It pleased Cornelia to become the wilful child who quarrels with its tutor's teachings, upon this point.
Then Mr. Barrett said quickly: “Your heart is not in this union?”
His tone was severe in the deliberation of its accents.
Was it her duty to live an incomplete life? He gave her a definition of personal duty, and shadowed out all her own ideas on the subject; seeming thus to speak terrible, unanswerable truth.
As one who changes the theme, he said: “I have forborne to revert to myself in our interviews; they were too divine for that. You will always remember that I have forborne much.”
“Yes!” She was willing at the instant to confess how much.
“And if I speak now, I shall not be misinterpreted?”
Though she knew what was behind the door, this flinging of it open with her name startled the lady; and if he had faltered, it would not have been well for him. But, plainly, he claimed the right to call her by her Christian name. She admitted it; and thenceforward they were equals.
It was an odd story that he told of himself. She could not have repeated it to make it comprehensible. She drank at every sentence, getting no more from it than the gratification of her thirst. His father, at least, was a man of title, a baronet. What was meant by estates not entailed? What wild freak of fate put this noble young man in the power of an eccentric parent, who now caressed him, now made him an outcast? She heard of the sum that was his, coming from his dead mother to support him just one hundred pounds annual! Was ever fate so mournful?
Practically, she understood that if Mr. Barrett would write to his father, pledging himself to conform to his mysterious despotic will in something, he would be pardoned and reinstated.
He concluded: “Hitherto I have preferred poverty. You have taught me at what a cost! Is it too late?”
The fall of his voice, with the repetition of her name, seemed as if awakening her, but not in a land of reason.
“Oh, no! Oh, never!” she felt his hand taking hers gently. “My friend,” she said, half in self-defence; and they, who had never kissed as lovers, kissed under the plea of friendship.
All Wilfrid's diplomacy was now brought into play to baffle Mr. Pericles, inspire Emilia with the spirit of secresy, and carry on his engagement to two women to their common satisfaction. Adela, whose penetration he dreaded most, he had removed by a flattering invitation to Stornley; and that Emilia might be occupied during his absences, and Mr. Pericles thrown on a false scent, he persuaded Tracy Runningbrook to come to Brookfield, and write libretti for Emilia's operas. The two would sit down together for an hour, drawing wonderful precocious noses upon juvenile visages, when Emilia would sigh and say: “I can't work!”--Tracy adding, with resignation: “I never can!” At first Mr. Pericles dogged them assiduously. After a little while he shrugged, remarking: “It is a nonsense.”