at the extreme composure of Braintop’s countenance.  “Why don’t the fellow laugh?  Does he think he’s listening to a sermon?” Poor Braintop, on his part, sat in mortal fear lest his admiration of Emilia was perceived.  Divided? between this alarming suspicion, and a doubt that the hair on his forehead was not properly regulated, he became uneasy and fitful in his deportment.  His imagination plagued him with a sense of guilt, which his master’s watchfulness of him increased.  He took an opportunity to furtively to eye himself in a pocket-mirror, and was subsequently haunted by an additional dread that Emilia might have discovered the instrument; and set him down as a vain foolish dog.  When he saw her laugh he was sure of it.  Instead of responding to Mr. Pole’s encouragement, he assumed a taciturn aspect worthy of a youthful anchorite, and continued to be the spectator of a scene to which his soul was dead.

“I believe that fellow’s thinking of nothing but his supper,” said Mr. Pole.

“I dare say he dined early in the day,” returned Emilia, remembering how hungry she used to be in the evenings of the potatoe-days.

“Yes, but he might laugh, all the same.”  And Mr. Pole gave Emilia the sound advice:  “Mind you never marry a fellow who can’t laugh.”

Braintop saw Emilia smile.  Then, in an instant, her face changed its expression to one of wonder and alarm, and her hands clasped together tightly.  What on earth was the matter with her?  His agitated fancy, centred in himself, now decided that some manifestation of most shocking absurdity had settled on his forehead, or his hair, for he was certain of his neck-tie.  Braintop had recourse to his pocket-mirror once more.  It afforded him a rapid interchange of glances with a face which he at all events could distinguish from the mass, though we need not.

The youth was in the act of conveying the instrument to its retreat, when conscience sent his eyes toward Emilia, who, to his horror, beckoned to him, and touched Mr. Pole, entreating him to do the same.  Mr. Pole gesticulated imperiously, whereat Braintop rose, and requested his neighbour to keep his seat for ten minutes, as he was going into that particular box; and “If I don’t come back in ten minutes, I shall stop there,” said Braintop, a little grandly, through the confusion of his ideas, as he guessed at the possible reasons for the summons.

Emilia had seen her father in the orchestra.  There he sat, under the leader, sullenly fiddling the prelude to the second play, like a man ashamed, and one of the beaten in this world.  Flight had been her first thought.  She had cause to dread him.  The more she lived and the dawning knowledge of what it is to be a woman in the world grew with her, the more she shrank from his guidance, and from reliance on him.  Not that she conceived him designedly base; but he outraged her now conscious delicacy, and what she had to endure as a girl seemed unbearable