"I cannot understand the child's aversion," said Mr. Dundas in a half-musing, half-suspicious way. "Leam seems to be all that is good and kind to her, but nothing that she does can soften the little creature's dislike. It must be natural instinct," he added in a lower voice.
"Yes, perhaps it is," assented Josephine, who would have answered, "Yes, perhaps it is," to anything else that her lover might have said.
"Where is Leam, my little Fina? Do you know?" asked Sebastian of the child.
"In the garden. She is coming in," answered Fina; and at the word Leam passed before the window as Fina had done.
"Leam, my child, come in: I want to speak to you," said her father, with unwonted kindness; and Leam, too, as Fina had done before her, passed through the open window and came in.
The two middle-aged lovers were still sitting side by side and close together on the sofa. Fina was on her stepfather's knee, caressing his hand and Josephine's, which were clasped together on her little lap, while his other arm encircled the substantial waist of his promised bride, whose disengaged hand rested on his shoulder.
"Leam," said the father, "I have given you—"
He stopped. The name which he was about to utter, with all its passionate memories, was left unsaid. He remembered in time Leam's former renunciation of the new mamma whom he had once before proposed.
"I have asked Josephine Harrowby to be my wife," he said after a short pause. "She has consented, and made me very happy. Let me hope that it will make you happy too."
He spoke with forced calmness and something of sternness under his apparent serenity. In heart he was troubled, remembering the past and half fearing the future. How would she bear herself? Would she accept his relations pleasantly, or defy and reject as before?