He did not know whether he was or not. He only knew that it was very disagreeable being turned out of bed at midnight and brought through the storm to this comfortless room, where the fire in the stove did not burn, and the one candle on the table ran up a huge black wick and smelled horribly of tallow; and then, to crown all, Edith must ask if he was willing to take into his family and treat as her sister a little obscure girl, whose mother took in fluting, and ironing, and mopping, too, for aught he knew, for a living. Yes, it was hard, and his eyebrows came together, and his hands went further into his pockets, while he sat a moment in silence. Then he said:
“Do you wish it very much?”
“Yes, I wish it,” Edith said, “more than I have wished for anything in years.”
“Then take her,” was the response; and with a kiss of thanks, Edith went back to the sick-room where Mrs. Rogers was now asleep, with her head pillowed on Gertie’s shoulder.
But the slumber did not last long, and when the gray, wet wintry morning looked into the room, Mary Rogers was dead, and what she had tried so hard to tell Edith Schuyler had not been told. Gertie’s grief at first was wild and passionate, but Edith comforted her as best she could, and led her up to her own chamber, the little room where she once had dreamed of future happiness and then wept bitterly over its ruin.
As she entered the apartment and cast her eye upon the opposite wall, she started involuntarily, while the words rose to her lips, “How came my picture here?”
But it was “La Sœur,” which Robert, who was in New York for the winter, had finished and given Gertie permission to hang in her room, and which at first struck Edith forcibly as a likeness of herself when, a girl of fifteen, she used to look from the windows of that room for the coming of Abelard. As she examined it more closely, however, the likeness faded, and she could not see Heloise Fordham in it as plainly as she did at first.
“Edith, my dear,—you really must go now. I cannot allow you to remain any longer,” came from the foot of the stairs, where the colonel was standing, and with a kiss for the desolate child, and a promise to come again before the day was over, and to send Norah to stay altogether till after the funeral, Edith joined her impatient lord and was driven rapidly home.
Nor did she return as she had promised, for exposure to the damp night air brought on a severe cold, which confined her to her room, where, on the day of the funeral, she sat looking wistfully in the direction of the cottage, where the hearse was standing before the gate, just as it stood that other day when hers was the only heart which ached for the burden it took away. It was the Schuyler carriage which took Gertie and Norah to the grave, and Edith blessed her husband for this kindness to the girl who was so much to her, and for his thoughtfulness in requesting his daughters and their governess to attend the funeral. He did it for her sake, she knew, and Julia knew so, too, and in Edith’s hearing made some remarks about “the new element which was dragging her father down.”
As yet she did not know that Gertie was coming to the Hill to live. Neither did any one, except Mrs. Tiffe, for Edith thought best not to speak of it during the two or three days when Norah remained at the cottage looking over her cousin’s effects, packing away her things, and separating them from Gertie’s.