ill make me safe."

"Safe from what?"

"From marrying any one else."

"Ah, my girl, if you were to do that--!" Benyon exclaimed; but he did
n't mention the other branch of the contingency. Instead of this, he
looked up at the blind face of the house--there were only dim lights in
two or three windows, and no apparent eyes--and up and down the empty
street, vague in the friendly twilight; after which he drew Georgina
Gressie to his breast and gave her a long, passionate kiss. Yes,
decidedly, he felt, they had better be married. She had run quickly up
the steps, and while she stood there, with her hand on the bell, she
almost hissed at him, under her breath, "Go away, go away; Amanda's
coming!" Amanda was the parlor-maid, and it was in those terms that the
Twelfth Street Juliet dismissed her Brooklyn Romeo. As he wandered back
into the Fifth Avenue, where the evening air was conscious of a vernal
fragrance from the shrubs in the little precinct of the pretty Gothic
church ornamenting that charming part of the street, he was too absorbed
in the impression of the delightful contact from which the girl had
violently released herself to reflect that the great reason she had
mentioned a moment before was a reason for their marrying, of course,
but not in the least a reason for their not making it public. But, as I
said in the opening lines of this chapter, if he did not understand his
mistress's motives at the end, he cannot be expected to have understood
them at the beginning.

II.

Mrs. Portico, as we know, was always talking about going to Europe;
but she had not yet--I mean a year after the incident I have just
related--put her hand upon a youthful cicerone. Petticoats, of course,
were required; it was necessary that her companion should be of the sex
which sinks most naturally upon benches, in galleries and cathredrals,
and pauses most frequently upon staircases that ascend to celebrated
views. She was a widow, with a good fortune and several sons, all of
whom were in Wall Street, and none of them capable of the relaxed pace
at which she expected to take her foreign tour. They were all in a state
of tension. They went through life standing. She was a short, broad,
high-colored woman, with a loud voice, and superabundant black hair,
arranged in a way peculiar to herself,--with so many combs and bands
that it had the appearance of a national coiffure. There was an
impression in New York, about 1845, that the sty