There was silence for a moment. Georgie’s lovely face grew cold and white as marble. She seemed to wither up like a flower cut at the stalks. The very lips were pale. At last an almost noiseless sob broke through them, and she started into life. “Does she love you?” “I hope, I think so. She has said as much.” “And then?” “Oh! my sweet friend, it is for her I want your help. I know how difficult it will be to reconcile my mother; she has such lofty expectations regarding me.” “Who has not?” murmured Georgie. “Do you know,” cried Savage, laughing, and patting her hand as if it had been a pet bird he was playing with, so much occupied that he did not feel its marble coldness, or read the agony in those shrinking eyes, “do you know she has set her heart on making a match between you and me; as if people who have played together in childhood ever fell in love with each other; but she will not give up this hope without a struggle, though I have told her fifty times that we like each other too well for love.” “You are right, we do,” said the lovely young creature, sitting upright, and putting the hair back from her throbbing temples. “What an idea!” and a laugh broke from her which startled him a little; there was such a ring of pain in it. “She is so fond of you, Georgie. Indeed, who could help it? Then we have been a good deal together. I got a habit of coming here somehow, and it wasn’t so very strange, after all; only it seems absurd to us, who never thought of such a thing.” “Yes, very absurd,” cried Georgie, with another laugh, which brought fresh tears into her eyes. “And now, when I am in such deadly earnest, when I would give the world to make Anna Burns my wife, even this foolish idea comes up as an obstacle.” “But you have told your mother that there is nothing in it?” “Yes, fifty times; but she will not believe me.” “She will believe me when I tell her it is impossible—ridiculous!” Poor Georgie, she caught her breath, and broke up a great sob before she could utter the word ridiculous; but carried it off with a laugh, which the blind young fellow passed over without a thought of the pain which made it sound so unlike her usual silvery outgushes of merriment. “Will you do this, Georgie? Say that you never fancied me in that light, that nothing would induce you to marry me?” “But she—she will hate me forever after,” said Georgie, mournfully; “and I think she did like me.” “Oh! it will not last a month; and I—I shall love you so dearly for this help. Anna, also, you cannot think how much she admires you.” “I am sure she is very kind.” “Kind—no! She is only the most appreciative creature in the world. Then you are my friend?” Georgie shrunk from all this praise, which was bitter when mingled with that of another so much more beloved than she ever was, and desperately changed the subject. “But there was something else; you had more than this on your mind.” “But I shall oppress you with my selfishness.”