r Addy! why should she be an ill omen to you, you dear little
fluttering, frightened dove?"

"She hates me--always has, so long as I can remember her," answered
Leam. "And you are her friend," she added.

"Her friend, yes, but not her lover, as I am yours--not her future
husband," said Edgar.

Leam's hand touched his softly, with a touch that was as fleeting and
subtle as her smile.

"A friend is not a wife, you know," he continued. "And you are to be
my wife, my own dear and beloved little wife--always with me, never
parted again."

"Never parted again! Ah, I shall never be unhappy then," she murmured.

A flash of summer lightning broke through the pale faint moonlight and
lighted up the old gray towers with a lurid glow.

Leam was not usually frightened at lightning, but now, perhaps because
her whole being was overwrought and strung, she started and crouched
down with a sense of awe strangely unlike her usual self.

"Come, we are going to have a storm," said Edgar, whom every
manifestation of weakness claiming his superior protection infinitely
pleased and seemed to endear her yet more to him. "We must be going,
my darling, else I shall have you caught in the rain. We shall just
have time to get to the rectory before it comes on, and they are
waiting for us."

"I would rather not go to the rectory to-night," said Leam with a
sudden return to her old shy self.

"No? Why, my sweet?" he said lovingly. "How can I live through the
evening without you?"

"Can you not? Do you really wish me to go?" she answered seriously.

"Of course I wish it: how should I not? But tell me why you raise an
objection. Why would you rather not go?"

"I would rather be alone and think of you than only see you at the
rectory with all those people," she answered simply.

"But we have had all the people about here, and yet we have been
pretty much alone," he said.

"We could not be together at the rectory, and"--she blushed, but her
eyes were full of more than love as she raised them to his face--"I
could not bear that any one should come between us to-day. Better be
alone at home, where I can think of you with no one to interrupt me."

"It is a disappointment, but who could refuse such a plea and made in
such a voice?" said Edgar, who felt that perhaps she was right in
her instinct, and who at all events knew that he should be spared
something that would be a slight effort in Adelaide's own house. "I
shall spoil you, I know