“Indeed!  That might not always be agreeable,” said Adelaide with her most sarcastic air.  “Perhaps it is as well that the laws of politeness keep one’s mouth shut at times, and that we do not say what we feel.”

“It would be better,” insisted Leam.

“I wonder if you would say so were I to tell you what I thought of you now?” Adelaide replied, measuring her scornfully with her eyes.

“Why should you not?  What have I done to be ashamed of?” Leam asked.

“And you call yourself natural and not affected!” Adelaide cried, turning away abruptly.—­“How wrong,” she said in a low voice to Edgar, “turning the head of such a silly child as this!”

Edgar laughed.  The vein of cruelty traversing his nature made him find more amusement than chagrin in Adelaide’s patent jealousy:  he thought she was silly, and he was rather amazed at her want of dignity; still, it was amusing, and he enjoyed it as so much fun.

But when he laughed Leam’s discomfiture was complete.  “I am sorry I came on the ice at all,” she said with a mixture of her old pride and new softness that made her infinitely lovely, the proud little head held high, but the beautiful eyes dewy.  “I have offended every one, and I do not know why.”  Just then Alick came rambling by.  She held out her hand to him.  Here at least was her friend and faithful follower.  He would not jeer at her nor laugh, nor yet look cross and angry, as if she had done wrong.  “Take me to papa,” she said superbly, making as if to withdraw her other hand from Edgar.

Alick’s homely face brightened like the morning.  “Certainly,” he said.

“Certainly not,” flashed Edgar proudly, taking both her hands in his crosswise and grasping them even more firmly than before.  “You are in my charge, Miss Dundas, and I can give you up to no one else—­not even by your own desire.”

Adelaide’s slight cast became an unmistakable squint; the Fairbairn girls fluttered, half frightened at the chance of a fracas; Alick looked irresolute; Edgar looked haughty and displeased; Leam tragic and proud, partly bewildered, partly distressed.

Then Edgar cut the whole thing short by taking her away in silence, but like a whirlwind, saying, when half over the ground and well out of hearing, “What have I done to you, Miss Dundas, that you should try to throw me over like that?”

“You laughed at me,” said Leam.

“Laughed at you?  You are dreaming.”

“You did,” she persisted.

“Pardon me:  I laughed because my little friend Adelaide was so cross at your skating.  It was fun to see her so angry.”

“I saw no fun in it,” Leam returned.  “I only saw that she was angry with me, and impertinent, and that then you laughed at me.”

“I swear to you I did not,” cried Edgar earnestly.  “Will you believe me?  Tell me, Miss Dundas, that you exonerate me from such a charge.  Tell me that you are sure I did not laugh at you.”