to contemplate the intrigues, and vile designs, and vengeances of other nations; and still more so, after we have written so many pages of intelligible history, to see them attributed to us.  Will it never be perceived that we do not sow the thing that happens?  The source of the flooding stream which drinks up those rich acres of low flat land is not more innocent than we.  If,