“When he looks like that,” he said in her ear, “he is—­he is,—­dangerous.”  He straightened himself directly and walked on.  Sir Temple spoke to Lady Dacre, and again Bulchester was left.  But it might have been Madam Archdale who took pity upon him, for at last he obtained his introduction.

Why did Katie turn so readily from Edmonson to welcome the new-comer?  Was it coquetry?  Did she know intuitively that the eyes of the latter held more true worship for her than the other’s tones?  Edmonson’s eyes gleamed for a moment, and his face darkened.  He looked at Bulchester from head to foot, reading him with contempt.  Then with a bow that had a spice of mockery in it, as if he were amused at the rival whom he appeared not to dare to compete with, he resigned his place, and going up to Elizabeth, offered her his arm and moved away with her.

“Fate will be very kind to Stephen Archdale,” he said as soon as they were out of hearing, “should it substitute you for that young lady, kinder to him than to you, since he was man enough to want her.”

“You don’t like Katie?” cried Elizabeth, ignoring the subject she shrank from.  “You are the first person I ever heard of who did not.”

“Pardon me.  I did not say that I did not like her.  I was making a comparison.  She is an exceedingly pretty little puppet, and she goes through all her little tricks, if I may call them so without disparagement, with a delightful docility.  After the clockwork is wound up, it doesn’t hitch, or stop, until it runs down.  But there is nothing unexpected about her; in five minutes you get to know her like a book.”

“A book you have not read,” cried Elizabeth with spirit.

Edmonson laughed.  “Nobody would venture to predict your next acts or words,” he said; “he would be a bold man that tried.”

“No,” she answered with sadness in her gravity.  “I never know them myself.  I have none of that poise which it is worth such a struggle to gain.  That is the reason why—.”  She stopped, perhaps through consciousness that the conversation was getting toward egotism; perhaps because she did not want to give confidence where it was better that she should not.

“That is why you are so irresistible,” Edmonson longed to finish; he even framed his lips for the words, but a glance at Elizabeth checked them.  He wondered why, as he felt that a few months ago he would have spoken them unhesitatingly.  It could not be because she was possibly Archdale’s wife, for to believe her not that would please her better than anything else.  Therefore, though he feared it, and had referred to it, he would have been glad to have denied it at the next moment.  He would even have been glad to believe that he was restrained wholly by a question of how she would view this speech in the light of the possibility.  But he knew it was something more.  He had seen the change in Elizabeth, and in smothered wrath had perceived that this growth which made her every day more interesting