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"I came to take you to the castle," said; Edgar, looking down on the drooping figure with a tender smile on his handsome face as he took her hand in his; and held it. "Are you ready?" Leam's lips moved, but at the first inaudibly. "No," she then said with an effort. "It is time," said Edgar, still holding her hand. "I do not think I shall go," she faltered, not raising her eyes from the ground.
The vein of cruelty traversing his nature made him find more amusement than chagrin in Adelaide's patent jealousy: he thought she was silly, and he was rather amazed at her want of dignity; still, it was amusing, and he enjoyed it as so much fun. But when he laughed Leam's discomfiture was complete.
It was far more picturesque to meet her for the first time, as now, on the wild moor on a gusty gray November day, than in the gloomy old drawing-room at the Hill. It gave a flavor of romance and the forbidden which was not without its value in the beginning of an acquaintance with such a face as Leam's.
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.
For myself, I do not: it always reminds me of negroes and Lascars." Adelaide leaned forward, and made pretence to examine Leam's portrait with critical independence of judgment. She spoke as if this was the first time she had seen it, and her words the thought of the moment resulting. "There is no negroid taint here," Edgar answered gravely. "It is the face of a sibyl, of a tragedian."
He remembered in time Leam's former renunciation of the new mamma whom he had once before proposed. "I have asked Josephine Harrowby to be my wife," he said after a short pause. "She has consented, and made me very happy. Let me hope that it will make you happy too." He spoke with forced calmness and something of sternness under his apparent serenity.
"Tell me what you know," said the soft and honeyed voice, ever sweeter, ever more soothing, more deadening to her senses. Leam's whole form drooped, yielded, submitted. In another moment she would have made full confession, when suddenly the harsh cry of a frightened bird near at hand broke up the sleepy harmonies and scattered the compelling charm.
His voice sounded sweet and soft as honey: it was like a cradle-song to a tired child. Leam's eyes drooped heavily.
He stood and watched her coming along with that slow, graceful, undulating step which was Leam's birthright. Was he mad? Was he dreaming? What was this mocking trick of eyesight that was perplexing him? Surely it was madness; and yet no, it could be no one else. Supreme, beloved, who else could personate her so as to cheat him?
That strange trouble, sweet and thrilling, which disturbed Leam's whole being; Edgar's unfathomable eyes, which seemed almost to burn as she looked at them; his altered voice, scarcely recognizable it was so changed all a mere phantasy born of a dream all, what is so much in this life of ours, a mockery, a mistake, a vague hope without roots, a shadowy heaven that had no place in fact, the cold residuum of enthralling and bewitching myths all Maya, delusion!
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