“I should like to know,” she said, “what you are thinking about?”
The girl drew a positively ecstatic little sigh.
“I was thinking how sweet and quiet everything looked,” she said, innocently; “and how much happier I am.”
“Happier?” exclaimed Lisbeth. “When were you unhappy, Georgie?”
The surprise in her tone brought Georgie to a recognition of what her words had unconsciously implied. She found herself blushing, and wondering at her own simplicity. She had not meant to say so much. She could not comprehend why she should have said anything of that kind at all.
“It is strange enough to hear that you can be made happier than you always seem to be,” said Lisbeth. “You speak as if—” And then, her quick eye taking in the girl’s trepidation, she stopped short. “You never had a trouble, Georgie?” she added, in a voice very few of her friends would have known; it was so soft.
“No,” said Georgie. “Oh, no, Lisbeth! Not a trouble, exactly; not a trouble at all, indeed; only—” And suddenly she turned her bright, appealing eyes to Lisbeth’s face. “I don’t know why I said it,” she said. “It was nothing real, Lisbeth, or else I am sure you would have known. But it—Well, I might have had a trouble, and I was saved from it, and I am glad, and—thankful.” And, to Miss Crespigny’s surprise, she bent forward, and kissed her softly on the cheek.
Lisbeth asked her no questions. She was not fond of asking questions, and she was a young person of delicacy and tact, when she was in an affectionate mood. She was too partial to Georgie to wish to force her into telling her little secrets. But a certain thought flashed through her mind, as she sat with her eyes resting on the sea.
“She is the sort of girl,” she said, sharply, to herself, “who would be likely to have no trouble but a love trouble. Who has been making love to her, or rather, who, among all her admirers, would be likely to touch her heart?”
But this mental problem was by no means easy to solve. There were so many men who admired Georgie Esmond, and such a large proportion of them were men whom any girl might have loved.