to use it.  He was the doomed if innocent, as of old tragic times—­the sinless Cain guilty of murder, but guiltless in intent.  It was for this, as much as for the love and poetry of the boyish days, that he felt he owed himself to Leam—­that his life was hers, and all his energies were to be devoted for her good.  It was for this that he had prayed with such intensity of earnestness it seemed to him sometimes as if his soul had left his body, and had gone up to the Most High to pluck by force of passionate entreaty the pardon he besought:  “Pardon her, O Lord!  Turn her heart, enlighten her understanding, convince her of her sin; but pardon her, pardon her, dear Lord!  And with her, pardon me.”

The man’s whole life was spent in this one wild, fervid prayer.  All that he did was tinged with the sentiment of winning grace for her and pardon for both.  In his own mind they stood hand in hand together; and if he was the intercessor, they were both to benefit, and neither would be saved without the other.  And he believed in the value of his prayers and in the objective reality of their influence.

For the final changes in the ordering of home and society at North Aston, the week after Leam returned Edgar Harrowby came from India, and took up his position as the owner of the Hill estate; and the child Fina was brought to Ford House, and formally invested with her new name and condition as Miss Fina Dundas, Sebastian’s younger daughter.  Mindful of the past, Mr. Dundas expected to have a stormy scene with Leam when he told her his intentions respecting poor madame’s child; but Leam answered quietly, “Very well, papa,” and greeted Fina when she arrived benevolently, if not effusively.  She was not one of those born mothers who love babies from their early nursery days, but she was kind to the child in her grave way, and seemed anxious to do well by her.

The ladies all bestowed on her their nursery recipes and systems in rich abundance—­especially Mrs. Birkett, who, though glad to be relieved from the hourly task of watching and contending, was still immensely interested in the little creature, and gave daily counsel and superintendence.  So that on the whole Leam was not left unaided with her charge.  On the contrary, she ran great risk of being bewildered by her multiplicity of counselors, and of entering in consequence on that zigzag course which covers much ground and makes but little progress.

CHAPTER XXII.

EDGAR HARROWBY.

Thirty-two years of age; tall, handsome, well set-up, and every inch a soldier; manly in bearing, but also with that grace of gesture and softness of speech which goes by the name of polished manner; a bold sportsman, ignorant of physical fear, to whom England was the culmination of the universe, and such men as he—­gentlemen, officers, squires—­the culmination of humanity; a man who loved women as creatures, but despised them as intelligences; who