She was dusting the clock and the mantel, and when she came to the little picture in the rustic frame, she stopped, and continued her soliloquy:
“I wonder if she noticed that. If she did, she must know I think something of her, if I never did kiss her, and make a fuss. The likeness ain’t much like her, any way, but still it’s her picture, and I’ve half a mind,—yes, I b’lieve I will;” and reaching up her hand, the strange woman, who in twelve years had never shown her orphan niece a single mark of genuine affection, took down that photograph and kissed it.
That was a great deal for her to do, and being done, she began to feel as if she had made atonement for all that had, been wrong in herself heretofore, and that Edna really ought now to come back. But Edna had gone, and as the days went by and brought no news of her, Aunt Jerry began to grow indignant, and finally relieved herself by writing to Mrs. Churchill the letter we have seen. Roy’s reply and the check threw her into a violent rage, and after letting him know her mind, she washed her hands, as she said, of the whole of them, and settled back into her lonely life, sharper, harsher than before, and more disposed to find fault with her clergyman and battle with his decided tendency to High Church and Ritualism.
CHAPTER XVII.
WHERE EDNA WENT.
To Canandaigua first, but not to the seminary, nor yet the jeweller’s, as she had once thought of doing. She had heard from her aunt that Mr. Greenough was paid, and she shrank from meeting him face to face, or from seeing any of her old friends. So she sat quietly in the ladies’ room, waiting for the first train going east, and thinking it would never come. She had bought her ticket for Albany, but, with her thick black veil drawn closely over her face, the ticket agent never suspected that she was the gay, light-hearted girl he used sometimes to see at the station, and who recently had become so noted for the tragic ending of her marriage.
No one recognized her, for it was not the hour when the seminary girls were ever at the depot, and when, at last, the train came and took her away with it, nobody was the wiser for her having been there.
And where was she going? Have you, my reader, ever crossed the mountain range between Pittsfield and Albany? And if you have, do you remember how many little villages you saw, some to the right, some to the left, and all nestled among and sheltered by those tall mountains and rocky hills, with here and there a stream of water, as clear and bright as crystal, rippling along under the shadow of the willow and the birch, or dancing headlong down some declivity?
Edna was bound for one of these towns, where Uncle Phil Overton had lived for many years. He was her great uncle on her mother’s side, though she had never heard of him until she met her cousin, Mrs. Dana, in Chicago. Mrs. Dana had known Mr. Overton well, and had lived with him for a few months while she taught in the little academy which stood upon the common. He was an eccentric old man, who for years had lived among the mountains, in the same yellow farm-house, a mile, or more, from the village, which represented to him the world, and which we call Rocky Point.
Edna could not tell why her thoughts kept turning to Uncle Phil as they did. In her utter despair, while listening to Aunt Jerry’s abusive greeting, her heart had cried out: