ies
within him.

"Am I to understand by your silence that you fear to pain me?" he
says, at length, in a low voice. "Is it impossible to you to love me?
Well, do not speak. I can see by your face that the hope I have been
cherishing for so many weeks has been a vain one. Forgive me for
troubling you: and believe I shall never forget how tenderly you
shrank from telling me you could never return my love."

Again he presses her hand to his lips; and she, turning her face
slowly to his, looks up at him. Her late tears were but a summer
shower, and have faded away, leaving no traces as they passed.

"But I didn't mean one word of all that," she says, naively, letting
her long lashes fall once more over her eyes.

"Then what did you mean?" demands he, with some pardonable impatience.
"Quite the contrary, all through?"

"N--ot quite,"--with hesitation.

"At least, that some day you will be my wife?"

"N--ot altogether."

"Well, you can't be half my wife," says Mr. Branscombe promptly.
"Darling, _darling_, put me out of my misery, and say what I want you
to say."

"Well, then, yes." She gives the promise softly, shyly, but without
the faintest touch of any deeper, tenderer emotion. Had Dorian been
one degree less in love with her, he could have hardly failed to
notice this fact. As it is, he is radiant, in a very seventh heaven of
content.

"But you must promise me faithfully never to be unkind to me again,"
says Georgie, impressively, laying a finger on his lips.

"Unkind?"

"Yes; _dreadfully_ unkind: just think of all the terrible things you
said, and the way you said them. Your eyes were as big as half-crowns,
and you looked exactly as if you would like to eat me. Do you know,
you reminded me of Aunt Elizabeth!"

"Oh, Georgie!" says Branscombe, reproachfully. He has grown rather
intimate with Aunt Elizabeth and her iniquities by this time, and
fully understands that to be compared with her hardly tends to raise
him in his beloved's estimation.

There is silence between them after this, that lasts a full minute,--a
long time for lovers freshly made.

"What are you thinking of?" asks Dorian, presently, bending to look
tenderly into her downcast eyes. Perhaps he is hoping eagerly that she
has been wasting a thought upon him.

"I shall never have to teach those horrid lessons again," she says,
with a quick sigh of relief.

If he is disappointed, he carefully conceals it. He laughs, and,
lifting her exqu