University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
ARTHUR AND EDITH.

If anything could have reconciled Edith to her fate, it
would have been the fact that she was travelling with
Arthur St. Claire, who, after entering the cars, cared for
her as tenderly as if she had been a lady of his own rank,
instead of a little disgraced waiting maid, whom he was
taking back to the Asylum. It was preposterous, he
thought, for Grace to call one as young as Edith a waiting
maid, but it was like her, he knew. It had a lofty sound,
and would impress some people with a sense of her greatness;
so he could excuse it much more readily than the
injustice done to the child by charging her with a crime
of which he knew she was innocent. This it was, perhaps,
which made him so kind to her, seeking to divert her
mind from her grief by asking her many questions concerning
herself and her family. But Edith did not care
to talk. All the way to Albany she continued crying;
and when, at last, they stood within the noisy depot,
Arthur saw that the tears were still rolling down her
cheeks like rain.

“Poor little girl. How I pity her!” he thought, as she
placed her hand confidingly in his, and when he saw how
hopelessly she looked into his face, as she asked, with
quivering lip, if “it wasn't ever so far to New York yet?”
the resolution he had been trying all the day to make was
fully decided upon, and when alone with Edith in the
room appropriated to her at the Delavan House, he asked
her why she supposed Richard Harrington would be willing
to take her to Collingwood.

Very briefly Edith related to him the particulars of her
interviews with the blind man, saying, when she had finished,

“Don't you believe he likes me?”

“I dare say he does,” returned Arthur, at the same time
asking if she would be afraid to stay alone one night in
that great hotel, knowing he was gone?”

“Oh, Mr. Arthur, you won't leave me here?” and in
her terror Edith's arms wound themselves around the
young man's neck as if she would thus keep him there by
force.

Unclasping her hands, and holding them in his own,
Arthur said,

“Listen to me, Edith. I will take the Boston train
which leaves here very soon, and return to Shannondale,
reaching there some time to-night. I will go to Collingwood,
will tell Mr. Harrington what has happened, and
ask him to take you, bringing him back here with me, if he
will — ”

“And if he won't?” interrupted Edith, joy beaming in
every feature. “If he won't have me, Mr. Arthur, will
you? Say, will you have me if he won't?”

“Yes, yes, I'll have you,” returned Arthur, laughing to
himself, as he thought of the construction which might
be put upon this mode of speech.

But a child nine and a half years old could not, he
knew, have any designs upon either himself or Richard
Harrington, even had she been their equal, which he fancied
she was not. She was a poor, neglected orphan, and
as such he would care for her, though the caring compelled
him to do what scarcely anything else could have
done, to wit, to seek an interview with the man who held
his cherished secret.

“Are you willing to stay here alone now?” he said
again. “I'll order your meals sent to your room, and to-morrow
night I shall return.”

“If I only knew you meant for sure,” said Edith, trembling
at the thought of being deserted in a strange city.

Suddenly she started, and looking him earnestly in the
face, said to him,

“Do you love that pretty lady in the glass — the one
Mrs. Atherton thinks I stole?”

Arthur turned white but answered her at once.

“Yes, I love her very, very much.”

“Is she your sister, Mr. Arthur?” and the searching
black eyes seemed compelling him to tell the truth.

“No, not my sister, but a dear friend.”

“Where is she, Mr. Arthur? In New York?”

“No, not in New York.”

“In Albany then?”

“No, not in Albany. She's in Europe with her father,”
and a shade of sadness crept over Arthur's face. “She
was hardly a young lady when this picture was taken, and
he drew the locket from its hiding place. She was only
thirteen. She's not quite sixteen now.”

Edith by this time had the picture in her hand, and
holding it to the light exclaimed, “Oh, but she's so jolly,
Mr. Arthur. May I kiss her, please?”

“Certainly,” he answered, and Edith's warm red lips
pressed the senseless glass, which seemed to smile upon
her.

“Pretty — pretty — pretty N-n-n-Nina!” she whispered,
and in an instant Arthur clutched her so tightly that
she cried out with pain.

“Who told you her name was Nina?” he asked in
tones so stern and startling that Edith's senses all forsook
her, and trembling with fright she stammered,

“I don't know, sir — unless you did. Of course you
did, how else should I know. I never saw the lady.”

Yes, how else should she know, and though he would
almost have sworn that name had never passed his lips
save in solitude, he concluded he must have dropped it
inadvertently in Edith's hearing, and still holding her by
the arm, he said, “Edith, if I supposed you would repeat
the word Nina, either at Collingwood or elsewhere, I certainly
should be tempted to leave you here alone.”

“I won't, I won't, oh, Mr. Arthur, I surely won't!” and
Edith clung to him in terror. “I'll never say it — not
even to Mr. Harrington. I'll forget it, I can, I know.”

“Not to Mr. Harrington of all others,” thought Arthur,
but he would not put himself more in Edith's power than
he already was, and feeling that he must trust her to a
certain extent, he continued, “If you stay at Collingwood,
I may sometime bring this Nina to see you, but until
I do you must never breathe her name to any living
being, or say a word of the picture.”

