He laughed. "No one can help liking Rose; with all her faults she is open as the day. Do you know, Georgina, I used at times to think Rose very much like you."
"In face?"
"No. And yet there may be a certain resemblance even there: both of you are fair, and both--pretty. You need not fling away from me as if it were treason to say so. But I meant in manner. You were once as wild as Rose is now."
"You saw a great deal of her this time last year, did you not, when she was staying with Adeline de Castella?"
"Yes," he laconically answered.
Georgina Beauclerc turned to the terrace railings, and leaned over them, looking far away. He stood by her side in silence.
"Do you think I am wild in manner now?" she presently asked.
"No; you have greatly changed."
"Those old, old days in Westerbury--and I know I was wild in them--have faded away as a dream. It seems so long ago!--and yet, marked by the calendar, it is only a short time. One may live years in a few months, Mr. St. John."
With the privileged freedom of his boyhood he turned her face towards him, and saw what he had suspected. The blue eyes were filled with tears.