imself, but to leave it to me. For this he has given me his
solemn word of honor. And I know what that means!"

Mrs. Portico, on the sofa, fairly bounded.

"You _do_ know what you are about And Mr. Benyon strikes me as more
fantastic even than yourself. I never heard of a man taking such an
imbecile vow. What good can it do him?"

"What good? The good it did him was that, it gratified me. At the
time he took it he would have made any promise under the sun. It was
a condition I exacted just at the very last, before the marriage took
place. There was nothing at that moment he would have refused me;
there was nothing I could n't have made him do. He was in love to that
degree--but I don't want to boast," said Georgina, with quiet grandeur.
"He wanted--he wanted--" she added; but then she paused.

"He does n't seem to have wanted much!" Mrs. Portico cried, in a tone
which made Georgina turn to the window, as if it might have reached the
street.

Her hostess noticed the movement and went on: "Oh, my dear, if I ever do
tell your story, I will tell it so that people will hear it!"

"You never will tell it. What I mean is, that Raymond wanted the
sanction--of the affair at the church--because he saw that I would never
do without it. Therefore, for him, the sooner we had it the better, and,
to hurry it on, he was ready to take any pledge."

"You have got it pat enough," said Mrs. Portico, in homely phrase. "I
don't know what you mean by sanctions, or what _you_ wanted of 'em!"

Georgina got up, holding rather higher than before that beautiful head
which, in spite of the embarrassments of this interview, had not yet
perceptibly abated of its elevation. "Would you have liked me to--to not
marry?"

Mrs. Portico rose also, and, flushed with the agitation of unwonted
knowledge,--it was as if she had discovered a skeleton in her favorite
cupboard,--faced her young friend for a moment. Then her conflicting
sentiments resolved themselves into an abrupt question, uttered,--for
Mrs. Portico,--with much solemnity: "Georgina Gressie, were you really
in love with him?"

The question suddenly dissipated the girl's strange, studied, wilful
coldness; she broke out, with a quick flash of passion,--a passion that,
for the moment, was predominantly anger, "Why else, in Heaven's name,
should I have done what I have done? Why else should I have married him?
What under the sun had I to gain?"

A certain quiver in Georgina's voice, a ligh