“Don’t call me Colonel Schuyler, please. I’d rather be Howard to you, now that you are my wife. It will seem to lessen the years between us, and I do not want to be so much older than my darling. Call me Howard now, and let me hear how it sounds.”
“Not yet,” Edith said; “not till I have told you something which should have been told before, and which may make a difference.”
She spoke slowly and painfully, and Colonel Schuyler detected signs of choking in her voice, and guessing at once that she was thinking of the early lover, said to her, very kindly but firmly: “Don’t, Edith, please; don’t tell me anything which will distress you. I do not wish to hear it. Your mother told me enough,—all I care to know,—and I am satisfied.”
“But, Howard,”—she called him thus involuntarily, and there was a world of pathos and pitiful entreaty in her voice, while the eyes she fixed upon him were swimming in tears—“but, Howard, mother did not tell you the whole——”
“Then you need not,” he answered, quickly. “If you are pure, and good, and true, that is all I ask, and I know you are all of these. I daresay your mother did not tell me as eloquently as you could have told me how much you loved that man, and how your heart ached for him; and you wish me to know it all, but I am satisfied. You are my wife, and nothing can make any difference, even if you were his widow, instead of his affianced, though widows are not to my taste. I am satisfied, and to prove that I am, I do not even care to know his name or where he lived. In fact, I would rather not know it, would rather you should never refer to it again, for it is not a pleasant topic; and now for the favor you were to ask me on our wedding day, and which I was to grant even to half my kingdom.”
He spoke playfully and held her closer to him while the hot tears poured over Edith’s face. What should she do? Should she tell him in spite of his protest and his assurance that he was satisfied? She could not with the memory of his words, “Widows are not to my taste,” still ringing in her ears, and so she let the opportunity pass, and the only favor she asked was that whatever might come in the future he would have faith in her and believe that she meant to do right.
“Of course I will, you foolish little girl. You are nervous and tired to-night,” he said; and then, as if struck with a sudden thought, he added: “Only tell me one thing,—if that young man had lived and not improved beyond what he was when you knew him, and you had grown to be what you are, could you have loved him now as you did then?”
“Perhaps not. I never thought of it in that light,” Edith said; and her husband continued:
“One question more. Do you believe you can in time love me as well as you did him?”
“Yes, Howard, I know I can,” Edith spoke quickly, and her arms wound themselves involuntarily around her husband’s neck, while for the first time she kissed him unsolicited.