Jenny did not cry. She was looking at the bride in her rich apparel, and thinking how proud she was to be so unmoved, as if it was nothing to her how many poor men lost their lives to save that of a Schuyler. And Colonel Schuyler too had similar thoughts with Jenny, and believed it was contempt for these people and their surroundings which kept Edith so silent, in spite of his efforts to draw her into the conversation and make her seem gracious and interested. Alas! he could not guess what she was enduring as she sat there in Abelard’s home, and heard them talking of him and all the incidents concerned with his death.
“You dinna ken my lad,” the mother said to her; “an’ so you dinna ken how sair I was for him. Ah, he was a bonny lad and gude.”
Edith nodded, and the old lady went on, now addressing the colonel:
“A maun who kenned my boy and see him kilt coomed here onc’t an’ tauld me about it, and said there was a young lass there who moight be Abel’s sweetheart; heard ye tell of her like?”
No, the colonel had not heard of her, or he had forgotten, and as Edith was not supposed to know anything of the circumstances she was spared the questioning, and Mrs. Lyle went on to say that if there was such a lass she’d like so much to know something of her.
“Mayhap,” and she turned again to Edith; “mayhap you’ll foind her some day, and if you do wool ye let me know?”
Had her life depended upon it Edith could not have spoken, and a nod was her only answer, while her cheeks burned scarlet and the perspiration gathered about her mouth. The colonel was angry, and rose to take leave, while Jenny, who was angry also at what she believed to be the lady’s pride, began in a flippant way to say that, poor as they were, they had some grand relatives; her oldest sister, Dorothea, had married into one of the high Scotch families, where they kept twenty servants and dined at six o’clock.
“Hoity-toity, Jenny, my lass,” said the mother, “what was the good o’ that? Dinna them foine folk turn my Dolly and her maun out o’ door and never spake to ’em till he died?”
“Yes, mother, but their boy got the money at last, and was here to see us a spell ago, lookin’ as foine as any gentleman,” Jenny said, and then having given the final twist to her hair, and seeing that their guests were really going, she woke the little Godfrey Schuyler, and took him proudly to Edith, who could and did kiss him; an act which made amends for much of her silence and seeming haughtiness of manner.
Had Edith followed out her impulse she would have kissed Abelard’s mother, for the sake of the dead son, but after her persistent silence and reserve there could be no excuse for such a proceeding, and so she merely took the withered hand in her own and pressed it hard, managing to say “good-by,” and then she passed through the low door, out into the sunshine, like one passing from prison walls into freedom again.