Mrs. Portico, by this time, had grown almost afraid of her young friend; _she_ had so little fear, she had even, as it were, so little shame. If the good lady had been accustomed to analyzing things a little more, she would have said she had so little conscience. She looked at Georgina with dilated eyes,--her visitor was so much the calmer of the two,--and exclaimed, and murmured, and sunk back, and sprung forward, and wiped her forehead with her pocket-handkerchief! There were things she didn’t understand; that they should all have been so deceived, that they should have thought Georgina was giving her lover up (they flattered themselves she was discouraged, or had grown tired of him), when she was really only making it impossible she should belong to any one else. And with this, her inconsequence, her capriciousness, her absence of motive, the way she contradicted herself, her apparent belief that she could hush up such a situation forever! There was nothing shameful in having married poor Mr. Benyon, even in a little church at Harlem, and being given away by a paymaster. It was much more shameful to be in such a state without being prepared to make the proper explanations. And she must have seen very little of her husband; she must have given him up--so far as meeting him went--almost as soon as she had taken him. Had not Mrs. Gressie herself told Mrs. Portico (in the preceding October, it must have been) that there now would be no need of sending Georgina away, inasmuch as the affair with the little navy man--a project in every way so unsuitable--had quite blown over? “After our marriage I saw him less, I saw him a great deal less,” Georgina explained; but her explanation only appeared to make the mystery more dense. “I don’t see, in that case, what on earth you married him for!” “We had to be more careful; I wished to appear to have given him up. Of course we were really more intimate,--I saw him differently,” Georgina said, smiling. “I should think so! I can’t for the life of me see why you were n’t discovered.” “All I can say is we weren’t No doubt it’s remarkable. We managed very well,--that is, I managed,--he did n’t want to manage at all. And then, father and mother are incredibly stupid!”