there' has much the best of it," says Dorian.
"I wish I was the leader of that band. Is there any chance that your
partners of this evening will be remembered by you?"

"Well, I suppose I sha'n't quite forget you," says Georgie, seriously,
after a moment's careful reflection.

"I'll take jolly good care you don't," says Mr. Branscombe, rather
losing his head, because of her intense calmness, and speaking with
more emphasis than as a rule belongs to him. "You are staying at the
vicarage aren't you?"

"Yes," says Georgie.

"And I live just three miles from that----." Here he pauses, as though
afraid to make his insinuation too plain.

"At Sartoris, isn't it?" asks Georgie, sweetly. "Yes? Clarissa showed
me the entrance-gate to it last week. It looks pretty."

"Some day will you come up and see it?" asks he, with more earnestness
than he acknowledges even to himself; "and," with a happy thought,
"bring the children. It will be a nice walk for them."

"But you are always in London, are you not?" says Georgie.

"Oh, no, not always: I sha'n't go there again, for ever so long. So
promise, will you?"

"I'll ask Mrs. Redmond. But I know we can. She never refuses me
anything," says this most unorthodox governess.

"I'm sure I'm not surprised at that," says Branscombe. "Who could?"

"Aunt Elizabeth could," says Miss Broughton.

"I haven't the misfortune to know your aunt Elizabeth, for which I am
devoutly grateful, because if she 'could,' as you say, she must be too
good for hanging. By the by, this is not _my_ first ball; yet you have
never taken the trouble to ask me (though I asked you) why I intend
keeping this night as a white spot in my memory."

"Well, I ask you now," says Georgie, penitently.

"Do you care to know?"

"I do, indeed."

"Then it is because to-night I met you for the first time."

He bends his head a little, and looks into her eyes,--the beautiful
eyes that smile back so calmly into his, and are so cold to him, and
yet so full of fire,--eyes that somehow have power to charm him as no
others have yet been able to.

He is strangely anxious to know how his words will be received, and is
proportionately aggrieved in that she takes them as a matter of
course.

"After all, my reason is better than yours," she says, in her sweet,
petulant voice. "Come, let us dance: we are only wasting time."

Branscombe is at first surprised, then puzzled, then fascinated.
Almost any other woman of his acq