Dawn of the Morning

by Grace Livingston Hill

There was silence in the coach while Winthrop pondered the great discovery he had made, and how he should act upon it.

But the elder man was lost in gloomy thoughts. He had a vague feeling that Mary, out there in the moonlight with her bright-haired boy, would hold him to account for the little girl she had loved and lost in life. A sudden glimpse into the future had been given him, partly by the young man's words, partly by the beauty of Dawn herself. She was blossoming into womanhood, and with that change would come new perplexities. She could not stay always at the school. Where in the world was there a place for his child? More and more he saw that the woman whom in the fierceness of his wrath he had selected to take the place of mother to the girl was both unable and unwilling to do so. He shrank from the time when his daughter would have to come home. As he thought of it, it seemed an impossible situation to have her there; it would be almost like having Mary in the flesh to live with them, with reproachful eyes ever upon their smallest acts. At that moment it came to him that he was enduring the torments of a lost soul, his conscience having sat in judgment and condemned him.

The stage-coach rumbled on, stopping now and again through the night for a change of horses, and the two who sat within its gloomy depths said little to each other, yet slept not, for one was musing on the evil of the past and its results, while the other was plotting evil for the future.

CHAPTER III

Harrington Winthrop kept his promise about the sweets. Five times during the winter that followed his first visit with Mr. Van Rensselaer, he invented some excuse to visit Dawn.

The first time he came, he found her in the maple grove behind the pasture, with a group of other girls, all decked in autumn leaves and playing out some story that Dawn had read.

He persuaded her to walk a little way into the woods with him; and when he came to take his leave asked for a kiss, but Dawn sprang away from him in sudden panic:

"No," she said sharply; "I have never kissed anybody but my mother." Then, fearing she had been impolite in view of his gift, she added:

"We don't kiss people here at this school. It isn't the custom."

And she knew so little of the customs of the world that the incident passed without further apprehension on her part, or understanding of the young man's meaning.