"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 cocked 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 cocked hat; therefore why not a cocked 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."