n the beginning of an acquaintance with such a face
as Leam's. Nevertheless, in spite of the romance that hung about the
circumstance, his first words were common-place enough. "I hope my dog
has not alarmed you?" he said, lifting his hat.

Leam looked at him with those wonderful eyes of hers, that seemed
somehow to look through him. She, standing on her hillock, was
slightly higher than Edgar sitting on his horse; and her head was bent
as she looked down on him, giving her attitude and gesture something
of a dignified assumption of superiority, more like the Leam of the
past than of the present. "No, I was not alarmed," she said. "But I
do not like to be barked at," she added, an echo of the old childish
sense of injury from circumstance that was so quaint and pretty in her
half-complaining voice.

"I suppose not: how should you?" answered Edgar with sympathetic
energy. "Rover is a good-old fellow, but he has the troublesome trick
of giving tongue unnecessarily. He would not have hurt you, but I
should be very sorry to think he had frightened you. To heel, sir!"
angrily.

"No, he did not frighten me." repeated Leam.

Never loquacious, there was something about this man's face and
manner, his masterful spirit underneath his courteous bearing, his
look of masculine power and domination, his admiring eyes that fixed
themselves on her so unflinchingly--not with insolence, but as if he
had the prescriptive right of manhood to look at her, only a woman, as
he chose, he commanding and she obeying--that quelled and silenced
her even beyond her wont. He was the first gentleman of noteworthy
appearance who had ever spoken to her--not counting Alick, nor
the masters who had taught her at school, nor Mr. Birkett, nor Mr.
Fairbairn, as gentlemen of noteworthy appearance--and the first of all
things has a special influence over young minds.

"You are brave to walk so far alone: you ought to have a dog like
Rover to protect you," Edgar said, still looking at her with those
unflinching eyes, which oppressed her even when she did not see them.

"I am not brave, and I do not care for dogs. Besides, I do not often
walk so far as this; but I felt the valley stifling to-day," answered
Leam, in her matter-of-fact, categorical way.

"All the same, you ought to have protection," Edgar said
authoritatively, and Leam did not reply.

She only looked at him earnestly, wondering against what she should
be protected, having abandoned by t