Roy laughed lightly as he said this, while Georgie felt for a moment as if her heart were in her throat, and it was only by the most powerful efforts of the will that she forced it back, and recovered her powers of speech sufficiently to say: “Don’t imagine, pray, that I’ve murdered or stolen, or done anything that makes me amenable to the law. It is general badness;” and her old smile broke for the first time over her face, to which the color was coming back. “You are so good, that nothing less than perfection should ever hope to win you, and I am so far from that; but I am going to be better, and the world shall yet say that Roy Leighton chose wisely and well.” She had settled it, and Roy was an engaged man; and as he looked down upon the beautiful face of his _fiancée_, he felt that the world would even now say he had done well without waiting for any improvement in his betrothed, who looked up at him in such a loving, confiding way, that he naturally enough stooped and kissed her lips, and called her his darling, and felt sure that he loved her, and was happy in doing so. Georgie possessed the rare gift of going rapidly from one extreme mood to another. She had been very low down in the depths of humiliation, and in her excitement had almost told Roy secrets she guarded as she did her life; and from that depth she had risen to the heights of bliss, trembling a little as she remembered how near she had come to being stranded by her own act, and mentally chiding herself for her weakness in allowing herself to be so excited about something Roy never _could_ know unless Jack or Maude betrayed her, as she was sure they would not. She had detected the wavering for a moment on Roy’s part, and lest it should occur again, and work detriment to her cause, she said to him: “I do not believe in secret engagements, and shall tell Aunt Burton at once, as you, of course, will tell your mother.” Then Roy _did_ wince a little, and thought of Miss Overton, and wished Georgie was not in such a hurry to have it known that they were engaged, and told her she was right, and he would tell his mother that night, and asked if they should not join his guests upon the lawn. Georgie’s languor was all gone, and, taking Roy’s arm, she went with him through the house and out into the beautiful grounds, feeling as she went a sense of ownership in them all, which made her walk like a queen as she approached the group upon the lawn, and received their words of greeting. CHAPTER XXXIII. HOW THE ENGAGEMENT WAS RECEIVED.