Adelaide, in a picturesque dress and her most becoming mood, welcomed him with careful cordiality as a prodigal whose husks, clinging about his coat, were to be handled tenderly as if they were pearls.  She saw that something was gravely wrong, and she grasped the line of connection if she did not understand the issue; but, mindful of the doctrine of letting well alone—­also of that of catching a heart at the rebound—­she made no allusion in the beginning, but let her curiosity gnaw her like the Spartan boy’s fox without making a sign.  At last, however, her curiosity became impatience, and her impatience conquered her reserve.  She was clever in her generation and fairly self-controlled, but she was only a woman, after all.

“And when did you see that eccentric little lady, Miss Leam?” she asked with a smile—­not a bitter smile, merely one of careless amusement, as if Leam was acknowledged to be a comical subject of conversation and one naturally provoking a smile.

“Dear Adelaide,” said Edgar, not looking at her, but speaking with unusual earnestness, “do not speak ill of Leam Dundas—­neither to me nor to any one else.  I ask it as a favor.”

Adelaide turned pale.  “Tell me only one thing, Edgar:  are you going to marry her?” she asked, her manner as earnest as his own, but with a different meaning.

“No.  Marry her?  Good God, no!” was his vehement reply.  Then more tenderly:  “But for all that do not speak ill of her.  Will you promise, dear, good friend?”

“Yes, I will promise,” she answered with what was for her fervor and a sudden look of intense relief.  “I never will again, Edgar; and I am sorry if I have hurt you at any time by what I may have said.  I did not mean to do so.”

“No, I know you did not.  I can appreciate your motives, and they were good,” Edgar answered with emotion; and then their two pairs of fine blue eyes met, and both pairs were moist.

This was just at the moment when Leam, pale, rigid as a statue, thickly veiled, and holding a box in her hand, met Mr. Gryce in Steel’s Wood, he having gone to catch such rare specimens of sleeping lepidoptera as the place afforded and his eyes could discern.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

BLOTTED OUT.

Gone! no one knew where.  Gone in the night like a falling star, like a passing cloud—­gone and left no trace, vanished like the sunshine of yesterday or the flowers of last spring!  No one knew what had become of her, and no one knew where to look for her; for the sole information gathered by the scared neighbors was, that Leam Dundas was missing and no one had seen her go.