He did not speak, though he shivered from head to foot as there came over him a dim foreshadowing of what Edith meant to do and what he must not prevent her doing. He saw the right as clearly as she did, and knew that were he in her place he should do the same; but the flesh was very weak, and he staggered, and grew faint and sick as he thought of letting the whole world know who his Edith was, and how he had been deceived. If the child was found and acknowledged all this must be, unless indeed they both might think it best to keep it still a secret. They could care for the girl just the same, adopt her, perhaps, and never let her nor any one know just what she was to them. Edith certainly would concede so much to his feelings. She would not thrust this great humiliation upon him in the face of all the world. And if they never found the girl,—but he dared not allow himself to consider that possibility for a moment. Something told him they would find her, and he caught himself wondering how she looked, if she was at all like her mother; or had she lived so long with the people in Dorset Street that every vestige of grace and beauty and refinement had been destroyed, and she was like her aunt, Jenny Nesbit, in far-off Alnwick, with her bare arms and dreadful slang. How he dreaded her, and how his heart beat with shame at the thought of bringing her there as an associate for his wife and Gertie! Oh, if she could prove to be like Gertie, he thought; but she would not, and never in all his life had he shrunk from a living thing as he shrunk from that unknown step-daughter of whose existence he had never dreamed until within the last few minutes.
“Howard!” Edith said at last, but he did not answer. “Howard,” she said again, “now that you know the whole you will love me still?”
“Yes, Edith,” he said; and she continued, “And you will help me find her just as soon as I am able to cross the sea. Will it be in a week, do you think, or two? I am a great deal better than I was yesterday, and now that you know it I shall get well so fast. Do you think we can start in a week?”
“No, Edith, I know you cannot. A sea voyage in the winter is always rough, and you could not bear it yet,” was his reply, and Edith assented, and thought how hard she would try to get well so as to go on that strange errand of hunting up a child lost almost nineteen years.
Anon there crept into her mind a suspicion of what it would be to her husband to have the story known, and she said to him pityingly:
“Howard, I am sorry for you. It will be so hard for you to have the people know.”
“Yes, Edith, very hard at first; but you surely need not say anything until you know whether you find her,” the colonel replied, and Edith acquiesced, and longed for the time when she should be able to endure the excitement and fatigue of the voyage and the search, and the finding-perhaps of the object sought.
She was very tired and did not talk any more that night, but fell into a quiet sleep, while her husband sat by her, feeling as if he would never sleep again, or know a moment’s gladness. How old and tired and worn he looked the next day, and how he stooped in walking, as if the burden were greater than he could bear. Sometimes he thought it was, and once the tempter whispered that the cold river just in sight from his window would be a better place than his beautiful home after all was known. But Col. Schuyler was too brave a man to die a suicidal death in order to escape a trouble. “Better live and face it,” he thought, and then began to feel a restless impatience to have the matter settled, to know the worst as soon as possible, and he was almost as glad as Edith when she was pronounced able to undertake the voyage. Why they were going to England in the winter they did not say, and we naturally supposed it might be to benefit Edith and pay a visit to Glenthorpe, where Emma was so happy. Norah was not going; Edith could get a maid across the water, she said, and she preferred leaving Norah to look after little Arthur. To Gertie, however, the principal care of the child was given, and she promised to be faithful to her trust, and care for the little boy as if he were her brother.
And so one day in January, when the Oceanic sailed out of the harbor of New York, Edith was in the ship going blindfolded to seek the very blessing which, all unknown, she left behind.