Part 17 (1/2)

”Hi! What a while you've been.”

”What the devil brings you here?” said Barron.

”To find you, of course,” said the man sourly. ”Thought you'd be there.”

Barron looked quickly toward Sir Mark's house, turned, and said sharply:

”What is it?”

”Jump in, and I'll tell you,” whispered the man. ”Getting hot.”

Barron jumped into the cab, which was rapidly driven off after instructions had been given through the trap to the driver, and the next minute it was out of sight.

Meanwhile, Edie had stood listening till she heard the hall door closed, and then turned to where her cousin was gazing thoughtfully at the window, not having moved since Barron left the room.

”Listening to his beloved footsteps, Myra?” said Edie sarcastically.

Myra turned upon her with her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, but a smile came upon her lips, and she said:

”Well, Edie, am I to congratulate you, too?”

”What about?” flashed out the girl, bitterly mortified by the position in which she had been placed. ”Being made a laughing stock for you?”

”What do you mean, dear?” said Myra, startled by the girl's angry way; but there was no answer, and, full of eagerness now, Myra caught her hands. ”Mr Barron said just now that Mr Stratton came to propose for you.”

”For me?” cried Edith bitterly. ”Absurd!”

”But I always thought he was so attentive to you, dear. I always felt that you were encouraging him.”

”Oh, how can people be so stupidly blind!” cried Edie, s.n.a.t.c.hing herself away. ”It is ridiculous.”

”But, Edie, he was always with you. When he came here, or we met him and his friend at auntie's--”

”Leave his friend alone, please,” raged the girl. Then, trembling at her sudden outburst, she continued seriously:

”Always with me! Of course he was: to sit and pour into my ears praises of you; to talk about your playing and singing, and ask my opinion of this and that which you had said and done, till I was sick of the man.

Do you hear? Sick of him!”

A mist began to form before Myra's eyes, gradually shutting her in as she sank back in her chair, till all around was darkness, and she could not see the unwonted excitement of her cousin, who, with her fingers tightly enlaced, kept on moving from place to place, and talking rapidly.

But there was a bright light beginning to flash out in Myra's inner consciousness, and growing moment by moment, till the maiden calm within her breast was agitated by the first breathings--the forerunners of a tempest--and she saw little thoughts of the past, which she had crushed out at once as silly girlish fancies, rising again, and taking solid shape. Looks that had more than once startled her and set her thinking, but suppressed at once as follies, now coming back to be illumined by this wondrous light, till, in the full awakening that had come, she grasped the sides of the chair and began to tremble, as Edie's voice came out from beyond the darkness, in which externals were shrouded, the essence of all coming home to her in one terrible reproach, as she told herself that she had been blind, and that the awakening to the truth had come too late.

”How could you--how could you!” cried Edie in a low voice, full of the emotion which stirred her. ”You thought I loved Malcolm? O Myry, as if I should have kept it from you if I had. Like him? Yes, always as the dearest, best fellow I ever met. I didn't mean it, dear. I never was sick of him; but he used to make me angry, because I felt that he almost wors.h.i.+pped you, and was making me a stepping-stone to get nearer. Well, why don't you ask me why I did not speak?”

There was no reply, and Edie went on as if she had been answered.

”Of course I could not say a word. One day I felt sure that he loved you, and would confide in me; the next time we met he was so quiet and strange that I told myself it was all fancy, and that I should be a silly, match-making creature if I said a word. Besides, how could I?

What would uncle, who has been so good to me, have thought if I had seemed to encourage it? And you, all the time, like a horrid, cold, marble statue at an exhibition, with no more heart or care, or else you would have seen.”

Edie relieved her feelings by unlacing her fingers, taking out her handkerchief from her pocket and beginning to tear it.