Her bonnet and mantle are brought—she kisses Trix and Aunt Chatty good-night—they have promised to dine with her to-morrow—and goes forth into the soft October night with Charley.
He draws her hand within his arm—the night is star-lit, lovely. The old time comes back, the old feeling of rest and content, the old comfortable feeling that it is Charley's arm upon which she leans, and that she asks no more of fate. To-morrow he may be Nellie Seton's—just now, he belongs to her.
"Oh!" she exclaims, with a long-drawn breath, "how familiar it all is! these gas-lit New York streets, the home-like look of the men and women, and—you. It seems as though I had left Sandypoint only yesterday, and you were showing me again the wonders of New York for the first time."
He looks down at the dusk, warm, lovely face, so near his own.
"Sandypoint," he repeats; "Edith, do you recall what I said to you there? Have you ever wished once, in those three years that are gone, that I had never come to Sandypoint to take you away?"
"I have never wished it," she answers truly; "never once. I have never blamed you, never blamed anyone but myself—how could I? The evil of my life I wrought with my own hand, and—if it were all to come over again—I would still go! I have suffered, but at least—I have lived."
"I am glad to hear that," he says after a little pause; "it has troubled me again and again. You see, Hammond wrote us all he ever knew of you, and though it was rather incomprehensible in part, it was clear enough your life was not entirely a bed of roses. All that, I hope, is over and done with—there can be no reason why all the rest of your life should not be entirely happy. This is partly why I wished to walk home with you to-night, that I might know from your own lips whether you held me blameless or not. And partly, also—" a second brief pause;—"to bid you good-by."
"Good-by!" In the starlight she turns deathly white.
"Yes," he responded cheerily; "good-by; and as our lives lie so widely apart in all probability, this time forever. I shall certainly return here at Christmas, but you may have gone before that. To-morrow morning I start for St. Louis, where a branch of our house is established, and where I am permanently to remain. It is an excellent opening for me—my salary has been largely advanced, and I am happy to say the firm think me competent and trustworthy. I return, as I said, at Christmas; after that it becomes my permanent home. You know, of course," he says with a laugh, "why I return—Trix has told you?"
So completely has she forgotten Trix, so wholly have her thoughts been of him, that she absolutely does not remember to what he alludes.