Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 17, No. 101, May, 1876

"No, you are right, I should not. I do say very foolish things at times. You are right to be angry with me," he said humbly, and writhing.

Leam turned her eyes from him in artistic reprobation of his awkwardness and ungainly homage. She paused a moment: then, as if by an effort, she looked at him straight in the face and kindly. "You are too good to me," she said gently, "and I am too hard on you: it is cruel."

"Don't say that," he cried, in real distress now. "You are perfect in my eyes. Don't scold yourself. I like you to say sharp things to me, and to tell me in your own beautiful way that I am stupid and foolish, if really you trust me and respect me a little under it all. But I should not know you, Leam, if you did not snub me. I should think you were angry with me if you treated me with formal politeness."

He spoke with an honest heart, but an uncomfortable body; and Learn, turning away her eyes once more, said with a heavy sigh—gravely, sorrowfully, tenderly even, but as if impelled by respect for truth to give her verdict as she thought it—"It is true if it is hard: you are often stupid. You are stupid now, twisting yourself about like that and making silly speeches. But I like you, for all that, and I respect you. I would as soon expect the sun to go out as for you to do wrong. But I wish you would keep still and not talk so much nonsense as you do."

"Thank you!" cried the poor fellow fervently, his bare bone accepted as gratefully as if it had been the sweetest fruit that love could bestow. "You give me all I ask, and more than I deserve, if you say that. And it is so kind of you to care whether I am awkward or not."

"I do not see the kindness," returned Learn gravely.

"Do you see those two spooning?" asked one of the Fairbairn girls, pointing out Leam and Alick to Edgar, the curtain being now held back by Leam to show the world that she was there, not caring to look as if hiding away with Alick.

"They look very comfortable, and the lady picturesque," he answered affectedly, but his brows suddenly contracted and his eyes shot together, as they always did when angry. He had been jealous before now of that shambling, awkward, ill-favored and true-hearted Alick, that loyal knight and faithful watchdog whom he despised with such high-hearted contempt; and he was not pleased to see him paying homage to the young queen whom he himself had deserted.

"Poor Alick Corfield!" said Adelaide pityingly. "He has been a very faithful adorer, I must say. I believe that he has been in love with Leam all his life, while she has held him on and off, and made use of him when she wanted him, and deserted him when she did not want him, with the skill of a veteran."

"Do you think Miss Dundas a flirt?" asked Edgar as affectedly as before.

"Certainly I do, but perhaps not more so than most girls of her kind and age," was the quiet answer with its pretence of fairness.

"Including yourself?"

She smiled with unruffled amiability. "I am an exception," she said. "I am neither of her kind nor, thank Goodness! of Tier country; and I have never seen the man I cared to flirt with. I am more particular than most people, and more exclusive. Besides," with the most matter-of-fact air in the world, "I am an old maid by nature and destiny. I am preparing for my métier too steadily to interrupt it by the vulgar amusement of flirting."

"You an old maid!—you! nonsense!" cried Edgar with an odd expression in his eyes. "You will not be an old maid, Adelaide, I would marry you myself rather."

She chose to take his impertinence simply. "Would you?" she asked. "That would be generous!"

"And unpleasant?" he returned in a lower voice.

"To you? chi sa? I should say yes." She spoke quite quietly, as if nothing deeper than the question and answer of the moment lay under this crossing of swords.

"No, not to me," he returned.

"To me, then? I will tell you that when the time comes," she said. "Things are not always what they seem."

"You speak in riddles to-night, fair lady," said Edgar, who honestly did not know what she meant him to infer—whether her present seeming indifference was real, or the deeper feeling which she had so often and for so long allowed him to believe.

"Do I?" She looked into his face serenely, but a little irritatingly. "Then my spoken riddles match your acted ones," she said.

"This is the first time that I have been accused of enigmatic action. Of all men I am the most straightforward, the least dubious."

Edgar said this rather angrily. By that curious law of self-deception which makes cowards boast of their courage and hypocrites of their sincerity, he did really believe himself to be as he said, notably clear in his will and distinct in his action.

