He hesitated a moment, while Edna said:
“Because what? Tell me, please, why Georgie Burton will snub me.”
“Well, because you are poor, and she is rich,” Charlie jerked out; and Edna said, innocently:
“But I shall be rich, too, as rich as she, won’t I, Charlie?”
Her clear, honest eyes were fixed upon his without a shadow of suspicion; and Charlie could not undeceive her, and tell her that ten dollars was all the money he had in the world; that to defray the expenses of that journey he had sold a diamond stud in Buffalo, and, if Roy did not come to the rescue, his watch must get them back to Leighton.
“Even if you were not rich you would be worth a hundred Georgie Burtons,” he said, as he drew her closely to his side; and then he spoke of Jack Heyford, Georgie’s half-brother, and the best fellow in the world, and Edna listened awhile, until things began to get a little mixed in her brain, and her head lay again on Charlie’s shoulder, and her eyes were closed in sleep.
The day had been very warm and sultry, and although somewhat out of season, a heavy thunder-storm had come up, and the darkness without grew darker as the rain beat against the windows, and flashes of lightning showed occasionally against the inky sky. Faster and faster the train sped on; and Charlie’s head drooped till his locks mingled with Edna’s curls of golden brown, and in his sleep his arm tightened around her waist, and he was dreaming perhaps of Roy and his mother, and what they would say to his wife, when suddenly, without a moment’s warning, came the fearful crash, and the next flash of lightning which lit up the gloom showed a dreadful sight of broken beams, and shattered boards, and shivered glass, and a boyish form wedged tightly in, its white face upturned to the pitiless sky, while beside it crouched the girlish bride, trying in vain to extricate her lover, as her quivering lips kept whispering, “Charlie, oh, Charlie!”
CHAPTER IX.
AFTER THE ACCIDENT.
It was Jack Heyford who found our heroine; big-hearted Jack, who, after shaking himself loose from Georgie’s nervous, terrified grasp, and ascertaining that neither she nor himself was injured, went at once to the rescue of the poor wretches shrieking and dying beneath the wreck. A man from a house near by came out with a lantern, and Jack stood beside him when its rays first fell upon Edna, kneeling by her husband and trying to get him free. Something in the exceeding beauty of her face, together with its horrified expression, struck deep at Jack’s heart, and bending over her, he said softly as a mother would address her child: