said Mr. Dundas with a dash of his old weak petulance, angry with
circumstance and unable to dominate it--the weak petulance which had
made Pepita despise him so heartily, and had winged so many of her
shafts.

"Time and patience," said madame with her grand air of noble
cheerfulness. But she had just a moment's paroxysm of dismay as she
looked through the coming years, and thought of life shared between
Leam's untamable hate and her husband's unmanly peevishness. For that
instant it seemed to her that she had bought her personal ease and
security at a high price.

As Leam went up stairs the door of her stepmother's room was standing
open. The maid had unpacked the boxes most in request, and was now at
tea in the servants' hall, telling of her adventures in Paris, where
master and mistress had spent the honeymoon, and in her own way the
heroine of the hour, like her betters in the parlor. The world seemed
all wrong everywhere, life a cheat and love a torture, to Leam, as she
stood within the open door, looking at the room which had been hers
and her mother's, now transformed and appropriated to this stranger,
She did not understand how papa could have done it. The room in which
mamma had lived, the room in which she had died, the window from
which she used to look, the very mirror that used to reflect back her
beautiful and beloved face--ah, if it could only have kept what it
reflected!--and papa to have given all this away to another woman!
Poor mamma! no wonder she was unhappy. What could she, Leam, do to
prevent all this wickedness if the blessed ones were idle and would
not help her?

Her eyes fell on a bottle placed on the console where madame's night