Early the next morning the colonel’s first telegram came: “Godfrey is very sick, but out of danger, we hope. Miss Rossiter and Gertie both here; the latter well, but tired.”
I doubt if Edith paid much attention to anything but the last of the telegram, the part relating to Gertie. This she read and re-read, as if there were a pleasure even in the sight of the dear name.
“You see Mrs. Westbrooke named her Gertrude for her own little girl who died,” she explained to me, “and as she did not know whether she had been baptized or not she had her christened ‘Gertrude Heloise Westbrooke,’ so Westbrooke really is her name, and I am glad, for I know my husband would rather have it that than Lyle.”
After lunch came another telegram: “Godfrey better. Gertie at Miss Rossiter’s. Shall see her to-night.”
That evening Edith was like a crazy woman walking up and down the halls, and then through her suite of rooms and back again into the hall, clasping her hands tightly together, and whispering to herself:
“Is it now he is telling her? Does she know it yet? And what does she think of me, her mother? Will she call me by that name? Oh, Gertie, if I could see you now. Heaven grant you do not hate me.”
Suddenly she grew calm, and said to me:
“Something tells me it is over. Gertie knows the truth and does not hate me. Thank my Heavenly Father for that.”
Edith slept that night, but was restless and impatient in the morning until the third message came. “She knows everything, and is very glad.”
“Then why doesn’t she come home?” Edith said, and all that day she was in a feverish state of expectancy when a train from New York came in.