Leam turned away. "I am not fit to touch your hand," she said, the very pride of contrition in her voice—pride for him, if humiliation for herself.
"For this once," he pleaded.
"I am unworthy," she answered.
At this moment little Fina came jumping into the room. She had in her hand a rose-colored scarf that had once been poor madame's, and which the nurse, turning out an old box of hers, had found and given to the child.
After she had kissed Edgar, played with his bréloques, looked at the works of his watch, plaited his beard into three strings, and done all that she generally did in the way of welcome, she shook out the gauze scarf over her dress.
"This was mamma's—my own mamma's," she said. "Leam will never tell me about mamma: you tell me, Major Harrowby," coaxingly.
"I cannot: I did not know her," said Edgar in an altered voice, while Leam looked as if her judgment had come, but bore it as she had borne all the rest, resolutely.
"I want to hear about mamma, and who killed her," pouted Fina.
"Hush, Fina," said Leam in an agony: "you must not talk."
"You always say that, Leam, when I want to hear about mamma," was the child's petulant reply.