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_!"