“She is not my mother, and she shall not pollute mamma’s things,” Leam answered with passionate solemnity.  “If you give them to her I will break or burn them.  Mamma’s things are her own, and she shall not be made unhappy in heaven.”

Provoked beyond himself, Sebastian Dundas said scornfully, “Heaven!  You talk of heaven as if you knew all about it, Leam, like the next parish.  How do you know she is there, and not in the place of torment instead?  Your mother was scarcely of the stuff of which angels are made.”

“Then if she is in the place of torment, she is unhappy enough as it is, and need not be made more so,” said faithful Leam, suddenly breaking into piteous weeping; adding through her sobs, “and madame shall not have her things.”

Her tenacity carried the day so far that Mr. Dundas left off rearranging the old, and sent up to London for things new and without embarrassing memories attached to them.  On which Leam swept off all that had been her mother’s, and locked up her treasures in her own private cupboard, carrying the key in the hiding-place which that mother had taught her to use, the thick coils of her hair.  And her father, warned by that episode of the vase, and a little dominated, not to say appalled, by her resolute fidelity, shut his eyes to her domestic larceny and let her carry off her relics in safety.

So the time passed, miserably enough to the one, if full of hope and the promise of joy to the other; and the wedding morning came whereon Sebastian Dundas was to be made, as he phrased it, happy for life.

It had been madame’s desire that Leam should be her bridesmaid.  She had laid great stress on this, and her lover would have gratified her if he could.  He had no wish that way—­rather the contrary—­but her will was his law, and he did his best to carry it into effect.  But when he told Leam what he wanted—­and he told her quite carelessly, and so much as a matter of course that he hoped she too would accept her position as a matter of course—­the girl, enlightened by love if not by knowledge, broke into a torrent of disdain that soon showed him how sleeveless his errand was likely to be.

He did his best, and tried all methods from pleading to threatening, but Leam was immovable.  No power on earth should bend her, she said, or make her take part in that wicked day.  She go to church?  She would expect to be struck dead if she did.  She expected, indeed, that all of them would be struck dead.  She had prayed the saints so hard, so hard, to prevent this marriage, she was sure they would at the last; and if they did not, she would never believe in them nor pray to them again.  But she did believe in them, and she was sure they would punish this dreadful crime.  No, she would take no part in it.  Why should she put herself in the way of being punished when she was not to blame?

So Mr. Dundas had the mortification of carrying to his bride-elect the intelligence that he had been worsted in his conflict with his daughter, and that her hatred and reluctance were to be neither concealed nor overcome.