arrel, like some on 'em, he said, and too full of his beans for
a little miss like her to mount. The controversy, however, kept the
child engaged if it made her angry; and thus Edgar was left free to
break down more of that trembling defence-work within which Leam was
doing her best to entrench herself.

"Do you know, Leam, you have not looked at me once since I came?"
he said, after they had been sitting for some time, he talking on
indifferent subjects to give her time to recover herself, and she
replying in monosyllables, or perhaps not replying at all.

She was silent, but her eyes drooped a little lower.

"Will you not look at me, darling?" he asked in that mellifluous voice
of his which no woman had yet been found strong enough to withstand.

"Why?" said Leam, vainly trying after her old self, and doing her best
to speak as if the subject was indifferent to her, but failing, as how
should she not? The loud beatings of her heart rang in her ears, her
lips quivered so that she could not steady them, and her eyes were so
full of shame, their lids so weighted with consciousness, that truly
she could not have raised them had she tried.

"Why? Look at me and I will tell you," was his smiling answer.

She turned to him, and, as once before, bound by the spell of loving
obedience, lifted her heavy lids and raised her dewy eyes slowly till
they came to the level of his. Then they met his, and Edgar laughed--a
happy and abounding laugh which somehow Leam did not resent, though in
general a laugh the cause of which she did not fully understand was an
offence to her or a stupidity.

"Now I am satisfied," he said in his sweetest voice. "Now I know that
the morning has not destroyed the dream of the night, and that you
love me. Tell it me once more, Leam, sweet Leam! I must hear it in the
open sunshine as I heard it in the starlight: tell me again that you
love me."

Leam bent her pretty head to hide her crimson cheeks. How hard this
confession was to her, and yet how sweet! How difficult to make, and
yet how sorry she would be if anything came between them so that it
was left unmade!

"Tell me, my Leam, my darling!" said Edgar again, with that delicious
tyranny of love, that masterful insistence of manly tenderness, which
women prize and obey.

"I love you," half whispered Leam, feeling as if she had again
forfeited her pride and modesty, and for the second time had committed
that strange sweet sin against herself