“For instance, myself.”

“You knew of my wandering about London!  It makes me believe in heaven.  I can’t bear to think of being unseen.”

“This morning,” said Merthyr, “I saw the policeman in whose house you have been staying.”

Emilia bowed her head to the mystery by which this friend was endowed to be cognizant of her actions.  “I feel that I have not seen the streets for years.  If it were not for you I should fall down.—­Oh! do you understand that my voice has quite gone?”

Merthyr perceived her anxiety to be that she might not betaken on doubtful terms.  “Your hand hasn’t,” he said, pressing it, and so gratified her with a concrete image of something that she could still bestow upon a friend.  To this she clung while the noisy wheels bore her through London, till her weak body failed to keep courage in her breast, and she wept and came closer to Merthyr.  He who supposed that her recent despair and present tears were for the loss of her lover, gave happily more comfort than he took.  “When old gentlemen choose to interest themselves about very young ladies,” he called upon his humorous philosophy to observe internally, as men do to forestall the possible cynic external;—­and the rest of the sentence was acted under his eyes by the figures of three persons.  But, there she was, lying within his arm, rescued, the creature whom he had found filling his heart, when lost, and whom he thought one of the most hopeful of the women of earth!  He thanked God for bare facts.  She lay against him with her eyelids softly joined, and as he felt the breathing of her body, he marvelled to think how matter-of-fact they had both been on the brink of a tragedy, and how naturally she had, as it were, argued herself up to the gates of death.  For want of what?  “My sister may supply it,” thought Merthyr.

“Oh! that river is like a great black snake with a sick eye, and will come round me!” said Emilia, talking as from sleep; then started, with fright in her face:  “Oh! my hunger again!”

“Hunger!” said he, horrified.

“It comes worse than ever,” she moaned.  “I was half dead just now, and didn’t feel it.  There’s—­there’s no pain in death.  But this—­it’s like fire and frost!  I feel being eaten up.  Give me something.”

Merthyr set his teeth and enveloped her in a tight hug that relieved her from the sharper pangs; and so held her, the tears bursting through his shut eyelids, till at the first hotel they reached he managed to get food for her.  She gave a little gasping cry when he put bread through the window of the cab.  Bit by bit he handed her the morsels.  It was impossible to procure broth.  When they drove on, she did not complain of suffering, but her chest rose and fell many times heavily.  She threw him out in the reading of her character, after a space, by excusing herself for having eaten with such eagerness; and it was long before he learnt what Wilfrid’s tyrannous sentiment had done to this simple nature.  He understood better the fear she expressed of meeting Georgiana.  Nevertheless, she exhibited none on entering the house, and returned Georgiana’s embrace with what strength was left to her.