Part 38 (1/2)
Allandale were not my own parents--that I was their adopted daughter.”
”Indeed! I am surprised!” exclaimed Mr. Bryant.
”I did not discover the fact, however,” the young girl pursued, ”until the night after my mother's burial.”
And then she proceeded to relate all that had occurred in connection with the box of letters which Mrs. Allandale had desired, when dying, to be burned.
She told of her subsequent examination of them, especially of those signed ”Belle,” and the story which they had revealed. How the young girl had left her home and parents to flee to Italy with the man whom she loved; how she had discovered, later, that her supposed marriage with him was a sham; how, soon after the birth of her child--Edith--her husband had deserted her for another, leaving her alone and unprotected in that strange land.
She related how, in her despair, her mother had resolved to die, and pleaded with her friend, Mrs. Allandale, to take her little one and rear it as her own, thus securing to her a happy home and life without the possibility of ever discovering the stigma attached to her birth or the cruel fate of her mother.
Royal Bryant listened to the pathetic tale without once interrupting the fair narrator, and Edith's heart sank more and more in her bosom as she proceeded, and feared that she was so shocking him by these revelations that his affection for her would die with this expose of her secret.
But he still held her hand clasped in his; and when, at the conclusion of her story, she gently tried to withdraw it, his fingers closed more firmly over hers, when, bending still nearer to her, he questioned, in fond, eager tones:
”Was this the reason of your leaving New York so abruptly last December?”
”Yes.”
”Was it because you loved me and could not trust yourself to meet me day after day without betraying the fact when you feared that the knowledge of your birth might become a barrier between us? Tell me, my darling, truly!”
”Yes,” Edith confessed; ”but how could you guess it--how could you read my heart so like an open book?”
The young man laughed out musically, and there was a ring of joyous triumph in the sound.
”'Tis said that 'love is blind,'” he said, ”but mine was keen to read the signs I coveted, and I believed, even when you were in your deepest trouble, that you were beginning to love me, and that I should eventually win you.”
”Why! did you begin to--” Edith began, and then checked herself in sudden confusion.
”Did I begin to plan to win you so far back as that?” he laughingly exclaimed, and putting his own interpretation upon her half-finished sentence. ”My darling, I began to love you and to wish for you even before your first day's work was done for me.”
CHAPTER XXV.
A NEW CHARACTER IS INTRODUCED.
”And now, love,” the eager wooer continued, as he dropped the hand he had been holding and drew the happy girl into his arms, ”you will give yourself to me--you will give me the right to stand between you and all future care or trouble?”
”Then you do not mind what I have just told you?” questioned Edith, timidly.
”Not in the least, only so far as it occasions you unhappiness or anxiety,” unhesitatingly replied the young man. ”You are unscathed by it--the sin and the shame belong alone to the man who ruined the life of your mother. You are my pearl, my fair lily, unspotted by any blight, and I should be unworthy of you, indeed, did I allow what you have told me to prejudice me in the slightest degree. Now tell me, Edith, that henceforth there shall be no barrier between us--tell me that you love me.”
”How can I help it?” she murmured, as with a flood of ineffable joy sweeping into her soul she dropped her bright head upon his breast and yielded to his embrace.
”And will you be my wife?”
”Oh, if it is possible--if I can be,” she faltered. ”Are you sure that I am not already bound?”
”Leave all that to me--do not fret, even for one second, over it,” her lover tenderly returned. Then he added, more lightly: ”I am so sure, sweetheart, that to-morrow I shall bring you a letter which will proclaim to all whom it may concern, that henceforth you belong to me.”