Gertie Westbrooke had gone to the country with Mrs. Rogers for a few weeks, and Edith occupied her old room, and slept in the child’s bed, and dreamed strange things which haunted her waking hours, and sent her heart back to the little one lost long ago with a yearning such as she had not felt in years. And with this pain, this sense of loss still clinging to her, she sat down one morning and wrote the story of her life, word for word, keeping nothing back and finishing by saying:
“If, after knowing all this, you still wish me to be your wife, I will not refuse, but will do my duty faithfully, so help me Heaven!”
She showed the letter to her mother, who, finding that it was useless to oppose her daughter, offered to take it to Oakwood herself.
“Better so than to trust it to the post,” she said. “Besides, it is well for me to be there to answer any questions he may ask, and to take the blame wholly upon myself, as I deserve.”
Edith did not refuse. She was rather glad than otherwise to have her mother go as a kind of mediator between herself and the man whom she began to find it would be a little hard to lose. Accordingly Mrs. Barrett arrayed herself in her deepest mourning, and with her thick veil drawn over her face, started for Oakwood and asked for Colonel Schuyler. He had passed the four days drearily enough, and in his impatience had more than once resolved to go to Caledonia Street, and claim Edith’s answer. But he had promised her not to do so, and he remained at Oakwood in a state of great suspense, until the day when a lady was announced as wishing to see him.
“It surely cannot be Edith,” he thought, as he started for the parlor, where the closely-veiled figure arose and introduced itself as “Mrs. Dr. Barrett, mother of Miss Lyle.”
Colonel Schuyler was one of the preoccupied kind of men who take little note of what does not directly concern them, and though he must have heard the name of Edith’s mother, he had paid no attention to it, or thought strange that it was not Lyle. Now, however, he noticed it, and with only a stiff bow to the lady said:
“Barrett? Mrs. Barrett? And you Miss Lyle’s mother? How is that?”
“I have been twice married, and my last husband was Dr. Barrett,” was the reply, which satisfied the colonel, who took a seat at some distance from his visitor and waited for her to communicate her business.