CHAPTER XXIII.
EDITH REVEALS HER SECRET TO HER FATHER AND HE GOES TO NEW YORK.
Refreshing sleep, though late in coming, restored Edith's composure. She came down to breakfast temperamentally disposed to enter into negotiations with her father toward the combating of any plot laid by Monroe and his friends to entice John Winthrope into questionable dealings.
Like a wronged woman, through an excess of virtuous actions, she felt it peculiarly incumbent upon herself to frustrate the plotters—not that it would save John alone; but that it would, as well, be consistently in line with her ideas of just dealings between man and man. During the hour which she consumed in making her toilet, she revolved the whole matter, as related to her by Star, over and over in her now becalmed and determined little head; and the more she revolved it, the brighter became the sparkle in her strong blue eyes, and fiercer grew the militant spirit in her nature. The fatigue that had put her into a nervous state the night before had been routed by that blind force that comes upon depression through a quick series of changes attendant upon a wrong done, to be displaced only through wearying fortitude.
Edith, being primarily one of those strong natures that survives by shock of incident, went boldly to her conceived duty, as though it were given her to be ever strong when the crucial moment arrived. She now knew that her father's good nature was being imposed on by that man of unconscienceable principles. Before she fell ill the year before, the actions of Monroe, two or three times, excited her suspicion, and she had then thought of a plan to forestall him; but by reason of the fatal auto ride, her movements were delayed; and as well did it delay the schemers in their dark and dastardly plotting. It seemed a formidable undertaking for one so frail as Edith, just coming out of a spell of mental derangement; not in its simpleness of action was it so big, but in the momentousness of its results on her enervated system. She would brook no importunate pleading of her friend, Star, to stay her in her course, and leaped into it, as if she were a veritable Goliath of strength.
When she arrived in the dining room that morning with re-enforced courage, she greeted her father and mother, both waiting her arrival, with a kiss, and sat down next to them. Several times she was on the point of bringing up the subject, but lest it should disturb her mother, she calmly awaited a more convenient time for the rehearsal she expected to have with him. Breakfast was usually a quiet affair with the Jarneys, so little was thought of the reserve with which each held speech. After breakfast, Edith took her father's arm and guided him to a quiet nook in the drawing room, and seated him in his favorite seat on one side of a long plate-glass window that opened on his private grounds in front of the mansion.
"Papa, I want a word or two with you this morning before you leave," said Edith, drawing a chair up and sitting down by his side.
"This is unusual, Edith; now, what can my little girl want?" he said, endearingly, taking one of her hands. "You are not going to give me a secret, are you?"
"Too true, papa," replied Edith, and Mr. Jarney expected something else just then than what he heard.