Georgiana’s features expressed a slight but perceptible disgust.  Emilia continued humbly:  “Forgive me.  I wish you to know how I hate the word I gave that separates me from Merthyr in my Italy, and makes you dislike your poor Emilia.  You do.  I have pardoned it, though it was twenty stabs a day.”

“But, why, if this promise was so hateful to you, did you not break it before?” asked Georgiana.

“I had not the courage,” Emilia stooped her head to confess; “and besides,” she added, curiously half-closing her eyelids, as one does to look on a minute object, “I could not see through it before.”

“If,” suggested Georgiana, “you break your word, you release him from his.”

“No! if he cannot see the difference,” cried Emilia, wildly, “then let him keep away from me for ever, and he shall not have the name of friend!  Is there no difference—­I wish you would let me cry out as they do in Shakespeare, Georgey!” Emilia laughed to cover her vehemence.  “I want something more than our way of talking, to witness that there is such a difference between us.  Am I to live here till all my feelings are burnt out, and my very soul is only a spark in a log of old wood? and to keep him from murdering my countrymen, or flogging the women of Italy!  God knows what those Austrians would make him do.  He changes.  He would easily become an Austrian.  I have heard him once or twice, and if I had shut my eyes, I might have declared an Austrian spoke.  I wanted to keep him here, but it is not right that I—­I should be caged till I scarcely feel my finger-ends, or know that I breathe sensibly as you and others do.  I am with Merthyr.  That is what I intend to tell him.”

She smiled softly up to Georgiana’s cold eyes, to get a look of forgiveness for her fiery speaking.

“So, then, you love my brother?” said Georgiana.

Emilia could have retorted, “Cruel that you are!” The pain of having an unripe feeling plucked at without warning, was bitter; but she repressed any exclamation, in her desire to maintain simple and unsensational relations always with those surrounding her.

“He is my friend,” she said.  “I think of something better than that other word.  Oh, that I were a man, to call him my brother-in-arms!  What’s a girl’s love in return for his giving his money, his heart, and offering his life every day for Italy?”

As soon as Georgiana could put faith in her intention to depart, she gave her a friendly hand and embrace.

Two days later they were at Richford, with Lady Gosstre.  The journals were full of the Italian uprising.  There had been a collision between the Imperial and patriotic forces, near Brescia, from which the former had retired in some confusion.  Great things were expected of Piedmont, though many, who had reason to know him, distrusted her king.  All Lombardy awaited the signal from Piedmont.  Meanwhile blood was flowing.

In the excitement of her sudden rush from dead monotony to active life, Emilia let some time pass before she wrote to Wilfrid.  Her letter was in her hand, when one was brought in to her from him.  It ran thus:—­