She stole a glance at him from her blue eyes; a smile hovered on her parted lips. He bent his head until his brown wavy curls mingled with her lighter hair. "Georgina, you know--you know that you can be life or death to me." He could not speak with consecutive smoothness; his heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds, his whole frame thrilled, his fingers were trembling. "Tell me that it is not all to be forgotten!" "Indeed, if you have been cultivating a wrong impression--I can only advise you to forget it. I have liked you;" her voice sank to the lowest whisper--"very much; I have been so stupid as to let you see it; but I never meant you to--to--presume upon it in this uncomfortable manner." "One question!" he urged. "Only one. Is it that you have played with me, loving another?" Her right hand was on the keys of the piano, striking chords continually; a false note grating now and then on the ear. Her left hand lay passive on her lap, as she sat, slightly turned to him. "Stuff and nonsense! No, I have not. You will have them overhear you, Harry." "Do not equivocate--dearest Georgina--let me hear the truth. It may be better for me; I can bear anything rather than deceit. Let me know the truth; I beseech it of you by all the hours we have passed together." "Harry, you are decidedly beside yourself to-night. Don't suffer the world behind to get a notion of it." "You are playing with me now," he said, quite a wail in his low voice. "Let me, one way or the other, be at rest. I never shall bear this suspense, and live. Give me an answer, Georgina; one that shall abide for ever." "An answer to what?" "Have you all this while loved another?" She took her hand off the keys, and began picking out the treble notes of a song with her forefinger, bending her head slightly. "The answer might not be palatable." "No, it may not. Nevertheless, I pray you give it me. You are killing me, Georgina." She looked up hastily; she saw that the bright, transparent complexion of the face had turned to a deadly whiteness; and, perhaps, in that one moment, Georgina Beauclerc's heart smote her with a slight reproach of cruelty. But she may have deemed it well to put an end to the suspense, and she bent her head again as she spoke. "Even though I had loved another, what of that? I don't admit that I have; and I say that it is a question you have no right to ask me. Harry! be reasonable; though I had loved _you_, it could not come to anything; you know it could not; so what does it signify?" "But you have _not_ loved me?" "Well--no. Not in that way. Here's the dean coming in; and here's pompous old Ferraday. You must sing a song; papa's sure to ask for one." She hastened from the piano, as if glad to escape. The dean did ask for a song. But when they came to look for him who was to sing it, he was nowhere to be seen. "Bless me!" cried the dean, "I thought Henry Arkell was here. Where is he?"