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.