The announcement of her father’s intended marriage with madame came on Leam with a crushing sense of terror and despair.  Unobservant youth sees little, and even what it does see it does not comprehend.  Though the girl had accustomed herself by slow degrees to many works and ways which mamma had never known; though the faculties which had been, as it were, imprisoned by that close-set, hide-bound love of hers were now a little loosened and set free; though the activities of youth were stirring in her, and her inner life, if still isolated, was a shade more expanded than of old,—­yet she had no desire for greater change, and she had no keener vision for the world outside herself than before.  She saw nothing of that diabolical thing which her father and madame had been so long plotting as the outcome of their friendship, the parable of which her education had been the text.  If her intelligence was warping out from the narrow limits in which her mother had confined it, it was still below the average—­as much as her feverish love and tenacious loyalty were above.  All that she knew was, mamma dead was the same as mamma living, only to be more tenderly dealt with, as she could not defend herself; and that she wondered how papa could be so wicked as to affront her now that she was not able to punish him and let him know what she thought of him.

When he told her that he was going to give her a new mother, one whom she must love as she had loved her own poor dear mamma—–­ he was so happy he could afford to be tender even to that terrible past and poor Pepita—­Leam’s first sensation was one of terror, her first movement one of repulsion.  She flung off the hand which he had laid on her shoulder and drew back a few steps, facing him, her breath held, her tragic eyes flashing, her face struck to stone by what she had heard.

“Well, my dear, you need not look so surprised,” said Mr. Dundas jauntily.  “And you need not look so terrified.  Your new mother will not hurt you,”

“She shall not be my mother, papa,” said Learn:  “I will not own her.”

“You will do what I tell you to do,” her father returned with admirable self-command.

“Not when you tell me to do a crime,” flashed Leam.

Mr. Dundas smiled.  “Your words are a trifle strong,” he said.

“It is a crime,” she reiterated.  “But if you have forgotten mamma, and want to affront her now that she cannot defend herself, I have not, and never will.”

Mr. Dundas smiled again.  If he was so happy that he could afford to be tender to the past, so also could he afford to be patient with the present.  “Foolish child!” he said compassionately:  “you do not understand things yet.”

“I understand that I love mamma, and will not have this wicked woman in her place,” said Leam hotly.

“I think you will,” he answered, playing with his watch-guard.  “And in the future, my little daughter, you will thank me.”