"As up the aisle my bride I led in that triumphant hour, I ached to hear some wedding-cheer clash from the minster tower.

"Nor chime nor tower the minster had; so in my soul I sware, Come loss, come let, that I would set church-bells a-ringing there

"Before a twelvemonth. But ye know what forays lamed the land, How seasons went, and wealth was spent, and all were weak of hand.

"And then the yearly harvest failed ('twas when my boy was born); But could I build while vassals filled my ears with cries for corn?

"Thereafter happed the heaviest woe, and none could help or save; Nor was there bell to toll a knell above my Hertha's grave.

"Ah, had I held my vow supreme all hinderance to control, Maybe these woes—God knows! God knows!—had never crushed my soul.

"Ev'n now ye beg that I give o'er: ye say the scant supply Of water fails in lowland vales, and mountain-springs are dry.

"'Here be the quarried stones' (ye grant), 'skilled craftsmen come at call; But with no more of water-store how can we build the wall?'

"Nay, listen: Last year's vintage crowds our cellars, tun on tun: With wealth of wine for yours and mine, dare the work go undone?

"Quick! bring them forth, these mighty butts: let none be elsewhere sold, And I will pay this very day their utmost worth in gold,

"That so the mortar that cements each stone within the shrine, For her dear sake whom God did take, may all be mixed with wine."

* * * * *

'Twas thus the baron built his tower; and, as the story tells, A fragrance rare bewitched the air whene'er they rang the bells.

A merrier music tinkled down when harvest-days were long: They seemed to chime at vintage-time a catch of vintage-song;

And when the vats were foamed with must, if any loitered near The minster tower at vesper hour, above him he would hear

Tinglings, as of subsiding trills, athwart the purple gloom, And every draught of air he quaffed would taste of vineyard bloom.

MARGARET J. PRESTON.



BERLIN AND VIENNA.

The pre-eminence of London and Paris in the European world is unquestioned, and, so far as we can foresee, permanent. Although England is withdrawing herself more and more from the affairs of the Continent, and becoming a purely insular and quasi-Oriental power—although France has lost the lead in war and politics, and does not seem likely to regain it—yet the capitals of these two countries hold their own. In the accumulation of wealth and population, in science, letters and the arts, London and Paris seem to be out of reach of competition. Other cities grow, and grow rapidly, but do not gain upon them. Even Berlin and Vienna, which have become so conspicuous of late years, will remain what they are—local centres rather than world-centres. The most zealous friend of German and Austrian progress can scarcely claim for Berlin and Vienna, as cities, more than secondary interest. Nevertheless, these minor capitals are not to be overlooked, especially at the present conjuncture. One of them is the residence of the most powerful dynasty in Europe: the other is the base of an aggressive movement which tends to free at last the lower Danube from Mohammedanism. If, as is possible, the courts of Berlin and Vienna should decide to act in concert, if the surplus vitality and population of the German empire, instead of finding its outlet in the Western hemisphere, should be reversed and made to flow to the south-east, we should witness a strange recuscitation of the past. We should behold the Germanic race, after two thousand years of vicissitude, of migration, conquest, subordination and triumph, reverting to its early home, reoccupying the lands from which it started to overthrow Rome. The Eastern question, as it is called, forces itself once more upon the attention of Christendom, and craves an answer. Twenty years ago it was deferred by the interference of France and England. France is now hors de combat, and England has better work elsewhere. Berlin, Vienna and St. Petersburg have the decision in their hands. It would be a waste of time to speculate upon coming events. Even the negotiations plying to and fro at this moment are veiled in the strictest secrecy. Possibly no one of the trio, Bismarck, Andrassy and Gortschakoff, dares to look beyond the hour. The question may be deferred again, but it must be decided some day upon a lasting basis. Stripped of unessentials, it is a question of race-supremacy. The downfall of European Turkey being conceded as a foregone conclusion, which of the two races, the Slavic or the Germanic, is to oversee and carry out the reconstruction of the region of the lower Danube? Is Russia, already so immense, to place herself at the head of Panslavism and extend her borders to the Dardanelles? Or is Austria, backed by North Germany and aided by the Hungarians and the Roumanians, to resume her mediaeval office as marchia orientalis and complete the mission for which she was called into being by Charlemagne? A question which even the most prophetic of politicians would hesitate to answer. Yet, in any case, it is possible that Vienna and Berlin may become the centres of a great Pangermanic reflux not unlike the efflux that swept over Northern Gaul and England in the fifth century. In view of such a possibility it behooves us to study these two capitals more closely—to consider their origin and growth, their influence and their civic character.

Their history exhibits in many respects a marked parallelism. Each was founded as a frontier-city, as the outpost of aggressive civilization. Each has shared to the full the vicissitudes of the dynasty to which it was attached. Each has ended in becoming the centre and capital of an extensive empire. On the other hand, the differences between them are no less significant. Vienna is the older of the two. It can claim, in fact, a faint reflex of the glory of the old Roman world, for it was founded as a castrum and military colony by Vespasian in the first century of our era. This ancient Vindobona was the head-quarters of the thirteenth legion, which was replaced in the next century by the more famous tenth, the pia fidelis. Until the fifth century, Vindobona and the neighboring Carnuntum (not far from the modern Pressburg) were the seats of Roman power along the middle Danube. But when the empire fell, they fell with it. For centuries all traces of Vienna are lost. The valley of the Danube was the highway for Goth and Slave, Avar and Hun, who trampled down and ruined as they advanced or receded. Not until the Carolingian era do we find indications of a more stable order of things. The great Carl, having consolidated all the resources of Western Europe under his autocratic will, having crushed the Saracens and subdued the Saxons and Bavarians, resolved to make the Danube as well as the Rhine his own. The idea was stamped with genius, as all his ideas were, and the execution was masterly. The Frankish leudes, with their Saxon and Bavarian auxiliaries, routed the Avars in battle after battle, and drove them back beyond the Raab and the Theiss. The "eastern marches" became, and have remained to this day, the bulwark of Christendom. Carl's successors in Germany, the Saxon and Franconian emperors, continued the work. In the year 996 we find the word Ostar-rich (OEsterreich) appearing for the first time. From 976 to 1246 the duchies were in the possession of the Babenberg family. In 1276 they were annexed by Rudolph of Habsburg. Ever since then they have constituted the central possession of the house of which he was the founder.

Prior to the middle of the twelfth century Vienna appears to have been a town of little importance. In fact, the precise time when the name Wien first occurs is in dispute. Giesebrecht discovered it in documents purporting to date from the beginning of the eleventh century, but the genuineness of the documents is doubted by most historians. The town is mentioned several times in the Nibelungenlied, and described as existing in the times of Etzel (Attila, king of the Huns). But this is undoubtedly the invention of popular fancy. The Nibelungenlied was put into its present shape between the middle and the end of the twelfth century. The poet has changed more than one feature of the original saga, has blended, not unskillfully, primitive Teutonic myth with historic personages and events of the early Middle Ages, and has interpolated sayings and traditions of his own times. The Viennese of the twelfth century sought, with pardonable vanity, to invest their town with the sacredness of antiquity. But we can scarcely allow their claims. On the contrary, we must deny all continuity between the Vindobona of the fourth and the Wien of the twelfth century. The Roman castrum disappeared, the Babenberg capital appeared, but between the two there is an unexplored gulf. Yet this incipient Vienna, although only the capital of a ducal family that had a hard fight at times for existence, holds an honorable position in the annals of German literature. The Babenberg dukes were generous patrons of the Muses. Their court was frequented by minnesingers and knights-errant. Their praises were sung by Walther von der Vogelweide, Ulrich von Lichtenstein and others. Walther, in his ode to Duke Leopold, has almost anticipated Shakespeare, when he sings—

His largess, like the gentle rain, Refresheth land and folk.

Vienna and the memorable Wartburg in Thuringia were the acknowledged centres of taste and good breeding. They were the courts of last resort in all questions of style, grammar and versification.

It will not be necessary to follow the growth of Vienna in detail during the last six hundred years. The dangers to which the city was exposed from time to time were formidable. They came chiefly from two quarters—from Bohemia and from Hungaro-Turkey. Charles IV. and Wenzel favored the Bohemians at the expense of the Germans, and preferred Prague to Vienna as a residence. The Czechish nation increased rapidly in wealth and culture until, having embraced the doctrines of Huss, it felt itself strong enough to assert a quasi-independence. The Hussite wars which ensued in the fifteenth century ended in the downfall of Bohemia. But the Austrian duchies, and even Bavaria and Saxony, did not escape without cruel injuries. More than once the fanatic Taborites laid the land waste up to the gates of Vienna. The Reformation, a century later, did not take deep root in Austria. At best it was only tolerated, and the Jesuit reaction, encouraged by Rudolph II. and Matthias, made short work of it. The Thirty Years' war gave Ferdinand II. an opportunity of restoring Bohemia to the Roman Catholic communion. The victory of the White Hill (1620) prostrated Bohemia at his feet: the Hussite preachers were executed or banished, the estates of the nobility who had taken part in the rebellion were confiscated, and the Catholic worship reinstated by force of arms. So thoroughly was the work done that Bohemia at the present day is, next to the Tyrol, the stronghold of Catholicism. But Ferdinand's success, complete to outward appearance, was in reality a blunder. The Czechish and the German nationalities were permanently estranged, and the former, despoiled, degraded, incapacitated for joining the work of reform upon which the latter has finally entered, now constitutes an obstacle to progress. While the Austrian duchies are at present extremely liberal in their religious and political tendencies, Bohemia and Polish Galicia are confederated with the Tyrol in opposing every measure that savors of liberalism. Bohemia has been surnamed the Ireland of the Austrian crown.

The union of Hungary with the house of Habsburg has always been personal rather than constitutional. The Hungarians claimed independence in all municipal and purely administrative matters. Moreover, during the Thirty Years' war, and even later, a large portion of the land was in possession of the Turks and their allies, the Transylvanians, with whom the Hungarians were in sympathy. The first great siege of Vienna by the Turks was in 1529—the last, and by far the most formidable, in 1683. The city escaped only through the timely assistance of the Poles under Sobieski. Ten years later the tide had changed. The Austrian armies, led by Prince Eugene, defeated the Turks in a succession of decisive battles, and put an end for ever to danger from that quarter. Hungary and Transylvania became permanent Austrian possessions.

Amid such alternations of fortune the growth of Vienna was necessarily slow. In 1714, after six centuries of existence, its population amounted to only 130,000. The city retained all the characteristics of a fortress and frontier-post. The old part, or core, now called the "inner town," was a compact body of houses surrounded by massive fortification-walls and a deep moat. Outside of this was a rayon or clear space six hundred feet in width, separating the city from the suburbs. These suburbs, Leopoldstadt, Mariahilf, etc., now incorporated with the inner city in one municipal government, were then small detached villages. From time to time the rayon was encroached upon by enterprising builders, with the connivance of the emperor or the garrison commander. The disastrous wars with France at the end of the last century and beginning of the present were in reality a gain to Vienna. Napoleon's bombardment and capture of the city in 1809, before the battle of Wagram, demonstrated conclusively that the fortifications were unable to withstand modern artillery. Accordingly, after the general European peace had been established by the Congress of Vienna, the city was declared officially by the emperor to be no longer a fortification. But the walls and ditch, so far as they had not been injured by the French, were still suffered to remain: they were substantially intact as late as 1848, and were strong enough to enable the revolutionists who had possession of the city to hold it for forty-eight hours against the army of Prince Windischgraetz.

The final reconstruction of the city was not begun in earnest until 1857, and occupied ten years or more. The walls were leveled to the ground, the moat was filled in, a broad girdle-street (the Ringstrasse) laid out to encircle the inner city, and the adjacent ground on either side was converted into building-lots. In this brief space of time Vienna was changed from a quasi-mediaeval town to a modern capital of the most pronounced type. The Ringstrasse became a promenade like that of the old Paris boulevards, but broader, grander and lined with palatial edifices no whit inferior to the French. The metamorphosis is so startling that a tourist revisiting the city after an absence of twenty years would have difficulty in persuading himself that he was indeed in the residence of Maria Theresa, Joseph II. and Metternich. No American city can exhibit a like change in the same time. Our cities, although expanding incessantly, have preserved their original features. Even new Chicago, springing from the ashes of the old, has not departed from the former ground-plan and style of building. And no American city can point to a succession of buildings like the Franz Joseph Barracks, the Cur Salon with its charming park, the Grand Hotel and the Hotel Imperial, the Opera-house, the Votive Church, the new Stock Exchange, and the Rudolf Barracks. When the projected House of Deputies, the City Hall, and the University building are completed, the Ring street will deserve to stand by the side of the Rue de Rivoli and the Champs Elysees. The quondam suburbs (Vorstaedte), eight in number, are now one with the city proper. Encircling them is the mur d' octroi, or barrier where municipal tolls are levied upon articles of food and drink. Outside of this barrier, again, are the suburbs of the future, the Vororte, such as Favoriten, Fuenfhaus, Hernals, etc. The growth of the population is rapid and steady. In 1714 it was 130,000, in 1772 only 193,000. A century later, in 1869, it had risen to 811,000 (including the Vororte); at the present day it can scarcely fall short of 1,000,000.

Not in population and adornment alone has Vienna progressed. Much has been done, or at least projected, for the comfort and health of the residents and for the increase of trade. The entire city has been repaved with Belgian pavement, the houses renumbered after the Anglo-American fashion. The railroads centring in the city are numerous, and the stations almost luxurious in their appointments. But the two chief enterprises are the Semmering aqueduct and the Danube Regulation. The former, begun in 1869 and completed in 1873, would do honor to any city. It is about fifty miles in length, and has a much greater capacity than the Croton aqueduct. The pure, cold Alpine water brought from two celebrated springs near the Semmering Pass, flows into the distributing reservoir on the South Hill, near the Belvedere Palace, at an elevation of one hundred and fifty feet above the city. The pressure is great enough to throw a jet nearly one hundred feet high from the fountain in the Schwarzenberg Square. The Danube Regulation, as its name implies, is an attempt to improve the navigation of the river. The Danube, which in this part of its course has a general flow from north-west to south-east, approaches within a few miles of Vienna. Here, at Nussdorf, it breaks into two or three shallow and tortuous channels, which meander directly away from the city, as if in sheer willfulness, and reunite at the Lobau, as far below the city as Nussdorf is above it. The "regulation" consists in a new artificial channel, cut in a straight line from Nussdorf to the Lobau. In length it is about nine miles, in breadth about twelve hundred feet: the average depth of water will be not less than ten feet. It was begun in 1869 and finished in April, 1875. This new channel, which passes the Leopoldstadt suburb a short distance outside the late exhibition grounds, will render unnecessary the transshipment of goods and passengers at Nussdorf and the Lobau respectively, and will also, it is hoped, prevent the inundations by which the low region to the north of the river has been so often ravaged.

Berlin is inferior to Vienna in antiquity and in variety of incident and association. The capital of the present German empire consisted originally of two small rival towns, or rather villages, standing almost side by side on opposite banks of the Spree. The elder, Coeln, was incorporated as a municipality in 1232: the other, Berlin, is mentioned for the first time in 1244. Both names are of Vendic (Slavic) origin, and designated villages of the hunting and fishing Vends, who were dispossessed by German colonists.

Coeln-Berlin, the marches of Brandenburg, East and West Prussia—in fact, all the now Germanized lands to the east of the Elbe—owe their Teutonic character to a great reflux, a reconquest so to speak, which is barely mentioned in the usual textbooks of German history, yet which is one of the most noteworthy phenomena in the development of modern Europe. At the beginning of the fourth century German tribes (German in the widest sense of the term) occupied the broad expanse from the Rhine to the Dwina and the head-waters of the Dnieper. A century later they had receded as far as the Vistula. Still another century later, about 500, the German linguistic domain was bounded on the east by the Ens, the Bohemian Hills, the upper Main, the Saal and the Elbe. The downfall of the Thuringian kingdom was the occasion of Slavic encroachments even on the left bank of the Elbe between Stendal and Lueneburg. This German recession, which boded the Slavization not only of Eastern but also of Central Europe, was due to various causes, many of which are veiled in the impenetrable darkness which still hangs over the early Middle Ages. The chief causes were undoubtedly the Germanic migration over the Roman world and the settlement of the Franks in Northern Gaul and the Saxons in England.

But with the Carolingian dynasty came a new era. Charles Martel, Pepin and Charlemagne aspired to universal monarchy. Not content with France, Northern Spain, Italy and Germany proper, Charlemagne, as we have already seen, recaptured the middle Danube. His successors in Germany, the Saxon, Franconian and Swabian emperors, continued the impulse, but gave it in the main a different direction. Instead of moving toward the south-east, where they would have encountered stubborn opposition from the already compact Hungarian nationality, they chose for their field of colonization (or recolonization) the east and north-east. Throughout the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries we observe a strong and unremitting tide of German peasants, burghers and knights flowing through and over Brandenburg, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Silesia, the Prussian duchies, and even into Lithuania, Curland, Livonia and Esthonia. We have here an explanation of the want of interest taken by the Germans in the Crusades. While the kings of England and France, the barons and counts of Brabant and Italy, were wasting their substance and the blood of their subjects in hopeless attempts to overthrow Mohammedanism on its own ground, the Germans were laying the foundations—unconsciously, it is true—of a new empire. The lands wrested from the Slaves were to be the kingdom of Frederick the Great. The work was done thoroughly, almost as thoroughly as the Saxon conquest of Britain. The Obotrites, Wiltzi, Ukern, Prussians, Serbs and Vends were annihilated or absorbed. The only traces of their existence now to be found are the scattered remnants of dialects spoken in remote villages or small districts, and the countless names of towns bequeathed by them to their conquerors. These names are often recognizable by the terminations in and itz. The most conspicuous factor in this labor of colonization was the Teutonic order of chivalry, transferred to the Baltic from Palestine. Koenigsberg, Dantzic, Memel, Thorn and Revel were the centres or the advanced posts of the movement. At the end of the reign of the grand master Winrich von Kniprode (1382) the Germanization of the region between the Elbe and the Niemen—the Polish province of Posen perhaps excepted—may be regarded, for all practical purposes, as finished. The acquisition of Brandenburg by the Hohenzollerns only solidified the conquest and guaranteed its future. It is safe to assume that even a large share, perhaps the greater share, of Poland itself would have been overrun in like manner but for the Hussite wars and the Thirty Years' war. The unfortunate Peace of Thorn (1466), whereby the lands of the Teutonic order and of the Brethren of the Sword became—in name at least—fiefs of the Polish crown, was due to internal dissensions among the German colonists and also to the distractions in Bohemia.

This apparent digression was necessary to a right understanding of the character of Berlin and its neighborhood in comparison with Vienna. Berlin was at the start a frontier post, but, unlike Vienna, it soon ceased to be one. Colonization and conquest left it far to the rear as an unimportant and thoroughly German town. The border-land of language and race was advanced from the Spree to the Niemen and Vistula. The language of these north-eastern districts is worthy of note. The knights of the Teutonic order were chiefly from South Germany, the inferior colonists from Low Germany of the Elbe, Weser and Rhine. Hence the necessity for a lingua communis, a mode of expression that should adapt itself to the needs of a mixed population. The dialect which proved itself most available was one which stood midway between High (South) and Low (North) German, and which itself might almost be called a linguistic compromise—namely, the Thuringian, and more especially in its Meissen form. This "Middle German,"[1] as it was styled, became the official language of Prussia, Silesia and the Baltic provinces. All very marked dialectic peculiarities were discarded one by one, until the residuum became a very homogeneous, uniform and correct mode of conventional speech. It will not surprise us, then, to perceive that the Curlanders, Livonians and Prussians (of the duchies) speak at the present day a more elegant German than the Berlinese, whose vernacular is strongly tinged with Plattdeutsch forms from the lower Elbe. A similar phenomenon is to be observed in our own country. We Americans, taken as a nation, speak a more correct English—i.e., an English freer from dialectic peculiarities—than the English themselves. We have but one conventional form of expression from Maine to California, and whatever lies outside of this may be bad grammar or slang, but is certainly not dialect.

[Footnote 1: The word "Middle" is used here as a geographical term. German philologists arrange the dialects into two main groups—High (South) and Low (North), and prefix to each the terms Old, Middle and New to distinguish epochs in the growth of each. According to this nomenclature, Old = Early, Middle = Late-Mediaeval, New = Modern. The word Middle is unfortunate, as it may designate either age or locality. It designates both locality and age in the text above—i.e., the late-mediaeval form of Middle Germany. In full, it should be "Middle-Middle." The Meissen dialect, it may be added, was the one adopted by Luther, and is the basis of all modern book-German. (See Rueckert's Gesch. der neuhochd. Sprache, pp. 168-178.)]

The most important event in the history of the twin municipalities, Coeln-Berlin, was a change of dynasty. In 1415-18, Frederick of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg, was invested with the margravate of Brandenburg and the electoral dignity. The Hohenzollerns, a few exceptions aside, have been a thrifty, energetic and successful family. Slowly, but with the precision of destiny, their motto, "From rock to sea"—once apparently an idle boast—has realized itself to the full, until they now stand foremost in Europe. It would pertain rather to a history of the Prussian monarchy than to a sketch like the present to trace, even in outline, the steps by which Brandenburg annexed one after another the Prussian duchies of the Teutonic order, Pomerania, Silesia, the province of Saxony, Westphalia, and in our own days Hanover and Hesse-Cassel. So far as Berlin is concerned, it will suffice to state that its history is not rich in episode or in marked characters. It long remained the obscure capital of a dynasty which the Guelfs and Habsburgs were pleased to look down upon as parvenu. During the Thirty Years' war, in which Brandenburg played such a pitiable part, Berlin was on the verge of extinction. By 1640 its population had been reduced to 6000. Even the great elector, passing his life in warfare, could do but little for his capital. His successor, Frederick I., the first king of the Prussians, was more fortunate. To him the city is indebted for most of its present features. He was the originator of the Friederichsstadt, the Friederichsstrasse, the Dorotheenstadt,[2] the continuation of the Linden to the Thiergarten, the arsenal, and the final shaping of the old castle. In 1712 the population was 61,000. The wars of Frederick the Great, brought to a triumphal issue, made Berlin more and more a centre of trade and industry. To all who could look beyond the clouds of political controversy and prejudice it was evident that Berlin was destined to become the leading city of North Germany and the worthy rival of Vienna. Even the humiliation of Jena and the subsequent occupation by Napoleon were only transitory. Berlin, not being a fortified city, was spared at least the misery of a siege. After the downfall of Napoleon, Prussia and its capital resumed their mission of absorption and expansion. The "Customs Union" accelerated the pace. In 1862 the population was 480,000; in 1867, 702,437; in 1871, 826,341. At present it is in excess of Vienna. The Austrian and French wars have given to its growth an almost feverish impulse.

[Footnote 2: The Friederichsstadt and Dorotheenstadt are those parts of the town with which the tourist is most familiar as places of residence and shopping; Coeln is the island on which stand the castle and the two museums; Old Berlin is the part beyond the Spree.]

A comparison of Berlin and Vienna in their present state will suggest many reflections. We have seen that they resemble each other in origin, rate of growth and actual size. In their composition, however, they differ widely. The population of Berlin is homogeneous, devotedly attached to the Hohenzollern dynasty, enterprising in trade and manufactures, thrifty and economical. It spends far less than it earns. For upward of half a century it has been subjected to the most careful military and scientific training. Moreover, Berlin is the geographical and political centre of a thoroughly homogeneous realm. We cannot afford to encourage any delusions on this point. It has become of late the fashion among certain French writers and their imitators to sneer at the Prussians as semi-Slaves, to call them Borussians, and contrast them with the so-called Germans proper of Bavaria, Swabia and the Rhine; whereas the fact of ethnography is that the Prussians are an amalgamation of the best—that is, the hardiest and most enterprising—elements of all the German districts. The purest blood and the most active brains of the old empire left their homes on the Main and the Weser to colonize and conquer under the leadership of the Teutonic order. The few drops of Slavic blood are nothing in comparison. Slavic names of towns and villages do not prove Slavic descent; else, by like reasoning, we should have to pronounce "France" and "French" words implying German blood, and "Normandy" an expression for Norse lineage. So far from being composite, Berlin is ultra German. It is more national, in this sense, than Dresden, where the Saxon court was for generations Polish in tastes and sympathies, and where English and American residents constitute at this day a perceptible element; more so than Bremen and Hamburg, which are entrepots for foreign commerce; more so than Frankfort, with its French affiliations. The few Polish noblemen and workmen from Posen only serve to relieve the otherwise monotonous German type of the city. The French culture assumed by Frederick the Great and his contemporaries was a mere surface varnish, a passing fashion that left the underlying structure intact. Furthermore, Berlin is profoundly Protestant. The Reformation was accepted here with enthusiasm, and its adoption was more of a folk-movement than elsewhere, Thuringia alone excepted. By virtue of its Protestantism, then, Berlin is accessible to liberal ideas and capable of placing itself in the van of progress without breaking abruptly with the past. Its liberalism, unlike that of Catholic Paris, does not lead to radicalism or communism. Finally, it is to be borne in mind that Berlin, having become the official capital, must of necessity attract more and more the ablest men from all quarters of the empire—the members of the imperial Diet, politicians, lobbyists, bankers, speculators and their satellites. Along with the good, it is true, comes much of the bad. Berlin is unquestionably the present goal for needy and unscrupulous adventurers of the worst sort. Not a few pessimists, native and foreign, have made the fact a text for dismal prognostications of the city's future degeneracy. Yet this is taking a shortsighted and unjust view of things. The great mass of the population is still sound to the core. The unsettled state of monetary and social relations cannot but be transitory, and compulsory education and military service cannot but operate in the future as they have done in the past. So long as the garde-corps remains what it is, the flower of the army, it will be idle to speak of the degeneracy of Berlin. We must not forget that only five years ago, at Mars la Tour, Brandenburg and Berlin regiments fought the most remarkable battle, in many respects, of modern times.

On almost all the points above indicated Vienna is the direct opposite of Berlin. It is not homogeneous in itself, neither is it the centre of a homogeneous empire; its population is not thrifty nor enterprising; it is Catholic, and not Protestant. The Hohenzollerns have achieved their success by hard fighting. With the exception of the original marches of Brandenburg there is scarcely a district in the kingdom of Prussia that has not been wrested from some enemy and held as the spoils of war. This policy of forcible annexation or robbery, as the historian may be pleased to call it—while inconsistent with principles of equity, has had nevertheless its marked advantages. Perceiving that the sword alone could keep what the sword had won, the Hohenzollerns have ever striven to identify their dynastic interests with the well-being of their people, to make their regime one of order and improvement, to repress the power of the nobility without crushing its spirit, to adjust a satisfactory compromise between centralization and local independence, and to stamp their own uncompromising spirit upon each individual subject. Hence their success in creating a nation out of provinces. Every Prussian has always felt that he was a member of one indissoluble commonwealth. The Habsburgs, on the contrary, have grown great through marriage. Their policy is aptly expressed in the oft-quoted phrase, Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube. Regarding their sway as a matter of hereditary succession and divine right, they have been content to let each province or kingdom remain as it was when acquired, an isolated Crown dependency. They have not put forth serious and persistent efforts to weld the Tyrol, the Austrian duchies, Bohemia, Galicia, much less Hungary, in one compact realm. They have done even worse. They have committed repeatedly a blunder which the Hohenzollerns, even in their darkest days, never so much as dreamed of—namely, the blunder of hounding down one province or race by means of another. They have used the Germans to crush the Bohemians, the Poles to thwart the Germans, the Hungarians to check all the others, and the Croats to defeat the Hungarians. From this has resulted a deplorable conflict of races. The present emperor, Francis Joseph, appears to the eye of the close observer a man bent beneath the hopeless task of reconciliation. He is called upon to bear the accumulated evils of centuries of misrule.

Vienna is a faithful reflex in miniature of Austria in general. The heedless or untrained tourist, misled by names and language and the outward forms of intercourse, may pronounce the city a most delightful German capital: he may congratulate himself upon the opportunity it gives him of reviving his reminiscences of the old German emperors and contrasting their times with the present. But the tourist, were he to go beneath the surface, would discover that he is treading upon peculiar ground. We have only to scratch the Viennese to find something that is not German. We shall discover beneath the surface Hungarian, or Slavic, or Italian blood. A very large portion of the population, perhaps even the greater portion, speaks two, three or four languages with equal facility. New York excepted, no great city will compare with Vienna for medley of speech and race. The truth is, that the city still retains its early character as a frontier-post, or, to speak more correctly, it is the focus where the currents from North-eastern Italy, South-eastern Germany, Bohemia, Galicia and Hungary converge without thoroughly intermingling. The conventional German used by the middle and lower classes is interspersed with terms borrowed from the other languages, with dialectic idioms, provincialisms and peculiarities of pronunciation that cause it to sound like an unfamiliar tongue.

In outward appearance the city is not less diversified than in population. The gay bustle of the streets, the incessant roll of fiacres, the style of dress, the crowded cafes remind one more of Paris than of Germany. The cuisine and ways of living and the architecture here and there have borrowed freely from Italy and France. A certain fondness for gorgeous coloring and profuse ornamentation is due to Hungarian influence. The bulbous cupolas surmounted with sharply tapering spires, irreverently nicknamed Zwiebel-Thuerme ("onion-towers"), are evidently stragglers from Byzantium, and contrast sharply with the rich Gothic of St. Stephen's and the new Votive Church. By the side of Vienna, Berlin is painfully monotonous. Few of the public buildings can be called handsome, or even picturesque. The plaster used for the outer coating of the houses is apt to discolor or flake off, so that the general aspect is that of premature age. Worthy of note is the new city hall, a successful effort to make an imposing and elegant structure of brick. In the neighborhood of the Thiergarten the private residences evince taste and refinement. Taken all in all, Berlin has not yet shaken off its provincialism, and is far behind Vienna in drainage, water-supply and paving. The Berlinese have much to do and undo before they can rightfully call their city a Weltstadt.

In the matter of economy, at least, they are worthy of all praise. No other community spends less in proportion to its income. From the emperor down, each person seems to count his pence. This self-denial, which borders at times on parsimony, is the result of training and circumstances. The soil in the eastern part of the kingdom, and especially around Berlin, is not fertile. It yields its crops only to the most careful tillage. Moreover, prolonged struggles for political existence and supremacy, with the necessity of being on the watch for sudden wars and formidable invasions, have sharpened the wits of the Berlinese and taught them the advisability of laying by for a rainy day. The Viennese, on the contrary, live rather for the passing hour. Austria is favored with an agreeable climate and an extremely fertile soil. The immediate vicinity of Vienna is highly picturesque and invites to merrymaking excursions, while life in the city is a hunt after pleasure. The court and the nobility, once proverbial for wealth, set an example of profuse expenditure which is followed by the middle and even the lower classes.

Were it possible, by passing a magic wand over the Austrian duchies and Vienna, to transform them into a Brandenburg or a Silesia, the Eastern question would be much simplified. The entire valley of the lower Danube, Hungary not excepted, suffers from a want of laborers. Agriculture, mining and manufactures are in a primitive state unworthy of the Middle Ages. The exhibition from Roumania at Vienna in 1873, although arrayed tastefully, was a lamentable confession of poverty and backwardness. Even Hungary, anxious to display her autonomy to the best advantage, could show little more than the beginnings of a change. The actual condition of the lower Danube is a reproach to European civilization. Everything seems to be lacking—good roads and tolerable houses, kitchen and farming utensils, workshops of the most rudimentary sort, clothing, popular education, the first conceptions of science. Germany is the only source from which to expect assistance in the spread of material comfort and spiritual enlightenment, for Germany alone has population and education to spare. Yet that part of Germany which is nearest at hand is not adequate of itself to the task. The Austrians have not such a preponderancy of numbers and influence within their own borders as would qualify them for conducting successfully a great movement of colonization. Besides, it must be admitted, with all due respect to the many good qualities of the Austrians, that colonists should be of "sterner stuff"—should have more self-denial, greater capacity for work and more talent for self-government. In these particulars the North Germans are unquestionably superior. The improved condition of Roumania (Moldavia and Wallachia) under Prince Charles of Hohenzollern teaches us what may be accomplished by an energetic administration. During the past ten years the army has been drilled and equipped after the Prussian fashion, the finances placed on a tolerable footing, and practical independence of Turkey asserted. At the Vienna exhibition Roumania was the only one of the nominally-vassal states that did not display the star and crescent. Were the prince unrestrained by respect for Austrian and Prussian diplomacy, and free to lead his well-disciplined army of fifty thousand men into the field, he would give the signal for a general uprising in Bosnia and Servia, and thus probably succeed in severing all the Christian provinces from the Porte.

In one essential feature the Germanization of Prussia in the Middle Ages differed necessarily from any like movement now possible along the Danube. The Vends, Serbs and other Slaves were heathens, and their overthrow and extermination was a crusade as well as a conquest. The Church consecrated the sword, the monk labored side by side with the knight. Such is not the case in the Danube Valley. Whatever value we may set upon the Christianity of the Slovenes, Herzegovinians, Bulgarians and Roumanians, we certainly cannot call them heathens. They belong to the Roman Catholic, to the Greek, or to the Greek United Church, although their worship and religious conceptions are strongly tinged with reminiscences of Slavic paganism. Neither is a conquest, in the military sense, possible. Public opinion in Europe has learned to look with abhorrence on such violent measures, not to speak of the mutual jealousies of Austria, Russia and Germany. The question is rather one of peaceful colonization, of the introduction of Germans in large numbers, and the gradual adoption of Western improvements. Without some strong influx of the sort the mere separation of the Danubian principalities from Turkey would be only a halfway measure. It would put an end to the outrageous tyranny of the Turkish governors, but it would not ensure industrial and intellectual progress. And if Germany does not undertake the work, where else is aid to be looked for? We see what the Germans have done for us in the valleys of the upper Ohio and Mississippi. We have only to imagine a like stream of population rolling for twenty years along the Danube. Some of the conditions there are even more favorable than they have been with us. The German colonist in America has been confronted from the start by a civilization fully equal to his own. In the Danubian principalities he would rise at once to a position of superiority. The cessation of German immigration would be undoubtedly a loss to America, but its diversion to the south-east would be a great gain to Europe. It would settle, perhaps, for ever, the grave question of race-supremacy—it would enable Austria to become a really German power, and Vienna a really German city. Last, but not least, it would reclaim from Mohammedanism and barbarism lands that were lost to Christian culture only five centuries ago in a moment of shameful weakness.

JAMES MORGAN HART.



THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS.

BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF "PATRICIA KEMBALL."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

OUR MARRIAGE.

Not the youngest or prettiest bride could have excited more interest on her launch into the unknown shoals and quicksands of matrimony than did many-fleshed, mature and freckled Josephine on the achievement of her long-desired union with the twice-told widower. A marriage of one of their own set was a rare event altogether to the North Astonians, and the marriage of one of the Hill girls was above all a circumstance that touched the heart of the place as nothing else could touch it—one which even Carry Fairbairn on the day of her triumph over willow-wearing and that faithless Frank had not come near. It was "our marriage" and "our bride," and each member of the community took a personal interest in the proceedings, and felt implicated in the subsequent failure or success of the venture.

Of course they all confessed that it was a bold thing for Miss Josephine to be the third wife of a man—some of the more prudish pursed their lips and said they wondered how she could, and they wondered yet more how Mrs. Harrowby ever allowed it, and why, if Mr. Dundas must marry again (but they thought he might be quiet now), he had not taken a stranger, instead of one who had been mixed up as it were with his other wives—but seeing that her day was passed, the majority, as has been said, held that she was in the right to take what she could get, and to marry even as a third wife was better than not to marry at all. And then the neighborhood knew Sebastian Dundas, and knew that although he had been foolish and unfortunate in his former affairs, there was no harm in him. If his second wife had died mysteriously, North Aston was generous enough not to suppose that he had poisoned her; and who could wonder at that dreadful Pepita having a stroke, sitting in the sun as she did on such a hot day, and so fat as she was? So that Mr. Dundas was exonerated from the suspicion of murder in either case, if credited with an amount of folly and misfortune next thing to criminal; and "our marriage" was received with approbation, the families sending tribute and going to the church as the duty they owed a Harrowby, and to show Sebastian that they considered he had done wisely at last, and chosen as was fitting.

There was a little mild waggery about the future name of Ford House, and the bolder spirits offered shilling bets that it would be rechristened "Josephine Lodge" before the year was out. But save this not very scorching satire, which also was not too well received by the majority, as savoring of irreverence to consecrated powers, the country looked on in supreme good-humor, and the day came in its course, finding as much social serenity as it brought summer sunshine.

It was a pretty wedding, and everybody said that everybody looked very nice; which is always comforting to those whose souls are stitched up in their flounces, and whose happiness and self-respect rise or fall according to the becomingness of their attire. The village school-children lining the churchwalk strewed flowers for the bride's material and symbolic path. Dressed in a mixture of white, scarlet and blue, they made a brilliant show of color, and gave a curious suggestion of so many tricolored flags set up along the path; but they added to the general gayety of the scene, and they themselves thought Miss Josephine's wedding surely as grand as the queen's.

There were five bridesmaids, including little Fina, whom kindly Josephine had specially desired should bear her part in the pageant which was to give her a mother and a friend. The remaining four were the two Misses Harrowby, Adelaide Birkett, as her long-time confidante, and that other step-daughter, more legitimate if less satisfactory than Fina—Leam.

The first three of these four elder maids came naturally and of course: the last was the difficulty. When first asked, Learn had refused positively—for her quite vehemently—to have hand or part in the wedding. It brought back too vividly the sin and the sorrow of the former time; and she despised her father's inconstancy of heart too much to care to assist at a service which was to her the service of folly and wickedness in one.

She said, "No, no: I will not come. I, bridesmaid at papa's wedding! bridesmaid to his third wife! No, I will not!" And she said it with an insistance, an emphasis, that seemed immovable, and all the more so because it was natural.

But Josephine pleaded with her so warmly—she was evidently so much in earnest in her wish, she meant to be so good and kind to the girl, to lift her from the shadows and place her in the sunshine of happiness—that Leam was at last touched deeply enough to give way. She had come now to recognize that fidelity to be faithful need not be churlish; and perhaps she was influenced by Josephine's final argument. For when she had said "No, I cannot come to the wedding," for about the fourth time, Josephine shot her last bolt in these words: "Oh, dear Leam, do come. I am sure Edgar will be hurt and displeased if you are not one of my bridesmaids. He will think you do not like the connection, and you know what a proud man he is: he will be so vexed with me."

On which Leam said gravely, "I would not like to hurt or displease Major Harrowby; and I do not like or dislike the connection;" adding, after a pause, and putting on her little royal manner, "I will come."

Josephine's honest heart swelled with the humble gratitude of the self-abased. "Good Leam! dear girl!" she cried, kissing her with tearful eyes and wet lips—poor Learn! who hated to be kissed, and who had by no means intended that her grave caress on the day of betrothal should be taken as a precedent and acted on unreservedly. And after she had kissed her frequently she thanked her again effusively, as if she had received some signal grace that could hardly be repaid.

Her excess chilled Leam of course, but she held to her promise; and Josephine augured all manner of happy eventualities from the fact that her future step-daughter had yielded so sweetly on the first difference of desire between them, and had let herself be kissed with becoming patience. It was a good omen for the beginning of things; and all brides are superstitious—Josephine perhaps more so than most, in that she was more loving and more in love than most.

Yes, it was a pretty wedding, as they all said. The bride in the regulation white and pearls looked, if not girlish, yet comely and suitable to the bridegroom with his gray hair and sunburnt skin. The two senior maids had stipulated for a preponderance of warm rose-color in the costumes, which suited every one. It threw a flush on their faded elderliness which was not amiss, and did the best for them that could be done in the circumstances; it brought out into lovely contrast, the contrast of harmonies, Adelaide Birkett's delicate complexion, fair flaxen braids and light-blue eyes; it burnt like flame in Leam's dark hair, and made her large transcendent eyes glow as if with fire; while the little one looked like a rose, the white and crimson petals of which enclosed a laughing golden-headed fairy.

It was admirable all through, and did credit to the generalizing powers of the Hill, which had thus contrived to harmonize the three stages of womanhood and to offend none. Even Frank's fastidious taste was satisfied. So was Mrs. Frank's, who knew how things ought to be done. And as she was the rather elderly if very wealthy daughter of a baronet, who considered that she had married decidedly beneath herself in taking Frank Harrowby, the untitled young barrister not even yet in silk, she had come down to the Hill prepared to criticise sharply; so that her approbation carried weight and ensured a large amount of satisfaction. Edgar, however, who was not so fastidious as his brother, thought the whole thing a failure and that no one looked even tolerable.

As he had his duty to do by his sister, being the father who gave her away, he was fully occupied; but his eyes wandered more than once to the younger two of the bridesmaids proper—those two irreconcilables joined for the first time in a show of sisterhood and likeness—and whom he examined and compared as so often before, with the same inability to decide which.

He paid little or no attention to either. He might have been a gray-headed old sage for the marvelous reticence of his demeanor, devoting himself to his duties and the dowagers with a persistency of good-breeding, to say the least of it, admirable. At the breakfast-table he was naturally separated from both these fair disturbers of his lordly peace, Leam having been told off to Alick, and Adelaide handed over to Frank's fraternal care, with Mrs. Frank, who claimed more than a fee-simple in her husband, watching them jealously and interrupting them often.

That wind which never blows so ill that it brings no good to any one had brought joy to Alick in this apportionment of partners, if the sadness of boredom to poor Leam. The natural excitement of a wedding, which stirs the coldest, had touched even the chastened pulses of the pale, gaunt curate, and he caught himself more than once wondering if he could ever win the young queen of his boyish fancy to return the deep love of his manhood—love which was so true, so strong, so illimitable, it seemed as if it must by the very nature of things compel its answer.

That answer was evidently not in the course of preparation to-day, for Leam had never been more laconic or more candidly disdainful than she was now; and what sweetness the pomegranate flower might hold in its heart was certainly not shaken abroad on the surrounding world. She answered when she was spoken to, because even Leam felt the constraining influences of society, but her eyes, like her manner, said plainly enough, "You tire me: you are stupid."

Not that either her eyes or her manner repelled her uncomfortable adorer. Alick was used to her disdain, and even liked it as her way, as he would have liked anything else that had been her way. He was content to be her footstool if it was her pleasure to put her foot on him, and he would have knotted any thong of any lash that she had chosen to use. Whatever gave her pleasure rejoiced him, and he had no desire for himself that might be against her wishes. Nevertheless, he yearned at times, when self would dominate obedience, that those wishes of hers should coincide with his desires, and that before the end came he might win her to return his love.

But what can be hoped from a girl, not a coquette, who is besieged on the one side by an awkward and ungainly admirer, when directly opposite to her is the handsome hero for whose love her secret heart, unknown to herself, is crying, and who has withdrawn himself for the time from smiles and benevolence? Leam somehow felt as if every compliment paid to her by Alick was an offence to Edgar; and she repelled him, blushing, writhing, uncomfortable, but adoring, with a coldness that nothing could warm, a stony immobility that nothing could soften, because it was the coldness of fidelity and the immobility of love.

Edgar saw it all. It put him somewhat in better humor with himself, but made him indignant with the Reverend Alexander, as he generally called Alick when he spoke of him wishing to suggest disrespect. He held him as a poacher beating up his preserves; and the gentlemen of England have scant mercy for poachers, conscious or unconscious. Meanwhile, nothing could be more delightfully smooth and successful than the whole thing was on the outside. The women looked nice, the men were gallant, the mature but comely bride was so happy that she seemed to radiate happiness on all around her, and the elderly bridegroom was marvelously vitalized for a man whose heart was broken, and only at the best riveted. Edgar performed his duties, as has been said, with heroic constancy; Mrs. Harrowby did not weep nor bemoan herself as a victim because one of her daughters had at last left the maternal wing for a penthouse of her own; Adelaide talked to Frank with graceful discretion, mindful of his owner watching her property jealously from the other side of the way; Leam was—Leam in her more reserved mood if Alick was too manifestly adoring; and the families admitted acted like a well-trained chorus, and carried on the main thread to lower levels without a break. So time and events went on till the moment came for that fearful infliction—the wedding-breakfast toast prefaced by the wedding-breakfast speech.

This naturally fell to the lot of Mr. Birkett to propose and deliver, and after a concerted signaling with Edgar he rose to his feet and began his oration. He proposed "the health of the fair bride and her gallant groom," both of whom, after the manner of such speeches, he credited with all the virtues under heaven, and of whom each was the sole proper complement of the other to be found within the four seas. He was so far generous in that he did not allude to that fascinating second whom Mr. Dundas had taken to his bosom nearly five years ago now, and whose tragical death had cut him to the heart almost as much as it had wounded Sebastian. At one time natural masculine malice had made him compose a stinging little allusion that should carry poison, as some flowers do, sheathed and sugared; but the gentleman's better taste prevailed, and for Josephine's sake he brushed away the gloomy shadow of the grave which he had thrown for his own satisfaction over the orange-blossoms. He rose to the joyous height of the occasion, and his speech was a splendid success and gave satisfaction to every one alike. But what he did say was, that he supposed the master of the Hill would soon be following the example of his brother-in-law, and cause the place to be glad in the presence of a young Mrs. Harrowby, who would do well if she had half the virtues of the lady who had so long held the place of mistress there. And when he said this he looked at Edgar with a paternal kind of roguishness that really sat very well on his handsome old face, and that every one took to mean Adelaide.

Edgar laughed and showed his square white teeth while the rector spoke, blushing like a girl, but in all save that strange, unusual flush he bore himself as if it was a good joke of Mr. Birkett's own imagining, and one with which he had personally nothing to do. More than one pair of eyes watched to see if he would look at Adelaide as the thong for the rector's buckle; and Adelaide watched on her own account to see if he would look at Leam or at her. But Edgar kept his eyes discreetly guided, and no one caught a wandering glance anywhere: he merely laughed and put it by as a good joke, looking as if he had devoted himself to celibacy for life, and that the Hill would never receive another mistress than the one whom it had now.

"I wonder if the rector means Miss Birkett?" blundered Alick as his commentary in a low voice to Leam.

Leam turned pale: then with an effort she answered coldly, "Why wonder at what you cannot know? It is foolish."

And Alick was comforted, because if she had rebuked she had at the least spoken to him.

The breakfast soon after this came to an end, and in due time the guests were all assembled in the drawing-room, waiting for the departure of the newly-married pair. Here Edgar might have made some amends to the two bridesmaids whom he had neglected with such impartiality of coldness, such an equal division of doubt, but he did not. He still avoided both as if each had offended him, and made them feel that he was displeased and had intentionally overlooked them.

Each girl bore his neglect in a manner characteristic of herself. Adelaide showed nothing, unless indeed it was that her voice was smoother and her speech sharper than usual, while her smiles were more frequent if less real. But then it was heroic in her to speak and smile at all when she was verily in torture. Nothing short of the worship due to the great god Society could have made her control herself so admirably; but Adelaide was a faithful worshiper of the divine life of conventionality, and she had her reward. Leam showed nothing, at least nothing directly overt. Perhaps her demeanor was stiller, her laconism curter, her distaste to uninteresting companionship and current small-talk more profound, than usual; but no one seemed to see the deeper tinge of her ordinary color, and she passed muster, for her creditably. In her heart she thought it all weariness of the flesh and spirit alike, and wished that people would marry without a wedding if they must marry at all.

She had not the slightest idea why she felt so miserable when every one else was so full of the silliest laughter. It never occurred to her that it was because Edgar had not spoken to her; but once she confessed to herself that she wished she was away out of all this, riding through the green lanes, with Major Harrowby riding fast to join her. Even if her chestnut should prance and dance and make her feel uncomfortable about the pommel and the reins, it would be better than this. A heavy meal of meat and wine, and that horrible cake in the middle of the day, were stupid, thought ascetic Leam. She had never felt anything so dreary before. How glad she would be when her father and Josephine went away, and she might go back to Ford House and be alone! As for the evening, she did not know that she would show herself then at all. There was to be a ball, and though it would be pleasant to dance, she felt so dull and wretched now she half thought she would send an excuse. But perhaps Major Harrowby would be more at liberty in the evening than he was now, and would find it possible to dance with her, at least once. He danced so well! Indeed, he was the only partner whom she cared to have, and she hoped therefore that he would dance with her if she came.

And thinking this, she resolved in her own mind that she would come, and unconsciously raised her eyes to Edgar with a look of such intensity, and as it seemed to him such reproach, that it startled him as much as if she had called him by his name and asked him sadly, Why?



CHAPTER XXXIV.

IS THIS LOVE?

It seemed as if the evening was to bring no more satisfaction to the three whom the morning had so greatly disturbed than had that morning itself. Edgar avoided the two girls at the ball as much as he had avoided them at the breakfast, dancing only once with each, and not making even that one dance pleasant. Under cover of brotherly familiarity he teased Adelaide till she had the greatest difficulty in keeping her temper; while he was so preternaturally respectful to Leam, whom he wished he had not been forced to respect at all, that it seemed as if they had met to-night for the first time, and were not quite so cordial as sympathetic strangers would have been.

It was only a quadrille that they were dancing, a stupid, silent, uninteresting set of figures which people go through out of respect for ancient usage, and for which no one cares. Leam would have refused to take part in it at all had any one but Major Harrowby asked her. But he was different from other men, she thought; and it became her to say "Yes" when he said "Will you?" if only because he was the master of the house.

Leam had made considerable progress in her estimate of the proprieties. The unseen teacher who had informed her of late was apparently even more potent than those who had first broken up the fallow ground at Bayswater, and taught her that las cosas de Espana were not the things of the universe, and that there was another life and mode of action besides that taught by mamma.

But when Leam thoroughly understood the master's mood, and thus made it clear to herself that the evening's formality was simply a continuance of the morning's avoidance, after looking at him once with one of those profound looks of hers which made him almost beside himself, she set her head straight, turned her eyes to the floor, and lapsed into a silence as unbroken as his own. She was too proud and shy to attempt to conciliate him, but she wondered why he was so changed to her. And then she wondered, as she had done this morning, why she was so unhappy to-night. Was it because her father had married Josephine Harrowby? Why should that make her sad? She did not think now that her mother was crying in heaven because another woman was in her place; and for herself it made no difference whether there was a step-mother at home or no. She could not be more lonely than she was; and with Josephine at the head of affairs she would have less responsibility. No, it was not that which was making her unhappy; and yet she was almost as miserable to-night as she had been when madame was brought home as papa's wife, and her fancy gave her mamma's beloved face weeping there among the stars—abandoned by all but herself, forsaken even by the saints and the angels.

Everything to-night oppressed her. The lights dazzled her with what seemed to her their hard and cruel shine; the passing dancers radiantly clad and joyous made her giddy and contemptuous; the flower-scents pouring through the room from the plants within and from the gardens without gave her headache; the number of people at the ball—people whom she did not know and who stared at her, people whom she did know and who talked to her—all overwhelmed as well as isolated her. She seemed to belong to no one, now that Edgar had let her slip from his hands so coldly—not even to Mrs. Corfield, who had brought her, nor yet to her faithful friend and guardian Alick, who wandered round and round about her in circles like a dog, doing his best to make her feel befriended and to clear her dear face of some of its sadness. Doing his best too, with characteristic unselfishness, to forget that he loved her if it displeased her, and to convince her that he had only dreamed when he had said those rash words when the lilacs were first budding in the garden at Steel's Corner.

It was quite early in the evening when Edgar danced this uninteresting "square" with Leam, whom then he ceremoniously handed back to Mrs. Corfield, as if this gathering of friends and neighbors in the country had been a formal assemblage of strangers in a town.

"I hope you are not tired with this quadrille," he said as he took her across the room, not looking at her.

"It was dull, but I am not tired," Learn answered, not looking at him.

"I am sorry I was such an uninteresting partner," was his rejoinder, made with mock simplicity.

"A dumb man who does not even talk on his fingers cannot be very amusing," returned Learn with real directness.

"You were dumb too: why did you not talk, if dull, on your fingers?" he asked.

She drew herself up proudly, more like the Leam of Alick than of Edgar. "I do not generally amuse gentlemen," she said.

"Then I am only in the majority?" with that forced smile which was his way when he was most annoyed.

"You have been to-day," answered Leam, quitting his arm as they came up to her sharp-featured chaperon, but looking straight at him as she spoke with those heart-breaking eyes to which, Edgar thought, everything must yield, and he himself at the last.

Not minded, however, to yield at this moment, fighting indeed desperately with himself not to yield at all, Edgar kept away from his sister's step-daughter still more, as if a quarrel had fallen between them; and Adelaide gained in proportion, for suddenly that butterfly, undecided fancy of his seemed to settle on the rector's daughter, to whom he now paid more court than to the whole room beside—court so excessive and so patent that it made the families laugh knowingly, and say among themselves evidently the Hill would soon receive its new mistress, and the rector knew which way things were going when he made that wedding-speech this morning.

Only Adelaide herself was not deceived, but read between the lines and made out the hidden words, which were not flattering to herself. And to her it was manifest that Edgar's attentions, offered with such excited publicity, were not so much to gratify her or to express himself, as to pique Leam Dundas and work off his own unrest.

Meanwhile, Leam, sad and weary, took refuge in the embrasure of a bow-window, where she sat hidden from the room by the heavy curtains which fell before the sidelights, leaving the centre window leading into the garden open and uncurtained. Here she was at rest. She was not obliged to talk. She need not see Edgar always with her enemy, both laughing so merrily—and as it seemed to her so cruelly, so insolently—as they waltzed and danced square dances, looking really as if made one for the other—so handsome as they both were; so well set up, and so thoroughly English.

It made her so unhappy to watch them; for, as she said to herself, Major Harrowby had always been so much her friend, and Adelaide Birkett was so much her enemy, that she felt as if he had deserted her and gone over to the other side. That was all. It was like losing him altogether to see him so much with Adelaide. With any one else she would not have had a pang. He might have danced all the evening, if he had liked, with Susy Fairbairn or Rosy, or any of the strange girls about, but she did not like that he should so entirely abandon her for Adelaide. Wherefore she drew herself away out of sight altogether, and sat behind the curtain looking into the garden and up to the dark, quiet sky.

Presently Alick, who had been searching for her everywhere, spied her out and came up to her. He too was one of those made wretched by the circumstances of the evening. Indeed, he was always wretched, more or less; but he was one of the kind which gets used to its own unhappiness—even reconciled to it if others are happy.

"You are not dancing?" he said to Learn sitting behind the curtain.

"No," said Learn with her old disdain for self-evident propositions. "I am sitting here."

"Don't you care for dancing?" he asked.

He knew that she did, but a certain temperament prefers foolish questions to silence; and Alick Corfield was one who had that temperament.

"Not to-night," she answered, looking into the garden,

"Why not to-night? and when you dance so beautifully too—just as light as a fairy."

"Did you ever see a fairy dance?" was Leam's rejoinder, made quite solemnly.

Alick blushed and shifted his long lean limbs uneasily. He knew that when he said these silly things he should draw down on him Leam's rebuke, but he never could refrain. He seemed impelled somehow to be always foolish and tiresome when with her. "No, I cannot say I have ever seen a fairy," he answered with a nervous little laugh.

"Then how can you say I dance like one?" she asked in perfect good faith of reproach.

"One may imagine," apologized Alick.

"One cannot imagine what does not exist," she answered. "You should not say such foolish things."

"No, you are right, I should not. I do say very foolish things at times. You are right to be angry with me," he said humbly, and writhing.

Leam turned her eyes from him in artistic reprobation of his awkwardness and ungainly homage. She paused a moment: then, as if by an effort, she looked at him straight in the face and kindly. "You are too good to me," she said gently, "and I am too hard on you: it is cruel."

"Don't say that," he cried, in real distress now. "You are perfect in my eyes. Don't scold yourself. I like you to say sharp things to me, and to tell me in your own beautiful way that I am stupid and foolish, if really you trust me and respect me a little under it all. But I should not know you, Leam, if you did not snub me. I should think you were angry with me if you treated me with formal politeness."

He spoke with an honest heart, but an uncomfortable body; and Learn, turning away her eyes once more, said with a heavy sigh—gravely, sorrowfully, tenderly even, but as if impelled by respect for truth to give her verdict as she thought it—"It is true if it is hard: you are often stupid. You are stupid now, twisting yourself about like that and making silly speeches. But I like you, for all that, and I respect you. I would as soon expect the sun to go out as for you to do wrong. But I wish you would keep still and not talk so much nonsense as you do."

"Thank you!" cried the poor fellow fervently, his bare bone accepted as gratefully as if it had been the sweetest fruit that love could bestow. "You give me all I ask, and more than I deserve, if you say that. And it is so kind of you to care whether I am awkward or not."

"I do not see the kindness," returned Learn gravely.

"Do you see those two spooning?" asked one of the Fairbairn girls, pointing out Leam and Alick to Edgar, the curtain being now held back by Leam to show the world that she was there, not caring to look as if hiding away with Alick.

"They look very comfortable, and the lady picturesque," he answered affectedly, but his brows suddenly contracted and his eyes shot together, as they always did when angry. He had been jealous before now of that shambling, awkward, ill-favored and true-hearted Alick, that loyal knight and faithful watchdog whom he despised with such high-hearted contempt; and he was not pleased to see him paying homage to the young queen whom he himself had deserted.

"Poor Alick Corfield!" said Adelaide pityingly. "He has been a very faithful adorer, I must say. I believe that he has been in love with Leam all his life, while she has held him on and off, and made use of him when she wanted him, and deserted him when she did not want him, with the skill of a veteran."

"Do you think Miss Dundas a flirt?" asked Edgar as affectedly as before.

"Certainly I do, but perhaps not more so than most girls of her kind and age," was the quiet answer with its pretence of fairness.

"Including yourself?"

She smiled with unruffled amiability. "I am an exception," she said. "I am neither of her kind nor, thank Goodness! of Tier country; and I have never seen the man I cared to flirt with. I am more particular than most people, and more exclusive. Besides," with the most matter-of-fact air in the world, "I am an old maid by nature and destiny. I am preparing for my metier too steadily to interrupt it by the vulgar amusement of flirting."

"You an old maid!—you! nonsense!" cried Edgar with an odd expression in his eyes. "You will not be an old maid, Adelaide, I would marry you myself rather."

She chose to take his impertinence simply. "Would you?" she asked. "That would be generous!"

"And unpleasant?" he returned in a lower voice.

"To you? chi sa? I should say yes." She spoke quite quietly, as if nothing deeper than the question and answer of the moment lay under this crossing of swords.

"No, not to me," he returned.

"To me, then? I will tell you that when the time comes," she said. "Things are not always what they seem."

"You speak in riddles to-night, fair lady," said Edgar, who honestly did not know what she meant him to infer—whether her present seeming indifference was real, or the deeper feeling which she had so often and for so long allowed him to believe.

"Do I?" She looked into his face serenely, but a little irritatingly. "Then my spoken riddles match your acted ones," she said.

"This is the first time that I have been accused of enigmatic action. Of all men I am the most straightforward, the least dubious."

Edgar said this rather angrily. By that curious law of self-deception which makes cowards boast of their courage and hypocrites of their sincerity, he did really believe himself to be as he said, notably clear in his will and distinct in his action.

"Indeed! I should scarcely endorse that," answered Adelaide. "I have so often known you enigmatic—a riddle of which, it seems to me, the key is lost, or to which indeed there is no key at all—that I have come to look on you as a puzzle never to be made out."

"You mean a puzzle not known to my fair friend Adelaide, which is not quite the same thing as not known to any one," he said satirically, his ill-humor with himself and everything about him overflowing beyond his power to restrain. His knowledge that Miss Birkett was his proper choice, his mad love for Leam—love only on the right hand, fitness, society, family, every other claim on the left—his jealousy of Alick, all irritated him beyond bearing, and made him forget even his good-breeding in his irritation.

"Not known to my friend Edgar himself," was Adelaide's reply, her color rising, ill-humor being contagious.

"Now, Adelaide, you are getting cross," he said.

"No, I am not in the least cross," she answered with her sweetest smile. "I have a clear conscience—no self-reproaches to make me vexed. It is only those who do wrong that lose their tempers. I know nothing better for good-humor than a good conscience."

"What a pretty little sermon! almost as good as one of the Reverend Alexander's, whose sport, by the way, I shall go and spoil."

"I never knew you cruel before," said Adelaide quietly. "Why should you destroy the poor fellow's happiness, as well as Leam's chances, for a mere passing whim? You surely are not going to repeat with the daughter the father's original mistake with the mother?"

She spoke with the utmost contempt that she could manifest. At all events, if Edgar married Leam Dundas, she would have her soul clear. He should never be able to say that he had gone over the edge of the precipice unwarned. She at least would be faithful, and would show him how unworthy his choice was.

"Well, I don't know," he drawled. "Do you think she would have me if I asked her?"

"Edgar!" cried Adelaide reproachfully. "You are untrue to yourself when you speak in that manner to me—I, who am your best friend. You have no one who cares so truly, so unselfishly, for your happiness and honor as I do."

She began with reproach, but she ended with tenderness; and Edgar, who was wax in the hands of a pretty woman, was touched. "Good, dear Adelaide!" he said with fervor and quite naturally, "you are one of the best girls in the world. But I must go and speak to Miss Dundas, I have neglected her so abominably all the evening."

On which, as if to prevent any reply, he turned away, and the next moment was standing by Leam sitting in the window-seat half concealed by the curtain, Alick paying awkward homage as his manner was.

Leam gave the faintest little start, that was more a shiver than a start, as he came up. She turned her tragic eyes to him with dumb reproach; but if she was sorrowful she was not craven, and though she meant him to see that she disapproved of his neglect—which had indeed been too evident to be ignored—she did not want him to think that she was unhappy because of it.

"Are you not dancing, Miss Dundas?" asked Edgar as gravely as if he was putting a bona fide question.

"No," said Leam—thinking to herself, "Even he can ask silly questions."

"Why not? Are you tired?"

"Yes," answered laconic Leam with a little sigh.

"I am afraid you are bored, and that you do not like balls," he said with false sympathy, but real love, sorry to see the weariness of face and spirit which he had not been sorry to cause.

"I am bored, and I do not like balls," she answered, her directness in nowise softened out of regard for Edgar as the giver of the feast or for Alick as her companion.

"Yet you like dancing; so come and shake off your boredom with me," said Edgar with a sudden flush. "They are just beginning to waltz: let me have one turn with you."

"No. Why do you ask me? You do not like to dance with me," said Leam proudly.

"No? Who told you such nonsense—such a falsehood as that?" hotly.

"Yourself," she answered.

Alick shifted his place uneasily. Something in Leam's manner to Edgar struck him with an acute sense of distress, and seemed to tell him all that he had hitherto failed to understand. But he felt indignant with Edgar, even though his neglect, at which Leam had been so evidently pained, might to another man have given hopes. He would rather have known her loving, beloved, hence blessed, than wounded by this man's coldness, by his indifference to what was to him, poor faithful and idealizing Alick, such surpassing and supreme delightfulness.

"I?" cried Edgar, willfully misunderstanding her. "When did I tell you I did not like to dance With you?"

"This evening," said Leam, not looking into his face.

"Oh, there is some mistake here. Come with me now. I will soon convince you that I do not dislike to dance with you," cried Edgar, excited, peremptory, eager.

Her accusation had touched him. It made him resolute to show her that he did not dislike to dance with her—she, the most beautiful girl in the room, the best dancer—she, Leam, that name which meant a love-poem in itself to him.

"Come," he said again, offering his hand, not his arm.

Leam looked at him, meaning to refuse. What did she see in his face that changed hers so wholly? The weariness swept off like clouds from the sky; her mournful eyes brightened into joy; the pretty little smile, which Edgar knew so well, stole round her mouth, timid, fluttering, evanescent; and she laid her hand in his with an indescribable expression of relief, like one suddenly free from pain.

"I am glad you do not dislike to dance with me," she said with a happy sigh; and the next-moment his arm was round her waist and her light form borne along into the dance.

As they went off Alick passed through the open window and stole away into the garden. The pain lost by Leam had been found by him, and it lay heavy on his soul.

Dancing was Leam's greatest pleasure and her best accomplishment. She had inherited the national passion as well as the grace bequeathed by her mother; and even Adelaide was forced to acknowledge that no one in or about North Aston came near to her in this. Edgar, too, danced in the best style of the best kind of English gentleman; and it was really something for the rest to look at when these two "took the floor." But never had Leam felt during a dance as she felt now—never had she shone to such perfection. She was as if taken up into another world, where she was some one else and not herself—some one radiant, without care, light-hearted, and without memories. The rapid movement intoxicated her; the lights no longer dazzled but excited her; she was not oppressed by the many eyes that looked at her: she was elated, made proud and glad, for was she not dancing as none of them could, and with Edgar? Edgar, too, was not the Edgar of the dull, prosaic every day, but was changed like all the rest. He was like some prince of old-time romance, some knight of chivalry, some hero of history, and the poetry, the passion, that seemed to inspire her with more than ordinary life were reflected in him.

"My darling!" Edgar said below his breath, pressing her to him warmly, "do you think now that it is no pleasure for me to dance with you?"

Leam, startled at the word, the tone, looked up half scared into his face; then—she herself scarcely knowing what she did, but instinctively answering what she saw—Edgar felt her little hand on his shoulder lie there heavily, her figure yield to his arm as it had never yielded before, while her head drooped like a flower faint with the heavy sunlight till it nearly touched his breast.

