At the end of a year she graduated, doing honor to both her instructors and herself.
There was a day apart for public exercises, when the graduating class appeared before their many friends to show what they were capable of in the way of essays, poems, and other accomplishments, and to receive their diplomas.
Editha’s poem was greeted with enthusiasm, a perfect storm of applause testifying to the appreciation of the public; whole floral offerings were showered at her feet, until there were enough to have stocked a florist in a small way.
Selecting the choicest of them all, she inclosed both bouquet and poem, together with a little explanatory note, in a box, and dispatched it to Earle.
Unfortunately, Mr. Dalton encountered the servant who was bearing this box to the express office, confiscated it, and enjoined silence upon the bearer regarding its untimely fate. The poem he preserved, but the flowers were ruthlessly cast into the flames.
“We’ll put a stop to all this nonsense,” he muttered, as he watched their beauty blacken and shrivel upon the glowing coals; and from that day he took care that the lonely prisoner should receive no more flowers or tokens of remembrance from his little friend, who, though she never once failed to keep her promise, was yet destined, through the enmity of another, to appear unfaithful to her promises.
The second year passed, and it was a year fraught with events of pain and sorrow for our beautiful Editha.
Mrs. Dalton died—a woman of fashion and folly, but always kind, in her way, to Editha; and though there had never been as much of sympathy and harmony between them as there should be between mother and daughter, yet it left her very lonely, and occasioned her the deepest grief that the one whom she had always called by that sacred name should be taken from her.
Six months later Richard Forrester suddenly sickened, and from the first they knew that it was unto death.
This blow appeared likely to crush Editha, for “Uncle Richard” had always been her friend and sympathizer.