I like him very much. He is good and kind; and he cannot help
being awkward, can he?"

"No," said Edgar coldly. "So you like him very much, do you?"

"Very much," repeated Leam with loyal emphasis, "He has always been my
friend here."

"I hope for the future that I may be included in that sacred place,"
said Edgar after a pause.

Leam looked at him slowly, fixedly. "You will never be so good to me
as he is," she answered.

It was the man's heart that beat now, the man's cheek that flushed.
Who could keep his pulses still when those eyes were turned to his
with, as it seemed, such maddening meaning? "I will try," he said; and
from that moment the die was cast. Edgar put himself in competition
with Alick: he lowered his pride to such a rivalry as this, and threw
his whole energies into the determination to surpass and supplant a
man for whom even the least personable of his own sex need have had no
fear.

He kept Leam for a long time after this, laying ground-lines for the
future; forgetting Adelaide and the suitability which had hitherto
been such an important factor in his calculations; forgetting his
horror of Pepita, whose daughter Leam was, and his contempt for weak,
fusionless Mr. Dundas, who was her father; forgetting the conventional
demands of his class, intolerant of foreign blood; forgetting all but
the words which said that Alick was her best friend here, and doubted
his (Edgar's) ever being so good to her as that other had been. It was
on his heart now to convince her that he could be as good to her as
Alick, and, if she would allow him, a great deal better. At last he
slackened, and pulled up at the group of which the Fairbairn girls and
Adelaide Birkett were the most conspicuous members.

"What a long skate you have had!" said Susy Fairbairn ruefully, for
all that she was a good-tempered girl and not disposed to measure her
neighbor's wheat by her own bushel. But this was a special matter; for
Edgar Harrowby was the pride of the place, and they took count of his
doings as of their local prince, and envied the lucky queen of the
hour bitterly or sadly according to the mood and the person.

"It was the first time I had tried," said Leam, all aglow with the
unwonted exercise and unusual excitement.

"I suppose you began by saying you could not and would not, and then
did more than any one else?" said Adelaide in an acrid voice, veiling
a very displeased face with a very unpleasant smile; but the ve