Leam looked at him with her large luminous eyes serious, questioning.  “If you say so, I must believe you,” she answered slowly, “but I thought you did.”

“If you could read my heart, you would know I did not,” he said emphatically.

They were close on the bank now, where Mr. Dundas was walking with the rector.

“Say you believe me,” Edgar almost whispered in his rich musical voice, so sweet and tender.  “Say it, I beseech you!  You do not know how I shall suffer else.”

She looked at him again.  “I do,” she said in the manner of a surrender, the grave little smile which was her most eloquent expression of pleasure stealing over her face.

“Thank you,” said Edgar:  “now you have made me happy.”

“I do not understand why,” she answered with serious simplicity.

“Perhaps you will some day,” he replied as her father came down to receive her, rather more content with her than he usually was, seeing that Edgar Harrowby—­Major Harrowby, the possessor of the Hill and some thousands a year—­had singled her out for his special attention, and had made a picture on the ice almost as pretty as an illustrated weekly.

But Edgar, not wishing to go too far in the way of provocation, nor to burn his boats behind him before he had decided on his settlement, skated off to Adelaide so soon as he had deposited Leam, and by a few judicious praises and well-administered tendernesses of voice and look succeeded in bringing her back to her normal condition of quiescent resolve and satisfaction.  Then, when she was her smiling self again—­for if she had frowns for many others, she had always smiles for the Harrowbys as a race, and specially for Edgar as an individual—­he said, in the manner of one wishing to know the truth of a thing, “What made you so savage to Miss Dundas just now?”

“I cannot bear her,” said Adelaide with energy.

“No, I see that you dislike her; but why?”

“I can hardly tell you:  she has never done anything very bad, but I always feel as if she could, she is so silent, so reserved, so odd altogether.”

“A woman’s reason!” he laughed, “Dr. Fell over again.”

“It may be,” returned Adelaide coldly, “but I believe in my own instinctive dislikes.  I felt the same kind of mistrust for that wretched woman who called herself Madame de Montfort, about whom papa and mamma and the whole place went mad.  And after her death quite odd-enough stories came out to justify my doubts and condemn her faithful friends.  Every one said she poisoned herself because she knew that she would be unmasked and she was afraid to face the ordeal.  And her debts, I believe, were frightful; though it served that ridiculous Mr. Dundas right for marrying such a creature.”

“But granting that this woman was an adventuress, as you say, what has that to do with Miss Dundas?”

“Nothing, of course:  I only mentioned her to show you that I have some accuracy of judgment, and that when I say I dislike Leam Dundas my opinion ought to be taken as worth consideration.”