All the excitement of the previous night was gone, and he could reason clearly now, and remember how queerly Georgie had talked and acted at first, just as if she had done some horrible deed, which, if she should confess it, would prove a barrier between them. But she had not confessed, and she had recovered her usual composure, and accepted him, and was going to be his wife sometime, he hardly knew when, though he had a vague idea that there need be no undue haste. He had done his duty in asking her, and surely Mr. Burton would not urge an immediate marriage, neither would Georgie desire it; girls never did; and having fixed the blissful day at some period far in the future, Roy gave a relieved yawn, and went on with his toilet, quickening his movements a little when he saw from his window the flutter of a white dress, and knew that Miss Overton was already in the grounds. “She is an early riser, and it must be that which makes her look so fresh, and bright, and young, though of course she is very young. I wonder, by the way, how old Georgie is. I never heard any one hazard a conjecture. Sometimes she looks all of twenty-eight, though that can’t be, as she has only been out of school four or five years; and even if she is, I am thirty myself, and two years difference is enough, provided the husband has the advantage. Georgie will never look old with those eyes and that hair.” Roy was dressed by this time, and went out to join Miss Overton in her morning walk. He found her in a little arbor, looking pale and tired, as if she had not slept; but she smiled brightly as he came up, and made some remark about the pleasant morning. He wanted her to talk of Georgie,—wanted to be reassured that he had done well for himself; but as nothing had been said to her on the subject, she did not feel at liberty to introduce it, and so the conversation drifted as far as possible from Miss Burton, and turned at last upon _Edna_, whom Roy hoped eventually to have at Leighton. “She will come, of course, when I am married,” he said. “She can then have no excuse for not coming.” “Perhaps your wife would not like her,” Edna suggested, and Roy replied: “I am sure she will. Georgie is not hard to please, and from Edna’s letters I judge her to be a very bright, sprightly little body. There’s a good deal of mischief about her, I guess. I saw her once in the cars with some of her schoolmates. I had been very sick and was still an invalid, nervous and irritable, and afraid of the least breath of air. Girl-like, they opened all the windows near them, and mother got a cinder in her eye, and I began to sneeze, and at last asked the sauciest looking one to shut the window, not pleasantly, you know, but savagely, as if I were the only person to be considered in the car. She did shut it with a bang, and then avenged herself by making a caricature of me, shivering in a poke bonnet, and called me a Miss Betty.”