"My Leam!" he whimpered again, "I love you! I love you! my Leam, my love!"

Leam sighed dreamily. "This is like death—and heaven," she murmured as he stopped by the window where she had sat with Alick, and carried her half fainting into the garden.

The cool night-air revived her, and she opened her eyes, wondering where she was and what had happened. Even now she could not take it all in, but she knew that something had come to her of which she was ashamed, and that she must not stay here alone with Major Harrowby. With an attempt at her old pride she tried to draw herself away, not looking at him, feeling abashed and humbled. "I will dance no more," she said faltering.

Edgar, who had her hands clasped in his, drew her gently to him again. He held her hands up to his breast, both enclosed in one of his, his other arm round her waist. "Will you leave me, my Leam?" he said in his sweetest tones. "Do you not love me well enough to stay with me?"

"I must go in," said Leam faintly.

"Before you have said that you love me? Will you not say so, Leam? I love you, my darling: no man ever loved as I love you, my sweetest Leam, my angel, my delight! Tell me that you love me—tell me, darling."

"Is this love?" said Leam turning away her head, her whole being penetrated with a kind of blissful agony, where she did not know which was strongest, the pleasure or the pain: perhaps it was the pain.

"Kiss me, and then I shall know," whispered Edgar.

"No," said Leam trembling and hiding her face, "I must not do that."

"Ah, you do not love me, and we shall never meet again," he cried in the disappointed lover's well-feigned tone of despair, dropping her hands and half turning away.

Leam stood for a moment as if she hesitated: then, with an indescribable air of self-surrender, she went closer to him and laid her hands very gently on his shoulders. "I will kiss you rather than make you unhappy," she said in a soft voice, lifting up her face.

"My angel! now I know that you love me!" cried Edgar triumphantly, holding her strained to his heart as he pressed her bashful, tremulous little lips, Leam feeling that she had proved her love by the sacrifice of all that she held most dear—by the sacrifice of herself and modesty.

The first kiss for a girl whose love was as strong as fire and as pure—for a girl who had not a weak or sensual fibre in her nature—yes, it was a sacrifice the like of which men do not understand; especially Edgar, loose-lipped, amorous Edgar, with his easy loves, his wide experience, his consequent loss of sensitive perception, and his holding all women as pretty much alike—creatures rather than individuals, and created for man's pleasure: especially he did not understand how much this little action, which was one so entirely of course to him, cost her—how great the gift, how eloquent of what it included. But Leam, burning with shame, thought that she should never bear to see the sun again; and yet it was for Edgar, and for Edgar she would have done even more than this. "Have you enjoyed yourself, Leam, my dear?" asked Mrs. Corfield as they drove home in the quiet moonlight.

"No—yes," answered Leam, who wished that the little woman would not talk to her. How could she say that this fiery unrest was enjoyment? The word was so trivial. But indeed what word could compass the strange passion that possessed her?—that mingled bliss and anguish of young love newly born, lately confessed.

"Have you enjoyed yourself, Alick, my boy?" asked the little woman again.

She had had no love-affairs to disturb her with pleasure or with pain, and she was full of the mechanism of the evening, and wanted to talk it over.

"I never enjoy that kind of thing," answered Alick in a voice that was full of tears.

He had witnessed the scene in the garden, and his heart was sore, both for himself and for her.

"Oh," said Mrs. Corfield briskly, "it was a pretty sight, and I am sure every one was happy."

Had she seen Adelaide Birkett sitting before her glass, her face covered in her hands and shedding hot tears like rain—had she seen Leam standing by her open window, letting the cool night-air blow upon her, too feverish and disturbed to rest—she would not have said that every one had been happy at the ball given in honor of Josephine's marriage. Perhaps of all those immediately concerned Edgar was the most content, for now that he had committed himself he had done with the torment of indecision, and by putting himself finally under the control of circumstances he seemed to have thrown off the strain of responsibility.

So the night passed, and the next day came, bringing toil to the weary, joy to the happy, wealth to the rich, and sorrow to the sad—bringing Edgar to Leam, and Leam to the deeper consciousness and confession of her love.



CHAPTER XXXV.

DUNASTON CASTLE.

It was not a bad idea to continue the wedding-gayeties of yesterday evening by a picnic to-day. People are always more or less out of sorts after a ball, and a day spent in the open air soothes the feverish and braces up the limp. Wherefore the rectory gave a picnic to blow away the lingering vapors of last evening at the Hill, and the place of meeting chosen was Dunaston Castle.

Leam had of course been invited with the rest. Had she been a different person, and more in accord with the general sentiments of the neighborhood than she was, she would have been made the "first young lady" for the moment, because of her connection with the bridegroom; but being what she was—Leam—she was merely included with the rest, and by Adelaide with reluctance.

The day wore on bright and clear. Already it was past two o'clock, but Leam, irresolute what to do, sat in the garden under the shadow of the cut-leaved hornbeam, from the branches of which Pepita used to swing in her hammock, smoking cigarettes and striking her zambomba. One part of her longed to go, the other held her back. The one was the strength of love, the other its humiliation. How could she meet Major Harrowby again? she thought. She had kissed him of her own free will last night—she, Leam, had kissed him; she had leant against his breast, he with his arms round her; she had said the sacred and irrevocable words, "I love you." How could she meet him again without sinking to the earth for shame? What a strange kind of shame!—not sin and yet not innocence; something to blush for, but not to repent of; something not to be repeated, but not to wish undone. And what a perplexed state of feeling!—longing, fearing to see Edgar again—praying of each moment as it came that he should not appear; grieved each moment as it passed that he was still absent.

So she sat in all the turmoil of her new birth, distracted between love and shame, and not knowing which was stronger—feeling as if in a dream, but, every now and then waking to think of Dunaston, and should she go or stay away—when, just as little Fina came running to her, ready dressed and loud in her insistence that they should set off at once, the lodge-gates swung back and Edgar Harrowby rode up to the door. When she saw him dismount and walk across the lawn to where she sat—though it was what she had been waiting for all the day, hoping if fearing—yet now that it had come and he was really there, she wished that the earth would open at her feet, or that she could flee away and hide herself like a scared hind in her cover. But she could not have risen had there been even any place of refuge for her. Breathing with difficulty, and seeing nothing that was before her, she was chained to her seat by a feeling that was half terror, half joy—a feeling utterly inexplicable in its total destruction of her self-possession to reticent Leam, who hitherto had held herself in such proud restraint, and had kept her soul from all influence from the world without. And now the citadel was stormed and she was conquered and captive.

Meanwhile, the handsome officer walked over the sunny lawn with his military step, well set up, lordly, smiling. He liked to see this bashfulness in Leam. It was the sign of submission in one so unsubdued that flattered his pride as men like it to be flattered. Now indeed he was the man and the superior, and this trembling little girl, blushing and downcast, was no longer his virgin nymph, self-contained and unconfessed, but the slave of his love, like so many others before her.

The child ran up to him joyfully. She and Edgar were "great friends," as he used to say. He lifted her in his arms, placed her on his shoulder like a big blue forget-me-not gathered from the grass, then deposited her by Leam on the seat beneath the cut-leaved hornbeam. And Leam was grateful that the little one was there. It was somehow a protection against herself.

"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.

Edgar, towering above her, always smiling—the child playing with his beard as she stood on the seat breast-high with himself—still holding that small burning hand in his, Leam not resisting, then said in Spanish, "My soul! have pity on me."

The old familiar words thrilled the girl like a voice from the dead. Had anything been wanting to rivet the chains in which love had bound her, it was these words, "My soul," spoken by her lover in her mother's tongue. She answered more freely, almost eagerly, in the same language, "Would you be sorry?" and Edgar, whose Castilian was by no means unlimited, replied in English "Yes" at a venture, and sat down on the seat by her.

"Fina, go and ask Jones to tell you pretty stories about the bay," he then said to the child.

"And may I ride him?" cried Fina, sure to take the ell when given the inch.

"Ask Jones," he answered good-naturedly "I dare say he will put you up."

Whereupon Fina ran off to the groom, whom she teased for the next half hour to give her a ride on the bay.

But Jones was obdurate. The major's horse was not only three sticks and a barrel, like some on 'em, he said, and too full of his beans for a little miss like her to mount. The controversy, however, kept the child engaged if it made her angry; and thus Edgar was left free to break down more of that trembling defence-work within which Leam was doing her best to entrench herself.

"Do you know, Leam, you have not looked at me once since I came?" he said, after they had been sitting for some time, he talking on indifferent subjects to give her time to recover herself, and she replying in monosyllables, or perhaps not replying at all.

She was silent, but her eyes drooped a little lower.

"Will you not look at me, darling?" he asked in that mellifluous voice of his which no woman had yet been found strong enough to withstand.

"Why?" said Leam, vainly trying after her old self, and doing her best to speak as if the subject was indifferent to her, but failing, as how should she not? The loud beatings of her heart rang in her ears, her lips quivered so that she could not steady them, and her eyes were so full of shame, their lids so weighted with consciousness, that truly she could not have raised them had she tried.

"Why? Look at me and I will tell you," was his smiling answer.

She turned to him, and, as once before, bound by the spell of loving obedience, lifted her heavy lids and raised her dewy eyes slowly till they came to the level of his. Then they met his, and Edgar laughed—a happy and abounding laugh which somehow Leam did not resent, though in general a laugh the cause of which she did not fully understand was an offence to her or a stupidity.