This was his letter, which he read to Edith, who said: “But, Howard, you never told her how my heart is aching for her, or gave her my love or anything.”
“Never mind,” the colonel answered, good-naturedly. “You will have all your lifetime to tell her of your love.”
And so the letter which would tell Gertie so much, and yet so little, was sent, and two days after Robert Macpherson arrived in London, bringing with him Emma, the little lady of Glenthorpe, who was perfectly wild over her husband and her beautiful home among the Highlands, and insisted that her father should go there if only for a few days. “You must see what a good mistress I make, and what a high-bred lady I am to the people who just worship Robert, and I do believe like him all the more because his mother was one of them. I begin to believe in what are called mésalliances after all.”
Now was the time to tell the story of another mésalliance, and the colonel told it, while Robert and Emma listened breathlessly, and when the denouement was reached the latter exclaimed, joyfully:
“Oh, I am so glad, that it is Gertie. She is your cousin, Robert, your own cousin, and it is all just like a story. Oh, I am so glad!”
She evidently did not think it so dreadful to be connected with the Lyles. She had seen the white-haired, sweet-faced old woman in Alnwick, and seen Jenny Nesbit, too, for Robert had taken her there to call, and she had fallen in love with the grandmother, and tried to pet Godfrey Schuyler, now a big boy in jacket and trousers, and had sickened and grown hot and cold by turns at the vulgarity of Mrs. Nesbit, and then in the splendor and éclat of her home at Glenthorpe had forgotten them all and remembered only that she was Robert’s wife, the great lady of the neighborhood and the happiest woman living. Gertie should come and live with her, she said, and marry a Scottish Lord; but Edith shook her head; Gertie was hers. She could not part with her, and her heart was full of an unutterable yearning to behold the young girl again, and hear her call her mother, and she could hardly wait for the day when the Cuba sailed at last from the harbor of Liverpool, and she knew she was going home to Gertie.
CHAPTER LVI.
GERTIE.
No. 30 30th Street, New York, February 18, 18—.
To Colonel Schuyler: Your son Godfrey is very dangerously ill with typhoid fever. Come at once.