"Where had I been! That's good! In this very grove; here; watching for the carriage of Mr. St. John. I came into it at half-past twelve, and never got out of it until between six and seven!"
"You are a good and true girl, Georgina, though you are random," he said, taking her hand and speaking in a softer tone than she generally heard from him. "How shall I repay you for what you have done for me?"
"Oh, it's not much," she said, her large grey eyes raised to his, discernible in the clear night. He might have thought he saw a moisture in them, but for her light tone, her careless laugh. "It's not much, I say. Tell me why you are going to London?"
"Because I have had a dispute with Isaac. Fare you well, Georgina; take care of yourself, child. Thank you ever for what you have done for me."
The eyes had tears in them now, unmistakably; and her hand rested in his with a lingering pressure. Mr. St. John stooped in his heedlessness and left a kiss upon her lips.
"There's no harm in it that I know of, Georgina. We have ever been as brother and sister."
Her cheeks crimsoned, her pulses beating, her whole frame thrilling with a rapture hitherto unknown, she stood motionless as he disappeared round the turning of the walk. But ere she had realized the emotion to her own soul, it gave place to sober fact, untinged with sentiment. The delusive mist cleared away from her eyes, and she saw things as they were, not as they might have been.
"As brother and sister!" she murmured in her pain. "Only as brother and sister!"