"Good morning, Freddy. Your mother is breakfasting in her room. What a wilderness your house is at present! The first thing after breakfast will be to have a man in and put down the carpets."
"But they are down," stammered the Vicar, who had laboured hard all the past week.
"All crooked," said Georgiana.
She poured out his tea and sat down opposite, with an air of calm superiority and possession (which the Vicar was too agitated to remark). Having long since made up her mind as to what she wanted, she was not unduly elated at the present turn of affairs. Freddy was always fickle, and it had taken very little pains to keep him apart from Dolly while that fancy lasted. It was not her part to consider Dolly—Dolly, years younger, and pretty, and always liked.
Something like exultation glittered in Georgiana's eyes. She had a glimpse of Dolly at home and smiled; her triumph was pitiless.
"Oh, by-the-bye," she said. "Your idea of furnishing the drawing-room is too ridiculous. It ought to be smart and shiny—a company room. You don't want old pictures and comfortable chairs!"
"Don't I?" said the Vicar with a half-smile, thinking whose whims he had tried to suit in the furnishing.
"No," said Georgiana. Her tone was lordly. "I'll tell you what I will do. You shall drive me into the town, and I will help you to choose what you really want."
"Do——," began the Vicar, and then stopped hastily, reddening. She looked at him witheringly, unaware that the word suppressed had been simply "Dolly."
"In the meantime——" she vouchsafed after a crushing pause. He looked up suddenly from his letters.