"I will be your wife. I care nothing for the world, and we won't mingle in it any more to cause remarks. We'll stay at Collingwood, where people know us best. Let's go home to-morrow. I'm tired of this hateful place. Will you go?"
Ere Richard could answer, Grace Atherton was heard exclaiming,
"Ah, here you are, I've hunted everywhere. Mr. Russell," and she turned to the dark man at her side, "this is Mr. Harrington—Miss Hastings—Mr. Russell, from Tallahassee." Edith did not at first think that Tallahassee was in Florida, not many miles from Sunnybank, and she bowed to the gentleman as to any stranger, while Grace, who had just arrived in another omnibus, explained to her that Mr. Russell was a slight acquaintance of Arthur's; that the latter being in town, and accidentally hearing that he was coming North, had intrusted him with some business matters, which would require his visiting Grassy Spring—had given him a letter of introduction to herself, said letter containing a note for Edith—that Mr. Russell had been to Shannondale, and ascertaining their whereabouts, had followed them, reaching the Mountain House in the morning stage.
"He can spend but one day here," she added, in conclusion, "and wishing him to see as much as possible of our northern grandeur I brought him at once to the Falls. Here is your note," and tossing it into Edith's lap she moved away.
A note from Arthur! How Edith trembled as she held it in her hand, and with a quick, furtive glance at sightless eyes beside her, she raised the dainty missive to her lips, feeling a reproachful pang as she reflected that she was breaking her vow to Richard. Why had Arthur written to her—she asked herself this question many times, while Richard, too, asked,
"What news from Florida?" ere she broke the seal and read, not words of changeless and dark despair, but words of entreaty that for the sake of Nina, sick, dying Nina, she would come at once to Florida, for so the crazy girl had willed it, pleading with them the live-long day to send for Miggie, precious Miggie, with the bright, black eyes, which looked her into subjection, and the soft hands which drove the ugly pain away.
"All the summer," Arthur wrote, "she has been failing. The heat seems to oppress her, and several times I've been on the point of returning with her to the North, thinking I made a mistake in bringing her here, but she refuses to leave Sunnybank. Old sights and familiar places have a soothing effect upon her, and she is more as she used to be before the great calamity fell upon her. Her disease is consumption, hereditary like her insanity, and as her physical powers diminish her mental faculties seem to increase. The past is not wholly a blank to her now; she remembers distinctly much that has gone by, but of nothing does she talk so constantly as of Miggie, asking every hour if I've sent for you— how long before you'll come; and if you'll stay until she's dead. I think your coming will prolong her life; and you will never regret it, I am sure. Mr. Russell will be your escort, as he will return in three weeks."
To this note two postscripts were appended—the first in a girlish, uneven hand, was redolent of the boy Arthur's "Florida rose."
"Miggie, precious Miggie—come to Sunnybank; come to Nina. She is waiting for you. She wants you here—wants to lay her poor, empty head, where the bad pain used to be, on your soft, nice bosom—to shut her eyes and know it is your breath she feels—your sweet, fragrant breath, and not Arthur's, brim full of cigar smoke. Do come, Miggie, won't you? There's a heap of things I want to fix before I die, and I am dying, Miggie. I see it in my hands, so poor and thin, not one bit like they used to be, and I see it, too, in Arthur's actions. Dear Arthur boy! He is so good to me— carries me every morning to the window, and holds me in his lap while I look out into the garden where we used to play, you and I. I think it was you, but my brain gets so twisted, and I know the real Miggie is out under the magnolias, for it says so on the stone, but I can't help thinking you are she. Arthur has a new name for me, a real nice name, too. He took it from a book, he says—about just such a wee little girl as I am. 'Child-wife,' that's what he calls me, and he strokes my hair so nice. I'm loving Arthur a heap, Miggie. It seems just as if he was my mother, and the name 'Child-wife' makes little bits of waves run all over me. He's a good boy, and God will pay him by and by for what he's been to me. Some folks here call me Mrs. St. Claire. Why do they? Sometimes I remember something about somebody somewhere, more than a hundred years ago, but just as I think I've got hold of it right, it goes away. I lose it entirely, and my head is so snarled up. Come and unsnarl it, wont you? Nina is sick, Nina is dying, Nina is crazy. You must come."
The second postscript showed a bolder, firmer hand, and Edith read,