was at his best his good-nature
led him to avoid giving pain and to affect a sympathetic air, which
was no more true than his earnestness. But it took with the uncritical
and the affectionate, and Major Harrowby was quoted by many as an
eminently kind and tender-hearted man.

To women he had that manner of subtle deference and flattering
admiration characteristic of men who make love to all women--even to
children in the bud and to matrons more than full-blown--and who are
consequently idolized by the sex all round. And when this natural
adorer of many laid himself out to make special love to one he was,
as we know, irresistible. He was irresistible to-day. He was really in
love with Leam; and if his love had not the intensity, the tenacity of
hers, yet it was true of its kind, and for him very true.

But he was not so much in love as to be unconscious of the most
graceful way of making it; consequently, he knew exactly what he was
doing and how he looked and what he said, while Leam, sitting there by
his side, drinking in his words as if they were heavenly utterances,
forgot all about herself, and lived only in her speechless, her
unfathomable adoration of the man she loved. Her life at this moment
was one pulse of voiceless happiness: it was one strain of sensation,
emotion, passion, love; but it was not conscious thought nor yet
perception of outward things by her senses.

If yesterday at Dunaston had been a day of blessedness, this was its
twin sister, and the better favored of the two. There was a certain
flavor of domesticity in these quiet hours passed together in the
garden, interrupted only by the child as she ran hither and thither
breaking in on them, sometimes not unpleasantly when speech was
growing embarrassed because emotion was growing too strong, that
seemed to Leam the sweetest experience which life could give her were
she to live for ever; and the sunless stillness of the day suited her
nature even better than the gayer glory of yesterday. To-day, too,
it was still more peace in her inner being and still less unrest. The
more accustomed she was becoming to the strange fact of loving and
being loved by a man not a Spaniard, and one whom mamma would neither
have chosen nor approved of, the more she was at ease both in heart
and manner, and the more exquisite and profound her blessedness. And
who does not know what happiness can do for a girl of strong emotions,
naturally reserved, by circumstances fr