"A true one, nevertheless."
A little earnest shade shows itself upon his face, but Georgie laughs lightly, and moves away from him over to the window, and at this moment Clarissa returns, armed with paper and pencils and a very much pleased smile.
"Can't I have the gardens lighted?" she says, "with Chinese lanterns, and that? I have been thinking of it."
"I don't know about 'that,'" says Dorian. "I'm not sure but it might blow us all to atoms; but the celestial lights will be quite 'too, too!' It must be a splendid thing, Clarissa, to have a brain like yours. Now, neither Miss Broughton nor I have a particle between us."
"Speak for yourself, please," says Miss Broughton, very justly incensed.
"I'm doing even more than that, I'm speaking for you too. Don't put up too many Chinese lanterns, Clarissa, or it will be awkward: we shall be seen."
"What matter? I love light," says Georgie, innocently. "How I do hope there will be a moon! Not a mean effort at one, but a good, round, substantial, vast old moon, such as there was two months ago."
She has her wish: such another moonlight night as comes to Pullingham on the night of Miss Peyton's ball has been rarely, if ever, seen. It breaks over the whole place in a flood of light so whitely brilliant that the very sleeping flowers lift up their heads, as though believing the soft mystic light to be the early birth of morn.
All around is calm and drowsy sweet. The stars come forth to light the world, and, perhaps, to do homage to Clarissa on this the night of her first ball.