He is looking tenderly at the small childish face, framed in gold, that is gazing at him smilingly from the distance.
"Me?" she says, waking, as if from a revery, with a faint blush. "Oh! give me my liberty." She says it jestingly, but with a somewhat sad shrug of her rounded shoulders, as she remembers the dismal school-room, and the restraint that, however gentle, is hateful to her gay, petulant nature. Her smile dies, and tears creep into her eyes.
In another moment she is laughing again; but months go by before Dorian forgets the sad little petition and the longing glance that accompanied it, and the sigh that was only half repressed.
"I like Mr. Branscombe so much," says Georgie, a little later on, when Dorian has disappeared. They have forsaken their late game, and are now in Clarissa's own room, standing in a deep oriel window that overlooks the long sweep of avenue on one side, and the parterre beneath where early spring flowers are gleaming wet with the rain that fell so heavily an hour ago.
"Every one likes Dorian," says Clarissa, pleasantly, but without her usual warmth when speaking of Branscombe. "He is a general favorite, and I think he knows it. He is like a spoiled child; he says what he likes to everyone, but nobody takes anything he says seriously."
This friendly hint is utterly thrown away. Miss Broughton understands it not at all.
"Yet sometimes he looks quite grave," she says,—"nearly as grave as Mr. Hastings when in his surplice, only not so solemn. That is all the difference."
"I like Mr. Hastings in his surplice," says Clarissa; "I think him very handsome: don't you?"
"Well—yes—. Only I wish his ears didn't stick out so much. Why do they? He always, somehow, makes me think of Midas."
"But you like him," persists Clarissa, feeling, however, a little crestfallen. It doesn't sound promising, this allusion to Mr. Hastings's ears.