“Excuse the liberty, but you seem more like a daughter than a stranger; and, Miss Overton, you know of course I am to have a daughter by and by; Georgie is to be Mrs. Roy Leighton, and I am glad, and think my son could not have chosen better, or as well perhaps,—but—but—I want you to stay just the same, even if Edna, that is Mrs. Charlie Churchill, comes too, as Roy means to have her. Will you, Miss Overton?”
“You may get tired of me by that time and glad to have me leave,” Edna replied, evasively; and making some excuse to leave the room, she staid away so long that the conversation was not resumed when she returned with the medicine which Mrs. Churchill always kept standing by her bed at night.
Edna had not counted upon all the unpleasant things to which the peculiarity of her position would subject her. She had no idea that she should so often hear herself discussed, or be compelled to feel so continually that she was living and acting a lie, or she would never have been there as she was; and that night after leaving Mrs. Churchill she began seriously to revolve the propriety of leaving Leighton, and going back to Uncle Phil, who, she knew, would willingly welcome her.
After the departure of the city guests from Oakwood, Georgie spent several days at Leighton, and acted the sweet, amiable daughter and bride-elect to perfection, and petted Edna, and talked a great deal about “poor Charlie,” and looked at Edna as she did so, and went with her when she carried flowers to his grave, and called her a dear kind creature to be so thoughtful for Mrs. Churchill.
“Of course it is not as if you had known him,” she said; and her great black eyes looked straight at Edna, who colored scarlet, and turned her face away to hide her guilty blushes.
Georgie was bent upon torturing her, and, seating herself in one of the chairs, went over with all the harrowing particulars of the railroad disaster, the fearful storm, the body crushed beneath the wreck, and the young girl trying to extricate it. And Edna, listening to her, felt as if she should scream outright with pain, so vivid was the picture Georgie drew of that dreadful scene.
“Will she never stop,” she thought, as Georgie went on to relate all that occurred at Leighton after the body was brought home, and told how Mrs. Churchill went into convulsions, and denounced the girl as Charlie’s murderer. Georgie was drawing a little upon her imagination, but she was accustomed to that, and she had an object in what she was doing. It was not alone to wound and torture her auditor, though that was some satisfaction to her, but there was a fixed purpose in her mind that Edna should not remain at Leighton after her entrance there. She did not like the girl; she had a mean kind of jealousy toward her, and Mrs. Churchill’s praises of her only made her more determined that the same roof should not shelter both. She dared not betray Edna’s secret, but she could annoy and worry her, and she took a mean kind of delight in seeing poor Edna writhe as she went on to talk of that girl whom Charlie married, saying finally, that she hoped Roy would not insist upon bringing her home, as he now seemed resolved to do.
“Not that I should care at all. I probably should grow fond of her, for Jack insists that she is very nice, and little Annie nearly worships her; but for dear Mrs. Churchill’s sake I should be sorry to see her here.”
“Why so? She talks kindly of her always,” Edna asked hotly, forgetting herself for a moment, in her indignation.
But Georgie was sweetly unconscious of her excitement, and replied: