. It was the moral arbitrariness of the superior
being, which, amusing now in the maiden, might become wearisome, not
to say oppressive, in the wife.

"Well, I do not know her as you do, of course, but I cannot see why
you should dislike her so much," persisted Edgar.

"Trust me, some day it will be seen why," she answered. "I feel
confident that before long Leam will show herself in her true colors,
and those will be black. I pity the man who will ever be her husband."

Edgar laughed somewhat forcedly, then looked at Leam walking up the
road alone, and thought that her husband would not need much pity
for his state. Her beauty stood with him for moral qualities and
intellectual graces. Given such a face as hers, such a figure, and
all the rest was included. And when he thought of her eyes and the
maddening way in which they looked into his; of the grave little
smile, evanescent, delicate, subtle, the very aroma of a smile, so
different from the coarse hilarity of your commonplace English girls;
of the reticence and pride which gave such value to her smaller
graces; of the enchanting look and accent which had accompanied
her act of self-surrender just now--that acceptance of his word and
renunciation of her own fancy which had put him in the place and given
him the honor of a conqueror,--he accused Adelaide in his heart of
prejudice and jealousy, and despised her for her littleness. In fact,
he was nearer to loving Leam Dundas because of these strictures
than he would have been had the rector's daughter praised her; and
Adelaide, usually so politic, had made a horribly bad move by her
unguarded confession of distrust and dislike.

The whole episode, however, had been lost in its true meaning to all
save one--that one the Mr. Gryce of Lionnet, who already knew what
there was to be known of every family in the place, and who had the
faculty of dovetailing parts into a whole characteristic of the born
detective.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE GREEN YULE.

The frost broke suddenly, and was succeeded by damp, close,
unseasonable weather, continuing up to Christmas, and giving the
"green yule" which the proverb says "makes a fat churchyard." That
proverb was justified sadly enough at North Aston, for typhus set in
among the low-lying cottages, and, as in olden times, when jail-fever
struck the lawyer at the bar and the judge on the bench in stern
protest against the foulness they fostered, so now the sins of the
wealth