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, nor quarreled nor made up—­neither stood as a model of fidelity nor changed her girl-lovers in anticipation of future inconstancies—­writing a love-letter 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.