n life. Under Alick's guidance she had fallen
asleep over Wordsworth--under Edgar's she dreamed beneath the stars
over Byron, and had heartaches without knowing why.

If they had met sometimes, and by chance, before the families went
away, they met now continually, and not by chance. But as Edgar's
passion and reason were not in accord, he restrained himself, for him
marvelously, and neither made love to her in earnest nor flirted with
her in jest. Indeed, Leam was too intense to be approached at any time
with levity. As well dress the Tragic Muse in the costume of a Watteau
shepherdess as ply Leam Dundas with the pretty follies found so useful
with other women. She did not understand them, and it seemed useless
to try to make her. If Edgar paid her any of the trivial compliments
always on his lips for women, Leam used to look at him with her
serious eyes and ask him how could he possibly know what she was
like--he, who scarcely knew her at all. If he praised her beauty, she
used to turn away her head offended and tell him he was rude. He felt
as if he could never touch her, never hold her: his ways were not as
hers; and if her fascination for him increased, so did his trouble.

He was in doubt on both sides--for her and for himself. He could not
read that silent, irresponsive nature nor measure his influence over
her. By no blushes when they met, no girlish poutings when he kept
away, by no covert reproaches, no ill-concealed gladness, no tremors
and no consciousness could he gain the smallest clew to guide him. She
was always the same--grave, gentle, laconic, self-possessed. But who
that looked into her eyes could fail to see underneath her Spanish
pride and more than Oriental reserve that fund of passion lying hidden
like the waters of an artesian well, waiting only to be brought to the
surface? He had not yet brought that hidden treasure into the light
of the sun and of love, and he wondered if ever he should. And if he
should, would it be for happiness? Leam was the kind of girl to love
madly under the orange trees and myrtles, to break one's heart for
when brothers interposed in the moonlight with rapiers and daggers
and caught her away for conventual discipline or for marriage with the
don; but as the mistress of an English home, the every-day wife of an
English squire with a character to keep up and an example to set,
was she fit for that? She was so quaint, so original, there were
such depths of passionate tho