"What a charming picture you conjure up!" says Georgie, looking at him. "You encourage me. The very first rich man that asks me to marry him, I shall say 'Yes' to."

"You have made up your mind, then, to marry for money?" He is watching her closely, and his brow has contracted a good deal, and his lips show some pain.

"I have made up my mind to nothing. Perhaps I haven't one to make up,"--lightly. "But I hate teaching, and I hate being poor. That is all. But we were not talking of that. We were thinking of Mr.

Hastings. At all events, you must confess he reads well, and that is something! Almost everybody reads badly."

"They do," says Brans...o...b.., meekly. "I do. Unless in words of one syllable, I can't read at all. So the curate has the pull over me there. Indeed, I begin to feel myself nowhere beside the curate. He can read well, and drink tea well, and I can't do either."

"Why, here we are at the vicarage," says Georgie, in a tone of distinct surprise, that is flattering to the last degree. "I didn't think we were half so close to it. I am so glad I met you, because, do you know, the walk hasn't seemed nearly so long as usual. Well, good-by."

"May I have those violets?" says Brans...o...b.., pointing to a little bunch of those fair comers of the spring that lies upon her breast.

"You may," she says, detaching them from her gown and giving them to him willingly, kindly, but without a particle of the tender confusion he would gladly have seen in her. "They are rather faded," she says, with some disappointment; "you could have picked yourself a sweeter bunch on your way home."

"I hardly think so."

"Well, good-by again," she says, turning up to him the most bewitching and delicious of small faces, "and be sure you put my poor flowers in water. They will live the longer for it."

"They shall live forever. A hundred years hence, were you to ask me where they were, I swear I should be able to show them."

"A very safe oath," says Miss Broughton; and then she gives him her hand, and parts from him, and runs all the way down the short avenue to the house, leaving him to turn and go on to Gowran.

CHAPTER XX.

"There have been hearts whose friendship gave Them thoughts at once both soft and grave."

In the drawing-room he finds Clarissa sitting among innumerable spring offerings. The whole place seems alive with them. "The breath of flowers is on the air." Primroses and violets shine out from tiny Etruscan vases, and little baskets of pale Belleek are hidden by cl.u.s.tering roses brought from the conservatory to make sweet the sitting-room of their mistress.

"I am so glad you have come," says Clarissa, rising with a smile to welcome him, as he comes up to her. "The day was beginning to drag a little. Come over here, and make yourself comfortable."

"That will I, right willingly, so it pleases you, madam," says Dorian, and straightway, sinking into the desirable lounging-chair she has pointed out, makes himself thoroughly happy.

A low bright fire is burning merrily; upon the rug a snow-white Persian cat sinks blinking; while Billy, the Irish terrier, whose head is bigger than his body, and whose hair is of the shabbiest, reclines gracefully upon an ottoman near. Clarissa, herself, is lying back upon a cushioned chair, looking particularly pretty, if a trifle indolent.

"Now for your news," she says, in the tone one adopts when expecting to be amused.

Dorian, lifting his arms, lays them behind his head.

"I wonder if ever in all my life I had any news," he says, meditatively. "After all, I begin to think I'm not much. Well, let me see: would it be news to say I met and talked with, and walked with your 'la.s.sie wi' the lint-white locks'?"

"Georgie? You----. She was with me all the morning."

"So she told me."

"Ah? And how far did you go with her?"

"To the vicarage. As I had been there all the morning, I couldn't well go in again,--a fact I felt and deplored."

"I am glad you walked back with her," says Miss Peyton; but she doesn't look glad. "I hope you were nice to her?"

"Extremely nice: ask her if I wasn't. And our conversation was of the freshest. We both thought it was the warmest spring day we had ever known, until we remembered last Thursday, and then we agreed _that_ was the warmest spring day we had ever known. And then we thought spring was preferable to summer. And, then, that Cissy Redmond would be very pretty if she hadn't a c.o.c.ked nose. Don't look so amazed, my dear Clarissa: it was Miss Broughton's expression, not mine, and a very good one too, I think. We say a c.o.c.ked hat; therefore why not a c.o.c.ked nose? And then we said all education was a bore and a swindle, and then----. How old is she, Clarissa?"

"You mean Georgie?"

"Yes."

"Neither nineteen nor twenty."

"So much! Then I really think she is the youngest-looking girl I ever met at that age. She looks more like sweet seventeen."

"You think her pretty?"

"Rather more than that: she reminds me always of 'Maggie Lauder:'

"'Her face is as the summer cloud, whereon The dawning sun delights to rest his rays.'

And, again, surely Apollo loves to

"Play at hide-and-seek amid her golden hairs.'"

"Dorian, don't--don't make her unhappy," says Clarissa, blushing hotly.

"I wish I could," says Dorian. He laughs as he speaks, but there is truth hidden in his jesting tone. Oh, to make her feel something,--that cold indifferent child!

"No, no. I am in earnest," says Clarissa, a little anxiously. "Don't pay her too much attention, if you don't mean it."

"Perhaps I do mean it."

"She is very young,"--ignoring his last speech altogether. "She is a perfect baby in some ways. It isn't kind of you, I think."

"My dear child, what am I doing? If I hand Miss Broughton a chair, or ask her if she would like another cup of tea, is that 'making her unhappy'? I really begin to think society is too moral for me. I shall give it up, and betake myself to Salt Lake City."

"You won't understand me," begins she, sitting more upright, as though desirous of argument; but he interrupts her.

"There you mistake me," he says. "My motives are quite pure. I am dying to understand you, only I can't. If you would try to be a little more lucid, all would be well; but why I am to be sat upon, and generally maltreated, because I walked a mile or so with a friend of yours, is more than I can grasp."

"I don't want to sit upon you," says Clarissa a little vexed.

"No! I dare say that chair is more comfortable."

"I don't want anything; I merely ask you to be careful. She is very young, and has seen few men; and if you persist in your attentions she may fall in love with you."

"I wish to goodness she would," says Brans...o...b..; and then something in his own mind strikes him, and he leans back in his chair, and laughs aloud. There is, perhaps, more bitterness than mirth in his laugh; yet Miss Peyton hears only the mirth.