was in the mood to make the best of things. Do not
the first days of a happy love ever give the happiest kind of philosophy
for man and woman to go on?

And he was happy in his love. Who more so? He was on his way now to Ford
House as a man going to his own, serene and confident of his possession.
He had left his treasure overnight, and he went to take it up again,
sure to find it where he had laid it down. He had no thought of the
thief who might have stolen it in the dark hours, of the rust that might
have cankered it in the chill of the gray morning. He only pictured to
himself its beauty, its sweetness and undimmed radiance--only remembered
that this treasure was his, his own and his only, unshared by any, and
known in its excellence by none before him.

He rode up to the door glad, dominant, assured. Life was very pleasant
to the strong man and ardent lover--the English gentleman with his
happiness in his own keeping, and his future marked out in a clear broad
pathway before him. There was no cloud in his sky, no shadow on his sea:
it was all sunshine and serenity--man the master of his own fate and the
ruler of circumstance--man the supreme over all things, a woman's past
included.

Not seeing Leam in the garden, Edgar rang the bells and was shown into
the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. The down-drawn blinds had
darkened the room to a pleasant gloom for eyes somewhat overpowered by
the blazing sunshine and the dazzling white clouds flung like heaps of
snow against the hard bright blue of the sky; yet something struck more
chill than restful on the lover as he came through the doorway, little
fanciful or sentimental as he was.

Leam, who had not been in bed through the night, was sitting on the sofa
in the remotest and darkest part of the room. She rose as he
entered--rose only, not coming forward to meet him, but standing in her
place silent, pale, yet calm and collected. She did not look at him, but
neither did she blush nor tremble. There was something statuesque,
almost dead, about her--something that was not the same Leam whom he had
known from the first.

He went up to her, both hands held out. She shrank back and folded hers
in each other, still not looking at him.

"Why, Leam, what is it?" he cried in amazement, pained, shocked at her
action. Was she in her right mind? Had she heard of his former
attentions to Adelaide, divined their ultimate meaning, and been seized
with a mad idea of s