Just then, upon the terrace below there was the sound of a clear, sweet voice, which thrilled him as Emily’s never had, and Edith looked up to the windows of the room adjoining his, where Godfrey was calling to her. It was a beautiful face, and as he watched her gliding away among the shrubbery he thought how she would brighten and adorn his house at Schuyler Hill, and how proud he should be of her when his money had arrayed her in the apparel befitting his wife. Every barrier of pride and prejudice and early training had gone down before Edith Lyle’s wonderful beauty, and the proud, haughty man was ready to offer her his name and hand on one condition. Her mother could not go with her, and in taking him she must give up her family friends, if indeed she had any besides the mother. He knew nothing against Mrs. Barrett, but his sister disliked her, and that was enough, if he ignored, as he tried to think he did, the fact that she took in lodgers and sewing. Many highly respectable ladies did that, he knew, but he had a feeling that Edith’s mother was not highly respectable, and he doubted if she was a lady even. His sister, when questioned with regard to Edith’s family, had reported the mother as a pushing, curious, disagreeable woman, who assumed to be what she certainly was not.
“Edith is not like her in the least, and must inherit her natural refinement and delicacy from her father,” Mrs. Sinclair had said, and the colonel was satisfied if one side of the house was comme il faut.
As a Schuyler he could afford to stoop a little, and he felt that it was stooping to marry his sister’s hired companion. As far as position was concerned, he might as well take poor, plain Ettie Armstrong, the village schoolmistress, who in point of family was undoubtedly Edith’s equal. There was, however, this difference. The people at home could know nothing of Edith’s antecedents, save that she was an English girl and the daughter of a curate; while another fact, which outweighed all else, was her exceeding great beauty and queenly style, which, with proper surroundings and influence, would place her on the highest wave of society. And he was ready to give her the surroundings and the influence, and felt a thrill of exultant pride as he saw her in fancy at the head of his table and moving through his handsome rooms, herself the handsomest appendage there.
“I may as well settle it at once,” he thought, and the next day he found his opportunity and took it, with what success the reader will learn from a page in Edith’s diary.
CHAPTER XI.
EDITH’S DIARY.
Oakwood, July 15th, 18—.
Am I dreaming, or is it a reality that Col. Schuyler has asked me to be his wife? He says he thinks I am more beautiful than any woman he has ever seen, and that I would make such a rare gem for his house at Hampstead, and he would surround me with every possible luxury. And in his voice, usually so cold and calm and impassioned, there was a little trembling, and his forehead flushed as he went on to state the one condition on which he would do me this honor:
“My mother must have no part in my grandeur! She must remain here. If necessary, money should be freely given for her needs, but she could not live with me!”
Poor mother, with all her planning and her dreams of my brilliant future she never once thought that when the chance came she would be left out and have neither part nor lot in the question! What would she say if she knew it, and what will she say when I tell her I refused him? For I did, and told him it could never be. For a moment, though, weak woman that I am, I was tempted to end this life of dependence and poverty, and take what he offered me; not his love: he never hinted at such an emotion, and I think that feeling is rare in such natures as his. I doubt if he felt it for the Lady Emily, whom he married in his May time, and surely now in his October he has no place for foolishness of that kind. He does not love me, but he admires my face and form, and would no doubt be very kind and careful of me, just as he would be kind to and careful of a favorite horse whose looks depended on such treatment. He would hang upon me jewels rare, with silks and laces and satins, and I could wear them and feel my heart break afresh each time I looked from my window across the lawn to that grave under the evergreen where Abelard is lying. I should hear him discussed, and with Colonel Schuyler stand by the mound and listen to a story I know so well, and loathe myself for the lie I was acting, for if I was there as Colonel Schuyler’s wife, my life would be one tissue of falsehood and deceit. He, of all men in the world, would not take me if he knew the truth, and during that interval when I hesitated I had resolved not to tell him! I would go to him, if I went at all, as Edith Lyle the maiden, and not Edith Lyle the widow. But only for an instant, thank Heaven, did the tempter have me in his control ere I cast him behind me with the resolve that whatever else I might do, I would be frank with the man whom I made up my mind to marry, and as I had not made up my mind to marry Colonel Schuyler, I did not tell him who I was. I only declined his offer, and said it could not be, and when his remark that I did not know what I was doing angered me, I burst out impetuously: