"You have no heart, or you certainly could not so coldly reject an affection which any other woman would proudly accept. A few years hence, when your insane ambition is fully satiated, and your beauty fades, and your writings pall upon public taste, and your smooth-tongued flatterers forsake your shrine to bow before that of some new and more popular idol, then Edna, you will rue your folly."
She rose and answered quietly:
"The future may contain only disappointments for me, but however lonely, however sad my lot may prove, I think I shall never fall so low as to regret not having married a man whom I find it impossible to love. The sooner this interview ends the longer our friendship will last. My time is not now my own, and as my duties claim me in the school-room, I must bid you good-bye."
"Edna, if you send me away from you now, you shall never look upon my face again in this world!"
Mournfully her tearful eyes sought his, but her voice was low and steady as she put out both hands, and said solemnly:
"Farewell, dear friend. God grant that when next we see each other's faces they may be overshadowed by the shining, white plumes of our angel wings, in that city of God, 'where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.' 'Never again in this world,' ah! such words are dreary and funereal as the dull fall of clods on a coffin-lid; but so be it. Thank God! time brings us all to one inevitable tryst before the great white throne."
He took the hands, bowed his forehead upon them and groaned; then drew them to his lips and left her.
With a slow, weary step she turned and went up to her room and read Mr. Hammond's letter. It was long and kind, full of affection and wise counsel, but contained no allusion to Mr. Murray.
As she refolded it she saw a slip of paper which had fallen unnoticed on the carpet, and picking it up she read these words:
"It grieves me to have to tell you that, after all, I fear St. Elmo will marry Estelle Harding. He does not love her, she can not influence him to redeem himself; his future looks hopeless indeed. Edna, my child! what have you done! Oh! what have you done!"