"Good Heaven!" Edith cried, starting up aghast; "half-past eleven! What will Trixy say? Really, moon-gazing must be absorbing work. I had no idea it was after ten."
"Stay a moment, Miss Darrell," Sir Victor interposed, "there is something I would like to say to you—something I have wished to speak of, since we came on board."
Edith's heart gave one great jump—into her mouth it seemed. What could such a preface as this portend, save one thing? The baronet spoke again, and Miss Darrell's heart sunk down to the very soles of her buttoned boots.
"It is concerning those old papers, the Chesholm Courier. You understand, and—and the lamentable tragedy they chronicle."
"Yes?" said Miss Darrell, shutting her lips tight.
"It is naturally a deeply painful subject to me. Twenty-three years have passed; I was but an infant at the time, yet if it had, occurred only a year ago, I think I could hardly feel it more keenly than I do—hardly suffer more, when I speak of it."
"Then why speak of it?" was the young lady's very sensible question. "I have no claim to hear it, I am sure."
"No," the young man responded, and even in the moonlight she could see his color rise, "perhaps not, and yet I wanted to speak to you of it ever since. I don't know why, it is something I can scarcely bear to think of even, and yet I feel a sort of relief in speaking of it to you. Perhaps there is 'rapport' between us—that we are affinities—who knows?"
Who indeed! Miss Darrell's heart came up from her boots, to its proper place, and stayed there.
"It was such a terrible thing," the young man went on, "such a mysterious thing. To this day it is wrapped in darkness. She was so young, so fair, so good—it seems too horrible for belief, that any human being could lift his hand against so innocent a life. And yet it was done."