y of your everyday voice: I meant your singing: it is quite
perfect."

"Two compliments in five minutes!" says Miss Georgie, calmly. Then,
changing her tone with dazzling, because unexpected, haste, she says,
"Nothing pleases me so much as having my singing praised. Do you
know," with hesitation,--"I suppose--I am afraid it is very great
vanity on my part, but I love my own voice. It is like a friend to
me,--the thing I love best on earth."

"Are you always going to love it best on earth?"

"Ah! Well, that, perhaps, was an exaggeration. I love Clarissa. I am
happier with her than with any one else. You"--meditatively--"love her
too?"

"Yes, very much indeed. But I know somebody else with whom I am even
happier."

"Well, that is the girl you are going to marry, I suppose," says
Georgia, easily,--so easily that Dorian feels a touch of
disappointment, that is almost pain, fall on his heart. "But as for
Clarissa,"--in a puzzled tone,--"I cannot understand her. She is going
to marry a man utterly unsuited to her. I met him at the ball the
other night, and"--thoughtlessly--"I don't like him."

"Poor Horace!" says Dorian, rather taken aback. Then she remembers,
and is in an instant covered with shame and confusion.

"I beg your pardon," she says, hurriedly. "I quite forgot. It never
occurred to me he was your brother,--never, really. You believe me,
don't you? And don't think me rude. I am not"--plaintively--"naturally
rude, and--and, after all,"--with an upward glance full of honest
liking,--"he is not a _bit_ like _you_!"

"If you don't like him, I am glad you think he isn't," says Dorian;
"but Horace is a very good fellow all through, and I fancy you are a
little unjust to him."

"Oh, not unjust," says Georgie, softly. "I have not accused him of any
failing; it is only that something in my heart says to me, 'Don't like
him.'"

"Does something in your heart ever say to you, '_Like_ some one'?"

"Very often." She is (to confess the honest truth) just a little bit
coquette at heart, so that when she says this she lifts her exquisite
eyes (that always seem half full of tears) to his for as long as it
would take him to know they had been there, and then lowers them. "I
shall have to hurry," she says; "it is my hour for Amy's
music-lesson."

"Do you like teaching?" asks he, idly, more for the sake of hearing
her plaintive voice again, than from any great desire to know.

"Like it?" She stops short on the pretty