be; yet for all that, with
her more than Oriental gravity and reserve, and that look of tragedy
haunting her face, she was not an amusing companion, and the little
one was.

Mr. Dundas had begun to take up his old habits again with the
Harrowbys. He found the patient constancy of his friend Josephine not
a disagreeable salve for a wounded heart and broken life; albeit poor
dear Joseph was getting stout and matronly, and took off the keen edge
of courtship by a willingness too manifest for wisdom. Sebastian liked
to be loved, but he did not like to be bored by being made overmuch
love to. The things are different, and most men resent the latter, how
much soever they desire the former.

Edgar was in the drawing-room when Mr. Dundas was announced. He was
booted and spurred, waiting his horse to be brought round. "What a
pretty little girl!" he said after a time. True to his type, he was
fond of children and animals, and children and animals liked him.
"Come and speak to me," he continued, holding out his hand to
Fina.--"Whose child is she?" vaguely to the company in general.

"Mine," said Mr. Dundas emphatically--"my youngest daughter, Fina
Dundas."

Edgar knew what he meant. He had often heard the story from his
sisters, and since his return home he had had Adelaide Birkett's
comments thereon. He looked then with even more interest on the
pretty little creature in dark-blue velvet and swansdown, careless,
unconscious, happy, as the child of a mystery and a tragedy in one.

"Ah!" he said sympathetically. "Come to me, little one," again,
coaxingly.

Fina, with her finger in her mouth, went up to him half shyly, half
boldly, and wholly prettily. She let him take her on his knee and kiss
her without remonstrance. She was of the kind to like being taken on
knees and kissed--especially by gentlemen who were strong and matronly
women who were soft--and she soon made friends. Not many minutes
elapsed before, kneeling upon his knees, she was stroking his tawny
beard and plaiting it in threes, pulling his long moustache, playing
with his watch-guard, and laughing in his face with the pretty
audacity of six.

"What a dear little puss!" cried Edgar, caressing her. "Very like
you, Joseph, I should think, when you were her age, judging by your
picture. Is she not, mother?"

"They say so, but I do not see it," answered Mrs. Harrowby primly.

She did not like to hear about this resemblance. There was something
in it that an