Flinging himself from his horse, he took the bridle in his hand and turned toward home, looking to the girl to accompany him.  Leam felt that she could not refuse his escort offered as so much a matter of course.  Why should she?  It was very pleasant to have some one to walk with—­some one not her father, with whom she still felt shy, if not now absolutely estranged; nor yet Alick, in whose pale face she was always reading the past, and who, though he was so good and kind and tender, was her master and held her in his hand.  This handsome, courteous gentleman was different from either, and she liked his society and superior ways.  And as he began now to talk to her of things not trenching on nor admitting of flirtation—­chiefly of the places he had visited, India, Egypt, Italy, Spain—­she was not so much abashed by his unflinching looks and masterful manner.

When he entered on Spain and his recollections of what he had seen there, the girl’s heart throbbed, and her pale face grew whiter still with the passionate thrill that stirred her.  The old blood was in her veins yet, and, though modified, and in some sense transformed, she was still Pepita’s daughter and the child of Andalusia.  And here was truth; not like that poor wretched madame’s talk, which even she had found out to be false and only making believe to know what she did not know.  Spain was the name of power with Learn, as it had been with her mother, and she lifted her face, white with its passionate desires, listening as if entranced to all that Edgar said.

It was a good opening, and the handsome soldier-squire congratulated himself on his lucky hit and serviceable memory.  Presently he touched on Andalusia, and Leam, who hitherto had been listening without comment, now broke in eagerly.  “That is my own country!” she cried.  “Mamma came from Andalusia, beautiful Andalusia!  Ah! how I should like to go there!”

“Perhaps you will some day,” Edgar answered a little significantly.

Had she been more instructed in the kind of thing he meant, she would have seen that he wished to convey the idea of a love-journey made with him.

She shook her head and her eyes grew moist and dewy.  “Not now,” she said mournfully.  “Poor mamma has gone, and there is no one now to take me.”

“I will make up a party some day, and you shall be one of us,” said Edgar.

She brightened all over.  “Ah! that would be delightful!” she cried, taking him seriously.  “When do you think we shall go?”

“I will talk about it,” Edgar answered, though smiling again—­Leam wished he would not smile so often—­a little aghast at her literalness, and saying to himself in warning that he must be careful of what he said to Leam Dundas.  It was evident that she did not understand either badinage or a joke.  But her very earnestness pleased him for all its oddity.  It was so unlike the superficiality and levity of the modern girl—­that hateful Girl of the Period, in whose existence he believed, and of whose influence he stood in almost superstitious awe.  He liked that grave, intense way of hers, which was neither puritanical nor stolid, but, on the contrary, full of unspoken passion, rich in latent concentrated power.