now
without a word of warning. It can be no business of mine, outside the
purest regard and consideration for you as well as for her. I do not
like her, but I do not want to see her in a false position and with a
damaged character through you."

Had they been alone, Edgar would probably have accepted this
remonstrance amicably enough. He might even have gone a long way in
proving it needless. But in the presence of Josephine his pride took
the alarm, and the weapon intended for Leam cut Adelaide's fingers
instead.

He listened patiently till she ended, then he drew himself up.
"Thanks!" he drawled affectedly. "You are very kind both to Miss
Dundas and myself. All the world knows that the most vigilant overseer
a pretty girl can have is a pretty woman. When the reputation of Miss
Dundas is endangered by me, it will then be time for her father to
interfere. Meanwhile, thanks! I like her quite well enough to take
care of her."

"Now, Adelaide, you have vexed him," said Josephine in dismay as Edgar
strode back to where Leam remained waiting for him.

"I have done my duty," said Adelaide, drawing her lips into a thin
line and lowering her eyebrows; and her friend knew her moods and
respected them.

On this point of warning Edgar against an entanglement with Leam she
did really think that she had done her duty. She knew that she wished
to marry him herself--in fact, meant to marry him--and that she would
probably have been his wife before now had it not been for this girl
and her untimely witcheries; but though, naturally enough, she was not
disposed to love Leam any the more because she had come between her
and her intended husband, she thought that she would have borne the
disappointment with becoming magnanimity if she had been of the
right kind for Edgar's wife. With Adelaide, as with so many among us,
conventional harmony was a religion in itself, and he who despised its
ritual was a blasphemer. And surely that harmony was not be found in
the marriage of an English gentleman of good degree with the daughter
of a dreadful low-class Spanish woman--a girl who at fifteen years
of age had prayed to the saints, used her knife as a whanger, and
maintained that the sun went round the earth because mamma said so,
and mamma knew! No, if Edgar married any one but herself, let him at
least marry some one as well fitted for him as herself, not one like
Leam Dundas.

For the sake of the neighborhood at large the mistress of