" And Adelaide laughed
again.

Somehow, her laugh, which was not unmusical, was never pleasant. It
did not seem to come from the heart, and was the farthest in the world
removed from mirth.

Leam looked at her coldly. "I like flowers," she said, carrying her
head high.

"So do I," said Edgar with the intention of taking her part. "What are
these things?" holding up a few cuckoo-flowers that were half hidden
like delicate shadows among the primroses.

"You certainly show your liking by your knowledge. I thought every
schoolboy knew the cuckoo-flower!" cried Adelaide, trying to seem
natural and not bitter in her banter, and not succeeding.

"I can learn. Never too late to mend, you know. And Miss Dundas shall
teach me," said Edgar.

"I do not know enough: I cannot teach you," Leam answered, taking him
literally.

"My dear Leam, how frightfully literal you are!" said Adelaide. "Do
you think it looks pretty? Do you really believe that Major Harrowby
was in earnest about your giving him botanical lessons?"

"I believe people I respect," returned Leam gravely.

"Thanks," said Edgar warmly, his face flushing.

Adelaide's face flushed too. "Are you going through life taking as
gospel all the unmeaning badinage which gentlemen permit themselves
to talk to ladies?" she asked from the heights of her superior wisdom.
"Remember, Leam, at your age girls cannot be too discreet."

"I do not understand you," said Leam, fixing her eyes on the fair face
that strove so hard to conceal the self within from the world without,
and to make impersonal and aphoristic what was in reality passionate
disturbance.

"A girl who has been four years at a London boarding-school not to
understand such a self-evident little speech as that!" cried Adelaide,
with well-acted surprise. "How can you be insincere? I must say I have
no faith, myself, in Bayswater _ingenues_: have you, Edgar?" with the
most graceful little movement of her head, her favorite action, and
one that generally made its mark.

"I do not understand you," said Leam again. "I only know that you are
rude: you always are."

She spoke in her most imperturbable manner and with her quietest face.
Nothing roused in her so much the old Leam of pride and disdain
as these encounters with Adelaide Birkett. The two were like the
hereditary foes of old-time romance, consecrated to hate from their
birth upward.

"Come, come, fair lady, you are rather hard on our young friend," said