"Not for my own sake," returned Edith; "but if it would make you love me more, I should like it;" and she clung closer to him as he replied,
"Darling that could not be. I loved you with all the powers I had, even before I knew you were Petrea's child. Beautiful Petrea! I think you must be like her, Edith, except that you are taller. She was your father's second wife. This I knew in Germany, and also that there was a child of Mr. Temple's first marriage, a little girl, he said."
"A child—a little girl," and Edith started quickly, but the lightning flash which had once gleamed across her bewildered mind, when in the Den she stood gazing at the picture of Miggie Bernard, did not come back to her now, neither did she remember Arthur's story, so much like Richard's. She only thought that possibly there was somewhere in the world a dear, half-sister, whom she should love so much, could she only find her. Edith was a famous castle-builder, and forgetting that this half-sister, were she living, would be much older than herself, she thought of her only as a school-girl, whose home should be at Collingwood, and on whom MRS. RICHARD HARRINGTON would lavish so much affection, wasting on her the surplus love which, perhaps, could not be given to the father—husband. How then was her castle destroyed, when Richard said,
"She, too, is dead, so Mrs. Jamieson told me, and there is none of the family left save you."
"I wish I knew where mother was buried," Edith sighed, her tears falling to the memory of her girl mother, whose features it seamed to her she could recall, as well as a death-bed scene, when somebody with white lips and mournful black eyes clasped her in her arms and prayed that God would bless her, and enable her always to do right.
It might have been a mere fancy, but to Edith it was a reality, and she said within herself,
"Yes, darling mother, I will do right, and as I am sure yon would approve my giving myself to Richard, so I will be his wife."
One wild, longing, painful throb her heart gave to the past when she had hoped for other bridegroom than the middle-aged man on whose knee she sat, and then laying her hot face against his bearded cheek, she whispered,
"You've told the story, Richard. It does not need Marie to confirm it, though she, too, will come sometime to tell me who I am, but when she comes, I shan't be Edith Hastings, shall I. The initials won't be changed, though. They will be 'E.H.' still—Edith Harrington. It has not a bad sound, has it?"
"Don't, darling, please don't," and Richard's voice had in it a tone much like that which first rang through the room, when Edith said,