"Was that your _first_ thought?" He is both surprised and pained. "Yes, my very first. You look as if you didn't believe me," says Miss Broughton, with a little laugh. "But if you had gone through as many moods and tenses as I have during the past week, you would quite understand. Well, then I thought how good it would be to have nothing to do but amuse myself all day long. And then I looked at you, and felt so glad you had no crooked eyes, or red hair, or anything that way. And then, above all things, I felt how sweet it was to know I had found somebody who would have to look after me and take care of me, so that I need never trouble about myself any more." "Did you never once think of me?" asks he, in a curious tone. "Of you? Oh, no! You are quite happy," says Georgie, with a sigh. "You have nothing to trouble you." "Nothing! Of course not." Going up to her, he takes her dear little face between both his hands, and looks long and earnestly into her clear unconscious eyes. How gladly would he have seen them droop and soften beneath his gaze! "Now let me tell you how I feel towards you," he says, smoothing her soft hair back from her forehead. "I don't think I am a bit pretty with my hair pushed back," she says, moving away from the caressing hand, and, with a touch, restoring her "amber locks" to their original position. She smiles as she says this,--indeed, ill temper, in any form, does not belong to her,--and, when her hair is once more restored to order, she again slips her fingers into his confidingly, and glances up at him. "Now tell me all about it," she says. "What am I to tell you?--that when I am away from you I am restless, miserable; when with you, more than satisfied. I know that I could sit for hours contentedly with this little hand in mine" (raising it to his lips), "and I also know that, if fate so willed it, I should gladly follow you through the length and breadth of the land. If you were to die, or--or forsake me, it would break my heart. And all this is because I love you." "Is it?"--in a very low tone. "Does all that mean being in love? Then"--in a still lower tone--"I know I am not one bit in love with _you_." "Then why are you marrying me?" demands he, a little roughly, stung to pained anger by her words. "Because I promised papa, when--when he was leaving me, that I would marry the very first rich man that asked me," replies she, again lifting her serious eyes to his. "I thought it would make him happier. And it did. I am keeping my promise now," with a sigh that may mean regret for her dead, or, indeed, anything. "Are you not afraid to go too far?" demands he, very pale, moving back from her, and regarding her with moody eyes. "Do you quite know what you are saying--what you are compelling me, against my will, to understand?"