For this curtailment of their sister’s enjoyment Maria and Fanny judged Leam almost more severely than for any other delinquency involved in her flight.  They spoke as if she had planned it purposely to vex her father and his bride in their honeymoon and deprive them of their lawful pleasure; but Josephine never blamed her as they did, and when they were most bitter cast in her little words of soothing and excused her with more zeal than evidence—­excused her sometimes to the point of making her sisters angry with her and inclined to accuse her of her old failing, meek-spiritedness carried to the verge of self-abasement.

But the one who suffered most of all those left to lament or to wonder was poor Alick Corfield.  It was a misery to see him with his hollow cheeks and haggard eyes, like an animal that has been hunted into lone places, terrified and looking for a way of escape, or like a dog that has lost its master.  He tried every method known to him to gain information of her directly or indirectly, but Mr. Dundas, ignorant himself, had only to guard that ignorance from breaking out.  As for knowledge, he could not give what he did not possess, and the terrible thing that he did know he was not likely to let appear.

One day when the poor fellow broke down, as was not unusual with him when asking about Leam—­and Mr. Dundas read him like a book, all save that one black page where the beloved name stood inscribed in letters of his own heart’s blood between the words “crime” and “murder”—­with a woman’s liking for saying pleasant things which soothed those who heard them, and did no hurt to those who said them save for the insignificant manner in which falsehood hurts the soul, Sebastian, laying his hand kindly on the poor fellow’s angular shoulder, said, “I am sorry to know as much as I do, Alick.  There is no one to whom I would have given her so readily as to you, my dear boy.  Indeed, it was always one of my hopes for the future, poor misguided child! and I can see that it was yours too.  Ah, how I grieve that it is impossible!”

“Why impossible?” asked Alick, who had the faculty of faith, his pale face flushing.

Mr. Dundas turned white.  A look not so much of pain as of abhorrence came into his face.  “Impossible!” he said vehemently.  “I would not curse my greatest enemy with my daughter’s hand.”

Alick felt his blood run cold.  What did he mean?  Did he know all, or was he speaking only with the angry feeling of a man who had been disappointed and annoyed?  There was a short pause.  Then said Alick, looking straight into Sebastian’s eyes and speaking very slowly, but with not too much emphasis, “I would hold myself blessed with her as my wife had she even committed murder.”

Mr. Dundas started perceptibly.  “Oh,” he answered after a moment’s hesitation, with a forced and sickly kind of smile, “a silly girl’s wrong-headedness does not reach quite so far as that.  She has done wrong, miserably wrong, but between withdrawing herself from her father’s house and committing such a crime as murder there is rather a wide difference.  All the same, I am disgraced by her folly,” angrily, “and I will not let any one—­not even you, Alick—­know where she is.”