r a dance, as I have been told."

"I am quite sure," says Georgie, flushing hotly. She has sufficient
self-love to render this doubt very unpalatable.

Something that is not altogether remote from envy creeps into Mrs.
Redmond's heart. Being a mother, she can hardly help contrasting her
Cissy's future with the brilliant one carved out for her governess.
Presently, however, being a thoroughly good soul, she conquers these
unworthy thoughts, and when next she speaks her tone is full of
heartiness and honest congratulation. Indeed, she is sincerely
pleased. The fact that the future Lady Sartoris is at present an
inmate of her house is a thought full of joy to her.

"You are a very happy and a very fortunate girl," she says, gravely.

"Indeed yes, I think so," returns Georgie, in a low tone, but with
perfect calmness. There is none of the blushing happiness about her
that should of right belong to a young girl betrothed freshly to the
lover of her heart.

"Of course you do," says Mrs. Redmond, missing something in her voice,
though she hardly knows what. "And what we are to do without you, I
can't conceive; no one to sing to us in the evening, and we have got
so accustomed to that."

"I can still come and sing to you sometimes," says Georgie, with tears
in her eyes and voice.

"Ah, yes,--sometimes. That is just the bad part of it; when one has
known an 'always,' one does not take kindly to a 'sometimes.' And now
here come all my governess troubles back upon my shoulders once more.
Don't think me selfish, my dear, to think of that just now in the very
morning of your new happiness, but really I can't help it. I have been
so content with you, it never occurred to me others might want you
too."

"I will ask Clarissa to get you some one else nicer than me," says
Georgie, soothingly.

"Will you? Yes, do, my dear: she will do anything for you. And,
Georgina,"--from the beginning she has called her thus,--nothing on
earth would induce Mrs. Redmond to call her anything more
frivolous,--"tell her I should prefer somebody old and ugly, if at all
bearable, because then she may stay with me. Dear, dear! how Cissy
will miss you! And what will the vicar say?"

And so on. She spends the greater part of the morning rambling on in
this style, and then towards the evening despatches Georgie to Gowran
to tell Clarissa, too, the great news.

But Clarissa knows all about it before her coming, and meets her in
the hall, and kisses