"Ah, but you must obey me now--do as I tell you in everything," he said with perfect seriousness of mien and accent. "You have given yourself to me now, and if I ask you to kiss me you must, just as readily as Fina, and let me caress and pet you as much as I like." "Must I? but I do not like it," said Leam simply. He laughed outright, and--Jones not looking--took her hand and carried it to his lips. "Is this unpleasant?" he asked, looking up from under his eyebrows. Leam blushed, hesitated, trembled. "No," she then said in a low voice, "not from you." On which he kissed it again, and Leam had no wish to retract her confession. "Now go and make ready to come to the castle," he said after a moment's pause. "I told you before that you must obey me, now that you have promised to be my wife. Command is the husband's privilege, Leam, and obedience the wife's happiness: don't you know? So come, darling! They were all to assemble at two," looking at his watch, "and here we are close on three! You do not wish not to go now, my pet?" "No," said Leam, with her happy little fleeting smile: "I am glad to go. I shall be with you, and you wish it." "What an exquisite little creature! In a week she will come to my hand like a tame bird," was Edgar's thought as he watched her slender, graceful figure slowly crossing the lawn with that undulating step of her mother's nation. "In a week's time I shall have tamed her," he repeated with a difference; and he felt glad that he had bespoken Leam Dundas betimes, and that fate and fortune had made him her prospective proprietor. "She will make me happy," he said as his last thought: he forgot to add either assurance or hope that he should make her the same. That is not generally part of a man's matrimonial calculations.