"Indeed! I should scarcely endorse that," answered Adelaide. "I have so often known you enigmatic—a riddle of which, it seems to me, the key is lost, or to which indeed there is no key at all—that I have come to look on you as a puzzle never to be made out."

"You mean a puzzle not known to my fair friend Adelaide, which is not quite the same thing as not known to any one," he said satirically, his ill-humor with himself and everything about him overflowing beyond his power to restrain. His knowledge that Miss Birkett was his proper choice, his mad love for Leam—love only on the right hand, fitness, society, family, every other claim on the left—his jealousy of Alick, all irritated him beyond bearing, and made him forget even his good-breeding in his irritation.

"Not known to my friend Edgar himself," was Adelaide's reply, her color rising, ill-humor being contagious.

"Now, Adelaide, you are getting cross," he said.

"No, I am not in the least cross," she answered with her sweetest smile. "I have a clear conscience—no self-reproaches to make me vexed. It is only those who do wrong that lose their tempers. I know nothing better for good-humor than a good conscience."

"What a pretty little sermon! almost as good as one of the Reverend Alexander's, whose sport, by the way, I shall go and spoil."

"I never knew you cruel before," said Adelaide quietly. "Why should you destroy the poor fellow's happiness, as well as Leam's chances, for a mere passing whim? You surely are not going to repeat with the daughter the father's original mistake with the mother?"

She spoke with the utmost contempt that she could manifest. At all events, if Edgar married Leam Dundas, she would have her soul clear. He should never be able to say that he had gone over the edge of the precipice unwarned. She at least would be faithful, and would show him how unworthy his choice was.

"Well, I don't know," he drawled. "Do you think she would have me if I asked her?"

"Edgar!" cried Adelaide reproachfully. "You are untrue to yourself when you speak in that manner to me—I, who am your best friend. You have no one who cares so truly, so unselfishly, for your happiness and honor as I do."

She began with reproach, but she ended with tenderness; and Edgar, who was wax in the hands of a pretty woman, was touched. "Good, dear Adelaide!" he said with fervor and quite naturally, "you are one of the best girls in the world. But I must go and speak to Miss Dundas, I have neglected her so abominably all the evening."

On which, as if to prevent any reply, he turned away, and the next moment was standing by Leam sitting in the window-seat half concealed by the curtain, Alick paying awkward homage as his manner was.

Leam gave the faintest little start, that was more a shiver than a start, as he came up. She turned her tragic eyes to him with dumb reproach; but if she was sorrowful she was not craven, and though she meant him to see that she disapproved of his neglect—which had indeed been too evident to be ignored—she did not want him to think that she was unhappy because of it.

"Are you not dancing, Miss Dundas?" asked Edgar as gravely as if he was putting a bonâ fide question.

"No," said Leam—thinking to herself, "Even he can ask silly questions."

"Why not? Are you tired?"

"Yes," answered laconic Leam with a little sigh.

"I am afraid you are bored, and that you do not like balls," he said with false sympathy, but real love, sorry to see the weariness of face and spirit which he had not been sorry to cause.

"I am bored, and I do not like balls," she answered, her directness in nowise softened out of regard for Edgar as the giver of the feast or for Alick as her companion.

"Yet you like dancing; so come and shake off your boredom with me," said Edgar with a sudden flush. "They are just beginning to waltz: let me have one turn with you."

"No. Why do you ask me? You do not like to dance with me," said Leam proudly.

"No? Who told you such nonsense—such a falsehood as that?" hotly.

"Yourself," she answered.

Alick shifted his place uneasily. Something in Leam's manner to Edgar struck him with an acute sense of distress, and seemed to tell him all that he had hitherto failed to understand. But he felt indignant with Edgar, even though his neglect, at which Leam had been so evidently pained, might to another man have given hopes. He would rather have known her loving, beloved, hence blessed, than wounded by this man's coldness, by his indifference to what was to him, poor faithful and idealizing Alick, such surpassing and supreme delightfulness.

"I?" cried Edgar, willfully misunderstanding her. "When did I tell you I did not like to dance With you?"

"This evening," said Leam, not looking into his face.

"Oh, there is some mistake here. Come with me now. I will soon convince you that I do not dislike to dance with you," cried Edgar, excited, peremptory, eager.