The time, for the first week or two after Earle’s departure, dragged heavily to Editha, and then, with her usual good sense, she resolved to fill up the months of his absence with work—the very best antidote in the world for all life’s weariness and ills. Consequently, she set herself a daily task in music and in perfecting herself in the languages of German and French, and after that time flew as if on magic wings.
Twice every week she wrote to Earle, and twice every week she heard from him. And such letters as they were, too! Full of such deep, strong, abiding devotion as only such men as he are capable of feeling and expressing.
Whether Mr. Dalton suspected the flight and reception of these little white-winged messengers of love was a matter of doubt to Editha. At all events they were none of them intercepted or tampered with, since she alone held the key to lock-box 1,004, and trusted no one else with it.
She wondered often what the nature of Earle’s business abroad could be, and what great good he expected it to bring him if he was successful.
She wondered if it was some case connected with the lords and nobles of that country, and by which some American descendant expected to be elevated to the nobility of the land.
She built many a romance and castle in the air, but whether they would stand or fall she could not tell until her lover’s return. He did not mention business matters to her in his letters, and therefore she had no means of knowing whether he was meeting with success or not.
“Please, miss, give me a dime, my father is dying and we’ve neither fire nor bread.”
These were the plaintive words which greeted Editha’s ears one cold, threatening evening, as she was hurrying to reach the shelter of her home before the storm should overtake her.
She had been out, as usual, to recite her German and French, and on returning had stopped to do a little shopping, and it had begun to grow dark before she was through.