"Will you come?" pursued Wilfrid.
"Many sanks!"
Wilfrid's hand was rising. At this juncture his brother officer slipped
out some languid words in his ear, indicative of his astonishment that he
should be championing a termagant, and horror at the idea of such a thing
being publicly imagined, tamed Wilfrid quickly. He recovered himself
with his usual cleverness. Seeing the signs of hostility vanish, Mr.
Pericles said, "You are on a search for your father? You have found him?
Hom! I should say a maladie of nerfs will come to him. A pin fall--he
start! A storm at night--he is out dancing among his ships of venture!
Not a bid of corage!--which is bad. If you shall find Mr. Pole for to-
morrow on ze lawn, vary glad."
With a smile compounded of sniffing dog and Parisian obsequiousness, Mr.
Pericles passed, thinking "He has not got her:" for such was his
deduction if he saw that a man could flush for a woman's name.
Wilfrid stood like a machine with a thousand wheels in revolt.
Sensations pricked at ideas, and immediately left them to account for
their existence as they best could. The ideas committed suicide without
a second's consideration. He felt the great gurgling sea in which they
were drowned heave and throb. Then came a fresh set, that poised better
on the slack-rope of his understanding. By degrees, a buried dread in
his brain threw off its shroud. The thought that there was something
wrong with his father stood clearly over him, to be swallowed at once in
the less tangible belief that a harm had come to Emilia--not was coming,
but had come. Passion thinks wilfully when it thinks at all. That night
he lay in a deep anguish, revolving the means by which he might help and
protect her. There seemed no way open, save by making her his own; and
did he belong to himself?. What bound him to Lady Charlotte? She was
not lovely or loving. He had not even kissed her hand; yet she held him
in a chain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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