"Is Horace quite well?" asks Clarissa, presently.
"Quite well. He always is, you know. Who——who is the girl next your father?"
"That is my friend, Georgie Broughton. I think I told you about her. She is governess at the vicarage, now. Is she not lovely,—quite sweet?" asks Clarissa, eagerly.
But Mr. Branscombe does not answer her. He is still staring at the unconscious Georgie, and seems almost deaf to Clarissa's praise of her. At this Miss Peyton is somewhat disgusted, and declines any further attempt at laudation.
"A governess!" he says, at length, raising his brows, but without removing his eyes from the fair and perfect face that, even now, he tells himself, is without its equal.
"Yes. She is none the less sweet for that," says Clarissa, rather coldly. She tells herself it is unlike Dorian to look down upon any one because he or she may be in a worse position than his own.
"They are going to sing again," she says, in a tone she seldom uses to him: "we must not talk, you know." She had some faint idea of introducing him to Georgie, but she abandons it, and gives him to understand that she has at present nothing more to say to him.
Whether he quite comprehends all she intends to convey, I know not; but, raising himself slowly from his lounging position on the back of her chair, he takes a last look at Georgie's profile, and moves into the background.
"Good-evening, Branscombe," says Lord Alfred, presently; and Dorian, finding himself beside him, returns the greeting, and props himself up in his turn against the friendly wall, that shows its appreciation of them by giving them finely whitewashed coats.
The concert is getting on swimmingly. As yet no flaw has occurred to mark the brilliancy of its success. The opening chorus has been applauded to the echo, especially by Lord Alfred, who feels it his duty to do something, and who keeps on applauding, in the most open-hearted manner each thing and everything, until he discovers he has split his right glove all up the palm, when he caves in, and, having said something impossible, puts his hands behind his back and refuses to applaud again.