"Stop!" he says suddenly; "you are making some strange mistake, Edith. Nellie cares for me, as Trix does, and Trix is not more a sister to me than Nellie. For the rest—do you remember what I said to you that night at Killarney?"
Her lips tremble—her eyes watch him, her weak fingers close tightly over his. Remember! does she not?
"I said—'I will love you all my life!' I have kept my word, and mean to keep it. If I may not call you wife, I will never call, by that name, any other woman. No one in this world can ever be to me again, what you were and are."
There is another pause, but the dark, uplifted eyes are radiant now.
"At last! at last!" she breathes; "when it is too late. Oh, Charley! If the past might only come over again, how different it all would be. I think"—she says this with a weak little laugh, that reminds him of the Edith of old—"I think I could sleep more happily even in my grave—if 'Edith Stuart' were carved on my tombstone!"
His eyes never leave her face—they light up in their dreary sadness now at these words.
"Do you mean that, Edith?" he says bending over her; "living or dying, would it make you any happier to be my wife?"
Her eyes, her face, answer him. "But it is too late," the pale lips sigh.
"It is never too late," he says quietly; "we will be married to-night."
"Charley?"