Edith nodded to the bright face on the mirror opposite, and the bright face nodded back as much was to say, "I knew 'twas so."
"Was she really handsome, this Mrs. Temple?" she asked, anxious to know how Richard Harrington's early love had looked.
Instinctively the hands of the blind man met together round Edith's graceful neck, as he told her how beautiful that Swedish mother was, with her glossy, raven hair, and her large, soft, lustrous eyes, and as he talked, there crept into Edith's heart a strange, inexplicable affection for that fair young Swede, who Richard said was not as happy with her father-husband as she should have been, and who, emigrating to another land, had died of a homesick, broken heart.
"I am sorry I cursed her to-day," thought Edith, her tears falling fast to the memory of the lonely, homesick woman, the mother of Eloise.
"Had she married Richard," she thought, "he would not now be sitting here in his blindness, for SHE would be with him, and Eloise, too, or some one very much like her. I wish she were here now," and after a moment she asked why he had not brought the maiden home with him. "I should love her as much as my sister," she said; "and you'd be happier with two of us, wouldn't you?"
"No," he answered; "one young girl is enough for any house. I couldn't endure two."
"Then I ought to go away," said Edith promptly, her bosom swelling with a dread lest she should eventually have to go. "Eloise has certainly the best right here. You loved her mother, yon know, and you'd rather have her than me, wouldn't you?"
She held both his hands now within her own. She bent her face upon them, and he felt her tears trickling through his fingers. Surely he was not to blame if, forgetting himself for the moment, he wound his arms about her and hugging her to his bosom, told her that of all the world SHE was the one he most wanted there at Collingwood, there just where she was now, her head upon his shoulder, her cheek against his own. 0nce she felt slightly startled, his words were so fraught with tender passion, but regarding him as her father, or at least her elder brother, she could not believe he intended addressing her save as his sister or his child, and releasing herself from his embrace, she slid back upon her stool and said, "I'm glad you're willing I should stay. It would kill me to go from Collingwood now. I've been so happy here, and found in you so kind a FATHER."
She WOULD say that last word, and she did, never observing that
Richard frowned slightly as if it were to him an unwelcome sound.
Presently Edith went on, "I think, though, this Eloise ought to come, too, no matter how pleasant a home she has. It is her duty to care for you who lost your sight for her. Were I in her place, I should consider no sacrifice too great to atone for the past. I would do everything in the world you asked of me, and then not half repay you."