This was the nearest approach to a compliment that Leam had ever made. She meant simply that, as there was no one else to tire her, how could her pleasant friend Major Harrowby possibly do so? But Edgar naturally took her words awry. "And if there were anyone else I suppose I should be nowhere? My part has not often been that of a pis aller," with a deep flush of displeasure.
"Why do you say that?" she asked in a slight tone of surprise. "You would be always where you are."
"With you?"
Her face asked his meaning.
"I mean, would you always hold me as much your friend, always care for me as much as you do now—if, indeed, you care for me at all—if any one else was here?" he explained.
Leam turned her troubled eyes to the ground. "I do not change like the wind," she answered, wishing he would not talk of her at all.
"No, I do not think you do or would," returned Edgar, bending his head nearer to hers as he drew his horse closer. "I should think that once loved would be always loved with you, Miss Dundas?" He said this in a low voice that slightly trembled.
She was silent. She had a consciousness of unknown dangers, sweet and perilous, closing around her—dangers which she must avoid she scarcely knew how, only vaguely conscious as she was that they were about. Then she said, with an effort, "I do not like myself talked of. It does not matter what I am."
"To me everything!" cried Edgar impulsively.
"You say what you do not mean," returned Leam. "I am not your sister; how, then, should it matter?"