The snare was almost too palpable.  Wilfrid fell into it, from the simple passion that the name inspired; and now his hand tightened.  “Poor child!” he moaned.

She praised his kind heart:  “You cannot be unjust and harsh, I know that.  You could not see her—­me—­any of us miserable.  Women feel, dear.  Ah!  I need not tell you that.  Their tears are not the witnesses.  When they do not weep, but the hot drops stream inwardly:—­and, oh!  Wilfrid, let this never happen to me.  I shall not disgrace you, because I intend to see you happy with...with her, whoever she is; and I would leave you happy.  But I should not survive it.  I can look on Death.  A marriage without love is dishonour.”

Sentiment enjoys its splendid moods.  Wilfrid having had the figure of his beloved given to him under nuptial benediction, cloaked, even as he wished it to be, could afford now to commiserate his sister, and he admired her at the same time.  “I’ll take care you are not made a sacrifice of when the event is fixed,” he said—­as if it had never been in contemplation.

“Oh!  I have not known happiness for years, till this hour,” Cornelia whispered to him bashfully; and set him wondering why she should be happy when she had nothing but his sanction to reject a man.

On the other hand, her problem was to gain lost ground by letting him know that, of the pair, it was not she who would marry beneath her station.  She tried it mentally in various ways.  In the end she thought it best to give him this positive assurance.  “No,” he rejoined, “a woman never should.”  There was no admission of equality to be got out of him, so she kissed him.  Of their father’s health a few words were said—­of Emilia nothing further.  She saw that Wilfrid’s mind was resolved upon some part to play, but shrank from asking his confidence, lest facts should be laid bare.

At the breakfast-table Mr. Pole was a little late.  He wore some of his false air of briskness on a hazy face, and read prayers—­drawing breath between each sentence and rubbing his forehead; but the work was done by a man in ordinary health, if you chose to think so, as Mrs. Chump did.  She made favourable remarks on his appearance, begging the ladies to corroborate her.  They were silent.

“Now take a chop, Pole, and show your appetite,” she said. “’A Chump-chop, my love?’ my little man used to invite me of a mornin’; and that was the onnly joke he had, so it’s worth rememberin’.”

A chop was placed before Mr. Pole.  He turned it in his plate, and wonderingly called to mind that he had once enjoyed chops.  At a loss to account for the distressing change, he exclaimed to himself, “Chump!  I wish the woman wouldn’t thrust her husband between one’s teeth.  An egg!”

The chop was displaced for an egg, which he tapped until Mrs. Chump cried out, “Oh! if ye’re not like a postman, Pole; and d’ye think ye’ve got a letter for a chick inside there?”