ar
than most people, and more exclusive. Besides," with the most
matter-of-fact air in the world, "I am an old maid by nature and
destiny. I am preparing for my _metier_ too steadily to interrupt it
by the vulgar amusement of flirting."

"You an old maid!--you! nonsense!" cried Edgar with an odd expression
in his eyes. "You will not be an old maid, Adelaide, I would marry you
myself rather."

She chose to take his impertinence simply. "Would you?" she asked.
"That would be generous!"

"And unpleasant?" he returned in a lower voice.

"To you? _chi sa?_ I should say yes." She spoke quite quietly, as if
nothing deeper than the question and answer of the moment lay under
this crossing of swords.

"No, not to me," he returned.

"To me, then? I will tell you that when the time comes," she said.
"Things are not always what they seem."

"You speak in riddles to-night, fair lady," said Edgar, who honestly
did not know what she meant him to infer--whether her present seeming
indifference was real, or the deeper feeling which she had so often
and for so long allowed him to believe.

"Do I?" She looked into his face serenely, but a little irritatingly.
"Then my spoken riddles match your acted ones," she said.

"This is the first time that I have been accused of enigmatic action.
Of all men I am the most straightforward, the least dubious."

Edgar said this rather angrily. By that curious law of self-deception
which makes cowards boast of their courage and hypocrites of their
sincerity, he did really believe himself to be as he said, notably
clear in his will and distinct in his action.

"Indeed! I should scarcely endorse that," answered Adelaide. "I have
so often known you enigmatic--a riddle of which, it seems to me, the
key is lost, or to which indeed there is no key at all--that I have
come to look on you as a puzzle never to be made out."

"You mean a puzzle not known to my fair friend Adelaide, which is not
quite the same thing as not known to any one," he said satirically,
his ill-humor with himself and everything about him overflowing beyond
his power to restrain. His knowledge that Miss Birkett was his proper
choice, his mad love for Leam--love only on the right hand, fitness,
society, family, every other claim on the left--his jealousy of
Alick, all irritated him beyond bearing, and made him forget even his
good-breeding in his irritation.

"Not known to my friend Edgar himself," was Adelaide's reply, her