"Well, that is the girl you are going to marry, I suppose," says Georgia, easily,—so easily that Dorian feels a touch of disappointment, that is almost pain, fall on his heart. "But as for Clarissa,"—in a puzzled tone,—"I cannot understand her. She is going to marry a man utterly unsuited to her. I met him at the ball the other night, and"—thoughtlessly—"I don't like him."
"Poor Horace!" says Dorian, rather taken aback. Then she remembers, and is in an instant covered with shame and confusion.
"I beg your pardon," she says, hurriedly. "I quite forgot. It never occurred to me he was your brother,—never, really. You believe me, don't you? And don't think me rude. I am not"—plaintively—"naturally rude, and—and, after all,"—with an upward glance full of honest liking,—"he is not a bit like you!"
"If you don't like him, I am glad you think he isn't," says Dorian; "but Horace is a very good fellow all through, and I fancy you are a little unjust to him."
"Oh, not unjust," says Georgie, softly. "I have not accused him of any failing; it is only that something in my heart says to me, 'Don't like him.'"
"Does something in your heart ever say to you, 'Like some one'?"
"Very often." She is (to confess the honest truth) just a little bit coquette at heart, so that when she says this she lifts her exquisite eyes (that always seem half full of tears) to his for as long as it would take him to know they had been there, and then lowers them. "I shall have to hurry," she says; "it is my hour for Amy's music-lesson."
"Do you like teaching?" asks he, idly, more for the sake of hearing her plaintive voice again, than from any great desire to know.
"Like it?" She stops short on the pretty woodland path, and confronts him curiously: "Now, do you think I could like it? I don't, then! I perfectly hate it! The perpetual over and over again, the knowledge that to-morrow will always be as to-day, the feeling that one can't get away from it, is maddening. And then there are the mistakes, and the false notes, and everything. What a question to ask me! Did any one ever like it, I wonder!"
There is some passion, and a great deal of petulance, in her tone; and her lovely flower-like face flushes warmly, and there is something besides in her expression that is reproachful. Dorian begins to hate himself. How could he have asked her such a senseless question? He hesitates, hardly knowing what to say to her, so deep is his sympathy; and so, before he has time to decide on any course, she speaks again.