the one thing I "--he checked himself--"I look forward to meeting," he
added awkwardly.

"Then why should I be tired of you?" she returned. "You are kind
to me; you tell me things I do not know; and," with maddening
unconsciousness of how her words might be taken, "there is no one
else."

This was the nearest approach to a compliment that Leam had ever made.
She meant simply that, as there was no one else to tire her, how could
her pleasant friend Major Harrowby possibly do so? But Edgar naturally
took her words awry. "And if there were anyone else I suppose I should
be nowhere? My part has not often been that of a _pis aller_," with a
deep flush of displeasure.

"Why do you say that?" she asked in a slight tone of surprise. "You
would be always where you are."

"With you?"

Her face asked his meaning.

"I mean, would you always hold me as much your friend, always care for
me as much as you do now--if, indeed, you care for me at all--if any
one else was here?" he explained.

Leam turned her troubled eyes to the ground. "I do not change like the
wind," she answered, wishing he would not talk of her at all.

"No, I do not think you do or would," returned Edgar, bending his head
nearer to hers as he drew his horse closer. "I should think that once
loved would be always loved with you, Miss Dundas?" He said this in a
low voice that slightly trembled.

She was silent. She had a consciousness of unknown dangers, sweet
and perilous, closing around her--dangers which she must avoid she
scarcely knew how, only vaguely conscious as she was that they were
about. Then she said, with an effort, "I do not like myself talked of.
It does not matter what I am."

"To me everything!" cried Edgar impulsively.

"You say what you do not mean," returned Leam. "I am not your
sister; how, then, should it matter?"

Her grave simplicity was more seductive to him than the most
coquettish wiles would have been. She was so entirely at sea in the
art of love-making that her very ignorance provoked a more explicit
declaration. "Are there only sisters in the world?" he asked
passionately, yet angry with himself for skirting so near to the edge
of peril.

"No: there are mothers," said Leam.

Edgar caught his breath, but again checked himself just in time to
prevent the words "and wives," that rose to his lips. "And friends,"
he substituted, with evident constraint and as awkwardly as before. It
was not often that a woman had been a