No one but Editha herself, however, knew the secret of her own beauty—she had loved and was beloved; and, though her hopes might not be crowned for a long while, yet she waited in patience for Earle to speak, having full faith that he would eventually rise superior to every trial, and trample every obstacle beneath his feet.
She and her father were less in sympathy than ever before.
She had dared to displease him again by rejecting Mr. Tressalia’s proposals of marriage.
The day following Earle’s call upon her—on that very Christmas Day when she had contemplated asking him to dinner, and making the day so pleasant to him—Mr. Dalton had brought Mr. Tressalia home with him to be their guest, and he had sat in the seat she had destined for Earle, and she had been obliged to exert herself to entertain him instead.
He had also attended a grand reception with them in the evening, and altogether that Christmas was so entirely different from what she had planned it should be, that she was a little inclined to feel almost as much out of patience with the innocent cause of it as with her father.
A few days later Paul Tressalia had asked her to be his wife, and she had been obliged to tell him “No, it could not be.”
Mr. Dalton was very angry, but secretly bade the rejected lover hope, assuring him that Editha’s affections were not engaged, and he, three months later, taking courage, renewed his proposal, to receive the same answered as before.
A stormy interview between father and daughter had followed, Mr. Dalton declaring that she should marry the rich Englishman, and Editha as firmly asserting that she should not do so.
The disappointed lover, however, followed them to Newport, where he continually haunted every scene of pleasure where the fair girl was to be found; and, to Editha’s shame, she was at last forced to believe that her father was still bidding him hope against hope.
It might be thought that Paul Tressalia was lacking in either pride for himself or proper respect for the woman he professed to love, by being so persistent but it was the one passion of his life, although he was thirty years of age, and he could not easily yield to her gentle though firm refusal, particularly when Mr. Dalton told him he must eventually overcome her objections if he was patient.