At this moment little Fina came jumping into the room. She had in her
hand a rose-colored scarf that had once been poor madame's, and which
the nurse, turning out an old box of hers, had found and given to the
child.
After she had kissed Edgar, played with his _breloques_, looked at the
works of his watch, plaited his beard into three strings, and done all
that she generally did in the way of welcome, she shook out the gauze
scarf over her dress.
"This was mamma's--my own mamma's," she said. "Leam will never tell me
about mamma: you tell me, Major Harrowby," coaxingly.
"I cannot: I did not know her," said Edgar in an altered voice, while
Leam looked as if her judgment had come, but bore it as she had borne
all the rest, resolutely.
"I want to hear about mamma, and who killed her," pouted Fina.
"Hush, Fina," said Leam in an agony: "you must not talk."
"You always say that, Leam, when I want to hear about mamma," was the
child's petulant reply.
"Go away now, dear little Fina," said Edgar, who felt all that Leam must
feel at these inopportune words, and who, moreover, weak as he was in
this direction, was longing for one last caress.
"I will go and send her nurse," said Leam, half staggering to the door.
Had anything been wanting to show her the impossibility of their
marriage, this incident of Fina's random but incisive words would have
been enough.
"Leam! not one word more?" he asked as he stood against the door,
holding the handle in his hand.
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