Only Adelaide herself was not deceived, but read between the lines and made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself.  And to her it was manifest that Edgar’s attentions, offered with such excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express himself, as to pique Leam Dundas and work off his own unrest.

Meanwhile, Leam, sad and weary, took refuge in the embrasure of a bow-window, where she sat hidden from the room by the heavy curtains which fell before the sidelights, leaving the centre window leading into the garden open and uncurtained.  Here she was at rest.  She was not obliged to talk.  She need not see Edgar always with her enemy, both laughing so merrily—­and as it seemed to her so cruelly, so insolently—­as they waltzed and danced square dances, looking really as if made one for the other—­so handsome as they both were; so well set up, and so thoroughly English.

It made her so unhappy to watch them; for, as she said to herself, Major Harrowby had always been so much her friend, and Adelaide Birkett was so much her enemy, that she felt as if he had deserted her and gone over to the other side.  That was all.  It was like losing him altogether to see him so much with Adelaide.  With any one else she would not have had a pang.  He might have danced all the evening, if he had liked, with Susy Fairbairn or Rosy, or any of the strange girls about, but she did not like that he should so entirely abandon her for Adelaide.  Wherefore she drew herself away out of sight altogether, and sat behind the curtain looking into the garden and up to the dark, quiet sky.

Presently Alick, who had been searching for her everywhere, spied her out and came up to her.  He too was one of those made wretched by the circumstances of the evening.  Indeed, he was always wretched, more or less; but he was one of the kind which gets used to its own unhappiness—­even reconciled to it if others are happy.

“You are not dancing?” he said to Learn sitting behind the curtain.

“No,” said Learn with her old disdain for self-evident propositions.  “I am sitting here.”

“Don’t you care for dancing?” he asked.

He knew that she did, but a certain temperament prefers foolish questions to silence; and Alick Corfield was one who had that temperament.

“Not to-night,” she answered, looking into the garden,

“Why not to-night? and when you dance so beautifully too—­just as light as a fairy.”

“Did you ever see a fairy dance?” was Leam’s rejoinder, made quite solemnly.

Alick blushed and shifted his long lean limbs uneasily.  He knew that when he said these silly things he should draw down on him Leam’s rebuke, but he never could refrain.  He seemed impelled somehow to be always foolish and tiresome when with her.  “No, I cannot say I have ever seen a fairy,” he answered with a nervous little laugh.

“Then how can you say I dance like one?” she asked in perfect good faith of reproach.