Part 3 (2/2)
”No I ain't neither,” returned Edith, the tears starting in her flas.h.i.+ng black eyes.
”s.p.u.n.ky,” was the young man's next remark, as he advanced a step or two toward her. ”But don't let's quarrel, little lady. You've come down to entertain me, I dare say; and now tell me who you are.”
His manner at once disarmed the impulsive Edith of all prejudice, and she replied:
”I told you I was Edith Hastings, Mrs. Atherton's waiting maid.”
”Waiting maid!” and Arthur St. Claire took a step or two backwards as he said: ”Why are you in here? This is not your place.”
Edith sprang to her feet. She could not misunderstand the feeling with which he regarded her, and with an air of insulted dignity worthy of Grace herself, she exclaimed,
”Oh, how I hate you, Arthur St. Claire! At first I thought you might be good, like Squire Harrington; but you ain't. I can't bear you. Ugh!”
”Squire Harrington? Does he live near here?” and the face which at the sight of her anger had dimpled all over with smiles, turned white as Arthur St. Claire asked this question, to which Edith replied:
”Yes; he's blind, and he lives up at Collingwood. You can see its tower now,” and she pointed across the fields.
But Arthur did not heed her, and continued to ply her with questions concerning Mr. Harrington, asking if he had formerly lived near Geneva, in western New York, if he had a crazy father, and if he ever came to Brier Hill.
Edith's negative answer to this last query seemed to satisfy him, and when, mistaking his eagerness for a desire to see her divinity, Edith patronizingly informed him that he might go with her some time to Collingwood, he answered her evasively, asking if Richard recognized voices, as most blind people did.
Edith could not tell, but she presumed he did, for he was the smartest man that ever lived; and in her enthusiastic praises she waxed so eloquent, using, withal, so good language, that Arthur forgot she was a waiting maid, and insensibly began to entertain a feeling of respect for the sprightly child, whose dark face sparkled and flashed with her excitement. She WAS a curious specimen, he acknowledged, and he began adroitly to sound the depths of her intellect. Edith took the cue at once, and not wis.h.i.+ng to be in the background, asked him, as she had at first intended doing, if he'd read the last new novel.
Without in the least comprehending WHAT novel she meant, Arthur promptly replied that he had.
”How did you like it?” she continued, adjusting her crimson scarf as she had seen Mrs. Atherton do under similar circ.u.mstances.
”Very much indeed,” returned the young man with imperturbable gravity, but when with a toss of her head she asked; ”Didn't you think there was too much 'PHYSICS in it?” he went off into peals of laughter so loud and long that they brought old Rachel to the door to see if ”he was done gone crazy or what.”
Taking advantage of her presence, the crest-fallen Edith crept disconsolately up the stairs, feeling that she had made a most ridiculous mistake, and wondering what the word COULD be that sounded so much like 'PHYSICS, and yet wasn't that at all. She know she had made herself ridiculous, and was indulging in a fit of crying when Mrs. Atherton returned, delighted to meet her young cousin, in whom she felt a pardonable pride.
”You must have been very lonely,” she said, beginning to apologize for her absence.
”Never was less so in my life,” he replied. ”Why, I've been splendidly entertained by a little black princess, who called herself your waiting maid, and discoursed most eloquently of METAPHYSICS and all that.”
”Edith, of course,” said Grace. ”It's just, like her. Imitated me in every thing, I dare say.”
”Rather excelled you, I think, in putting on the fine lady,”
returned the teasing Arthur, who saw at once that Edith Hastings was his fair cousin's sensitive point.
”What else did she say?” asked Grace, but Arthur generously refrained from repeating the particulars of his interview with the little girl who, as the days went by, interested him so much that he forgot his Virginia pride, and greatly to Mrs. Atherton's surprise, indulged with her in more than one playful romp, teasingly calling her his little ”Metaphysics,” and asking if she hated him still.
She did not. Next to Richard and Marie, she liked him better than any one she had ever seen, and she was enjoying his society so much when a most unlucky occurrence suddenly brought her happiness to an end, and afforded Grace an excuse for doing what she had latterly frequently desired to do, viz. that of sending the little girl back to the Asylum from which she had taken her.
Owing to the indisposition of the chambermaid, Edith was one day sent with water to Mr. St. Claire's room. Arthur was absent, but on the table his writing desk lay open, and Edith's inquisitive eyes were not long in spying a handsome golden locket, left there evidently by mistake. Two or three times she had detected him looking at this picture, and with an eager curiosity to see it also, she took the locket in her hand, and going to the window, touched the spring.
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