"Yes, I suppose she is handsome," the other answered icily. "You suppose she is handsome! It is really too bad of you to be prejudiced against a girl I wanted you to like. As if this poor little Clarissa could do anybody any harm! But never mind, she must do without your liking. And now tell me all about George Fairfax. I was so glad to hear your news, dear, so thoroughly rejoiced." "There is no occasion for such profound gladness. I could have gone on existing very well as Geraldine Challoner." "Of course; but I had much rather see you well married, and your own mistress; and this is such a good match." "Yes; from a worldly point of view, I suppose, the affair is unexceptionable," Geraldine Challoner answered, with persistent indifference; simulated indifference, no doubt, but not the less provoking to her sister. "George will be rich by-and-by, and he is well enough off now. We shall be able to afford a house in one of the streets out of Park Lane--I have a rooted detestation for both Belgravia and Tyburnia--and a carriage, and so on; and I shall not be worried as I have been about my milliner's bills." "And then you are very fond of him, Geraldine," Lady Laura said, softly. There were still little romantic impulses in the matron's heart, and this studied coldness of her sister's tone wounded her. "Yes, of course that is the beginning of the business. We like each other very well," Lady Geraldine replied, still with the same unenthusiastic air. "I think there has always been some kind of liking between us. We suit each other very well, you see; have the same way of thinking about most things, take the same view of life, and so on." Lady Laura gave a faint sigh of assent. She was disappointed by her sister's tone; for in the time past she had more than once suspected that Geraldine Challoner loved George Fairfax with a passionate half-despairing love, which, if unrequited, might make the bane of her life. And, lo! here was the same Geraldine discussing her engagement as coolly as if the match had been the veriest marriage of convenience ever planned by a designing dowager. She did not understand how much pride had to do with this reticence, or what volcanic depths may sometimes lie beneath the Alpine snows of such a nature as Geraldine Challoner's.