which--said Josephine to her own people, weeping--she
supposed was due to her, the poor little thing not liking her for a
stepmother.

"Though, indeed, she need not have been afraid," said the good creature
effusively, "for I had intended to be kindness itself to the poor dear
girl."

And when she said this, Mrs. Harrowby who never failed an opportunity
for moral cautery, remarked dryly, "In all probability it is as well as
it is, Josephine. You would have been very uncomfortable with her, and
would have been sure to have spoiled her. And, as Adelaide Birkett
always says, very sensibly, she is odd enough already. She need not be
made more so."

Maria threw out a doubt as to whether Mr. Dundas had heard from Leam at
all. It was not like Sebastian to be so close, she said; but Josephine
assured her that he had, and bridled a little at the vapory insinuation
that Sebastian was not perfect. She detailed the whole circumstance with
all the facts fully fringed and feathered. He had received the letter
just as they were preparing to go to the Louvre, but he had not shown it
to her, and she had not asked to see it. She saw, though, that he was
much agitated when he read it, but he had put it in his pocket, and
when she looked for it it was not there. All that he had said was, "Leam
has left home, Josephine, and we must go back at once." Of course she
had not asked questions, she said with a pleasant little assumption of
wifely submission. Her search in her husband's pockets was only what
might have been expected from the average woman, but the wifely
submission was special.

For this curtailment of their sister's enjoyment Maria and Fanny judged
Leam almost more severely than for any other delinquency involved in her
flight. They spoke as if she had planned it purposely to vex her father
and his bride in their honeymoon and deprive them of their lawful
pleasure; but Josephine never blamed her as they did, and when they were
most bitter cast in her little words of soothing and excused her with
more zeal than evidence--excused her sometimes to the point of making
her sisters angry with her and inclined to accuse her of her old
failing, meek-spiritedness carried to the verge of self-abasement.

But the one who suffered most of all those left to lament or to wonder
was poor Alick Corfield. It was a misery to see him with his hollow
cheeks and haggard eyes, like an animal that has been hunted into lone
places, terrified and l