Part 9 (2/2)
Standing back a little further, so as to escape observation, the young man waited till Grace Atherton came near.
”Here you are,” she said, ”poring over a book as usual. I should suppose you'd had enough of that to do in reading to Mr.
Harrington--German Philosophy, too! Will wonders never cease?
Arthur was right, I declare, when he dubbed you Metaphysics!”
”Edith Hastings!” The young man said it beneath his breath, while he involuntarily made a motion forward.
”Can it be possible, and yet now that I know it, I see the little black-eyed elf in every feature. Well may the blind man be proud of his protege. She might grace the saloons of Versailles, and rival the Empress herself!”
Thus far he had soliloquised, when something Grace was saying caught his ear and chained his attention at once.
”Oh, Edith,” she began, ”you don't know what you lost by being over squeamish. Such a perfect jewel-box of a room, with the tiniest single bed of solid mahogany! Isn't it queer that Arthur should have locked it up, and isn't it fortunate for us that Mrs.
Johnson found that rusty old key which must have originally belonged to the door of the Den, as she says he calls it?”
Anxiously the young man awaited Edith's answer, his face aglow with indignation and his eyes flas.h.i.+ng with anger.
”Fortunate for YOU, perhaps,” returned Edith, tying on her riding- hat, ”but I wouldn't have gone in for anything.”
”Why not?” asked Grace, walking into the hall.
”Because,” said Edith, ”Mr. St. Claire evidently did not wish any one to go in, and I think Mrs. Johnson was wrong in opening the door.”
”What a little Puritan it is!” returned Grace, playfully caressing the rosy cheeks of Edith, who had now joined her in the hall.
”Arthur never will know, for I certainly shall not tell either him or any one, and I gave Mrs. Johnson some very wholesome advice upon that subject. There she is now in the back-yard. If you like, we'll go round and give her a double charge.”
The young man saw them as they turned the corner of the building, and gliding from his post, he hurried up the stairs and entering the Den, locked the door, and throwing himself upon the sofa, groaned aloud, while the drops of perspiration oozed out upon his forehead, and stood thickly about his lips. Then his mood changed, and pacing the floor he uttered invectives against the meddlesome Mrs. Johnson, who, by this one act, had proved that she could not be trusted. Consequently SHE must not remain longer at Gra.s.sy Spring, and while in the yard below Mrs. Johnson was promising Grace ”to be as still as the dead,” Arthur St. Claire was planning her dismissal. This done, and his future course decided upon, the indignant young man felt better, and began again to think of Edith Hastings, whom he admired for her honorable conduct in refusing to enter a place where she had reason to think she was not wanted.
”n.o.ble, high-principled girl,” he said. ”I'm glad I told Mr.
Harrington what I did before seeing her. Otherwise he might have suspected that her beauty had something to do with my offer, and so be jealous lest I had designs upon his singing-bird, as he called her. But alas, neither beauty, nor grace, nor purity can now avail with me, miserable wretch that I am,” and again that piteous moan, as of a soul punished before its time, was heard in the silent room.
But hark, what sound is that, which, stealing through the iron- latticed windows, drowns the echo of that moan, and makes the young man listen? It is Edith Hastings singing one of her wild songs, and the full rich melody of her wonderful voice falls upon his ear, Arthur St. Claire bows his head upon his hands and weeps, for the music carries him back to the long ago when he had no terrible secret haunting every hour, but was as light-hearted as the maiden whom, as she gallops away on her swift-footed Arabian, he looks after, with wistful eyes, watching her until the sweep of her long riding-skirt and the waving of her graceful plumes disappear beneath the shadow of the dim woods, where night is beginning to fall. Slowly, sadly, he turns from the window-- merrily, swiftly, the riders dash along, and just us the clock strikes six, their panting steeds pause at the entrance to Collingwood.
CHAPTER X.
EDITH AT HOME.
It was too late for Grace to call, and bidding her companion good- bye, she galloped down the hill, while Edith, in a meditative mood, suffered her favorite Bedouin to walk leisurely up the carriage road which led to the rear of the house.
”Victor Dupres!” she exclaimed, as a tall figure emerged from the open door and came forward to meet her. ”Where did you come from?”
”From New York,” he replied, bowing very low, ”Will Mademoiselle alight?” and taking the little foot from out the shoe he lifted her carefully from the saddle.
”Is HE here?” she asked, and Victor replied,
”Certainement; and has brought home a fresh recruit of the blues, too, judging from the length and color of his face.”
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