“Thanks: you may go now,” she said to her maid, who went out and left her alone.
Roy would be there Monday night, and with him Charlie’s wife.
“Poor Charlie,” she whispered to herself, and tried to believe that the tears which rolled down her cheeks were prompted by sorrow for him, instead of sorrow for the fact that Edna was found and was coming there to live. “I mean to be glad, and I am glad. I am going to like her, and I do like her,” she said to herself; but she did not sleep much that night, and nearly all the next day she sat out by Charlie’s grave, trying by thinking of him and his love for Edna Browning, to awaken a feeling of genuine affection in her own breast.
But she could not do it. The most she could effect was a determination to be very kind to the girl, and to make it as pleasant for her as possible. To this end she gave orders that the largest and best sleeping-room in the house should be prepared for her on Monday, and as far as her sight would admit, gave it her personal inspection.
“If it was only Miss Overton coming to-night, how happy I should be,” she said, when after all was done, and the day nearly gone, she sat down by the fire in the library to wait for the travellers.
It was very quiet and lonely there, and she fell asleep at last, and did not hear the carriage when it went to the station nor when it returned. But Roy soon found her, and putting both his arms around her, kissed her forehead lovingly.
“Wake up, mother,” he said, and there was a ring of some great joy in the tone of his voice. “Wake up, mother; I have brought Edna to you. Here she is,—right here; let me put her hand in yours and see if you have ever felt one like it.”
Roy was greatly excited, and something of his nervousness communicated itself to his mother, who trembled like a leaf, and whose sight seemed dimmer than ever as she turned her eyes toward the little figure, the rustle of whose dress she heard, and whose hands took hers in their own and held them fast, while a voice, which thrilled through every nerve, said, “Mother, dear mother, Charlie’s mother and mine,—the only one I ever knew! You liked me some, I know, as Miss Overton; love me, won’t you, as Edna, and forgive the deception.”
Mrs. Churchill was pale as death, and for an instant could not speak; but she held close to the soft hands, and bent her face down over the young girl who had knelt before her, and whose head was in her lap.
“What is it? How is it? I do not understand at all. Roy, tell me what it means. You bring me one you say is Edna, Charlie’s wife; and she calls me mother with Miss Overton’s voice. Is it, can it be they are the same? That the girl I already love as my daughter is really mine?”