flaxen hair had not quite enough colour, and that her face, if pure and fair, was slightly insipid.

"Poor, dear Adelaide," he said, when he returned to the drawingroom, "how nice she is, but how tart she was about this Leam Dundas of yours! Looks like jealousy; and very likely is. All you women are so horribly jealous."

"Not all of us," said Maria, hastily.

"And I do not think that Adelaide is," said Josephine. "She has no cause; for though Leam is certainly very lovely, and seems to have improved immensely through being at school, still she and Addy do not come into collision any way, and I do not see why she should be jealous.” "Perhaps Edgar admired her photograph too much," said Fanny, who was the stupid one of the three, but on occasions made the shrewdest remarks.

Edgar laughed, not displeasedly. "That would be paying me too high a compliment," he said.

Whereat his three sisters echoed "Compliment!" in various tones of deprecation, and Josephine added a meaning little laugh for her own share, for which Edgar gave her a kiss, and said in a bantering kind of voice, "Now, Joseph! mind what you are about!"

It was a grey and gusty day in November, with heavy masses of lowlying clouds rolling tumultuously overhead, and a general look of damp and decay about the fields and banks; one of those melancholy days of the late autumn which make one long for the more varied circumstances of confessed winter, when the deep blue shadows in the crisp snow suggest the glory of southern skies, and the sparkle of the sun on the delicate tracery of the frosted branches has a mimicry of life, such as we imagine strange elves and fairies might create.

There was no point of colour in the landscape save the brown foliage of the shivering beech-trees, a few coarse splashes of yellow weeds, and here and there a trail of dying crimson leaves threading the barren hedgerows. Everything was sombre, lifeless, mournful, and even Edgar Harrowby, though by no means sentimentally impressionable to outward conditions, felt, as he rode through the deserted lanes and looked abroad over the stagnant country, that life on the off hunt days was but a slow kind of thing at North Aston, and that any incident which should break the dead monotony of the scene would be welcome.

He had been thinking a great deal of Adelaide for the last four or five days; since she had dined at the Hill; and making up his mind to take the final plunge before long. He was not in love with her, but she

suited, as has been said; and that was as good as love to Edgar, who had now to take up his squiredom and country gentleman's respectability, after having had his share of a young man's "fling" in rather larger proportion than falls to the lot of most. All the same he wished that her face had more expression and that her eyes were perfectly straight; and he wanted to see Leam Dundas.

He had made a long round to-day, and was turning now homeward, when, as he had almost crossed the moor, athwart which his road led, he saw standing on a little hillock, away from the main track, the slight figure of a woman sharply defined against the sky. She was alone, doing nothing, not seeming to be looking at anything; just standing there on the hillock, facing the north-west, as if for pleasure in the rough freshness of the breeze.

The wind blew back her dress and showed her girlish form, supple, flexible, graceful, fashioned like some nymph of olden time. From her small feet, arched and narrow, gripping the ground like feet of steel, to the slender throat on which her head was set with so much grace of line yet with no sense of overweighting in its tender curves, an expression of nervous energy underlying her fragile litheness of form, a look of strength, not muscular nor the strength of bulk or weight, but the strength of fibre, will, tenacity, seemed to mark her out as something different from the herd.

Edgar scarcely gave this vague impression words in his own mind, but he was conscious of a new revelation of womanhood, and he scented an adventure in this solitary figure facing the north-west wind on the lonely moor.

Her very dress, too, had a character of its own in harmony with the rest-black all through, save for the scarlet feather in her hat which burnt like a flame against the grey background of the sky; and her whole attitude had something of defiance in its profound stillness, while standing so boldly against the strong blasts that swept across the heights, which caught his imagination, at that moment ready to be inflamed. All things depend on times and moods, and Edgar's mood at this moment of first seeing Leam Dundas was favourable for the reception of new impressions.

For, of course, it was Leam; Leam, who, since her return from school, alone and without companionship, was feverish often, and often impelled to escape into the open country from something that oppressed her down in the valley too painfully to be borne. She had never been a confidential nor an expansive schoolfellow; not even an affectionate one as girls count affection, seeing that she neither kissed nor cried, neither quarrelled nor made up, neither stood as a model of fidelity nor changed her girl-lovers in anticipation of future inconstancies-writing a loveletter to Ada to-day and a copy of verses to Ethel to-morrow-but had kept with all the same quiet gravity and gentle reticence which seemed

to watch rather than share, and to be more careful not to offend than solicitous to win.

All the same she missed her former comrades now that she had lost them; but most of all, she missed the wholesome occupation and mental employment of her studies. Left as she was to herself, thoughts and memories were gathering up from the background where they had lain dormant if extant all these years, and through her solitude were getting a vitality which made her stand still in a kind of breathless agony, wondering where they would lead her and in what they would end. At times such a burning sense of sin would flash over her that she felt as if she must confess that hideous fact of her girlish past. It seemed so shameful that she should be living there among the rest, a criminal with the innocent, and not tell them what she was. Then the instinct of self-preservation would carry it over her conscience, and she would press back her thoughts and go out, as to-day, to cool her feverish blood, and grow calm to bear and strong to hold the heavy burden which she had fashioned by her own mad deed, and laid for life on her own hands.

If only the ladies had not insisted so strongly on mamma's personality in heaven-if only they had not lighted up her imagination, her loyalty, by this tremendous torch of faith and love! How bitterly she regretted the childish fanaticism which had made her imagine herself the providence of that beloved memory, the avenger of those shadowy wrongs! Oh, if she could undo the past, and call Madame back to life! She would kiss her now, and even call her mamma if it would please her and papa! So she stood on the hillock facing the north-west, thinking these things, and regretting in vain.

As Edgar came riding by his large black hound dashed off to Leam and barked furiously, all four paws planted on the ground as if preparing for a spring. The beast had probably no malice, and might have meant it merely as his method of saying, "Who are you?" but he looked formidable, and Leam started back and cried, "Down, dog! go away!" in a voice half angry and half afraid.

Then Edgar saw the face and knew who she was.

He rode across the turf, calling off his dog, and came up to her. It was an opportunity, and Edgar Harrowby was a man who knew how to take advantage of opportunities. It was in his creed to thank Providence for favourable chances by making the most of them, and this was a chance of which it would be manifestly ungrateful not to make the most. It was far more picturesque to meet her for the first time, as now, on the wild moor on a gusty grey November day, than in the gloomy old drawing-room at the Hill. It gave a flavour of romance and the forbidden which was not without its value in the beginning of an acquaintance with such a face as Leam's. Nevertheless, in spite of the romance that hung about the circumstance, his first words were commonplace enough.

"I hope my dog has not alarmed you?" he said, lifting his hat.

Leam looked at him with those wonderful eyes of hers that seemed somehow to look through him. She, standing on her hillock, was slightly higher than Edgar sitting on his horse; and her head was bent as she looked down on him, giving her attitude and gesture something of a dignified assumption of superiority, more like the Leam of the past than of the present.

"No, I was not alarmed," she said. "But I do not like to be barked at," she added, an echo of the old childish sense of injury from circumstance that was so quaint and pretty in her half-complaining voice.

"I suppose not; how should you?" answered Edgar with sympathetic energy. "Rover is a good old fellow, but he has the troublesome trick of giving tongue unnecessarily. He would not have hurt you, but I should be very sorry to think he had frightened you. To heel, sir!” angrily.

"No, he did not frighten me," repeated Leam.

Never loquacious, there was something about this man's face and manner, his masterful spirit underneath his courteous bearing, his look of masculine power and domination, his admiring eyes that fixed themselves on her so unflinchingly, not with insolence but as if he had the prescriptive right of manhood to look at her, only a woman, as he chose, he commanding and she obeying, that quelled and silenced her even beyond her wont. He was the first gentleman of noteworthy appearance who had ever spoken to her; not counting Alick, nor the masters who had taught her at school, nor. Mr. Birkett, nor Mr. Fairbairn, as gentlemen of noteworthy appearance; and the first of all things has a special influence over young minds.

"You are brave to walk so far alone; you ought to have a dog like Rover to protect you," Edgar said, still looking at her with those unflinching eyes which oppressed her even when she did not see them.

"I am not brave, and I do not care for dogs. Besides, I do not often walk so far as this:-but I felt the valley stifling to-day," answered Leam, in her matter-of-fact categorical way.

"All the same you ought to have protection," Edgar said authoritatively, and Leam did not reply.

She only looked at him earnestly, wondering against what she should be protected, having abandoned by this time her belief in banditti and wild beasts.

If his eyes oppressed her hers half-embarrassed him. There was such a strange mixture of intensity and innocence in them-he scarcely knew how to meet them.

"It is absurd to pretend that we do not know each other," then said Edgar after a short pause, smiling; and his smile was very sweet and pleasant. "You are Miss Dundas, I am Edgar Harrowby."

"Yes, I know," Leam answered.

"How is that?" he asked. "I knew you from your photograph— once seen not to be forgotten again," gallantly; "but how should you know me?"

Leam raised her eyes from the ground where she had cast them. Those slow full looks, intense, tragic, fixed, had a startling effect of which she was wholly unconscious. Edgar felt his own grow dark and tender as he met hers. If the soul and mind within only answered to the mask without, what queen or goddess could surpass this half-breed Spanish girl, this country-born, unnoted, but glorious Leam Dundas? he thought. "And I knew you from yours," she answered.

"An honour beyond my deserts," said Edgar.

Not that he thought the notice of a girl, even with such a face as this, beyond his deserts. Indeed if a queen or a goddess had condescended to him it would not have been a grace beyond his merits; but it sounded pretty to say so, and served to make talk as well as anything else. And to make talk was the main business on hand at this present moment. Why an honour?" asked Leam, ignorant of the elements of flirting.

Edgar smiled again; and this time his smile without words troubled her. It seemed the assertion of superior intelligence, contemptuous, if half pitiful of her ignorance. Once so serenely convinced of her superiority, Leam was now as suspicious of her shortcomings, and was soon abashed.

Edgar did not see that he had troubled her. Masterful and masculine to an eminent degree, the timid doubts and fears of a young girl were things he could not recognise. He had no point in his own nature with which they came in contact, so that he should sympathise with them. He knew the whole fence and foil of coquetry, the signs of silent flattery, the sweet language of womanly self-conscious love, whether wooing or being won; but the fluttering misgivings of youth and absolute inexperience were dark to him. All of which he felt conscious was that here was something deliciously fresh and original, and that Leam was more beautiful to look at than Adelaide, and a great deal more interesting to talk to.

"If you will allow me, now that I have had the pleasure of meeting you, I will see you safe for at least part of your way home," he said, passing by her naïve query "Why an honour?" as a thing to be answered only by that smile of superior wisdom.

Flinging himself from his horse he took the bridle in his hand, and turned towards home, looking to the girl to accompany him. Leam felt that she could not refuse his escort offered as so much a matter of course. Why should she? It was very pleasant to have some one to walk with; some one not her father, with whom she still felt shy if not now absolutely estranged; nor yet Alick, in whose pale face she was always reading the past, and who, though he was so good and kind and tender, was her master and held her in his hand. This handsome courteous gentleman was different from either, and she liked his society and superior ways. And as he began now to talk to her of things not trenching on, nor admitting of, flirtation-chiefly of the places he had visited: India,