t? Are you tired?"

"Yes," answered laconic Leam with a little sigh.

"I am afraid you are bored, and that you do not like balls," he said
with false sympathy, but real love, sorry to see the weariness of face
and spirit which he had not been sorry to cause.

"I am bored, and I do not like balls," she answered, her directness in
nowise softened out of regard for Edgar as the giver of the feast or
for Alick as her companion.

"Yet you like dancing; so come and shake off your boredom with me,"
said Edgar with a sudden flush. "They are just beginning to waltz: let
me have one turn with you."

"No. Why do you ask me? You do not like to dance with me," said Leam
proudly.

"No? Who told you such nonsense--such a falsehood as that?" hotly.

"Yourself," she answered.

Alick shifted his place uneasily. Something in Leam's manner to Edgar
struck him with an acute sense of distress, and seemed to tell him all
that he had hitherto failed to understand. But he felt indignant with
Edgar, even though his neglect, at which Leam had been so evidently
pained, might to another man have given hopes. He would rather have
known her loving, beloved, hence blessed, than wounded by this man's
coldness, by his indifference to what was to him, poor faithful and
idealizing Alick, such surpassing and supreme delightfulness.

"I?" cried Edgar, willfully misunderstanding her. "When did I tell you
I did not like to dance With you?"

"This evening," said Leam, not looking into his face.

"Oh, there is some mistake here. Come with me now. I will soon
convince you that I do not dislike to dance with you," cried Edgar,
excited, peremptory, eager.

Her accusation had touched him. It made him resolute to show her that
he did not dislike to dance with her--she, the most beautiful girl
in the room, the best dancer--she, Leam, that name which meant a
love-poem in itself to him.

"Come," he said again, offering his hand, not his arm.

Leam looked at him, meaning to refuse. What did she see in his face
that changed hers so wholly? The weariness swept off like clouds from
the sky; her mournful eyes brightened into joy; the pretty little
smile, which Edgar knew so well, stole round her mouth, timid,
fluttering, evanescent; and she laid her hand in his with an
indescribable expression of relief, like one suddenly free from pain.

"I am glad you do not dislike to dance with me," she said with a happy
sigh; and the next-moment his arm was round her