“I have just returned home, and what is this I hear?  Are you utterly faithless?  Can I not rely on you to keep the word you have solemnly pledged!  Meet me at once.  Name a place.  I am surrounded by misery and distraction.  I will tell you all when we meet.  I have trusted that you were firm.  Write instantly.  I cannot ask you to come here.  The house is broken up.  There is no putting to paper what has happened.  My father lies helpless.  Everything rests on me.  I thought that I could rely on you.”

Emilia tore up her first letter, and replied:—­

“Come here at once.  Or, if you would wish to meet me elsewhere, it shall be where you please:  but immediately.  If you have heard that I am going to Italy, it is true.  I break my promise.  I shall hope to have your forgiveness.  My heart bleeds for my dear Cornelia, and I am eager to see my sisters, and embrace them, and share their sorrow.  If I must not come, tell them I kiss them.  Adieu!”

Wilfrid replied:—­

“I will be by Richford Park gates to-morrow at a quarter to nine.  You speak of your heart.  I suppose it is a habit.  Be careful to put on a cloak or thick shawl; we have touches of frost.  If I cannot amuse you, perhaps the nightingales will.  Do you remember those of last year?  I wonder whether we shall hear the same?—­we shall never hear the same.”

This iteration, whether cunningly devised or not, had a charm for Emilia’s ear.  She thought:  “I had forgotten all about them.”  When she was in her bedroom at night, she threw up her window.  April was leaning close upon May, and she had not to wait long before a dusky flutter of low notes, appearing to issue from the great rhododendron bank across the lawn, surprised her.  She listened, and another little beginning was heard, timorous, shy, and full of mystery for her.  The moon hung over branches, some that showed young buds, some still bare.  Presently the long, rich, single notes cut the air, and melted to their glad delicious chuckle.  The singer was answered from a farther bough, and again from one.  It grew to be a circle of melody round Emilia at the open window.  Was it the same as last year’s?  The last year’s lay in her memory faint and well-nigh unawakened.  There was likewise a momentary sense of unreality in this still piping peacefulness, while Merthyr stood in a bloody-streaked field, fronting death.  And yet the song was sweet.  Emilia clasped her arms, shut her eyes, and drank it in.  Not to think at all, or even to brood on her sensations, but to rest half animate and let those divine sounds find a way through her blood, was medicine to her.

Next day there were numerous visits to the house.  Emilia was reserved, and might have been thought sad, but she welcomed Tracy Runningbrook gladly, with “Oh! my old friend!” and a tender squeeze of his hand.

“True, if you like; hot, if you like; but I old?” cried Tracy.

“Yes, because I seem to have got to the other side of you; I mean, I know you, and am always sure of you,” said Emilia.  “You don’t care for music; I don’t care for poetry, but we’re friends, and I am quite certain of you, and think you ‘old friend’ always.”