Edna"s face grew radiant.
"Oh! I am glad to hear it! Poor little Huldah needed a friend, and she could not possibly have fallen into kinder hands than Mr.
Murray"s."
"There certainly exists some diversity of opinion on that subject.
He is rather too grim a guardian, I fancy, for one so young as Huldah Reed."
"Is Mr. Hammond teaching Huldah?"
"Oh! no. Herein consists the wonder. Murray himself hears her lessons, so Estelle told my sister. A propos! rumor announces the approaching marriage of the cousins. My sister informed me that it would take place early in the spring."
"Do you allude to Mr. Murray and Miss Harding?"
"I do. They will go to Europe immediately after their marriage."
Gordon looked searchingly at his companion, but saw only a faint, incredulous smile cross her calm face.
"My sister is Estelle"s confidante, so you see I speak advisedly. I know that her trousseau has been ordered from Paris."
Edna"s fingers closed spasmodically over each other, but she laughed as she answered:
"How then dare you betray her confidence? Mr. Leigh, how long will you remain in New York?"
"I shall leave to-morrow, unless I have reason to hope that a longer visit will give you pleasure. I came here solely to see you."
He attempted to unclasp her fingers, but she shook off his hand and said quickly:
"I know what you are about to say, and I would rather not hear what would only distress us both. If you wish me to respect you, Mr.
Leigh, you must never again allude to a subject which I showed you last night was exceedingly painful to me. While I value you as a friend, and am rejoiced to see you again, I should regret to learn that you had prolonged your stay even one hour on my account."
"You are ungrateful, Edna! And I begin to realize that you are utterly heartless."
"If I am, at least I have never trifled with or deceived you, Mr.
Leigh."
"You have no heart, or you certainly could not so coldly reject an affection which any other woman would proudly accept. A few years hence, when your insane ambition is fully satiated, and your beauty fades, and your writings pall upon public taste, and your smooth- tongued flatterers forsake your shrine to bow before that of some new and more popular idol, then Edna, you will rue your folly."
She rose and answered quietly:
"The future may contain only disappointments for me, but however lonely, however sad my lot may prove, I think I shall never fall so low as to regret not having married a man whom I find it impossible to love. The sooner this interview ends the longer our friendship will last. My time is not now my own, and as my duties claim me in the school-room, I must bid you good-bye."
"Edna, if you send me away from you now, you shall never look upon my face again in this world!"
Mournfully her tearful eyes sought his, but her voice was low and steady as she put out both hands, and said solemnly:
"Farewell, dear friend. G.o.d grant that when next we see each other"s faces they may be overshadowed by the shining, white plumes of our angel wings, in that city of G.o.d, "where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest." "Never again in this world,"
ah! such words are dreary and funereal as the dull fall of clods on a coffin-lid; but so be it. Thank G.o.d! time brings us all to one inevitable tryst before the great white throne."
He took the hands, bowed his forehead upon them and groaned; then drew them to his lips and left her.
With a slow, weary step she turned and went up to her room and read Mr. Hammond"s letter. It was long and kind, full of affection and wise counsel, but contained no allusion to Mr. Murray.
As she refolded it she saw a slip of paper which had fallen unnoticed on the carpet, and picking it up she read these words:
"It grieves me to have to tell you that, after all, I fear St. Elmo will marry Estelle Harding. He does not love her, she can not influence him to redeem himself; his future looks hopeless indeed.
Edna, my child! what have you done! Oh! what have you done!"
Her heart gave a sudden, wild bound, then a spasm seemed to seize it, and presently the fluttering ceased, her pulses stopped, and a chill darkness fell upon her.
Her head sank heavily on her chest, and when she recovered, her memory she felt an intolerable sensation of suffocation, and a sharp pain that seemed to stab the heart, whose throbs were slow and feeble.
She raised the window and leaned out panting for breath, and the freezing wind powdered her face with fine snowflakes, and sprinkled its fairy flower-crystals over her hair.
The outer world was chill and dreary, the leafless limbs of the trees in the park looked ghostly and weird against the dense dun clouds which seemed to stretch like a smoke mantle just above the sea of roofs; and, dimly seen through the white mist, Brooklyn"s heights and Staten"s hills were huge outlines monstrous as Echidna.
Physical pain blanched Edna"s lips, and she pressed her hand repeatedly to her heart, wondering what caused those keen pangs. At last, when the bodily suffering pa.s.sed away, and she sat down exhausted, her mind reverted to the sentence in Mr. Hammond"s letter.
She knew the words were not lightly written, and that his reproachful appeal had broken from the depths of his aching heart, and was intended to rouse her to some action.
"I can do nothing, say nothing! Must sit still and wait patiently-- prayerfully. To-day, if I could put out my hand and touch Mr.
Murray, and bind him to me for ever, I would not. No, no! Not a finger must I lift, even between him and Estelle! But he will not marry her! I know--I feel that he will not. Though I never look upon his face again, he belongs to me! He is mine, and no other woman can take him from me."
A strange, mysterious, shadowy smile settled on her pallid features, and faintly and dreamily she repeated:
"And yet I know past all doubting, truly--A knowledge greater than grief can dim--I know as he loved, he will love me duly, Yea, better, e"en better than I love him. And as I walk by the vast, calm river, The awful river so dread to see, I say, "Thy breadth and thy depth for ever Are bridged by his thoughts that cross to me.""
Her lashes drooped, her head fell back against the top of the chair, and she lost all her woes until Felix"s voice roused her, and she saw the frightened boy standing at her side, shaking her hand and calling piteously upon her.
"Oh! I thought you were dead! You looked so white and felt so cold.
Are you very sick? Shall I go for mamma?"
For a moment she looked in his face with a perplexed, bewildered expression, then made an effort to rise.
"I suppose that I must have fainted, for I had a terrible pain here, and--" She laid her hand over her heart.
"Felix, let us go down-stairs. I think if your mother would give me some wine, it might strengthen me."
Notwithstanding the snow, Mrs. Andrews had gone out; but Felix had the wine brought to the school-room, and after a little while the blood showed itself shyly in the governess"s white lips, and she took the boy"s Latin book and heard him recite his lesson.
The day appeared wearily long, but she omitted none of the appointed tasks, and it was nearly nine o"clock before Felix fell asleep that night. Softly unclasping his thin fingers which clung to her hand, she went up to her own room, feeling the full force of those mournful words in Eugenie de Guerin"s Journal:
"It goes on in the soul. No one is aware of what I feel; no one suffers from it. I only pour out my heart before G.o.d--and here. Oh!
to-day what efforts I make to shake off this profitless sadness-- this sadness without tears--arid, bruising the heart like a hammer!"
There was no recurrence of the physical agony; and after two days the feeling of prostration pa.s.sed away, and only the memory of the attack remained.
The idea of lionizing her children"s governess, and introducing her to soi-disant "fashionable society," had taken possession of Mrs.
Andrews"s mind, and she was quite as much delighted with her patronizing scheme as a child would have been with a new hobby- horse. Dreams at which even Macaenas might have laughed floated through her busy brain, and filled her kind heart with generous antic.i.p.ations. On Thursday she informed Edna that she desired her presence at dinner, and urged her request with such pertinacious earnestness that no alternative remained but acquiescence, and reluctantly the governess prepared to meet a formidable party of strangers.