“But Mr. Harrington,” interrupted the far-seeing Edith,
“He'll have to know why Mrs. Atherton sent me away.

“I'll attend to that,” returned Arthur. “I shall tell him
it was a daguerreotype of a lady friend. There's nothing
wrong in that, is there?” he asked, as he noticed the perplexed
look of the honest-hearted Edith.

“No,” she answered hesitatingly. “It is a lady friend,
but — but — seems as if there was something wrong somewhere.
Oh, Mr. Arthur — ” and she grasped his hand as
firmly as he had held her shoulder. “You ain't going to
hurt pretty Nina, are you? You never will do her any
harm?”

“Heaven forbid,” answered Arthur, involuntarily turning
away from the truthful eyes of the dark-haired maiden
pleading with him not to harm the Nina who, over the
sea, never dreamed of the scene enacted in that room between
the elegant Arthur St. Claire and the humble Edith
Hastings. “Heaven forbid that I should harm her — ”

He said it twice, and then asked the child to swear
solemnly never to repeat that name where any one could
hear.

“I won't swear,' she said, “but I'll promise as true as
I live and breathe, and draw the breath of life, and that's
as good as a swear.”

Arthur felt that it was, and with the compact thus
sealed between them, he arose to go, reaching out his
hand for the picture.

“No,” said Edith, “I want her for company. I shan't
be lonesome looking in her eyes, and I know you will
come back if I keep her.”

Arthur understood her meaning, and answered laughingly,
“Well, keep her then, as a token that I will surely
return,” and pressing a kiss upon the beautiful picture,
he left the room, while Edith listened with a beating
heart, until the sound of his footsteps had died away.
Then a sense of dreariness stole over her; the tears gathered
in her eyes, and she sought by a one-sided conversation
with her picture to drive the loneliness away.

“Pretty Nina! Sweet Nina! Jolly Nina!” she kept
repeating. “I guess I used to see you in Heaven, before
I came down to the nasty old Asylum. And mother was
there, too, with a great long veil of hair, which came below
her waist. Where was it?” she asked herself as
Nina, her mother and Marie were all mingled confusedly
together in her mind; and while seeking to solve the mystery,
the darkness deepened in the room, the gas lamps
were lighted in the street, and with a fresh shudder of
loneliness Edith crept into the bed, and nestling down
among her pillows, fell asleep with Nina pressed lovingly
to her bosom.

At a comparatively early hour next morning, the door
of her room, which had been left unfastened, was opened,
and a chambermaid walked in, starting with surprise at
sight of Edith, sitting up in bed, her thick black hair falling
over her shoulders, and her large eyes fixed inquiringly
upon her.

“An, sure,” she began, “is it a child like you staying
here alone the blessed night? Where's yer folks?”

“I hain't no folks,” answered Edith, holding fast to the
locket, and chewing industriously the bit of gum which
Rachel, who knew her taste, had slipped into her pocket
at parting.

“Haint's no folks! How come you here then?” and
the girl Lois advanced nearer to the bedside.

“A man brought me,” returned Edith. “He's gone off
now, but will come again to-night.”

“Your father, most likely,” continued the loquacious
Lois.

“My father!” and Edith laughed scornfully. “Mr.
Arthur ain't big enough to be anybody's father — or yes,
maybe he's big enough, for he's awful tall. But he's got
the teentiest whiskers growing you ever saw,” and Edith's
nose went up contemptuously at Arthur's darling mustache.
“I don't believe he's twenty,” she continued,
“and little girl's pa's must be older than that I guess, and
have bigger whiskers.”

“How old are you?” asked Lois, vastly amused at the
quaint speeches of the child, who replied, with great
dignity,

“Going on ten, and in three years more I'll be thirteen!”

“Who are you, any way?” asked Lois, her manner
indicating so much real interest that Edith repeated her
entire history up to the present time, excepting, indeed,
the part pertaining to the locket held so vigilantly in her
hand.

She had taken a picture belonging to Mr. Arthur, she
said, and as Lois did not ask what picture, she was spared
any embarrassment upon that point.

“You're a mighty queer child,” said Lois, when the
narrative was ended; “but I'll see that you have good
care till he comes back;” and it was owing, in a measure,
to her influence, that the breakfast and dinner carried up
to Edith was of a superior quality, and comprised in
quantity far more than she could eat.

Still the day dragged heavily, for Lois could not give
her much attention; and even Nina failed to entertain
her, as the western sunlight came in at her window, warning
her that it was almost night.

“Will Arthur come? or if he does, will Mr. Harrington
be with him?” she asked herself repeatedly, until at

last, worn out with watching and waiting, she laid her
head upon the side of the bed, and fell asleep, resting so
quietly that she did not hear the rapid step in the hall,
the knock upon the door, the turning of the knob, or the
cheery voice which said to her:

“Edith, are you asleep?”

Arthur had come.