believed a rather clear and significant exposition of Jessie's and
George's possible situation. But she was not prepared for the look
of blank resignation that seemed to drive the color from his face and
moisten the fire of his dark eyes.

"I reckon you're right," he said, looking down.

"Oh! we're not accusing you of fickleness," said Christie gayly;
"although you didn't come, and we were obliged to ask Mr. Hall to join
us. I suppose you found him and Jessie just now?"

But George made no reply. The color was slowly coming back to his face,
which, as she glanced covertly at him, seemed to have grown so much
older that his returning blood might have brought two or three years
with it.

"Really, Mr. Kearney," she said dryly, "one would think that some silly,
conceited girl"--she was quite earnest in her epithets, for a sudden,
angry conviction of some coquetry and disingenuousness in Jessie had
come to her in contemplating its effects upon the young fellow at her
side--"some country jilt, had been trying her rustic hand upon you."

"She is not silly, conceited, nor countrified," said George, slowly
raising his beautiful eyes to the young girl half reproachfully. "It is
I who am all that. No, she is right, and you know it."

Much as Christie admired and valued her sister's charms, she thought
this was really going too far. What had Jessie ever done--what was
Jessie--to provoke and remain insensible to such a blind devotion as
this? And really, looking at him now, he was not so VERY YOUNG for