“Come, we are going to have a storm,” said Edgar, whom every manifestation of weakness claiming his superior protection infinitely pleased and seemed to endear her yet more to him.  “We must be going, my darling, else I shall have you caught in the rain.  We shall just have time to get to the rectory before it comes on, and they are waiting for us.”

“I would rather not go to the rectory to-night,” said Leam with a sudden return to her old shy self.

“No?  Why, my sweet?” he said lovingly.  “How can I live through the evening without you?”

“Can you not?  Do you really wish me to go?” she answered seriously.

“Of course I wish it:  how should I not?  But tell me why you raise an objection.  Why would you rather not go?”

“I would rather be alone and think of you than only see you at the rectory with all those people,” she answered simply.

“But we have had all the people about here, and yet we have been pretty much alone,” he said.

“We could not be together at the rectory, and”—­she blushed, but her eyes were full of more than love as she raised them to his face—­“I could not bear that any one should come between us to-day.  Better be alone at home, where I can think of you with no one to interrupt me.”

“It is a disappointment, but who could refuse such a plea and made in such a voice?” said Edgar, who felt that perhaps she was right in her instinct, and who at all events knew that he should be spared something that would be a slight effort in Adelaide’s own house.  “I shall spoil you, I know, but I cannot refuse you anything when you look like that.  Very well:  you shall go home if you wish it, my beloved, and I will make your excuses.”

“Thank you,” said Leam, with the sweetest little air of humbleness and patience.

“How could that fool Sebastian Dundas say she was difficult to manage? and how can Adelaide see in her the possibility of anything like wickedness?  She is the most loving and tractable little angel in the world.  She will give me no kind of trouble, and I shall be able to mould her from the first and do what I like with her.”

These were Edgar’s thoughts as he took Leam’s hand on his arm, holding it there tenderly pressed beneath his other hand, while he said aloud, “My darling! my delight! if I had had to create my ideal I should have made you.  You are everything I most love;” and again he said, as so often before, “the only woman I have ever loved or ever could love.”

And Learn believed him.

Adelaide accepted Major Harrowby’s excuses for Miss Dundas’s sudden headache and fatigue gallantly, as she had accepted her position through the day:  she showed nothing, expressed nothing, bin:  bore herself with consummate ease and self-possession.  She won Edgar’s admiration for her tact and discretion, for the beautiful results of good-breeding.  He congratulated himself on having such a friend as