"Oh, yes; that she said."

"It sounded oddly to your ears?"

"Very, indeed."

"What more?"

"--did she say, do you mean?"

"Is my poor sister ashamed to repeat it?"

"I would repeat anything that would give you pleasure to hear."

"Sometimes pain, you know, is sweet."

Little by little, and with a contest at each step, Georgiana coasted the
conviction that her undivided reign was over. Then she judged Emilia by
human nature's hardest standard: the measure of the qualities brought as
usurper and successor. Unconsciously she placed herself in the seat of
one who had fulfilled all the great things demanded of a woman for
Merthyr, and it seemed to her that Emilia exercised some fatal
fascination, girl though she was, to hurl her from that happy
sovereignty.

But Emilia's worst crime before the arraigning lady was that Wilfrid had
cast her off. Female justice, therefore, said: "You must be unworthy of
my brother;" and female delicacy thought: "You have been soiled by a
previous history." She had pitied Wilfrid: now she held him partially
blameless: and while love was throbbing in many pulses all round her.