"'Go for him!' What a horribly vulgar way you have of speaking. No. I'll leave him for Trixy. Have you had enough of starlight and moonlight, Mr. Stuart, on Sandypoint Bay, because I'm going to turn and row home. I've had no supper, and I shall eat you if we stay here fasting much longer."
She rows back, and arm in arm they ascend the rocky path, and linger one last moment at the garden gate.
"So ends the old life," Edith says, softly. "It is my last night at home. I ought to feel sad, I suppose, but I don't. I never felt so happy in my life."
He is holding her hand. For two who are not lovers, and never mean to be, they understand each other wonderfully well.
"And remember your promise," he answers. "Let the life that is coming bring what it may, you are never to blame me."
Then Mrs. Darrell's tall, spare figure appears in the moonlight, summoning them sharply to tea, and hands are unclasped, and in silence they follow her.
The first train from Sandypoint to Boston bears away Edith Darrell and Charley Stuart. Not alone together, however—forbid it Mrs. Grundy! Mrs. Rogers, the Sandypoint milliner, is going to New York for the summer fashions, and the young lady travels under her protection. They reach Boston in time for the train that connects with the Fall River boats. It has been a day of brightest sunshine; it is a lovely spring night. They dine on board. Mrs. Rogers is sleepy and tired and goes to bed (she and Edith share the same state-room), with a last charge to Mr. Stuart not to keep Miss Darrell too long on deck in the night air.
They float grandly up the bright river. Two wandering harpists and a violinist play very sweetly near them, and they walk up and down, talking and feeling uncommonly happy and free, until Charley's watch points to eleven, and the music comes to a stop. They say good-night. She goes to Mrs. Rogers and the upper berth, and Mr. Stuart meditatively turns to his own. He is thinking, that all things considered, it is just as well this particularly fascinating companionship, ends in a manner to-morrow.
To-morrow comes. It is Miss Beatrix Stuart's birthday. The great party is to be to-night. They shake hands and part with Mrs. Rogers on the pier. Charley hails a hack and assists his cousin in, and they are whirled off to the palatial avenue up-town.
The house is a stately brown-stone front, of course, and on a sunny corner. Edith leans back, quite silent, her heart beating as she looks. The whirl, the crash, the rush of New York streets stun her, the stateliness of the Stuart mansion awes her. She is very pale, her lips are set together. She turns to Charley suddenly, and holds out her hands to him as a helpless child might.