Silver stars when the day is done.
After the knell, wedding bells,
Joyful greetings from sad farewells.”
Earle hummed this little verse, with a fond smile wreathing his handsome lips, his glad heart beating time to its hopeful rhythm, as he listened to catch the first sound of the footfalls he so loved.
Editha Dalton—so called since the first year of her babyhood—was indeed the child of Richard Forrester and Madam Sylvester, or Mrs. Forrester, as she must henceforth be called, and only a few words will be needed to give an outline of his early life.
While he was quite young a maiden aunt had died, leaving him heir to a handsome fortune. As soon as he had completed his college course he made the acquaintance of Estelle Sylvester.
He loved her from the very first, and though he thought her a trifle giddy and wild, he laid it to the fact that French people are naturally vivacious and freer in their manners than the staid, Puritanic Americans, and he reasoned that when she should marry and assume the responsibilities of domestic life, she would sober down into the quiet, self-possessed matron.
For a year after their marriage, as we have said, all went well—indeed, the wild and giddy Estelle became too quiet and sedate to suit him; but that he attributed to the state of her health somewhat. But when, on the fatal morning of Louis Villemain’s return, he learned the truth that his wife had never loved him, but that her heart had been wholly another’s even when she had vowed to love him only until death, he was crushed for the moment; then his fiery temper gained the ascendency, and, for the time, made almost a madman of him, and he uttered words which in his calmer moments he would never have spoken.
Upon his return one evening, after a day of solitude and of brooding over his injury, finding his wife and child gone, he was for the instant tempted to put an end to his life, but a wise hand stayed the rash act.
All night long he mourned for the lost ones—for he had loved his wife tenderly, and his baby had been his idol—with a bitterness which only strong natures like his can experience; but when morning broke, and he began to consider the dishonor that would fall upon him, his passion flamed anew, and when poor, penitent Estelle returned at noon, his heart was like a wall of brass to her entreaties and prayers for forgiveness.