Oh, Mildred, Mildred,—if she could have known, but she did not. She only felt stealing over her a second time the same sensation which had come to her at Hetty’s grave,—a feeling as if every spot once hallowed by Hetty Kirby’s presence were sacred to her, and when at last they left the ruinous old house, she looked about for some memento of the place, but everything had run to waste, save one thrifty cedar growing in a corner of the yard. From this she broke a twig and was thinking how she would preserve it, when Richard touched her arm, and said:
“I planted that tree myself and Hetty held it up while I put the earth about it.”
The cedar bough was dearer far to Mildred now, and she stood long by the evergreen thinking how little Hetty dreamed that such as she would ever be there with Richard at her side, and a fairy creature frolicking over the grass, the child of another than herself.
“If she had left a daughter how Richard would have loved it,” she thought, and through her mind there flitted the wild fancy that it would be happiness indeed to call him father and say sister to young Edith, who was now pulling at her dress, telling her to come away from that old place. “It isn’t as pretty,” she said, “as ma’s home over the sea, for there were fountains and trees and flowers there.”
Mildred could not forbear smiling as the little girl rattled on, while in listening to her prattle even Mr. Howell forgot his sadness, and by the time they reached the hotel he was apparently as cheerful as ever.
The next morning he was slightly indisposed, and Mildred kept Edith with her the entire day. The morning following he was still worse, and for two weeks he kept his room, while Mildred took charge of Edith, going occasionally to his bedside, and reading to him from books which he selected. Never for a moment, however, did she forget her gnawing pain, which, as the days advanced, seemed harder and harder to bear, and when at last the morning came on which she was to have been a bride, she buried her face in her pillows, refusing to be comforted, even by little Edith, who, alarmed at her distress, begged of her father to come and cure Minnie, “who did ty so hard.”
A severe headache was the result of this passionate weeping, and all the morning she lay upon the bed or sofa, almost blinded with pain, while Edith’s little soft hands smoothed her aching head or brushed her beautiful hair. Once Richard, who was better now, came to the door, offering to do something for her, and suggesting many remedies for headache. Very gratefully Mildred smiled upon him, but she could not tell him how the heart was aching tenfold harder than the head, or how her thoughts were turning continually toward Beechwood, from which she had received no news, she having bidden them not to write until Lawrence, Geraldine, Lilian and all were gone; then Oliver was to tell her the whole.
As he had not written, they, of course, had not gone, and fearful that something terrible had happened, her anxiety and excitement seemed greater than she could bear.
CHAPTER XIX.
LAWRENCE AND OLIVER.
