But Mrs. Churchill would not suffer this. She preferred that Miss Overton should go; and accordingly Edna went, and in passing through the hall glanced into the drawing-room, and saw the couple at the farther end too much absorbed in themselves to know there was a witness to their love-making. Roy was kissing Georgie as the seal to their betrothal, and by that token Edna knew they were engaged, and felt for a moment as if the brightness of her life had suddenly been stricken out, though why she should care, she could not tell. She only knew that she did care, and that her heart was throbbing painfully as she fled noiselessly up the stairs in the direction of Mrs. Churchill’s room. Once there, she stopped a moment to breathe and think over what she had seen, and ask herself what it was to her, that the heart-beats should come so fast, and the world should look so dark.
“Nothing, nothing,” she said, “only he might have done so much better, and have been so much happier. I don’t like her, and when she comes here I must go; and I could enjoy so much alone with Roy and his mother;” and having thus settled the cause of her disquiet, she found Mrs. Churchill’s shawl, and left the house by another way than the one leading past the parlor door.
She had been very gay just before, so gay indeed that Miss Agatha, who did not believe in a plebeian’s daring to be merry and free in the presence of superiors, had made some sarcastic remarks about “the wild spirits of that Miss Overton.” But she was not wild when she returned to the lawn with the shawl, and her face was so pale, that Maude asked if she had seen a ghost that she looked so white and scared.
“No,” Edna replied; “but I ran quite fast up and down the stairs.”
“And did you see anything of my daughter,” Mrs. Burton asked next, and Edna answered her evasively:
“I heard voices in the parlor, hers and Mr. Leighton’s, I think.”
“Oh, yes, there they come,” Mrs. Burton rejoined, her face all aglow with the great delight it afforded her to sit and watch Georgie coming toward her so graceful and self-possessed, and looking so radiant and beautiful.
One could see her black eyes sparkle and shine even in the distance, as she leaned on Roy’s arm, and smiled at something he was saying to her. Georgie was very happy for a few moments, and not a ripple of disquiet came to the surface until her glance fell on Edna, sitting upon a camp stool a little apart from the others, her hat on the grass at her side, her brown curls somewhat disordered, but falling about her face and neck in a most bewitching way, her hands folded listlessly together upon her lap, and her whole attitude and appearance that of some tired, pretty child. She was pretty, and Georgie knew it; and she looked so young, and fair, and innocent, that Georgie felt a sudden impulse of fear lest, after all, this girl, who would see Roy every day, should become her rival, and with that impulse came a thought that the sooner her engagement was known the better and safer for her. So clasping her white hand on Roy’s arm, she whispered to him softly: “Perhaps we may as well have it off our minds and announce it at once; we shall both feel freer and easier.”
Roy could not answer for her, but for himself he did not care to be in haste, especially with Miss Overton sitting there looking so eagerly at him. She was a restraint upon him, and he unconsciously wished her away while he made the announcement, for he was going to do it. Georgie was probably right. She usually was, he reflected, and without a second look at Edna, walked straight to his mother, and placing Georgie’s hand in hers, said to her, “Mother I bring to you a daughter: Georgie has promised to be my wife.”
“Heaven bless my soul!” Mr. Burton exclaimed, springing up from his chair and bobbing about like a rubber ball.