"Then what did you mean?" demands he, with some pardonable impatience. "Quite the contrary, all through?"
"N—ot quite,"—with hesitation.
"At least, that some day you will be my wife?"
"N—ot altogether."
"Well, you can't be half my wife," says Mr. Branscombe promptly. "Darling, darling, put me out of my misery, and say what I want you to say."
"Well, then, yes." She gives the promise softly, shyly, but without the faintest touch of any deeper, tenderer emotion. Had Dorian been one degree less in love with her, he could have hardly failed to notice this fact. As it is, he is radiant, in a very seventh heaven of content.
"But you must promise me faithfully never to be unkind to me again," says Georgie, impressively, laying a finger on his lips.
"Unkind?"
"Yes; dreadfully unkind: just think of all the terrible things you said, and the way you said them. Your eyes were as big as half-crowns, and you looked exactly as if you would like to eat me. Do you know, you reminded me of Aunt Elizabeth!"
"Oh, Georgie!" says Branscombe, reproachfully. He has grown rather intimate with Aunt Elizabeth and her iniquities by this time, and fully understands that to be compared with her hardly tends to raise him in his beloved's estimation.