At this moment little Fina came jumping into the room.  She had in her hand a rose-colored scarf that had once been poor madame’s, and which the nurse, turning out an old box of hers, had found and given to the child.

After she had kissed Edgar, played with his breloques, looked at the works of his watch, plaited his beard into three strings, and done all that she generally did in the way of welcome, she shook out the gauze scarf over her dress.

“This was mamma’s—­my own mamma’s,” she said.  “Leam will never tell me about mamma:  you tell me, Major Harrowby,” coaxingly.

“I cannot:  I did not know her,” said Edgar in an altered voice, while Leam looked as if her judgment had come, but bore it as she had borne all the rest, resolutely.

“I want to hear about mamma, and who killed her,” pouted Fina.

“Hush, Fina,” said Leam in an agony:  “you must not talk.”

“You always say that, Leam, when I want to hear about mamma,” was the child’s petulant reply.

“Go away now, dear little Fina,” said Edgar, who felt all that Leam must feel at these inopportune words, and who, moreover, weak as he was in this direction, was longing for one last caress.

“I will go and send her nurse,” said Leam, half staggering to the door.

Had anything been wanting to show her the impossibility of their marriage, this incident of Fina’s random but incisive words would have been enough.

“Leam! not one word more?” he asked as he stood against the door, holding the handle in his hand.

“No,” she said hopelessly.  “What words can we have together?”

“And we are parting like this, and for ever?”

“For ever.  Yes, it has to be for ever,” she answered almost mechanically.

“Leam, why did you love me?” he cried, taking her hands in his and keeping them.

“How could I help it?  Who would not love you?” she answered.

Again he gave a sudden heavy sob, and again the poor pale, tortured face reflected the pain it witnessed.

“Good-bye!” she then said, drawing her hands from his.  “Remember only, when you blame me, that I told you, not to let you be degraded.  And forgive me before I die, for I loved you—­ah, better than my own life!”

With a sudden impulse she stooped forward, took back his right hand in both of hers, pressed it to her bosom, kissed it passionately again and again, then turned with one faint, half-suppressed moan, and left him.  And as he heard her light feet cross the hall, wearily, heavily, as the feet of a mourner dragging by the grave of the beloved, he knew that his dream of love was over.  But, with the strange satire of the senses in moments of sorrow, noting ever the most trivial things, Edgar noted specially the powerful perfume of a spray of lemon-plant which she bruised as she pressed his hand against her breast.

That evening Edgar Harrowby went down to the rectory.  He was strong enough in physique and in some phases of will, but he was not strong all through, and he had never been able to face unassisted the first desolation of a love-disappointment.