"Who has despised you, Olivia?" Edward asked, perplexed by his cousin's manner.
"YOU HAVE!" she cried, with flashing eyes; "you have! From first to last—from first to last!" She turned away from him impatiently. "Go," she said; "why should we keep up a mockery of friendliness and cousinship? We are nothing to each other."
Edward walked towards the door; but he paused upon the threshold, with his hat in his hand, undecided as to what he ought to do.
As he stood thus, perplexed and irresolute, a cry, the feeble cry of a child, sounded within the pavilion.
The young man started, and looked at his cousin. Even in the dusk he could see that her face had suddenly grown livid.
"There is a child in that place," he said pointing to the door at the top of the steps.
The cry was repeated as he spoke,—the low, complaining wail of a child. There was no other voice to be heard,—no mother's voice soothing a helpless little one. The cry of the child was followed by a dead silence.
"There is a child in that pavilion," Edward Arundel repeated.
"There is," Olivia answered.
"Whose child?"