One moment, and she had recovered herself. She went up to Mr. St. John with an outstretched hand, bantering words on her tongue.
"So you really are alive! We thought you had been buried in the Red Sea."
He made some laughing answer, and passed on to Sarah Beauclerc. He clasped both her hands in his; he bent over her with only a word or two of greeting, his low voice subdued to tenderness. What did it mean? Georgina's lips turned white as ashes, but she could not see her cousin's face.
"How is Mrs. Beauclerc?" asked St. John, turning, and beginning to talk generally; "Harry tells me that the dean is well, to the consternation of the college school, which has to prepare itself for an examination."
"Oh, that examination!" laughed Georgina; "it is turning some of their senses upside down. But now," she added, standing in front of Mr. St. John, "what am I to call you? Frederick?—Or am I to be formal, and say 'Mr. St. John?'"
"You used to call me Fred."
"But I was not a grown-up young lady then," making him a mock curtsey; "after all, I suppose I must call you Fred still, for I should be sure to lapse into it. Where have you been all this while? We have heard of you everywhere; in Paris, in Madrid, in Vienna, in Rome, in Antwerp, in——oh, all over the world."
"I think I have been nearly all over Europe," said Mr. St. John.
"Which of us has the most changed?" she abruptly asked, a curl of the finger indicating that she meant to speak of her cousin.