s?"
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.

"You have been to-day," answered Leam, quitting his arm as they came
up to her sharp-featured chaperon, but looking straight at him as
she spoke with those heart-breaking eyes to which, Edgar thought,
everything must yield, and he himself at the last.

Not minded, however, to yield at this moment, fighting indeed
desperately with himself not to yield at all, Edgar kept away from his
sister's step-daughter still more, as if a quarrel had fallen between
them; and Adelaide gained in proportion, for suddenly that butterfly,
undecided fancy of his seemed to settle on the rector's daughter, to
whom he now paid more court than to the whole room beside--court so
excessive and so patent that it made the families laugh knowingly,
and say among themselves evidently the Hill would soon receive its new
mistress, and the rector knew which way things were going when he made
that wedding-speech this morning.

Only Adelaide herself was not deceived, but read between the lines and
made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself. And
to her it was manifest that Edgar's attentions, offered with such
excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express
himself, as to pique Leam Dundas and work off his own unrest.

Meanwhile, Leam, sad and weary, took refuge in the embrasure of a
bow-window, where she sat hidden from the room by the heavy curtains
which fell before the sidelights, leaving the centre window leading
into the garden open and uncurtained. Here she was at rest. She was
not obliged to talk. She need not see Edgar always with her enemy,
both laughing so merrily--and as it seemed to her so cruelly, so
insolently--as they waltzed and danced square dances, looking really
as if made one for the other--so handsome as they both were; so well
set up, and so thoroughly English.

It made her so unhappy to watch them; for, as she said to herself,
Major Harrowby had always been so much her friend, and Adelaide
Birkett was so much her enemy, that she felt as if he had deserted her
and gone over to the other side. That was all. It was like losing him
altogether to see him so much with Adelaide. With any one else she
would not have had a pang. He might have danced all the eve