“What can she do to you? How can she hurt you? We are not living in pagan times,” said Mrs. Portico, who was seldom so historical “Besides, you have no reason to speak of your mother--to think of her, even--so! She would have liked you to marry a man of some property; but she has always been a good mother to you.” At this rebuke Georgina suddenly kindled again; she was, indeed, as Mrs. Portico had said, a queer mixture. Conscious, evidently, that she could not satisfactorily justify her present stiffness, she wheeled round upon a grievance which absolved her from self-defence. “Why, then, did he make that promise, if he loved me? No man who really loved me would have made it,--and no man that was a man, as I understand being a man! He might have seen that I only did it to test him,--to see if he wanted to take advantage of being left free himself. It is a proof that he does n’t love me,--not as he ought to have done; and in such a case as that a woman is n’t bound to make sacrifices!” Mrs. Portico was not a person of a nimble intellect; her mind moved vigorously, but heavily; yet she sometimes made happy guesses. She saw that Georgia’s emotions were partly real and partly fictitious; that, as regards this last matter, especially, she was trying to “get up” a resentment, in order to excuse herself. The pretext was absurd, and the good lady was struck with its being heartless on the part of her young visitor to reproach poor Benyon with a concession on which she had insisted, and which could only be a proof of his devotion, inasmuch as he left her free while he bound himself. Altogether, Mrs. Portico was shocked and dismayed at such a want of simplicity in the behavior of a young person whom she had hitherto believed to be as candid as she was elegant, and her appreciation of this discovery expressed itself in the uncompromising remark: “You strike me as a very bad girl, my dear; you strike me as a very bad girl!” PART II. III.