"One of their great financial crises, they tell me, is approaching in New York, involving many failures and immense loss. One of the most deeply involved, it is whispered, will be James Stuart. I have heard he is threatened with ruin. Let us hope, however, this may be exaggerated. Once I fancied it would be a fine thing, a brilliant match, if my Edith married James Stuart's son. How much better Providence has arranged it! Once more, my dearest daughter, I congratulate you on the brilliant vista opening before you. Your step-mother, who desires her best love, never wearies of spreading the wonderful news that our little Edie is so soon to be the bride of a great English baronet."
Miss Darrell's straight black brows met in one frowning line as she perused this parental and pious epistle. The next instant it was torn into minute atoms, and scattered to the four winds of heaven.
There seemed to be some foundation for the news. Letters without end kept coming for Mr. Stuart; little boys bearing the ominous orange envelopes of the telegraph company, came almost daily to Powyss Place. After these letters and cable messages the gloom on Mr. Stuart's face deepened and darkened. He lost sleep, he lost appetite; some great and secret fear seemed preying upon him. What was it? His family noticed it, and inquired about his health. He rebuffed them impatiently; he was quite well—he wanted to be let alone—why the unmentionable-to-ears-polite need they badger him with questions? They held their peace and let him alone. That it in any way concerned commercial failure they never dreamed; to them the wealth of the husband and father was something illimitable—a golden river flowing from a golden ocean. That ruin could approach them never entered their wildest dreams.
He had gone to Edith one day and offered her a thousand-dollar check.
"For your trousseau, my dear," he had said. "It isn't what I expected to give you—what I would give you, if—" He gulped and paused. "Things have changed with me lately. You will accept this, Edie—it will at least buy your wedding-dress."
She had shrunk back, and refused—not proudly, or angrily—very humbly, but very firmly. From Charley's father she could never take a farthing now.
"No" she said, "I can't take it. Dear Mr. Stuart, I thank you all the same; you have given me more already than I deserve or can ever repay. I cannot take this. Sir Victor Catheron takes me as I am—poor, penniless. Lady Helena will give me a white silk dress and veil to be married in. For the rest, after my wedding-day, whatever my life may lack, it will not lack dresses."
He had replaced the check in his pocket-book, inwardly thankful, perhaps, that it had not been accepted. The day was past when a thousand dollars would have been but as a drop in the ocean to him.
The time of departure was fixed at length; and the moment it was fixed, Trix flew upstairs, and into Edith's room, with the news.
"Oh, let us be joyful," sang Miss Stuart, waltzing in psalm time up and down the room; "we're off at last, the day after to-morrow, Dithy; so go pack up at once. It's been very jolly, and all that, down here, for the past four weeks, and you've had a good time, I know; but I, for one, will be glad to hear the bustle and din of city life once more. One grows tired doing the pastoral and tooral-ooral—I mean truly rural—and craves for shops, and gaslight, and glitter, and crowds of human beings once more. Our rooms are taken at Langham's, Edie, and that blessed darling, Captain Hammond, goes with us. Lady Portia, Lady Gwendoline, and Lady Laura are coming also, and I mean to plunge headlong into the giddy whirl of dissipation, and mingle with the bloated aristocracy. Why don't you laugh? What are you looking so sulky about?"