see you all so excited about her. It must be some attraction possessed
by her--what, I cannot say. I like her, certainly."

"Figlia mia! she is an element--she is fire!" said Marini. "My sought,
when our Mertyr brought her, was, it is Italy he sees in her face--her
voice--name--anysing! And a day passed, and I could not lose her for my
own sake, and felt a somesing, too! She is half man."

"A singular reason for an attraction." Georgiana smiled.

"She is not," Marini put out his fingers like claws to explain, while his
eyelashes met over his eyes--"she is not what man has made of your sex;
and she is brave of heart."

"Can you possibly tell what such a child can be?" questioned Georgiana,
almost irritably.

Marini did not reply to her.

"A face to find a home in!--eh, Mertyr?"

"Let's discover where that face has found a home," said Merthyr. "She is
a very plain and unpretending person, if people will not insist upon her
being more. This morbid admiration of heroines puts a trifle too much
weight upon their shoulders, does it not?"

Georgiana knew that to call Emilia 'child' was to wound the most
sensitive nerve in Merthyr's system, if he loved her, and she had
determined to try harshly whether he did. Nevertheless, though the
expression succeeded, and was designedly cruel, she could not forgive the