“It is not for me to dictate in such matters, perhaps, but it seems to me you will do well to think of it again should he renew the matter on his return. It is an offer which any woman should consider seriously before rejecting it. I know he can make you happy, and you would far better be his honored wife even if he is many years your senior, than be cast upon the world with your face and manner as a lure to evil-minded men, who hold a governess as only fair spoil.”
“I know it; I know all that, and feel it so keenly,” Edith answered, and for an instant there came over her such a feeling of utter loneliness and desolation, and such a shrinking from the future which might be to her what the past had been until she knew Mrs. Sinclair, that she would almost have taken Colonel Schuyler had he been there then.
Smothering her sobs and commanding her voice as well as she could, she continued:
“I would rather die than meet again what I have met in the families where I was employed before I knew you, but mother is poor and growing old, and I must do something.”
“Why not take the home offered you?” Mrs. Sinclair asked, while Edith sat motionless as a stone, her face as white as ashes, and that horrid sensation in her throat which kept her from uttering a word.
When at last she could speak she astonished Mrs. Sinclair by falling on her knees beside the bed, and crying out:
“Oh, Mrs. Sinclair, you do not know, you cannot guess what and who I am, or you would know that could never be. Forgive me, I have been an impostor all these years, but now I must speak and tell the whole, and then you shall judge if your proud brother, knowing all, would take me for his bride.”
Twenty minutes passed, and then Edith sat, paler and more motionless, if possible, than before, her hands pressed tightly together, and her eyes cast down as if afraid to meet the wondering gaze fixed upon her. She had withheld nothing, and Mrs. Sinclair knew the entire story, from the hasty marriage in New York, up to the day when the message came that the little baby was dead. She had been astonished and shocked, and indignant with the mother rather than with the daughter, who, she readily saw, had been only a tool in an ambitious, heartless woman’s hands, and whom she could forgive for a deception which had wronged no one and in which no one but herself was as yet involved. So, when at last she spoke, her voice was just as kind and gentle as of old, as she said:
“My poor child, yours is a strange experience for one so young. Truth is always best, and it would have been just as well if it had been confessed at first. I am glad you have told me; and if my brother asks you again, as I think he will, you must tell him. It may make a difference with him. I do not know. Certainly it would, if withheld till after marriage. That deception he would hardly forgive. Leave me now, please; I am very tired, and you, too, need the open air after your great excitement.”
The next day Col. Schuyler came alone, as Godfrey was in Russia. But Mrs. Sinclair was too weak to talk much, and could only look her pleasure at her brothers presence. Three days after she died, with her head on Col. Schuyler’s bosom and Edith kneeling at her side. Just at the last she had taken the girl’s hand, and putting it in that of her brother had whispered: