go, and the Gressies were always elated at the
prospect of an advantage. There was a danger that she might meet Mr.
Benyon on the other side of the world; but it didn't seem likely that
Mrs. Portico would lend herself to a plot of that kind. If she had taken
it into her head to favor their love affair, she would have done
it frankly, and Georgina would have been married by this time. Her
arrangements were made as quickly as her decision had been--or rather
had appeared--slow; for this concerned those agile young men down town.
Georgina was perpetually at her house; it was understood in Twelfth
Street that she was talking over her future travels with her kind
friend. Talk there was, of course to a considerable degree; but after it
was settled they should start nothing more was said about the motive
of the journey. Nothing was said, that is, till the night before they
sailed; then a few words passed between them. Georgina had already
taken leave of her relations in Twelfth Street, and was to sleep at
Mrs. Portico's in order to go down to the ship at an early hour. The
two ladies were sitting together in the firelight, silent, with the
consciousness of corded luggage, when the elder one suddenly remarked to
her companion that she seemed to be taking a great deal upon herself in
assuming that Raymond Benyon wouldn't force her hand. _He_ might
choose to acknowledge his child, if she didn't; there were promises
and promises, and many people would consider they had been let off when
circumstances were so altered. She would have to reckon with Mr. Benyon
more than she thought.

"I know what I am about," Georgina answered. "There is only one promise,
for him. I don't know what you mean by circumstances being altered."

"Everything seems to me to be changed," poor Mrs. Portico murmured,
rather tragically.

"Well, he is n't, and he never will! I am sure of him,--as sure as that
I sit here. Do you think I would have looked at him if I had n't known
he was a man of his word?"

"You have chosen him well, my dear," said Mrs. Portico, who by this time
was reduced to a kind of bewildered acquiescence.

"Of course I have chosen him well! In such a matter as this he will be
perfectly splendid." Then suddenly, "Perfectly splendid,--that's why I
cared for him!" she repeated, with a flash of incongruous passion.

This seemed to Mrs. Portico audacious to the point of being sublime; but
she had given up trying to understand anything that