refore 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 Espana_
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