The sense that she had no kinship with such flesh shut her mouth faster than Wilfrid’s injunctions (which were ordinarily conveyed in too subtle a manner for her to feel their meaning enough to find them binding).  Cornelia, for a mask to her emotions, gave Emilia a gentle, albeit high-worded lecture on the artist’s duty toward Art, quoting favourite passages from Mr. Barrett’s favourite Art-critic.  And her fashion of dropping her voice as she declaimed the more dictatorial sentences (to imply, one might guess, by a show of personal humility that she would have you to know her preaching was vicarious; that she stood humbly in the pulpit, and was but a vessel for the delivery of the burden of the oracle), all this was beautiful to him who could see it.  I cannot think it was wholesome for him; nor that Cornelia was unaware of a naughty wish to glitter temporarily in the eyes of the man who made her feel humble.  The sorcery she sent through his blood communicated itself to hers.  When she had done, Emilia, convincedly vanquished by big words, said, “I cannot talk,” and turned heavily from them without bestowing a smile upon either.

Cornelia believed that the girl would turn back as abruptly as she had retreated; and it was not until Emilia was out of sight that she remembered the impropriety of being alone with Mr. Barrett.  The Pitfall of Sentiment yawned visible, but this lady’s strength had been too little tried for her to lack absolute faith in it.  So, out of deep silences, the two leapt to speech and immediately subsided to the depths again:  as on a sultry summer’s day fishes flash their tails in the sunlight and leave a solitary circle widening on the water.

Then Cornelia knew what was coming.  In set phrase, and as one who performs a duty frigidly pleasant, he congratulated her on her rumored union.  One hand was in his buttoned coat; the other hung elegantly loose:  not a feature betrayed emotion.  He might have spoken it in a ballroom.  To Cornelia, who exulted in self-compression, after the Roman method, it was more dangerous than a tremulous tone.

“You know me too well to say this, Mr. Barrett.”

The words would come.  She preserved her steadfast air, when they had escaped, to conceal her shame.  Seeing thus much, he took it to mean that it was a time for plain-speaking.  To what end, he did not ask.

“You have not to be told that I desire your happiness above all earthly things,” he said:  and the lady shrank back, and made an effort to recover her footing.  Had he not been so careful to obliterate any badge of the Squire of low degree, at his elbows, cuffs, collar, kneecap, and head-piece, she might have achieved it with better success.  For cynicism (the younger brother of sentiment and inheritor of the family property) is always on the watch to deal fatal blows through such vital parts as the hat or the H’s, or indeed any sign of inferior estate.  But Mr. Barrett was armed at all points by a consummate education and a most serviceable clothesbrush.