“Tell me of yourself and your home in America,” he mentally pronounced her a fine girl, with no nonsense about her; and in less than an hour had told nearly all he knew of himself and of his family. They had a splendid place in Hampstead, he said, not so big and rambling as the fine houses in England, but pleasanter every way, and more home-like, with such a fine view of the Hudson and the blue mountains beyond.
“You have never been in America?” he said, affirmatively, thus saving Edith the necessity of answering, “and so you do not know how beautiful the Hudson is. Why, it beats the Rhine all to nothing.”
“Have you seen the Rhine?” Edith asked, smiling at this enthusiastic youth, so wholly American.
“No,” and Godfrey blushed as he met her smile; “but I’ve read of it, and heard Alice Creighton rave about it by the hour, and still I know the Hudson is ahead. You ought to see it once in the neighborhood of the Highlands; the view from our tower is magnificent, with those blue peaks stretching away in the distance, and rising one above the other until I used to think them the stairs which led to Heaven.”
How Edith’s heart throbbed as she listened to his description of a place she, too, knew so well, though of her knowledge she dared not give a sign; and how she longed to question her companion of that grave on the hillside! But she could not, and as Godfrey evidently expected her to say something, she asked if he had always lived in Hampstead.
“No; I was born on Fifth Avenue, in a brown-stone front, so that the first breath I drew was sufficiently stuffy and aristocratic; but I went to the country when I was five or six years old. Father took the old house down and built the new one. I never shall forget it,—never, for the dreadful thing which happened.”
Edith knew just what was coming, and steeled herself to listen to the details of that tragedy which had colored her whole life. Again the fingers of iron were clutching her throat, while Godfrey told of the young man whom he liked so much, and who had saved another’s life at the loss of his own.
“And when they reached him, the grass was red with blood, and he lay white, and still, and dead.”
Godfrey’s voice trembled as he said these words, and he paused a moment in his tale, while Edith clasped her hands tightly together and tried to speak, but could not for the smothered sensation choking and stifling her so.
“We buried him in our own lot, and bought him a grand monument, and there are many flowers round, the spot,” Godfrey continued: and then he glanced at Edith, and starting up, exclaimed: “Why, what is the matter? You are whiter than a ghost. You are not going to faint? You must not faint! I don’t know what to do with girls who faint. Alice did it once, or made believe, and I kissed her and brought her to quick.”