Edna watched the grave, troubled countenance for some seconds, and then putting her hand on the flower-basket, she asked softly: 

“Shall I dress the flower-pots?”

“Yes, child, in four rooms; this, the parlors, and the library.  Always cut the flowers very early, while the dew is on them.”

Her eyes went back to the sugar-tongs, and Edna joyfully escaped from a room whose restraints and associations were irksome.

Impressed by Hagar’s vehement adjuration to keep out of Mr. Murray’s path, she avoided those portions of the house to which he seemed most partial, and thus although they continued to meet at meals, no words passed between them, after that brief salutation on the morning of presentation.  Very often she was painfully conscious that his searching eyes scrutinized her; but though the blood mounted instantly to her cheeks at such times, she never looked up—­dreading his gaze as she would that of a basilisk.  One sultry afternoon she went into the park, and threw herself down on the long grass, under a clump of cedars, near which the deer and bison were quietly browsing, while the large white merinoes huddled in the shade and blinked at the sun.  Opening a pictorial history of England, which she had selected from the library, she spread it on the grass, and leaning her face in her palms, rested her elbows on the ground, and began to read.  Now and then she paused as she turned a leaf, to look around at the beautiful animals, each one of which might have served as a model for Landseer or Rosa Bonheur.  Gradually the languor of the atmosphere stole into her busy brain; as the sun crept down the sky, her eyelids sunk with it, and very soon she was fast asleep, with her head on the book, and her cheeks flushed almost to a vermilion hue.  From that brief summer dream she was aroused by some sudden noise, and starting up, she saw the sheep bounding far away, while a large, gaunt, wolfish, grey dog snuffed at her hands and face.

Once before she had seen him chained near the stables, and Hagar told her he was “very dangerous,” and was never loosed except at night; consequently, the expression of his fierce, red eyes, as he stood over her, was well calculated to alarm her; but at that instant Mr. Murray’s voice thundered: 

“Keep still! don’t move! or you will be torn to pieces!” Then followed some rapid interjections and vehement words in the same unintelligible dialect which had so puzzled her once before, when her grandfather could not control the horse he was attempting to shoe.  The dog was sullen and unmanageable, keeping his black muzzle close to her face, and she grew pale with terror as she noticed that his shaggy breast and snarling jaws were dripping with blood.

Leaping from his horse, Mr. Murray strode up, and with a quick movement seized the heavy brass collar of the savage creature, hurled him back on his haunches, and held him thus, giving vent the while to a volley of oaths.