To women he had that manner of subtle deference and flattering admiration characteristic of men who make love to all women—­even to children in the bud and to matrons more than full-blown—­and who are consequently idolized by the sex all round.  And when this natural adorer of many laid himself out to make special love to one he was, as we know, irresistible.  He was irresistible to-day.  He was really in love with Leam; and if his love had not the intensity, the tenacity of hers, yet it was true of its kind, and for him very true.

But he was not so much in love as to be unconscious of the most graceful way of making it; consequently, he knew exactly what he was doing and how he looked and what he said, while Leam, sitting there by his side, drinking in his words as if they were heavenly utterances, forgot all about herself, and lived only in her speechless, her unfathomable adoration of the man she loved.  Her life at this moment was one pulse of voiceless happiness:  it was one strain of sensation, emotion, passion, love; but it was not conscious thought nor yet perception of outward things by her senses.

If yesterday at Dunaston had been a day of blessedness, this was its twin sister, and the better favored of the two.  There was a certain flavor of domesticity in these quiet hours passed together in the garden, interrupted only by the child as she ran hither and thither breaking in on them, sometimes not unpleasantly when speech was growing embarrassed because emotion was growing too strong, that seemed to Leam the sweetest experience which life could give her were she to live for ever; and the sunless stillness of the day suited her nature even better than the gayer glory of yesterday.  To-day, too, it was still more peace in her inner being and still less unrest.  The more accustomed she was becoming to the strange fact of loving and being loved by a man not a Spaniard, and one whom mamma would neither have chosen nor approved of, the more she was at ease both in heart and manner, and the more exquisite and profound her blessedness.  And who does not know what happiness can do for a girl of strong emotions, naturally reserved, by circumstances friendless, by habit joyless, and how the soul of such a one seems to throw off its husk like the enchanted victim of a fairy-tale when the true being that has been hidden is released by love?  It is a transformation as entire as any wrought by magic word or wand; and it was the transformation wrought with Leam to-day.  She was Leam Dundas truly in all the essential qualities of identity, but Leam Dundas with another soul, an added faculty, an awakened consciousness—­Leam set free from the darkness of the bondage in which she had hitherto lived.

“You look like another being:  you have looked like this ever since you told me you loved me,” said Edgar, drawing himself a little back and gazing at her with the critical tenderness of a man’s pride and love.  “You are like Psyche wakened out of her sleep, and for the first time using your wings and living in the upper air.”