"No, I think not. George does not seem to care for cathedrals. And he has plans for me, no doubt."

Miss Vance brushed the bonnet and carefully rolled up the strings. "Are you satisfied? Is London the London you have been thinking of these twenty years?" she asked.

"Oh, a thousand times more! And George has been with me every day--every day!"

Miss Vance picked up the gloves, looking impatiently at the poor lady's happy face. "Now she has gone off into one of her silly transports of delight, and for no earthly reason!"

"I noticed that George has seen very little of Lisa lately," she said tentatively. "If he really means to marry her----"

"Marry her! Clara! You surely never feared THAT?"

"He certainly told us plainly enough that he would do it," said Miss Vance testily.

"Oh, you don't understand him! You have had so little to do with young men. They are all liable to attacks like that--as to measles and scarlet fever. But they pass off. Now, George is not as susceptible as most of them. But," lowering her voice, "he was madly in love with the butcher's Kate when he was ten, and five years afterward offered to marry the widow Potts. I thought he had outgrown the disease. There has been nothing of the kind since, until this fancy. It is passing off. Of course it is mortifying enough to think that such a poor creature as that could attract him for an hour."