She went at once to Mrs. Murray, and the interview was long and painful. The latter wept freely, and insisted that if the orphan grew weary of teaching (as she knew would happen), she should come back immediately to Le Bocage; where a home would always be hers, and to which a true friend would welcome her.
At length, when Estelle Harding came in with some letters, which she wished to submit to her aunt's inspection, Edna retreated to her own quiet room. She went to her bureau to complete the packing of her clothes, and found on the marble slab a box and note directed to her.
Mr. Murray's handwriting was remarkably graceful, and Edna broke the seal which bore his motto, Nemo me impune lacessit.
"EDNA: I send for your examination the contents of the little tomb, which you guarded so faithfully. Read the letters written before I was betrayed. The locket attached to a ribbon, which was always worn over my heart, and the miniatures which it contains are those of Agnes Hunt and Murray Hammond. Read all the record, and then judge me, as you hope to be judged. I sit alone, amid the mouldering, blackened ruins of my youth; will you not listen to the prayer of my heart, and the half-smothered pleadings of your own, and come to me in my desolation, and help me to build up a new and noble life? Oh, my darling, you can make me what you will. While you read and ponder, I am praying. Aye, praying for the first time in twenty years! praying that if God ever hears prayer, He will influence your decision, and bring you to me. Edna, my darling! I wait for you. "Your own, "ST. ELMO."
Ah! how her tortured heart writhed and bled; how piteously it pleaded for him, and for itself!
Edna opened the locket, and if Gertrude had stepped into the golden frame, the likeness could not have been more startling. She looked at it until her lips blanched and were tightly compressed, and the memory of Gertrude became paramount. Murray Hammond's face she barely glanced at, and its extraordinary beauty stared at her like that of some avenging angel. With a shudder she put it away, and turned to the letters that St. Elmo had written to Agnes and to Murray, in the early, happy days of his engagement.
Tender, beautiful, loving letters, that breathed the most devoted attachment and the purest piety; letters that were full of lofty aspirations, and religious fervor, and generous schemes for the assistance and enlightenment of the poor about Le Bocage; and especially for "my noble, matchless Murray." Among the papers were several designs for charitable buildings: a house of industry, an asylum for the blind, and a free school-house. In an exquisite ivory casket, containing a splendid set of diamonds, and the costly betrothal ring, bearing the initials, Edna found a sheet of paper around which the blazing necklace was twisted. Disengaging it. she saw that it was a narration of all that had stung him to desperation on the night of the murder.
As she read the burning taunts, the insults, the ridicule heaped by the two under the apple-tree upon the fond, faithful, generous, absent friend, she felt the indignant blood gush into her face; but she read on and on, and two hours elapsed ere she finished the package. Then came a trial, a long, fierce, agonizing trial, such as few women have ever been called upon to pass through; such as the world believes no woman ever triumphantly endured. Girded by prayer, the girl went down resolutely into the flames of the furnace, and the ordeal was terrible indeed. But as often as Love showed her the figure of Mr. Murray, alone in his dreary sitting-room, waiting, watching for her, she turned and asked of Duty, the portrait of Gertrude's sweet, anxious face; the picture of dying Annie; the mournful countenance of a man, shut up by iron bars from God's beautiful world, from the home and the family who had fondly cherished her in her happy girlhood, ere St. Elmo trailed his poison across her sunny path.
After another hour, the orphan went to her desk, and while she wrote, a pale, cold rigidity settled upon her features, which told that she was calmly, deliberately shaking hands with the expelled, the departing Hagar of her heart's hope and happiness. "To the mercy of God, and the love of Christ, and the judgment of your own conscience, I commit you. Henceforth we walk different paths, and after to-night, it is my wish that we meet no more on earth. Mr. Murray, I cannot lift up your darkened soul; and you would only drag mine down. For your final salvation I shall never cease to pray till we stand face to face before the Bar of God. "EDNA EARL."
Ringing for a servant, she sent back the box, and even his own note, which she longed to keep, but would not trust herself to see again; and dreading reflection, and too miserable to sleep, she went to Mrs. Murray's room, and remained with her till three o'clock.