She only looked at him earnestly, wondering against what she should be protected, having abandoned by this time her belief in banditti and wild beasts.

If his eyes oppressed her, hers half embarrassed him.  There was such a strange mixture of intensity and innocence in them, he scarcely knew how to meet them.

“It is absurd to pretend that we do not know each other,” then said Edgar after a short pause, smiling; and his smile was very sweet and pleasant.  “You are Miss Dundas—­I am Edgar Harrowby.”

“Yes, I know,” Leam answered.

“How is that?” he asked, “I knew you from your photograph—­once seen not to be forgotten again,” gallantly—­“but how should you know me?”

Leam raised her eyes from the ground where she had cast them.  Those slow full looks, intense, tragic, fixed, had a startling effect of which she was wholly unconscious.  Edgar felt his own grow dark and tender as he met hers.  If the soul and mind within only answered to the mask without, what queen or goddess could surpass this half-breed Spanish girl, this country-born, unnoted, but glorious Leam Dundas? he thought.

“And I knew you from yours,” she answered.

“An honor beyond my deserts,” said Edgar.

Not that he thought the notice of a girl, even with such a face as this, beyond his deserts.  Indeed, if a queen or a goddess had condescended to him, it would not have been a grace beyond his merits; but it sounded pretty to say so, and served to make talk as well as anything else.  And to make talk was the main business on hand at this present moment.

“Why an honor?” asked Leam, ignorant of the elements of flirting.

Edgar smiled again, and this time his smile without words troubled her.  It seemed the assertion of superior intelligence, contemptuous, if half pitiful of her ignorance.  Once so serenely convinced of her superiority, Leam was now as suspicious of her shortcomings, and was soon abashed.

Edgar did not see that he had troubled her.  Masterful and masculine to an eminent degree, the timid doubts and fears of a young girl were things he could not recognize.  He had no point in his own nature with which they came in contact, so that he should sympathize with them.  He knew the whole fence and foil of coquetry, the signs of silent flattery, the sweet language of womanly self-conscious love, whether wooing or being won; but the fluttering misgivings of youth and absolute inexperience were dark to him.  All of which he felt conscious was that here was something deliciously fresh and original, and that Leam was more beautiful to look at than Adelaide, and a great deal more interesting to talk to.

“If you will allow me, now that I have had the pleasure of meeting you, I will see you safe for at least part of your way home,” he said, passing by her naive query “Why an honor?” as a thing to be answered only by that smile of superior wisdom.