countered, artistic sentiment permitted him to go.




CHAPTER LIII

A minute after his parting with Emilia, Wilfrid swung round in the street
and walked back at great strides. "What a fool I was not to see that she
was acting indifference!" he cried. "Let me have two seconds with her!"
But how that was to be contrived his diplomatic brain refused to say.
"And what a stiff, formal fellow I was all the time!" He considered that
he had not uttered a sentence in any way pointed to touch her heart.
"She must think I am still determined to marry that woman."

Wilfrid had taken his stand on the opposite side of the street, and
beheld a male figure in the dusk, that went up to the house and then
stood back scanning the windows. Wounded by his audacious irreverence
toward the walls behind which his beloved was sheltered, Wilfrid crossed
and stared at the intruder. It proved to be Braintop.

"How do you do, sir!--no! that can't be the house," stammered Braintop,
with a very earnest scrutiny.

"What house? what do you want?" enquired Wilfrid.

"Jenkinson," was the name that won the honour of rescuing Braintop from
this dilemma.

"No; it is Lady Gosstre's house: Miss Belloni is living there; and stop: