Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876

by Various

THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.

BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

OUR MARRIAGE.

Not the youngest or prettiest bride could have excited more interest on her launch into the unknown shoals and quicksands of matrimony than did many-fleshed, mature and freckled Josephine on the achievement of her long-desired union with the twice-told widower. A marriage of one of their own set was a rare event altogether to the North Astonians, and the marriage of one of the Hill girls was above all a circumstance that touched the heart of the place as nothing else could touch it—one which even Carry Fairbairn on the day of her triumph over willow-wearing and that faithless Frank had not come near. It was "our marriage" and "our bride," and each member of the community took a personal interest in the proceedings, and felt implicated in the subsequent failure or success of the venture.

Of course they all confessed that it was a bold thing for Miss Josephine to be the third wife of a man—some of the more prudish pursed their lips and said they wondered how she could, and they wondered yet more how Mrs. Harrowby ever allowed it, and why, if Mr. Dundas must marry again (but they thought he might be quiet now), he had not taken a stranger, instead of one who had been mixed up as it were with his other wives—but seeing that her day was passed, the majority, as has been said, held that she was in the right to take what she could get, and to marry even as a third wife was better than not to marry at all. And then the neighborhood knew Sebastian Dundas, and knew that although he had been foolish and unfortunate in his former affairs, there was no harm in him. If his second wife had died mysteriously, North Aston was generous enough not to suppose that he had poisoned her; and who could wonder at that dreadful Pepita having a stroke, sitting in the sun as she did on such a hot day, and so fat as she was? So that Mr. Dundas was exonerated from the suspicion of murder in either case, if credited with an amount of folly and misfortune next thing to criminal; and "our marriage" was received with approbation, the families sending tribute and going to the church as the duty they owed a Harrowby, and to show Sebastian that they considered he had done wisely at last, and chosen as was fitting.

There was a little mild waggery about the future name of Ford House, and the bolder spirits offered shilling bets that it would be rechristened "Josephine Lodge" before the year was out. But save this not very scorching satire, which also was not too well received by the majority, as savoring of irreverence to consecrated powers, the country looked on in supreme good-humor, and the day came in its course, finding as much social serenity as it brought summer sunshine.

It was a pretty wedding, and everybody said that everybody looked very nice; which is always comforting to those whose souls are stitched up in their flounces, and whose happiness and self-respect rise or fall according to the becomingness of their attire. The village school-children lining the churchwalk strewed flowers for the bride's material and symbolic path. Dressed in a mixture of white, scarlet and blue, they made a brilliant show of color, and gave a curious suggestion of so many tricolored flags set up along the path; but they added to the general gayety of the scene, and they themselves thought Miss Josephine's wedding surely as grand as the queen's.

There were five bridesmaids, including little Fina, whom kindly Josephine had specially desired should bear her part in the pageant which was to give her a mother and a friend. The remaining four were the two Misses Harrowby, Adelaide Birkett, as her long-time confidante, and that other step-daughter, more legitimate if less satisfactory than Fina—Leam.

The first three of these four elder maids came naturally and of course: the last was the difficulty. When first asked, Learn had refused positively—for her quite vehemently—to have hand or part in the wedding. It brought back too vividly the sin and the sorrow of the former time; and she despised her father's inconstancy of heart too much to care to assist at a service which was to her the service of folly and wickedness in one.

She said, "No, no: I will not come. I, bridesmaid at papa's wedding! bridesmaid to his third wife! No, I will not!" And she said it with an insistance, an emphasis, that seemed immovable, and all the more so because it was natural.

But Josephine pleaded with her so warmly—she was evidently so much in earnest in her wish, she meant to be so good and kind to the girl, to lift her from the shadows and place her in the sunshine of happiness—that Leam was at last touched deeply enough to give way. She had come now to recognize that fidelity to be faithful need not be churlish; and perhaps she was influenced by Josephine's final argument. For when she had said "No, I cannot come to the wedding," for about the fourth time, Josephine shot her last bolt in these words: "Oh, dear Leam, do come. I am sure Edgar will be hurt and displeased if you are not one of my bridesmaids. He will think you do not like the connection, and you know what a proud man he is: he will be so vexed with me."

On which Leam said gravely, "I would not like to hurt or displease Major Harrowby; and I do not like or dislike the connection;" adding, after a pause, and putting on her little royal manner, "I will come."

Josephine's honest heart swelled with the humble gratitude of the self-abased. "Good Leam! dear girl!" she cried, kissing her with tearful eyes and wet lips—poor Learn! who hated to be kissed, and who had by no means intended that her grave caress on the day of betrothal should be taken as a precedent and acted on unreservedly. And after she had kissed her frequently she thanked her again effusively, as if she had received some signal grace that could hardly be repaid.

Her excess chilled Leam of course, but she held to her promise; and Josephine augured all manner of happy eventualities from the fact that her future step-daughter had yielded so sweetly on the first difference of desire between them, and had let herself be kissed with becoming patience. It was a good omen for the beginning of things; and all brides are superstitious—Josephine perhaps more so than most, in that she was more loving and more in love than most.

Yes, it was a pretty wedding, as they all said. The bride in the regulation white and pearls looked, if not girlish, yet comely and suitable to the bridegroom with his gray hair and sunburnt skin. The two senior maids had stipulated for a preponderance of warm rose-color in the costumes, which suited every one. It threw a flush on their faded elderliness which was not amiss, and did the best for them that could be done in the circumstances; it brought out into lovely contrast, the contrast of harmonies, Adelaide Birkett's delicate complexion, fair flaxen braids and light-blue eyes; it burnt like flame in Leam's dark hair, and made her large transcendent eyes glow as if with fire; while the little one looked like a rose, the white and crimson petals of which enclosed a laughing golden-headed fairy.

It was admirable all through, and did credit to the generalizing powers of the Hill, which had thus contrived to harmonize the three stages of womanhood and to offend none. Even Frank's fastidious taste was satisfied. So was Mrs. Frank's, who knew how things ought to be done. And as she was the rather elderly if very wealthy daughter of a baronet, who considered that she had married decidedly beneath herself in taking Frank Harrowby, the untitled young barrister not even yet in silk, she had come down to the Hill prepared to criticise sharply; so that her approbation carried weight and ensured a large amount of satisfaction. Edgar, however, who was not so fastidious as his brother, thought the whole thing a failure and that no one looked even tolerable.

As he had his duty to do by his sister, being the father who gave her away, he was fully occupied; but his eyes wandered more than once to the younger two of the bridesmaids proper—those two irreconcilables joined for the first time in a show of sisterhood and likeness—and whom he examined and compared as so often before, with the same inability to decide which.

He paid little or no attention to either. He might have been a gray-headed old sage for the marvelous reticence of his demeanor, devoting himself to his duties and the dowagers with a persistency of good-breeding, to say the least of it, admirable. At the breakfast-table he was naturally separated from both these fair disturbers of his lordly peace, Leam having been told off to Alick, and Adelaide handed over to Frank's fraternal care, with Mrs. Frank, who claimed more than a fee-simple in her husband, watching them jealously and interrupting them often.

That wind which never blows so ill that it brings no good to any one had brought joy to Alick in this apportionment of partners, if the sadness of boredom to poor Leam. The natural excitement of a wedding, which stirs the coldest, had touched even the chastened pulses of the pale, gaunt curate, and he caught himself more than once wondering if he could ever win the young queen of his boyish fancy to return the deep love of his manhood—love which was so true, so strong, so illimitable, it seemed as if it must by the very nature of things compel its answer.

That answer was evidently not in the course of preparation to-day, for Leam had never been more laconic or more candidly disdainful than she was now; and what sweetness the pomegranate flower might hold in its heart was certainly not shaken abroad on the surrounding world. She answered when she was spoken to, because even Leam felt the constraining influences of society, but her eyes, like her manner, said plainly enough, "You tire me: you are stupid."

Not that either her eyes or her manner repelled her uncomfortable adorer. Alick was used to her disdain, and even liked it as her way, as he would have liked anything else that had been her way. He was content to be her footstool if it was her pleasure to put her foot on him, and he would have knotted any thong of any lash that she had chosen to use. Whatever gave her pleasure rejoiced him, and he had no desire for himself that might be against her wishes. Nevertheless, he yearned at times, when self would dominate obedience, that those wishes of hers should coincide with his desires, and that before the end came he might win her to return his love.

But what can be hoped from a girl, not a coquette, who is besieged on the one side by an awkward and ungainly admirer, when directly opposite to her is the handsome hero for whose love her secret heart, unknown to herself, is crying, and who has withdrawn himself for the time from smiles and benevolence? Leam somehow felt as if every compliment paid to her by Alick was an offence to Edgar; and she repelled him, blushing, writhing, uncomfortable, but adoring, with a coldness that nothing could warm, a stony immobility that nothing could soften, because it was the coldness of fidelity and the immobility of love.

Edgar saw it all. It put him somewhat in better humor with himself, but made him indignant with the Reverend Alexander, as he generally called Alick when he spoke of him wishing to suggest disrespect. He held him as a poacher beating up his preserves; and the gentlemen of England have scant mercy for poachers, conscious or unconscious. Meanwhile, nothing could be more delightfully smooth and successful than the whole thing was on the outside. The women looked nice, the men were gallant, the mature but comely bride was so happy that she seemed to radiate happiness on all around her, and the elderly bridegroom was marvelously vitalized for a man whose heart was broken, and only at the best riveted. Edgar performed his duties, as has been said, with heroic constancy; Mrs. Harrowby did not weep nor bemoan herself as a victim because one of her daughters had at last left the maternal wing for a penthouse of her own; Adelaide talked to Frank with graceful discretion, mindful of his owner watching her property jealously from the other side of the way; Leam was—Leam in her more reserved mood if Alick was too manifestly adoring; and the families admitted acted like a well-trained chorus, and carried on the main thread to lower levels without a break. So time and events went on till the moment came for that fearful infliction—the wedding-breakfast toast prefaced by the wedding-breakfast speech.

This naturally fell to the lot of Mr. Birkett to propose and deliver, and after a concerted signaling with Edgar he rose to his feet and began his oration. He proposed "the health of the fair bride and her gallant groom," both of whom, after the manner of such speeches, he credited with all the virtues under heaven, and of whom each was the sole proper complement of the other to be found within the four seas. He was so far generous in that he did not allude to that fascinating second whom Mr. Dundas had taken to his bosom nearly five years ago now, and whose tragical death had cut him to the heart almost as much as it had wounded Sebastian. At one time natural masculine malice had made him compose a stinging little allusion that should carry poison, as some flowers do, sheathed and sugared; but the gentleman's better taste prevailed, and for Josephine's sake he brushed away the gloomy shadow of the grave which he had thrown for his own satisfaction over the orange-blossoms. He rose to the joyous height of the occasion, and his speech was a splendid success and gave satisfaction to every one alike. But what he did say was, that he supposed the master of the Hill would soon be following the example of his brother-in-law, and cause the place to be glad in the presence of a young Mrs. Harrowby, who would do well if she had half the virtues of the lady who had so long held the place of mistress there. And when he said this he looked at Edgar with a paternal kind of roguishness that really sat very well on his handsome old face, and that every one took to mean Adelaide.

Edgar laughed and showed his square white teeth while the rector spoke, blushing like a girl, but in all save that strange, unusual flush he bore himself as if it was a good joke of Mr. Birkett's own imagining, and one with which he had personally nothing to do. More than one pair of eyes watched to see if he would look at Adelaide as the thong for the rector's buckle; and Adelaide watched on her own account to see if he would look at Leam or at her. But Edgar kept his eyes discreetly guided, and no one caught a wandering glance anywhere: he merely laughed and put it by as a good joke, looking as if he had devoted himself to celibacy for life, and that the Hill would never receive another mistress than the one whom it had now.

"I wonder if the rector means Miss Birkett?" blundered Alick as his commentary in a low voice to Leam.

Leam turned pale: then with an effort she answered coldly, "Why wonder at what you cannot know? It is foolish."

And Alick was comforted, because if she had rebuked she had at the least spoken to him.

The breakfast soon after this came to an end, and in due time the guests were all assembled in the drawing-room, waiting for the departure of the newly-married pair. Here Edgar might have made some amends to the two bridesmaids whom he had neglected with such impartiality of coldness, such an equal division of doubt, but he did not. He still avoided both as if each had offended him, and made them feel that he was displeased and had intentionally overlooked them.

Each girl bore his neglect in a manner characteristic of herself. Adelaide showed nothing, unless indeed it was that her voice was smoother and her speech sharper than usual, while her smiles were more frequent if less real. But then it was heroic in her to speak and smile at all when she was verily in torture. Nothing short of the worship due to the great god Society could have made her control herself so admirably; but Adelaide was a faithful worshiper of the divine life of conventionality, and she had her reward. Leam showed nothing, at least nothing directly overt. Perhaps her demeanor was stiller, her laconism curter, her distaste to uninteresting companionship and current small-talk more profound, than usual; but no one seemed to see the deeper tinge of her ordinary color, and she passed muster, for her creditably. In her heart she thought it all weariness of the flesh and spirit alike, and wished that people would marry without a wedding if they must marry at all.

She had not the slightest idea why she felt so miserable when every one else was so full of the silliest laughter. It never occurred to her that it was because Edgar had not spoken to her; but once she confessed to herself that she wished she was away out of all this, riding through the green lanes, with Major Harrowby riding fast to join her. Even if her chestnut should prance and dance and make her feel uncomfortable about the pommel and the reins, it would be better than this. A heavy meal of meat and wine, and that horrible cake in the middle of the day, were stupid, thought ascetic Leam. She had never felt anything so dreary before. How glad she would be when her father and Josephine went away, and she might go back to Ford House and be alone! As for the evening, she did not know that she would show herself then at all. There was to be a ball, and though it would be pleasant to dance, she felt so dull and wretched now she half thought she would send an excuse. But perhaps Major Harrowby would be more at liberty in the evening than he was now, and would find it possible to dance with her, at least once. He danced so well! Indeed, he was the only partner whom she cared to have, and she hoped therefore that he would dance with her if she came.

And thinking this, she resolved in her own mind that she would come, and unconsciously raised her eyes to Edgar with a look of such intensity, and as it seemed to him such reproach, that it startled him as much as if she had called him by his name and asked him sadly, Why?

CHAPTER XXXIV.

IS THIS LOVE?

It seemed as if the evening was to bring no more satisfaction to the three whom the morning had so greatly disturbed than had that morning itself. Edgar avoided the two girls at the ball as much as he had avoided them at the breakfast, dancing only once with each, and not making even that one dance pleasant. Under cover of brotherly familiarity he teased Adelaide till she had the greatest difficulty in keeping her temper; while he was so preternaturally respectful to Leam, whom he wished he had not been forced to respect at all, that it seemed as if they had met to-night for the first time, and were not quite so cordial as sympathetic strangers would have been.

It was only a quadrille that they were dancing, a stupid, silent, uninteresting set of figures which people go through out of respect for ancient usage, and for which no one cares. Leam would have refused to take part in it at all had any one but Major Harrowby asked her. But he was different from other men, she thought; and it became her to say "Yes" when he said "Will you?" if only because he was the master of the house.

Leam had made considerable progress in her estimate of the proprieties. The unseen teacher who had informed her of late was apparently even more potent than those who had first broken up the fallow ground at Bayswater, and taught her that las cosas de España were not the things of the universe, and that there was another life and mode of action besides that taught by mamma.

But when Leam thoroughly understood the master's mood, and thus made it clear to herself that the evening's formality was simply a continuance of the morning's avoidance, after looking at him once with one of those profound looks of hers which made him almost beside himself, she set her head straight, turned her eyes to the floor, and lapsed into a silence as unbroken as his own. She was too proud and shy to attempt to conciliate him, but she wondered why he was so changed to her. And then she wondered, as she had done this morning, why she was so unhappy to-night. Was it because her father had married Josephine Harrowby? Why should that make her sad? She did not think now that her mother was crying in heaven because another woman was in her place; and for herself it made no difference whether there was a step-mother at home or no. She could not be more lonely than she was; and with Josephine at the head of affairs she would have less responsibility. No, it was not that which was making her unhappy; and yet she was almost as miserable to-night as she had been when madame was brought home as papa's wife, and her fancy gave her mamma's beloved face weeping there among the stars—abandoned by all but herself, forsaken even by the saints and the angels.

Everything to-night oppressed her. The lights dazzled her with what seemed to her their hard and cruel shine; the passing dancers radiantly clad and joyous made her giddy and contemptuous; the flower-scents pouring through the room from the plants within and from the gardens without gave her headache; the number of people at the ball—people whom she did not know and who stared at her, people whom she did know and who talked to her—all overwhelmed as well as isolated her. She seemed to belong to no one, now that Edgar had let her slip from his hands so coldly—not even to Mrs. Corfield, who had brought her, nor yet to her faithful friend and guardian Alick, who wandered round and round about her in circles like a dog, doing his best to make her feel befriended and to clear her dear face of some of its sadness. Doing his best too, with characteristic unselfishness, to forget that he loved her if it displeased her, and to convince her that he had only dreamed when he had said those rash words when the lilacs were first budding in the garden at Steel's Corner.

It was quite early in the evening when Edgar danced this uninteresting "square" with Leam, whom then he ceremoniously handed back to Mrs. Corfield, as if this gathering of friends and neighbors in the country had been a formal assemblage of strangers in a town.

"I hope you are not tired with this quadrille," he said as he took her across the room, not looking at her.

"It was dull, but I am not tired," Learn answered, not looking at him.

"I am sorry I was such an uninteresting partner," was his rejoinder, made with mock simplicity.

"A dumb man who does not even talk on his fingers cannot be very amusing," returned Learn with real directness.

"You were dumb too: why did you not talk, if dull, on your fingers?" he asked.

She drew herself up proudly, more like the Leam of Alick than of Edgar. "I do not generally amuse gentlemen," she said.

"Then I am only in the majority?" with that forced smile which was his way when he was most annoyed.

"You have been to-day," answered Leam, quitting his arm as they came up to her sharp-featured chaperon, but looking straight at him as she spoke with those heart-breaking eyes to which, Edgar thought, everything must yield, and he himself at the last.

Not minded, however, to yield at this moment, fighting indeed desperately with himself not to yield at all, Edgar kept away from his sister's step-daughter still more, as if a quarrel had fallen between them; and Adelaide gained in proportion, for suddenly that butterfly, undecided fancy of his seemed to settle on the rector's daughter, to whom he now paid more court than to the whole room beside—court so excessive and so patent that it made the families laugh knowingly, and say among themselves evidently the Hill would soon receive its new mistress, and the rector knew which way things were going when he made that wedding-speech this morning.

Only Adelaide herself was not deceived, but read between the lines and made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself. And to her it was manifest that Edgar's attentions, offered with such excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express himself, as to pique Leam Dundas and work off his own unrest.

Meanwhile, Leam, sad and weary, took refuge in the embrasure of a bow-window, where she sat hidden from the room by the heavy curtains which fell before the sidelights, leaving the centre window leading into the garden open and uncurtained. Here she was at rest. She was not obliged to talk. She need not see Edgar always with her enemy, both laughing so merrily—and as it seemed to her so cruelly, so insolently—as they waltzed and danced square dances, looking really as if made one for the other—so handsome as they both were; so well set up, and so thoroughly English.

It made her so unhappy to watch them; for, as she said to herself, Major Harrowby had always been so much her friend, and Adelaide Birkett was so much her enemy, that she felt as if he had deserted her and gone over to the other side. That was all. It was like losing him altogether to see him so much with Adelaide. With any one else she would not have had a pang. He might have danced all the evening, if he had liked, with Susy Fairbairn or Rosy, or any of the strange girls about, but she did not like that he should so entirely abandon her for Adelaide. Wherefore she drew herself away out of sight altogether, and sat behind the curtain looking into the garden and up to the dark, quiet sky.

Presently Alick, who had been searching for her everywhere, spied her out and came up to her. He too was one of those made wretched by the circumstances of the evening. Indeed, he was always wretched, more or less; but he was one of the kind which gets used to its own unhappiness—even reconciled to it if others are happy.

"You are not dancing?" he said to Learn sitting behind the curtain.

"No," said Learn with her old disdain for self-evident propositions. "I am sitting here."

"Don't you care for dancing?" he asked.

He knew that she did, but a certain temperament prefers foolish questions to silence; and Alick Corfield was one who had that temperament.

"Not to-night," she answered, looking into the garden,

"Why not to-night? and when you dance so beautifully too—just as light as a fairy."

"Did you ever see a fairy dance?" was Leam's rejoinder, made quite solemnly.

Alick blushed and shifted his long lean limbs uneasily. He knew that when he said these silly things he should draw down on him Leam's rebuke, but he never could refrain. He seemed impelled somehow to be always foolish and tiresome when with her. "No, I cannot say I have ever seen a fairy," he answered with a nervous little laugh.

"Then how can you say I dance like one?" she asked in perfect good faith of reproach.

"One may imagine," apologized Alick.

"One cannot imagine what does not exist," she answered. "You should not say such foolish things."

"No, you are right, I should not. I do say very foolish things at times. You are right to be angry with me," he said humbly, and writhing.

Leam turned her eyes from him in artistic reprobation of his awkwardness and ungainly homage. She paused a moment: then, as if by an effort, she looked at him straight in the face and kindly. "You are too good to me," she said gently, "and I am too hard on you: it is cruel."

"Don't say that," he cried, in real distress now. "You are perfect in my eyes. Don't scold yourself. I like you to say sharp things to me, and to tell me in your own beautiful way that I am stupid and foolish, if really you trust me and respect me a little under it all. But I should not know you, Leam, if you did not snub me. I should think you were angry with me if you treated me with formal politeness."

He spoke with an honest heart, but an uncomfortable body; and Learn, turning away her eyes once more, said with a heavy sigh—gravely, sorrowfully, tenderly even, but as if impelled by respect for truth to give her verdict as she thought it—"It is true if it is hard: you are often stupid. You are stupid now, twisting yourself about like that and making silly speeches. But I like you, for all that, and I respect you. I would as soon expect the sun to go out as for you to do wrong. But I wish you would keep still and not talk so much nonsense as you do."

"Thank you!" cried the poor fellow fervently, his bare bone accepted as gratefully as if it had been the sweetest fruit that love could bestow. "You give me all I ask, and more than I deserve, if you say that. And it is so kind of you to care whether I am awkward or not."

"I do not see the kindness," returned Learn gravely.

"Do you see those two spooning?" asked one of the Fairbairn girls, pointing out Leam and Alick to Edgar, the curtain being now held back by Leam to show the world that she was there, not caring to look as if hiding away with Alick.

"They look very comfortable, and the lady picturesque," he answered affectedly, but his brows suddenly contracted and his eyes shot together, as they always did when angry. He had been jealous before now of that shambling, awkward, ill-favored and true-hearted Alick, that loyal knight and faithful watchdog whom he despised with such high-hearted contempt; and he was not pleased to see him paying homage to the young queen whom he himself had deserted.

"Poor Alick Corfield!" said Adelaide pityingly. "He has been a very faithful adorer, I must say. I believe that he has been in love with Leam all his life, while she has held him on and off, and made use of him when she wanted him, and deserted him when she did not want him, with the skill of a veteran."

"Do you think Miss Dundas a flirt?" asked Edgar as affectedly as before.

"Certainly I do, but perhaps not more so than most girls of her kind and age," was the quiet answer with its pretence of fairness.

"Including yourself?"

She smiled with unruffled amiability. "I am an exception," she said. "I am neither of her kind nor, thank Goodness! of Tier country; and I have never seen the man I cared to flirt with. I am more particular than most people, and more exclusive. Besides," with the most matter-of-fact air in the world, "I am an old maid by nature and destiny. I am preparing for my métier too steadily to interrupt it by the vulgar amusement of flirting."

"You an old maid!—you! nonsense!" cried Edgar with an odd expression in his eyes. "You will not be an old maid, Adelaide, I would marry you myself rather."

She chose to take his impertinence simply. "Would you?" she asked. "That would be generous!"

"And unpleasant?" he returned in a lower voice.

"To you? chi sa? I should say yes." She spoke quite quietly, as if nothing deeper than the question and answer of the moment lay under this crossing of swords.

"No, not to me," he returned.

"To me, then? I will tell you that when the time comes," she said. "Things are not always what they seem."

"You speak in riddles to-night, fair lady," said Edgar, who honestly did not know what she meant him to infer—whether her present seeming indifference was real, or the deeper feeling which she had so often and for so long allowed him to believe.

"Do I?" She looked into his face serenely, but a little irritatingly. "Then my spoken riddles match your acted ones," she said.

"This is the first time that I have been accused of enigmatic action. Of all men I am the most straightforward, the least dubious."

Edgar said this rather angrily. By that curious law of self-deception which makes cowards boast of their courage and hypocrites of their sincerity, he did really believe himself to be as he said, notably clear in his will and distinct in his action.

"Indeed! I should scarcely endorse that," answered Adelaide. "I have so often known you enigmatic—a riddle of which, it seems to me, the key is lost, or to which indeed there is no key at all—that I have come to look on you as a puzzle never to be made out."

"You mean a puzzle not known to my fair friend Adelaide, which is not quite the same thing as not known to any one," he said satirically, his ill-humor with himself and everything about him overflowing beyond his power to restrain. His knowledge that Miss Birkett was his proper choice, his mad love for Leam—love only on the right hand, fitness, society, family, every other claim on the left—his jealousy of Alick, all irritated him beyond bearing, and made him forget even his good-breeding in his irritation.

"Not known to my friend Edgar himself," was Adelaide's reply, her color rising, ill-humor being contagious.

"Now, Adelaide, you are getting cross," he said.

"No, I am not in the least cross," she answered with her sweetest smile. "I have a clear conscience—no self-reproaches to make me vexed. It is only those who do wrong that lose their tempers. I know nothing better for good-humor than a good conscience."

"What a pretty little sermon! almost as good as one of the Reverend Alexander's, whose sport, by the way, I shall go and spoil."

"I never knew you cruel before," said Adelaide quietly. "Why should you destroy the poor fellow's happiness, as well as Leam's chances, for a mere passing whim? You surely are not going to repeat with the daughter the father's original mistake with the mother?"

She spoke with the utmost contempt that she could manifest. At all events, if Edgar married Leam Dundas, she would have her soul clear. He should never be able to say that he had gone over the edge of the precipice unwarned. She at least would be faithful, and would show him how unworthy his choice was.

"Well, I don't know," he drawled. "Do you think she would have me if I asked her?"

"Edgar!" cried Adelaide reproachfully. "You are untrue to yourself when you speak in that manner to me—I, who am your best friend. You have no one who cares so truly, so unselfishly, for your happiness and honor as I do."

She began with reproach, but she ended with tenderness; and Edgar, who was wax in the hands of a pretty woman, was touched. "Good, dear Adelaide!" he said with fervor and quite naturally, "you are one of the best girls in the world. But I must go and speak to Miss Dundas, I have neglected her so abominably all the evening."

On which, as if to prevent any reply, he turned away, and the next moment was standing by Leam sitting in the window-seat half concealed by the curtain, Alick paying awkward homage as his manner was.

Leam gave the faintest little start, that was more a shiver than a start, as he came up. She turned her tragic eyes to him with dumb reproach; but if she was sorrowful she was not craven, and though she meant him to see that she disapproved of his neglect—which had indeed been too evident to be ignored—she did not want him to think that she was unhappy because of it.

"Are you not dancing, Miss Dundas?" asked Edgar as gravely as if he was putting a bonâ fide question.

"No," said Leam—thinking to herself, "Even he can ask silly questions."

"Why not? Are you tired?"

"Yes," answered laconic Leam with a little sigh.

"I am afraid you are bored, and that you do not like balls," he said with false sympathy, but real love, sorry to see the weariness of face and spirit which he had not been sorry to cause.

"I am bored, and I do not like balls," she answered, her directness in nowise softened out of regard for Edgar as the giver of the feast or for Alick as her companion.

"Yet you like dancing; so come and shake off your boredom with me," said Edgar with a sudden flush. "They are just beginning to waltz: let me have one turn with you."

"No. Why do you ask me? You do not like to dance with me," said Leam proudly.

"No? Who told you such nonsense—such a falsehood as that?" hotly.

"Yourself," she answered.

Alick shifted his place uneasily. Something in Leam's manner to Edgar struck him with an acute sense of distress, and seemed to tell him all that he had hitherto failed to understand. But he felt indignant with Edgar, even though his neglect, at which Leam had been so evidently pained, might to another man have given hopes. He would rather have known her loving, beloved, hence blessed, than wounded by this man's coldness, by his indifference to what was to him, poor faithful and idealizing Alick, such surpassing and supreme delightfulness.

"I?" cried Edgar, willfully misunderstanding her. "When did I tell you I did not like to dance With you?"

"This evening," said Leam, not looking into his face.

"Oh, there is some mistake here. Come with me now. I will soon convince you that I do not dislike to dance with you," cried Edgar, excited, peremptory, eager.

Her accusation had touched him. It made him resolute to show her that he did not dislike to dance with her—she, the most beautiful girl in the room, the best dancer—she, Leam, that name which meant a love-poem in itself to him.

"Come," he said again, offering his hand, not his arm.

Leam looked at him, meaning to refuse. What did she see in his face that changed hers so wholly? The weariness swept off like clouds from the sky; her mournful eyes brightened into joy; the pretty little smile, which Edgar knew so well, stole round her mouth, timid, fluttering, evanescent; and she laid her hand in his with an indescribable expression of relief, like one suddenly free from pain.

"I am glad you do not dislike to dance with me," she said with a happy sigh; and the next-moment his arm was round her waist and her light form borne along into the dance.

As they went off Alick passed through the open window and stole away into the garden. The pain lost by Leam had been found by him, and it lay heavy on his soul.

Dancing was Leam's greatest pleasure and her best accomplishment. She had inherited the national passion as well as the grace bequeathed by her mother; and even Adelaide was forced to acknowledge that no one in or about North Aston came near to her in this. Edgar, too, danced in the best style of the best kind of English gentleman; and it was really something for the rest to look at when these two "took the floor." But never had Leam felt during a dance as she felt now—never had she shone to such perfection. She was as if taken up into another world, where she was some one else and not herself—some one radiant, without care, light-hearted, and without memories. The rapid movement intoxicated her; the lights no longer dazzled but excited her; she was not oppressed by the many eyes that looked at her: she was elated, made proud and glad, for was she not dancing as none of them could, and with Edgar? Edgar, too, was not the Edgar of the dull, prosaic every day, but was changed like all the rest. He was like some prince of old-time romance, some knight of chivalry, some hero of history, and the poetry, the passion, that seemed to inspire her with more than ordinary life were reflected in him.

"My darling!" Edgar said below his breath, pressing her to him warmly, "do you think now that it is no pleasure for me to dance with you?"

Leam, startled at the word, the tone, looked up half scared into his face; then—she herself scarcely knowing what she did, but instinctively answering what she saw—Edgar felt her little hand on his shoulder lie there heavily, her figure yield to his arm as it had never yielded before, while her head drooped like a flower faint with the heavy sunlight till it nearly touched his breast.

"My Leam!" he whimpered again, "I love you! I love you! my Leam, my love!"

Leam sighed dreamily. "This is like death—and heaven," she murmured as he stopped by the window where she had sat with Alick, and carried her half fainting into the garden.

The cool night-air revived her, and she opened her eyes, wondering where she was and what had happened. Even now she could not take it all in, but she knew that something had come to her of which she was ashamed, and that she must not stay here alone with Major Harrowby. With an attempt at her old pride she tried to draw herself away, not looking at him, feeling abashed and humbled. "I will dance no more," she said faltering.

Edgar, who had her hands clasped in his, drew her gently to him again. He held her hands up to his breast, both enclosed in one of his, his other arm round her waist. "Will you leave me, my Leam?" he said in his sweetest tones. "Do you not love me well enough to stay with me?"

"I must go in," said Leam faintly.

"Before you have said that you love me? Will you not say so, Leam? I love you, my darling: no man ever loved as I love you, my sweetest Leam, my angel, my delight! Tell me that you love me—tell me, darling."

"Is this love?" said Leam turning away her head, her whole being penetrated with a kind of blissful agony, where she did not know which was strongest, the pleasure or the pain: perhaps it was the pain.

"Kiss me, and then I shall know," whispered Edgar.

"No," said Leam trembling and hiding her face, "I must not do that."

"Ah, you do not love me, and we shall never meet again," he cried in the disappointed lover's well-feigned tone of despair, dropping her hands and half turning away.

Leam stood for a moment as if she hesitated: then, with an indescribable air of self-surrender, she went closer to him and laid her hands very gently on his shoulders. "I will kiss you rather than make you unhappy," she said in a soft voice, lifting up her face.

"My angel! now I know that you love me!" cried Edgar triumphantly, holding her strained to his heart as he pressed her bashful, tremulous little lips, Leam feeling that she had proved her love by the sacrifice of all that she held most dear—by the sacrifice of herself and modesty.

The first kiss for a girl whose love was as strong as fire and as pure—for a girl who had not a weak or sensual fibre in her nature—yes, it was a sacrifice the like of which men do not understand; especially Edgar, loose-lipped, amorous Edgar, with his easy loves, his wide experience, his consequent loss of sensitive perception, and his holding all women as pretty much alike—creatures rather than individuals, and created for man's pleasure: especially he did not understand how much this little action, which was one so entirely of course to him, cost her—how great the gift, how eloquent of what it included. But Leam, burning with shame, thought that she should never bear to see the sun again; and yet it was for Edgar, and for Edgar she would have done even more than this. "Have you enjoyed yourself, Leam, my dear?" asked Mrs. Corfield as they drove home in the quiet moonlight.

"No—yes," answered Leam, who wished that the little woman would not talk to her. How could she say that this fiery unrest was enjoyment? The word was so trivial. But indeed what word could compass the strange passion that possessed her?—that mingled bliss and anguish of young love newly born, lately confessed.

"Have you enjoyed yourself, Alick, my boy?" asked the little woman again.

She had had no love-affairs to disturb her with pleasure or with pain, and she was full of the mechanism of the evening, and wanted to talk it over.

"I never enjoy that kind of thing," answered Alick in a voice that was full of tears.

He had witnessed the scene in the garden, and his heart was sore, both for himself and for her.

"Oh," said Mrs. Corfield briskly, "it was a pretty sight, and I am sure every one was happy."

Had she seen Adelaide Birkett sitting before her glass, her face covered in her hands and shedding hot tears like rain—had she seen Leam standing by her open window, letting the cool night-air blow upon her, too feverish and disturbed to rest—she would not have said that every one had been happy at the ball given in honor of Josephine's marriage. Perhaps of all those immediately concerned Edgar was the most content, for now that he had committed himself he had done with the torment of indecision, and by putting himself finally under the control of circumstances he seemed to have thrown off the strain of responsibility.

So the night passed, and the next day came, bringing toil to the weary, joy to the happy, wealth to the rich, and sorrow to the sad—bringing Edgar to Leam, and Leam to the deeper consciousness and confession of her love.

CHAPTER XXXV.

DUNASTON CASTLE.

It was not a bad idea to continue the wedding-gayeties of yesterday evening by a picnic to-day. People are always more or less out of sorts after a ball, and a day spent in the open air soothes the feverish and braces up the limp. Wherefore the rectory gave a picnic to blow away the lingering vapors of last evening at the Hill, and the place of meeting chosen was Dunaston Castle.

Leam had of course been invited with the rest. Had she been a different person, and more in accord with the general sentiments of the neighborhood than she was, she would have been made the "first young lady" for the moment, because of her connection with the bridegroom; but being what she was—Leam—she was merely included with the rest, and by Adelaide with reluctance.

The day wore on bright and clear. Already it was past two o'clock, but Leam, irresolute what to do, sat in the garden under the shadow of the cut-leaved hornbeam, from the branches of which Pepita used to swing in her hammock, smoking cigarettes and striking her zambomba. One part of her longed to go, the other held her back. The one was the strength of love, the other its humiliation. How could she meet Major Harrowby again? she thought. She had kissed him of her own free will last night—she, Leam, had kissed him; she had leant against his breast, he with his arms round her; she had said the sacred and irrevocable words, "I love you." How could she meet him again without sinking to the earth for shame? What a strange kind of shame!—not sin and yet not innocence; something to blush for, but not to repent of; something not to be repeated, but not to wish undone. And what a perplexed state of feeling!—longing, fearing to see Edgar again—praying of each moment as it came that he should not appear; grieved each moment as it passed that he was still absent.

So she sat in all the turmoil of her new birth, distracted between love and shame, and not knowing which was stronger—feeling as if in a dream, but, every now and then waking to think of Dunaston, and should she go or stay away—when, just as little Fina came running to her, ready dressed and loud in her insistence that they should set off at once, the lodge-gates swung back and Edgar Harrowby rode up to the door. When she saw him dismount and walk across the lawn to where she sat—though it was what she had been waiting for all the day, hoping if fearing—yet now that it had come and he was really there, she wished that the earth would open at her feet, or that she could flee away and hide herself like a scared hind in her cover. But she could not have risen had there been even any place of refuge for her. Breathing with difficulty, and seeing nothing that was before her, she was chained to her seat by a feeling that was half terror, half joy—a feeling utterly inexplicable in its total destruction of her self-possession to reticent Leam, who hitherto had held herself in such proud restraint, and had kept her soul from all influence from the world without. And now the citadel was stormed and she was conquered and captive.

Meanwhile, the handsome officer walked over the sunny lawn with his military step, well set up, lordly, smiling. He liked to see this bashfulness in Leam. It was the sign of submission in one so unsubdued that flattered his pride as men like it to be flattered. Now indeed he was the man and the superior, and this trembling little girl, blushing and downcast, was no longer his virgin nymph, self-contained and unconfessed, but the slave of his love, like so many others before her.

The child ran up to him joyfully. She and Edgar were "great friends," as he used to say. He lifted her in his arms, placed her on his shoulder like a big blue forget-me-not gathered from the grass, then deposited her by Leam on the seat beneath the cut-leaved hornbeam. And Leam was grateful that the little one was there. It was somehow a protection against herself.

"I came to take you to the castle," said; Edgar, looking down on the drooping figure with a tender smile on his handsome face as he took her hand in his; and held it. "Are you ready?"

Leam's lips moved, but at the first inaudibly. "No," she then said with an effort.

"It is time," said Edgar, still holding her hand.

"I do not think I shall go," she faltered, not raising her eyes from the ground.

Edgar, towering above her, always smiling—the child playing with his beard as she stood on the seat breast-high with himself—still holding that small burning hand in his, Leam not resisting, then said in Spanish, "My soul! have pity on me."

The old familiar words thrilled the girl like a voice from the dead. Had anything been wanting to rivet the chains in which love had bound her, it was these words, "My soul," spoken by her lover in her mother's tongue. She answered more freely, almost eagerly, in the same language, "Would you be sorry?" and Edgar, whose Castilian was by no means unlimited, replied in English "Yes" at a venture, and sat down on the seat by her.

"Fina, go and ask Jones to tell you pretty stories about the bay," he then said to the child.

"And may I ride him?" cried Fina, sure to take the ell when given the inch.

"Ask Jones," he answered good-naturedly "I dare say he will put you up."

Whereupon Fina ran off to the groom, whom she teased for the next half hour to give her a ride on the bay.

But Jones was obdurate. The major's horse was not only three sticks and a barrel, like some on 'em, he said, and too full of his beans for a little miss like her to mount. The controversy, however, kept the child engaged if it made her angry; and thus Edgar was left free to break down more of that trembling defence-work within which Leam was doing her best to entrench herself.

"Do you know, Leam, you have not looked at me once since I came?" he said, after they had been sitting for some time, he talking on indifferent subjects to give her time to recover herself, and she replying in monosyllables, or perhaps not replying at all.

She was silent, but her eyes drooped a little lower.

"Will you not look at me, darling?" he asked in that mellifluous voice of his which no woman had yet been found strong enough to withstand.

"Why?" said Leam, vainly trying after her old self, and doing her best to speak as if the subject was indifferent to her, but failing, as how should she not? The loud beatings of her heart rang in her ears, her lips quivered so that she could not steady them, and her eyes were so full of shame, their lids so weighted with consciousness, that truly she could not have raised them had she tried.

"Why? Look at me and I will tell you," was his smiling answer.

She turned to him, and, as once before, bound by the spell of loving obedience, lifted her heavy lids and raised her dewy eyes slowly till they came to the level of his. Then they met his, and Edgar laughed—a happy and abounding laugh which somehow Leam did not resent, though in general a laugh the cause of which she did not fully understand was an offence to her or a stupidity.

"Now I am satisfied," he said in his sweetest voice. "Now I know that the morning has not destroyed the dream of the night, and that you love me. Tell it me once more, Leam, sweet Leam! I must hear it in the open sunshine as I heard it in the starlight: tell me again that you love me."

Leam bent her pretty head to hide her crimson cheeks. How hard this confession was to her, and yet how sweet! How difficult to make, and yet how sorry she would be if anything came between them so that it was left unmade!

"Tell me, my Leam, my darling!" said Edgar again, with that delicious tyranny of love, that masterful insistence of manly tenderness, which women prize and obey.

"I love you," half whispered Leam, feeling as if she had again forfeited her pride and modesty, and for the second time had committed that strange sweet sin against herself for which she blushed and of which she did not repent.

"And I love you," he answered—"fervently, madly if you like. I never knew what love was before I knew you, my darling. When you are all my own I will make you confess that the love of an English gentleman is worth living for."

"You are worth living for," said Leam with timid fervor, defending him against all possible rivalry of circumstance or person. "I do not care about your English gentlemen. It is only you."

"That brute of a Jones!" muttered Edgar as he put his arm round her waist and glanced toward the door.

"No," said Leam gravely, shrinking back, "you must not do that."

"What a shy wild bird it is!" he said lovingly, though he was disappointed. And he did not like this kind of disappointment. "Will you never be tamed, my Leam?"

"Not to that," said innocent Leam in the same grave way; and Edgar smiled behind his golden beard, but not so that she could see the smile.

"Ah, but you must obey me now—do as I tell you in everything," he said with perfect seriousness of mien and accent. "You have given yourself to me now, and if I ask you to kiss me you must, just as readily as Fina, and let me caress and pet you as much as I like."

"Must I? but I do not like it," said Leam simply.

He laughed outright, and—Jones not looking—took her hand and carried it to his lips. "Is this unpleasant?" he asked, looking up from under his eyebrows.

Leam blushed, hesitated, trembled. "No," she then said in a low voice, "not from you."

On which he kissed it again, and Leam had no wish to retract her confession.

"Now go and make ready to come to the castle," he said after a moment's pause. "I told you before that you must obey me, now that you have promised to be my wife. Command is the husband's privilege, Leam, and obedience the wife's happiness: don't you know? So come, darling! They were all to assemble at two," looking at his watch, "and here we are close on three! You do not wish not to go now, my pet?"

"No," said Leam, with her happy little fleeting smile: "I am glad to go. I shall be with you, and you wish it."

"What an exquisite little creature! In a week she will come to my hand like a tame bird," was Edgar's thought as he watched her slender, graceful figure slowly crossing the lawn with that undulating step of her mother's nation. "In a week's time I shall have tamed her," he repeated with a difference; and he felt glad that he had bespoken Leam Dundas betimes, and that fate and fortune had made him her prospective proprietor. "She will make me happy," he said as his last thought: he forgot to add either assurance or hope that he should make her the same. That is not generally part of a man's matrimonial calculations.

The confidence of love soon grows. When Leam came back to the seat under the cut-leaved hornbeam, where Edgar still waited for her to have the pleasure of watching her approach, she was not so much ashamed and oppressed as when he had first found her there. She did not want to run away, and she was losing her fear of wrongdoing. She was beginning instead to feel that delightful sense of dependence on a strong man's love which—pace the third sex born in these odd latter times—is the most exquisite sensation that a woman can know. She was no longer alone—no longer an alien imprisoned in family bonds, but, though one of a family, always an alien and imprisoned, never homed and united. Now she was Edgar's as she had been mamma's; and there was dawning on her the consciousness of the same oneness, the same intimate union of heart and life and love, as she had had with mamma. She belonged to him. He loved her, and she—yes, she knew now that she had always loved him, had always lived for him. He was the secret god whom she had carried about with her in her soul from the beginning—the predestined of her life, now for the first time recognized—the only man whom she could have ever loved. To her intense and single-hearted nature change or infidelity was an unimaginable crime, something impossible to conceive. Had she not met Edgar she would never have loved any one, she thought: having met him, it was impossible that she should not have loved him, the ideal to her as he was of all manly nobleness and grace, given to her to love by a Power higher than that of chance.

She was dimly conscious of this deep sense of rest in her new-found joy as she came across the lawn in her pretty summer dress of pearly gray touched here and there with crimson—the loveliest creature to be seen for miles around. Her usually mournful face was brightened with an inner kind of bliss which, from the face of the Tragic Muse, made it the face of a youthful seraph serene and blessed; her smile was one of almost unearthly ecstasy, if it still retained that timid, tremulous, fleeting expression which was so beautiful to Edgar; her eyes, no longer sad and sorrowful, but dewy, tender, bashful, shone with the purity, the confidence, the self-abandonment of a young girl's first and happy love: every gesture, every line, seemed to have gained a greater grace and richness since yesterday; and as she came up to her lover, and laid her hand in his when he rose to meet her and looked for one shy instant into his eyes, then dropped her own in shame-faced tremor at what they had seen and told, he said again to himself that he had done well. If even she should call the hounds at a hunt-dinner dogs, and say that hunting was stupid and cruel, what might not be forgiven to Such beauty, such love as hers?

Yes, he was satisfied with himself and with her; and with himself because of her. He had done well, and she was eminently the right kind of wife for him, let conventional cavilers say what they would. He never felt more reconciled to fortune and himself than he did to-day when he rode by the side of the carriage wherein Leam and Fina sat, and looked through the coming years to the time when he should have a little Fina of his own with her mother Leam's dark eyes and her mother Leam's devoted heart.

The day was perfect, so was the place. Both were all that the day and place of young love should be. The view from the castle heights, with the river below, the woods around and the moor beyond, was always beautiful, but to-day, in the full flush of the early summer, it was at its best. The golden sunshine, alternating with purple shadows, was lying in broad tracts on meadow and moor, and lighting up the forest trees so that the delicate tints and foliage of bough and branch came out in photographic clearness; the river, where it caught the sun like a belt of silver, where it was under the shadow like a band of lapis-lazuli, ran like a vein of life through the scene, and its music could be heard here where they stood; close at hand the old gray ivy-covered ruins, with their stories and memories of bygone times, seemed to add to the vivid fervor of the moment by the force of contrast—that past so drear and old, the present so full of passionate hope and love; while the shadows of things that had once been real trooped among the ruins and flitted in and out the desert places, chased by laughing girls and merry children, as life chases death, youth drives out age, and the summer rises from the grave of winter. It was a day, a scene, to remember for life, even by those to whom it brought nothing special: how much more, then, by those to whom it symbolized the fresh fruition of the summer of the heart, the glad glory of newly-confessed love!

This was Leam's day. Edgar devoted himself publicly to her—so publicly that people gathered into shady corners to discuss what it meant, and to ask each other if the tie already binding the two families was to be supplemented and strengthened by another? It looked like it, they said, in whispers, for it was to be supposed that Major Harrowby was an honorable man and a gentleman, and would not play with a child like Leam.

Dear Mrs. Birkett was manifestly distressed at what she saw. Though Adelaide made her mother no more a confidante than if she had been a stranger, yet she knew well enough where her daughter's wishes pointed; and they pointed to where her own were set. She too thought that Edgar and Adelaide were made for each other, and that Adelaide at the Hill would be eminently matter in the right place. She would not have grudged Leam the duke's son, could she have secured him, but she did grudge her Edgar Harrowby. It would be such a nice match for Addy, who was getting on now, and whose temper at home was trying; and she had hoped fervently that this year would see the matter settled. It was hanging fire a little longer than she quite liked: still, she always hoped and believed until to-day, when Edgar appropriated Leam in this strange manner before them all, seeming to present her to them as his own, so that they should make no further mistake.

But if Mrs. Birkett looked distressed, Adelaide, who naturally suffered more than did her mother, kept her own counsel so bravely that no one could have told how hard she had been hit. If she betrayed herself in any way, it was in being rather more attentive and demonstrative to her guests than was usual with her; but she behaved with the Spartan pride of the English gentlewoman, and deceived all who were present but herself.

Even Edgar took her by outside seeming, and put his belief in her love for him as a fallacy behind him. And it said something for a certain goodness of heart, with all his faults and vanity, that he was more relieved than mortified to think that he had been mistaken. Yet he liked to be loved by women, and the character which he had chiefly affected on the social side of him was that of the Irresistible. Nevertheless, he was glad that he had been mistaken in Adelaide's feelings, and relieved to think that she would not be unhappy because he had chosen Leam and not herself.

Yes, this was Leam's day, her one spell of perfect happiness—the day whereon there was no past and no future, only the glad sufficiency of the present—a day which seemed as if it had been lent by Heaven, so great was its exquisite delight, so pure its cloudless, shadowless sunshine of love.

Leam neither knew nor noted how the neighbors looked. They had somehow gone far off from her: when they spoke she answered them mechanically, and if she passed them she took no more heed than if they had been so many sheep or dogs lying about the grass. She only knew that she was with Edgar—that she loved him and that he loved her. It was a knowledge that made her strong to resist the whole world had the whole world, opposed her, and that dwarfed the families into insignificant, almost impersonal, adjuncts of the place, of no more consequence than the ferns growing about the fallen stones. Not even Adelaide could jar that rich melodious chord to which her whole being vibrated. It was all peace, contentment, love; and for the first and only time in her life Leam Dundas was absolutely happy.

The two lovers, always together and apart from the rest, wandered about the ruins till evening and the time for dispersion and reassembling at the rectory came. The sunset had been in accord with the day, golden and glorious, but after the last rays had gone heavy masses of purple clouds that boded ill for the morrow gathered with strange suddenness on the horizon. Still the lovers lingered about the ruins. The families had left them alone for the latter part of the time, and they discussed now Leam's forwardness as they had discussed before Edgar's intentions. But neither Edgar nor Leam took heed. They were in love, and the world beyond themselves was simply a world of shadows with which they had no concern.

It had been such a day of happiness to both that they were loath to end it, so they lingered behind the rest, and tried, as lovers do, to stop time by love. They were sitting now on one of the fallen blocks of stone of the many scattered about, he talking to her in a low voice, "I love you, I love you," the burden of his theme; she for the most part listening to words which made the sweetest music discord, but sometimes responding as a tender fainter echo. He did not see the eyes that were watching him from behind the broken wall, nor the jealous ears that were drinking in their own pain so greedily. He saw only Leam, and was conscious only that he loved her and she him.

Presently he said, tempting her with the lover's affectation of distrust, "I do not think you love me really, my Leam," bending over her as if he would have folded her to his heart. Had she been any but Leam he would. But the love-ways that came so easy to him were lessons all unlearnt as yet by her, and he respected both her reticence and her reluctance.

"Not love you!" she said with soft surprise—"I not love you!"

"Do you?" he asked.

She was silent for a moment. "I do love you," she said in her quiet, intense way. "I do not talk—you know that—but if I could make you happy by dying for you I would. I love you—oh, I cannot say how much! I seem to love God and all the saints, the sun and the flowers, Spain, our Holy Mother and mamma in you. You are life to me. I seem to have loved you all my life under another name. When you are with me I have no more pain or fear left. You are myself—more than myself to me."

"My darling! and you to me!" cried Edgar.

But his voice, though sweet and tender, had not the passionate ring of hers, and his face, though full of the man's bolder love, had not the intensity which made her so beautiful, so sublime. It was all the difference between the experience which knew the whole thing by heart, and which cared for itself more than for the beloved, and the wholeness, the ecstasy, of the first and only love born of a nature single, simple and concentrated.

Adelaide, watching and listening behind the broken wall, saw and heard it all. Her head was on fire, her heart had sunk like lead; she could not stay any longer assisting thus at the ruin of her life's great hope; she had already stayed too long. As she stole noiselessly away, her white dress passing a distant opening looked ghastly, seen through the rising mist which the young moon faintly silvered,

"What is that?" cried Leam, a look of terror on her pale face as she rapidly crossed herself. "It is the Evil Sign."

"No," laughed Edgar, profiting by the moment to take her in his arms, judging that if she was frightened she would be willing to feel sheltered. "It is only one of the ladies passing to go down. Perhaps it is Adelaide Birkett: I think it was."

"And that would be an evil sign in itself," said Leam, still shuddering. And yet how safe she felt with his arms about her like this!

"Poor dear Addy! why should she be an ill omen to you, you dear little fluttering, frightened dove?"

"She hates me—always has, so long as I can remember her," answered Leam. "And you are her friend," she added.

"Her friend, yes, but not her lover, as I am yours—not her future husband," said Edgar.

Leam's hand touched his softly, with a touch that was as fleeting and subtle as her smile.

"A friend is not a wife, you know," he continued. "And you are to be my wife, my own dear and beloved little wife—always with me, never parted again."

"Never parted again! Ah, I shall never be unhappy then," she murmured.

A flash of summer lightning broke through the pale faint moonlight and lighted up the old gray towers with a lurid glow.

Leam was not usually frightened at lightning, but now, perhaps because her whole being was overwrought and strung, she started and crouched down with a sense of awe strangely unlike her usual self.

"Come, we are going to have a storm," said Edgar, whom every manifestation of weakness claiming his superior protection infinitely pleased and seemed to endear her yet more to him. "We must be going, my darling, else I shall have you caught in the rain. We shall just have time to get to the rectory before it comes on, and they are waiting for us."

"I would rather not go to the rectory to-night," said Leam with a sudden return to her old shy self.

"No? Why, my sweet?" he said lovingly. "How can I live through the evening without you?"

"Can you not? Do you really wish me to go?" she answered seriously.

"Of course I wish it: how should I not? But tell me why you raise an objection. Why would you rather not go?"

"I would rather be alone and think of you than only see you at the rectory with all those people," she answered simply.

"But we have had all the people about here, and yet we have been pretty much alone," he said.

"We could not be together at the rectory, and"—she blushed, but her eyes were full of more than love as she raised them to his face—"I could not bear that any one should come between us to-day. Better be alone at home, where I can think of you with no one to interrupt me."

"It is a disappointment, but who could refuse such a plea and made in such a voice?" said Edgar, who felt that perhaps she was right in her instinct, and who at all events knew that he should be spared something that would be a slight effort in Adelaide's own house. "I shall spoil you, I know, but I cannot refuse you anything when you look like that. Very well: you shall go home if you wish it, my beloved, and I will make your excuses."

"Thank you," said Leam, with the sweetest little air of humbleness and patience.

"How could that fool Sebastian Dundas say she was difficult to manage? and how can Adelaide see in her the possibility of anything like wickedness? She is the most loving and tractable little angel in the world. She will give me no kind of trouble, and I shall be able to mould her from the first and do what I like with her."

These were Edgar's thoughts as he took Leam's hand on his arm, holding it there tenderly pressed beneath his other hand, while he said aloud, "My darling! my delight! if I had had to create my ideal I should have made you. You are everything I most love;" and again he said, as so often before, "the only woman I have ever loved or ever could love."

And Learn believed him.

Adelaide accepted Major Harrowby's excuses for Miss Dundas's sudden headache and fatigue gallantly, as she had accepted her position through the day: she showed nothing, expressed nothing, bin: bore herself with consummate ease and self-possession. She won Edgar's admiration for her tact and discretion, for the beautiful results of good-breeding. He congratulated himself on having such a friend as Adelaide Birkett. She would be of infinite advantage to Learn when his wife, and when he had persuaded that sweet doubter to believe in her and accept her as she was, and as he wished her to be accepted. As it was in the calendar of his wishes at this moment that Adelaide had never loved him, never wished to marry him, he dismissed the belief which he had cherished so long as if it had never been, and decided that it had been a mistake throughout. She was just his friend—no more, and never had been more. He was not singular in his determination to find events as his desires ruled them. It is a pleasant way of shuffling off self-reproach and of excusing one's own fickleness.

Edgar just now believed as he wished to believe, and shut out all the rest. As he lit his last cigar, sitting on the terrace at the Hill and watching the sheet-lightning on the horizon, he thought with satisfaction on the success of his life. Specially he congratulated himself on his final choice. Leam would make the sweetest little wife in the world, and he loved her passionately. But "spooning" was exhausting work: he would cut it short and marry her as soon as he could get things together. Then his thoughts wandered away to some other of his personal matters; and while Leam was living over the day hour by hour, word by word, he had settled the terms for Farmer Mason's new lease, had decided to rebuild the north lodge, which was ugly and incommodious; and on this, something catching the end of that inexplicable association of ideas, he wondered how some one whom he had left in India was going on, and what had become of Violet Cray.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

IN LETTERS OF FIRE.

THE storm which had threatened to break last night still held off, but the spirit of the weather had changed. It was no longer bright and clear, but sunless, airless, heated, silent—the stillness which seems to presage as much sorrow to man as it heralds tumult to Nature. Leam, however—interpenetrated by her love, which gave what it felt and saw what it brought—always remembered this early day as the ideal of peace and softness, where was no prophecy of coming evil, no shadow of the avenging hand stretched out to punish and destroy—only peace and softness, love, joy and rest.

The gray background of the heavy sky, which to others was heavy and gloomy, was to her the loveliest expression of repose, and the absence of sunlight was as grateful as a veil drawn against the glare. If not beautiful in itself, it added beauty to other things: witness the passionate splendor given by it to the flowers, which seemed by contrast to gain a force and vitality of color, a richness and significance, they never had before. She specially remembered in days to come a bed of scarlet poppies that glowed like so many cups of flame against the dark masses of evergreens behind them; and the scarlet geraniums, the bold bosses of the blood-red peonies, the fiery spathes of salvia and gladiolus the low-lying verbenas like rubies cast on the green leaves and brown earth, the red gold, flame-color streaked with lines of blood, of the nasturtiums festooning the bordering wires of the centre beds, all seemed to come out like spires of flame or rosettes dyed in blood, till the garden was filled with only those two colors—the one of fire and the other of blood.

But though Leam remembered this in after-days as the weird prophecy of what was to come, at the time those burning beds of flowers simply pleased her with their brilliant coloring; and she sat in her accustomed place on the garden-chair, under the cut-leaved hornbeam, and looked at the garden stretching before her with the fresh, surprised kind of admiration of one who had never seen it before—as if it told her something different to-day from what it had in times past; as indeed it did.

Presently Edgar came down from the Hill. He had not told his people yet of the double bond which he designed to make between the two houses. He thought it was only fitting to wait until Sebastian had returned and he had gained the paternal consent in the orthodox way. And the false air of secrecy which this temporary reticence gave his engagement gave it also a false air of romance which exactly suited his temperament in the matter of love. Perhaps for the woman destined to be his wife he would have preferred to dispense with this characteristic of his dealings with those other women, her predecessors, not destined to be his wives. All the same, it was delightful, as things were, to come down to Ford House on this sultry day and sit under the shadow of the hornbeam, with Leam looking her loveliest by his side, and butterfly-like Fina running in and out in the joyous way of a lively child fond of movement and not afflicted with shyness; delightful to feel that he was enacting a little poem unknown to all the world beside—that he was the magician who had first wakened this young soul into life and taught it the sweet suffering of love; and delightful to know that he was king and supreme, the only man concerned, with not even a father to share, just yet, his domain.

Edgar, at all times charming, because at all times good-humored and not inconveniently in earnest, when specially pleased with himself was one of the most delightful companions to be found. He had seen much, and he talked pleasantly on what he had seen, whipping up the surface of things dexterously and not forcing his hearers to digest the substance. Hence he was never a bore, nor did he disturb the placid shallows of ignorance by an unwelcome influx of information. He had just so much of the histrionic element, born of vanity and self-consciousness, as is compatible with the impassive quietude prescribed by good-breeding, whereby his manner had a color that was an excellent substitute for sincerity, and his speech a pictorial glow that did duty for enthusiasm when he thought fit to simulate enthusiasm. He had, too, that sensitive tact which seems to feel weak places as if by instinct; and when he was at his best his good-nature led him to avoid giving pain and to affect a sympathetic air, which was no more true than his earnestness. But it took with the uncritical and the affectionate, and Major Harrowby was quoted by many as an eminently kind and tender-hearted man.

To women he had that manner of subtle deference and flattering admiration characteristic of men who make love to all women—even to children in the bud and to matrons more than full-blown—and who are consequently idolized by the sex all round. And when this natural adorer of many laid himself out to make special love to one he was, as we know, irresistible. He was irresistible to-day. He was really in love with Leam; and if his love had not the intensity, the tenacity of hers, yet it was true of its kind, and for him very true.

But he was not so much in love as to be unconscious of the most graceful way of making it; consequently, he knew exactly what he was doing and how he looked and what he said, while Leam, sitting there by his side, drinking in his words as if they were heavenly utterances, forgot all about herself, and lived only in her speechless, her unfathomable adoration of the man she loved. Her life at this moment was one pulse of voiceless happiness: it was one strain of sensation, emotion, passion, love; but it was not conscious thought nor yet perception of outward things by her senses.

If yesterday at Dunaston had been a day of blessedness, this was its twin sister, and the better favored of the two. There was a certain flavor of domesticity in these quiet hours passed together in the garden, interrupted only by the child as she ran hither and thither breaking in on them, sometimes not unpleasantly when speech was growing embarrassed because emotion was growing too strong, that seemed to Leam the sweetest experience which life could give her were she to live for ever; and the sunless stillness of the day suited her nature even better than the gayer glory of yesterday. To-day, too, it was still more peace in her inner being and still less unrest. The more accustomed she was becoming to the strange fact of loving and being loved by a man not a Spaniard, and one whom mamma would neither have chosen nor approved of, the more she was at ease both in heart and manner, and the more exquisite and profound her blessedness. And who does not know what happiness can do for a girl of strong emotions, naturally reserved, by circumstances friendless, by habit joyless, and how the soul of such a one seems to throw off its husk like the enchanted victim of a fairy-tale when the true being that has been hidden is released by love? It is a transformation as entire as any wrought by magic word or wand; and it was the transformation wrought with Leam to-day. She was Leam Dundas truly in all the essential qualities of identity, but Leam Dundas with another soul, an added faculty, an awakened consciousness—Leam set free from the darkness of the bondage in which she had hitherto lived.

"You look like another being: you have looked like this ever since you told me you loved me," said Edgar, drawing himself a little back and gazing at her with the critical tenderness of a man's pride and love. "You are like Psyche wakened out of her sleep, and for the first time using your wings and living in the upper air."

The metaphor was a little confused, but that did not signify. The whole image was essentially Greek to Leam, and she only knew that it sounded well and did somehow apply to her—that she had just awakened out of sleep, and was for the first time using her wings and living in the upper air.

"I have not really lived till now," she answered. "And now things seem different."

"In what way?" asked Edgar, smiling.

He knew what she meant, but he wanted to hear her reveal herself.

She smiled too. "More beautiful," she said, a little vaguely.

"As what? I like to be precise, and I want to know exactly what my darling thinks and means."

He said this with his most bewitching smile and in his tenderest voice. It was so pleasant to him to receive these first shy, confused confessions.

"The flowers and the sky," said Leam, raising her eyes and looking through the garden and on to the gray and narrowed horizon. "I remember when flowers were weeds and one day was like another. I did not know if the sun shone or not. But this year seems now to have been always summer and sunshine. The very weeds are more lovely than the flowers used to be."

"Flowers and sunshine since you knew me, my darling?"

"Yes," she answered shyly.

Edgar glanced at the heavy clouds hanging over head, but he did not say that he found this gray day singularly gloomy and oppressive, and that even love could not set a fairy sun in the sky. He took up the second clause of her loving speech: "And I am your flower? What a precious little compliment! I hope I shall be your amaranth, my Leam—your everlasting flower—if a rough soldier may have such a pretty comparison made in his favor. Do you think I shall be everlasting to you?"

"When God dies my love will die, and not before," said Leam, with her grave fervor, her voice of concentrated passion.

Her voice and manner thrilled Edgar. Her words, too, in their very boldness were more exciting than the most refined commonplaces of other women. It was this union of more than ordinary womanly reticence with almost savage passion and directness that had always been Leam's charm to Edgar; nevertheless, he hesitated for a few minutes, thinking whether he should correct her manner of speech or not, and while loving chasten her. Finally, he decided that he would not. She was only his lover as yet: when she should be his wife it would then be time enough to teach her the subdued conventionalism of English feeling as interpreted by the English tongue used commonly by gentlemen and ladies. Meanwhile, he must give her her head, as he inwardly phrased it, so as not frighten her in the beginning and thus make the end more difficult.

"You love me too much," he said in a low voice, half oppressed, half excited by her words, for men are difficult to content. The love of women given in excess of their demand embarrasses and maybe chills them; and Edgar had a sudden misgiving, discomposing if quite natural, which appeared, as it were, to check him like a horse in mid-career and throw him back on himself disagreeably. He asked himself doubtfully, Should he be able to answer this intense love so as to make the balance even between them? He loved her dearly, passionately—better than he had ever loved any woman of the many before—but he did not love her like this: he knew that well enough.

"I cannot love you too much," said Leam. "You are my life, and you are so great."

"And you will never tire of me?"

She looked into his face, her beautiful eyes worshiping him. "Do we tire of the sun?" she answered.

"Where did you get all your pretty fancies from, my darling?" he cried. "You have developed into a poet as well as a Psyche."

"Have I? If I have developed into anything, it is because I love you," she answered, with her sweet pathetic smile.

"But, my Leam, sweetheart—"

"Ah," she interrupted him with a look of passionate delight, "how I like to hear you call me that! Mamma used to call me her heart. No one else has since—I would not let any one if they had wanted—till now you."

"And you are my heart," he answered fervently—"the heart of my heart, my very life!"

"Am I?" she smiled. "And you are mine."

"But, sweetheart, tell me if, when you know me better, you do not find me all you think me now, what then? Will you hate me for very disappointment?"

He asked the question, but as if he believed in himself and the impossibility of her hatred or disappointment while he asked it.

She looked at him with naïve incredulity and surprise. It would have been a challenge to be kissed from any other woman, but Leam, with her fire and passion and personal reticence all in one, had no thought of offering such a challenge, still less of submitting to its consequences.

"Find you all I think?" she repeated slowly. "When I know the saints in heaven, will not they be all I think? Was not Columbus?"

"But I am neither a saint nor a hero," said Edgar, drawing a sprig of lemon-plant which he held in his hand lightly across her face.

"You are both," answered Leam as positively as she used to answer Alick about the ugliness of England and the want of flowers in the woods and hedges, and with as much conviction of her case.

"And you are an angel," he returned.

"No," said Leam quietly, "I am only the woman who loves you."

"Ah, but you must not depreciate yourself for my sake," he said. "My choice, my love, my wife, must be perfect for my own honor. You must respect me in respecting yourself, and if you were to say yes indeed you were an angel, that would only be what is due to me. Don't you see?" pleasantly.

"Yes," she answered. "And only an angel would be good enough for you."

"My sweetest, your flattery is too delicious. It will make me vain and all sorts of bad things," said Edgar with a happy smile, finding this innocent worship one of the most charming tributes ever brought to the shrine of his lordly manhood by woman.

"It is not flattery: you deserve more," said Leam. Then lapsing into her old manner of checked utterance, she added, "I cannot talk, but you should be told."

Edgar thought he had been told pretty often by women the virtues which they had seen in him. Whether they saw what was or what they imagined was not to the point. If love creates, so does vanity, and of the two the latter has the more permanence.

After this there was a long pause. It was as if one chapter had been finished, one cup emptied. Then said Edgar suddenly, "And you will be happy at the Hill?" lightly touching her face again with the lemon-plant.

"With you anywhere," she answered.

"And my mother? Do you remember when you said one day you would not like to be my mother's daughter? Ah, little puss, you did not know what you were saying; and now tell me, do you object to be my mother's daughter?"

Leam looked grave. "I had not thought of that," she said, a certain shadow of distress crossing her face.

"Does the idea displease you?" he asked, in his turn grave.

"No," she answered after a short silence. "But I only thought of you. Shall I be Mrs. Harrowby's daughter?"

"Of course. How should you not?" he laughed.

"And Miss Josephine's too—two mothers?—mother and daughter both my mothers? I cannot understand," said poor Leam, a little hopelessly.

"Never mind the intricacies now. You are to be my wife: that is all we need remember. Is it not?" bending toward her tenderly.

"Yes," echoed Leam with a sigh of relief. "That is all we need remember."

So the day passed in these broken episodes, these delightful little scenes of the fooling and flattery of love, till the evening came, when Edgar was obliged to go up to the seven-o'clock dinner at the Hill. He might sit with Leam, as he had done, for nearly six hours in the garden, without more comment than that which servants naturally make among themselves, but if he remained through the evening he would publish more than he cared to publish at the present moment. So he had arranged to go back to the family dinner at seven, and thus keep his mother and sisters hoodwinked for a few hours longer.

As the time of parting drew nearer and nearer Leam became strangely sad and silent. Little caressing as she was by nature or habit, of her own accord she had laid her small dry feverish hand in Edgar's, and had gathered herself so much nearer to him that her slight shoulder touched his broad and powerful arm. It was a very faint caress for an engaged girl to offer, but it was an immense concession for Leam to make; and Edgar understood it in its meaning more than its extent. With the former he was delighted enough: the latter would scarcely have contented a man with loose moist lips and the royal habit of taking and having all for which he had a fancy. Nothing that Leam had said or done through the day had told him so plainly as did this quiet and by no means fervent familiarity how much she loved him, and how the power of that love was breaking up her natural reserve.

"It is as if I should never see you again," she said sadly when, looking at his watch, he had exclaimed, "Time's up, my darling! I must be off in five minutes from this. But I shall see you to-morrow," he answered tenderly. "I shall come down in the morning, as I have done to-day, and perhaps you will ride with me. We will go over some of the old ground, where we used to go when I loved you and you did not think you would ever love me. Ah, fairy that you are, how you have bewitched me!"

"That will be good," said Learn, who did not resent it in him that she was compared to a thing that did not exist, but adding with a piteous look, "it is taking my life from me when you go."

"You lovely little darling! I don't like to see you look unhappy, but I do delight to see how much you love me," said Edgar. "But you will not have to part with me for very long now. I shall see you every day till the time comes when we shall never be separated—never, never."

"Ah, that time!" she sighed. "It is far off."

He smiled, as his manner was, behind his beard, so that she did not see it. "It shall not be far off," he said gravely. "And now," looking again at his watch and then at the sky, "I must go."

The storm that had been threatening through the day was now gathering to a head, and even as Edgar spoke the first flash came, the first distant peal of thunder sounded, the first heavy raindrops fell. There was evidently going to be a fearful tempest, and Edgar must leave now at once if he would not be in the thick of it before he reached home.

"Yes," said Leam, noting the change in the sky, and unselfish always, "you must go."

They rose and turned toward the house. Hand in hand they walked slowly across the lawn and entered the drawing-room by the way of the window, by the way by which she had entered twice before—once when she had disclaimed madame, and once when she had welcomed Josephine.

Tears were in her eyes: her heart had failed her.

"It is like losing you for ever," she said again.

"No, not for ever—only till to-morrow," he answered.

"To-morrow! to-morrow!" she replied. "There will be no to-morrow."

"Yes, yes: in a very few hours we shall have come to that blessed day," he said cheerfully. "Kiss me, darling, that I may carry away your sweetest memory till I see you again. You will kiss me, Leam, of your own free will to-night, will you not?" He said this a little tremulously, his arms round her.

"Yes," she answered, "I will kiss you to-night."

She turned her face to him and put her hands round his neck frankly: then with an uncontrollable impulse she flung herself against his breast and, clasping her arms tight, bent his head down to her level and kissed him on the forehead with the passionate sorrow, the reluctant despair of an eternal farewell. It was something that irresistibly suggested death.

Edgar was distressed at her manner, distressed to have to leave her; but he must. Life is made up of petty duties, paltry obligations. Great events come but rarely and are seldom uninterrupted. A shower of rain and the dinner-hour are parts of the mosaic and help in the catastrophe which looks as if it had been the offspring of the moment. And just now the supreme exigencies to be attended to were the dinner-hour at the Hill and the rain that was beginning to fall.

Saddened, surprised, yet gratified too by her emotion, Edgar answered it in his own way. He kissed her again and again, smoothed her hair, passed his hand over her soft fresh cheeks, held her to him tightly clasped; and Leam did not refuse his caresses. She seemed to have suddenly abandoned all the characteristics of her former self: the mask had fallen finally, and her soul, released from its long imprisonment, was receiving its gift, not of tongues, but of fire—not of healing, but of suffering.

"My darling," he half whispered, "I shall see you to-morrow. Come, do not be so cast down: it is not reasonable, my heart. And tears in those sweet eyes? My Leam, dry them: they are too beautiful for tears. Look up, my darling. Give me one happy little smile, and remember to-morrow and for all our lives after."

But Learn could not smile. Her face was set to its old mask of tragedy and sorrow. Something, she knew not what, had passed out of her life, and something had come into it—something that Edgar for the moment could neither restore nor yet banish. He pressed her to him for the last time, kissed her passive face again and again, caught the scent of the lemon-plant in her hair where he had placed it, and left her. As he passed through the gate the storm burst in all its fury, and Leam went up into her own room in a voiceless, tearless grief that made the whole earth a desert and all life desolation.

She did know herself this evening, nor understand what it was that ailed her. She had only consciously loved for two days, and this was the anguish to which she had been brought. No, not even when mamma died had she suffered as she was suffering now. She felt as if she had lost him even as she had lost her. She did not believe in to-morrow: it would never come. She would never be with him again as she had been to-day. No self-reasoning, feebly aimed at, could calm her or convince her of the folly of her fears. He had gone, she was left, and they were parted for ever.

She sat by the window desolate, deserted, more alone than she had ever been before, because she had lost more than she had ever either held or lost before. The storm that was raging in the sky grew gradually stronger and came still nearer, but she scarcely noticed it: it was only as the symphony sounding in sad harmony with her unspoken wail. Flash followed flash, swifter, nearer, more vivid; the thunder crashed and roared as if it would have beaten the house to the ground and rent the very earth whereon it stood; the rain fell in torrents that broke the flowers like hail and ran in turbulent rivulets along the paths. Never had there been such a furious tempest as this at North Aston since the days of tradition. It made the people in the village below quail and cry out that the day of judgment had come upon them: it made Leam at last forget her sorrow and quail in her solitude as if her day of judgment too had come upon her.

Then there came one awful flash that seemed to set the whole room on fire; and as Leam started up, thinking that the place was indeed in flames, her eyes fell on the Tables of the Ten Commandments given her by madame; and there, in letters of blood that seemed to cry out against her like a voice, she saw by the light of that accusing flash those words of terrible significance to her:

THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER!

[TO BE CONTINUED.]