Surely, so serious a question was never so dismissed in so short a time. For these few busy moments, the matter was as completely disposed of, as if they had spent hours in arguing it. He scarcely knew how it was that he felt so sure that he need say no more; that the brave, simple, pretty Georgie had set his poor, weak plans aside so easily, and yet so tenderly. Much as he admired and reverenced her, there was a depth in her girlish nature which he had never sounded. It was all over for him with Georgie Esmond, though he need not fear that her friendship would ever waver.

“If I was only wise enough to help you,” she repeated; “if you would only trust me, and let me try.”

“If any one could help me, you could,” he said, “but there is no help for me.”

He had never once admitted to himself that this miserable passion could ever make him happy. It had never occurred to his mind that its termination would be anything but a 159 wretched and humiliating one. As Georgie had suggested, he loved, but had not forgiven, and he told himself that his love was degraded infatuation. What was there to tie to in such a feeling? Did he trust the woman to whom he was in secret a slave? No, he trusted her no more to-day than he had done before. But she had a hold upon his heart-strings, nevertheless. The old witchery was exercising its full power upon him. It had been so strong, at last, that he had been maddened into making this coward’s effort to free himself. If Georgie would stretch out her hand, she might save him a fatal weakness, and so, even while he despised himself for his selfish folly, he had resolved to throw himself upon Georgie’s mercy. And here was the end of it! Georgie was wiser than himself, clearer of sight, truer of soul, stronger, with a brave simplicity; and she had proved to him what a shameful folly it was. Georgie would have none of him; and yet how sweet she was, God bless her!

“I shall leave Pen’yllan, in the morning,” he said. “There is nothing to keep me here now, since you do not want me. Say that you forgive me, Georgie, and we will bid each other good-by, for the present.”

“You must not think that I have anything to 160 forgive,” she answered; “but I do not say that you will be wrong in going. I believe it will be best. You do not quite understand yourself yet. Go away, and give yourself time to find out, whether you can conquer your heart, or not. The time will come when you will know.”

“And then?” somewhat bitterly.

“Something will happen, I think,” her simple faith in the kindness of Fortune asserting itself. “I cannot believe that you will always be as unhappy as you are now. One of you will be sure to do or say something that will help the other.”

A sudden color leaped to his face. Her words held a suggestion of which he had never once thought, and which set his pulses beating hard and fast.

“What?” he exclaimed, his new feeling giving him no time to check himself. “You do not think the time will ever come, when she—when she might feel, too——”

“I think,” said the girl, in a grave, almost reverent voice, “I think the time has come now.”

When they returned to the house, Lisbeth, seeing them from the parlor window, made a mental comment. 161

“Judging from his face,” she observed, “I should say that he had asked her to marry him, and had been accepted. Judging from hers, I should say her answer had been ‘No.’ You are not easy to read, for once, Georgie. What does it mean?”

Georgie came into the house, with a more composed look than her face had worn for several days. She laid her garden hat upon the hall table and walked straight into the parlor to her dear Lisbeth. She had a very shrewd idea that her dear Lisbeth knew nothing of their guest’s intended departure, and she wanted to be the first to break the news to her. It would not matter if any little secrets were betrayed to herself. So she went to the window, and laid her hand on Lisbeth’s shoulder.

“Did Hector tell you that he was going?” she asked, as if his having done so would have been the most natural thing in the world.

“That he was going?” repeated Lisbeth.

Georgie gazed considerately out into the garden.

“Yes. Back to London, you know—to-morrow. I suppose he thinks he has been idle long enough.”

Lisbeth shrugged her shoulders. 162

“Rather sudden, isn’t it?” she commented. “I think you have been the first to hear the news.”

“Gentlemen always do things suddenly,” remarked Georgie, astutely.

She had no need to have been so discreet. Lisbeth had been very cool under the information. An indifferent observer might have easily concluded that she cared very little about it; that her interest in Hector Anstruthers’ going and coming was an extremely well-controlled feeling. When he came into the room himself, a few minutes later, she was quite composed enough to touch upon the subject with polite regrets.

“Aunt Clarissa will positively mourn,” she ended, with one of her incomprehensible smiles. “She has been almost radiant during your visit.” And there her share in the matter seemed to terminate. She said nothing when the three old ladies, hearing the news, poured forth affectionate plaints, from the first course at dinner until the last. She listened composedly, without remark, though once or twice she looked at Georgie with rather an interested air. It was her turn to feel curious now, and she was curious enough. Georgie blushed when she was looked at scrutinizingly, but her 163 manner was decidedly not that of a girl who had just accepted a lover.

“And,” said Lisbeth, examining her coolly, “she would not refuse him. She must be fond of him; and if she is fond of him, she is too sweet-natured and straightforward to coquet with him. And yet—well, it is decidedly puzzling.”

She found the evening rather a bore, upon the whole. How was it that it dragged so, in spite of her efforts? She thought it would never come to an end. When, with long-suffering good-nature, Hector drew out the chess-table, and challenged the delighted Miss Clarissa to a game, her patience fairly gave way. She turned to the piano for refuge, and sang song after song, until she could sing no more. Then, when Georgie took her place, she made a furtive exit, and slipped out through the hall and a side door into the garden. What made her turn her steps toward Miss Clarissa’s rose-thicket? She did not know. But she went there. There she had bidden her boy-lover good-by, and broken his heart; there she had sung her little song to Georgie and Hector. On both occasions it had been warm, and balmy, and moonlight; and now it was warm, and balmy, and moonlight again. She stood and looked through 164 the trees, catching silvery glimpses of the sea. In a minute or so she moved her hand in an impatient gesture.

“I am sick of it all,” she cried, breaking the silence. “I am sick of the whole world, and of myself more than the rest. How I wish I was like Aunt Clarissa.”

She began to wander about restlessly, pulling at the roses with no particular object, but because she could not keep still. Buds and blossoms, red, and cream, and white, w............