For the rest, it was only natural that she should like the air of quasi adventure and independence which this unknown, intercourse with Alick gave her.  And as she was still in that conscienceless phase of youth when liking means everything, and honor without love is a grass having neither root nor flower, she continued to meet her faithful dog, and to learn from him—­not all that he could tell her, but what she chose to accept.

So here it was, perched among the lower branches of the yew tree in Steel’s Wood, that Leam spent her father’s wedding-day with Madame la Marquise de Montfort; and when she became hungry Alick went home and brought her some dry bread and grapes from Steel’s Corner, Dry bread and grapes—­this was all that she would have, she said.  She was not greedy like the English, who thought of nothing but eating, she added in her disdainful way; and if Alick brought her anything but bread and grapes, she would fling it into the wood.  On his life he was not to touch anything on papa’s table.  She would rather die of hunger than eat their wicked food.  She wondered it did not choke them both.

“Now go,” she said superbly, “and come back soon:  I am hungry,” as if her sense of inconvenience was a catastrophe which heaven and earth should be moved to avert.

But young and so beautiful as she was, her little tricks of pride and arbitrariness were just so many additional charms to Alick; and if she had not flouted and commanded him, he would have thought that something terrible was about to happen:  had she become docile, grateful, familiar, he would have expected her to die before the day was out.  He liked her superb assumption of superiority.  She was his girl-queen, and he was her slave; she was his mistress, and he was her dog; and, dog-like, he fawned at her feet even when she rated him and placed her little foot on his neck.

CHAPTER XIX.

AT STEEL’S CORNER.

“I hope you will not be bored, my boy, but I am thinking of bringing that wretched Leam Dundas here for a few days.  I don’t like a girl of her age and character to be left for a full month alone.  It is not right, for who knows what she may not do?  If she ran away on the wedding-day, she may run away again, and then where would we all be?  I cannot think what her father was about to leave her unprotected like this.  So I shall just take and bring her here; and if you are bored with her, you must make the best of it.”

Mrs. Corfield and Alick were sitting in the “work-room” on the morning of the fifth day after the marriage, when the thought struck the little woman of the propriety of Leam’s visit to them for the month of her father’s absence.  She did not see her son’s face when she spoke, being busy with her wood-carving.  If she had, she would not have thought that the presence of Leam Dundas would bore or annoy him.  The clumsy features gladdened into smiles, the dull eye brightened,