contrast with those
he employed to gain Madame de Montfort, a clever adventuress, who
balanced him, in hand, against her bird in the bush, and decided that
to make sure of the less was better than to wait for the chance of the
greater. But Josephine felt nothing humiliating in his lordliness. She
loved him, she was a woman devoid of self-esteem; hence humiliation
from his hand was impossible.

Just then pretty little Fina came running to the window from the
garden, where she was playing.

"Come here, poppet," said Mr. Dundas, holding out his left hand, his
right round comely Josephine.

She came through the open window and ran up to him. "Nice papa!" she
lisped, stroking his hand.

He took her on his knee, "I have I given you a new mamma, Fina," he
said, kissing her; and then he kissed Josephine for emphasis. "Will
you be good to her and love her very much? This is your mamma.".

"Will you love me, little Fina?" asked Josephine in a voice full of
emotion, taking the child's fair head between her hands. "Will you
like me to be your mamma?"

"Yes," cried Fina, clapping her hands. "I shall like a nice new mamma
instead of Learn. I hate Leam: she is cross and has big eyes."

"Oh, we must not hate poor Leam," remonstrated Josephine tenderly.

"I cannot understand the child's aversion," said Mr. Dundas in a
half-musing, half-suspicious way. "Leam seems to be all that is good
and kind to her, but nothing that she does can soften the little
creature's dislike. It must be natural instinct," he added in a lower
voice.

"Yes, perhaps it is," assented Josephine, who would have answered,
"Yes, perhaps it is," to anything else that her lover might have said.

"Where is Leam, my little Fina? Do you know?" asked Sebastian of the
child.

"In the garden. She is coming in," answered Fina; and at the word Leam
passed before the window as Fina had done.

"Leam, my child, come in: I want to speak to you," said her father,
with unwonted kindness; and Leam, too, as Fina had done before her,
passed through the open window and came in.

The two middle-aged lovers were still sitting side by side and close
together on the sofa. Fina was on her stepfather's knee, caressing his
hand and Josephine's, which were clasped together on her little lap,
while his other arm encircled the substantial waist of his promised
bride, whose disengaged hand rested on his shoulder.

"Leam," said the father, "I have given you--"

He stopped. The na