"Don't you believe he likes me?"
"I dare say he does," returned Arthur, at the same time asking if she would be afraid to stay alone one night in that great hotel, knowing he was gone?"
"Oh, Mr. Arthur, you won't leave me here?" and in her terror Edith's arms wound themselves around the young man's neck as if she would thus keep him there by force.
Unclasping her hand's, and holding them in his own, Arthur said,
"Listen to me, Edith. I will take the Boston train which leaves here very soon, and return to Shannondale, reaching there some time to-night. I will go to Collingwood, will tell Mr. Harrington what has happened, and ask him to take you, bringing him back here with me, if he will—-"
"And if he won't?" interrupted Edith, joy beaming in every feature. "If he won't have me, Mr. Arthur, will you? Say, will you have me if he won't?"
"Yes, yes, I'll have you," returned Arthur, laughing to himself, as he thought of the construction which might be put upon this mode of speech.
But a child nine and a half years old could not, he knew, have any designs upon either himself or Richard Harrington, even had she been their equal, which he fancied she was not. She was a poor, neglected orphan, and as such he would care for her, though the caring compelled him to do what scarcely anything else could have done, to wit, to seek an interview with the man who held his cherished secret.
"Are you willing to stay here alone now?" he said again. "I'll order your meals sent to your room, and to-morrow night I shall return."
"If I only knew you meant for sure," said Edith, trembling at the thought of being deserted in a strange city.