"How do you know I have been there at all to-day?" says Dorian.

"Oh, because you are always there, aren't you?" says Georgie, shrugging her shoulders, and biting a little flower she has been holding, into two clean halves.

"As you know so much, perhaps you also know _why_ I am always there,"

says Brans...o...b.., who is half amused, half offended, by her wilfulness.

"No, I don't," replies she, easily, turning her eyes, for the first time, full upon his. "Tell me."

She is quite calm, quite composed; there is even the very faintest touch of malice beneath her long lashes. Dorian colors perceptibly. Is she coquette, or unthinking, or merely mischievous?

"No, not now," he says, slowly. "I hardly think you would care to hear. Some day, if I may--. What a very charming hat you have on to-day!"

She smiles again,--what true woman can resist a compliment--and blushes faintly, but very sweetly, until all her face is like a pale "rosebud brightly blowing."

"This old hat?" she says, with a small attempt at scorn and a very well got-up belief that she has misunderstood him: "why, it has seen the rise and fall of many generations. You can't mean _this_ hat?"

"Yes, I do. To me it is the most beautiful hat in the world, no matter how many happy generations have been permitted to gaze upon it. It is yours!"

"Oh, yes; I bought it in the dark ages," says Miss Broughton, disdaining to notice the insinuation, and treating his last remark as a leading question. "I am glad you like it."

"Are you? I like something else, too: I mean your voice."

"It is too minor,--too discontented, my aunt used to say."

"Your aunt seems to have said a good deal in her time. She reminds me of Butler's talker: 'Her tongue is always in motion, though very seldom to the purpose;' and again, 'She is a walking pillory, and punishes more ears than a dozen standing ones.' But I wasn't talking exactly of your everyday voice: I meant your singing: it is quite perfect."

"Two compliments in five minutes!" says Miss Georgie, calmly. Then, changing her tone with dazzling, because unexpected, haste, she says, "Nothing pleases me so much as having my singing praised. Do you know," with hesitation,--"I suppose--I am afraid it is very great vanity on my part, but I love my own voice. It is like a friend to me,--the thing I love best on earth."

"Are you always going to love it best on earth?"

"Ah! Well, that, perhaps, was an exaggeration. I love Clarissa. I am happier with her than with any one else. You"--meditatively--"love her too?"

"Yes, very much indeed. But I know somebody else with whom I am even happier."

"Well, that is the girl you are going to marry, I suppose," says Georgia, easily,--so easily that Dorian feels a touch of disappointment, that is almost pain, fall on his heart. "But as for Clarissa,"--in a puzzled tone,--"I cannot understand her. She is going to marry a man utterly unsuited to her. I met him at the ball the other night, and"--thoughtlessly--"I don't like him."

"Poor Horace!" says Dorian, rather taken aback. Then she remembers, and is in an instant covered with shame and confusion.

"I beg your pardon," she says, hurriedly. "I quite forgot. It never occurred to me he was your brother,--never, really. You believe me, don't you? And don't think me rude. I am not"--plaintively--"naturally rude, and--and, after all,"--with an upward glance full of honest liking,--"he is not a _bit_ like _you_!"

"If you don't like him, I am glad you think he isn't," says Dorian; "but Horace is a very good fellow all through, and I fancy you are a little unjust to him."

"Oh, not unjust," says Georgie, softly. "I have not accused him of any failing; it is only that something in my heart says to me, 'Don't like him.'"

"Does something in your heart ever say to you, '_Like_ some one'?"

"Very often." She is (to confess the honest truth) just a little bit coquette at heart, so that when she says this she lifts her exquisite eyes (that always seem half full of tears) to his for as long as it would take him to know they had been there, and then lowers them. "I shall have to hurry," she says; "it is my hour for Amy's music-lesson."

"Do you like teaching?" asks he, idly, more for the sake of hearing her plaintive voice again, than from any great desire to know.

"Like it?" She stops short on the pretty woodland path, and confronts him curiously: "Now, do you _think_ I could like it? I don't, then! I perfectly hate it! The perpetual over and over again, the knowledge that to-morrow will always be as to-day, the feeling that one can't get away from it, is maddening. And then there are the mistakes, and the false notes, and everything. What a question to ask me! Did any one ever like it, I wonder!"

There is some pa.s.sion, and a great deal of petulance, in her tone; and her lovely flower-like face flushes warmly, and there is something besides in her expression that is reproachful. Dorian begins to hate himself. How could he have asked her such a senseless question? He hesitates, hardly knowing what to say to her, so deep is his sympathy; and so, before he has time to decide on any course, she speaks again.

"It is so monotonous," she says, wearily. "One goes to bed only to get up again; and one gets up with no expectation of change except to go to bed again."

"'One dem'd horrid grind,'" quotes Mr. Brans...o...b.., in a low tone. He is filled with honest pity for her. Instinctively he puts out his hand, and takes one of hers, and presses it ever so gently. "Poor child!" he says, from his heart. To him, with her baby face, and her odd impulsive manner, that changes and varies with every thought, she is merely a child.

She looks at him, and shakes her head.

"You must not think me unhappy," she says, hastily. "I am not that. I was twice as unhappy before I came here. Everybody now is so kind to me,--Clarissa, and the Redmonds, and"--with another glance from under the long lashes--"you, and----Mr. Hastings."

"The curate?" says Dorian, in such a tone as compels Miss Broughton, on the instant, to believe that he and Mr. Hastings are at deadly feud.

"I thought you knew him," she says, with some hesitation.

"I have met him," returns he, "generally, I think, on tennis-grounds.

He can run about a good deal, but it seems a pity to waste a good bat on him. He never hits a ball by any chance, and as for serving--I don't think I swore for six months until the last time I met him."

"Why, what did he do?"

"More than I can recall in a hurry. For one thing, he drank more tea than any four people together that ever I knew."

"Was that all? I see no reason why any one should be ashamed of liking tea."

"Neither do I. On the contrary, one should be proud of it. It betrays such meekness, such simplicity, such contentment. I myself am not fond of tea,--a fact I deplore morning, noon, and night."

"It is a mere matter of education," says Georgie, laughing. "I used not to care for it, except at breakfast, and now I love it."

"Do you? I wish with all my heart I was good souchong," says Mr.

Brans...o...b.., at which she laughs again.

"One can't have all one's desires," she says. "Now, with me music is a pa.s.sion; yet I have never heard any of the great singers of the age.

Isn't that hard?"

"For you it must be, indeed. But how is it you haven't?"

"Because I have no time, no money, no--no anything."

"What a hesitation! Tell me what the 'anything' stands for."

"Well, I meant no home,--that is, no husband, I suppose," says Georgie. She is quite unconcerned, and smiles at him very prettily as she says it. Of the fact that he is actually in love with her, she is totally unaware.

"That is a regret likely to be of short standing," he says, his eyes on hers. But her thoughts are far away, and she hardly heeds the warmth of his gaze or the evident meaning in his tone.

"I suppose if I did marry somebody he would take me to hear all the great people?" she says, a little doubtfully, looking at him as though for confirmation of her hope.

"I should think he would take you wherever you wanted to go, and to hear whatever you wished to hear," he says, slowly.