“Not more so than your own, I am quite sure, Earle. But do you not think mother is very lovely?” she asked.
“She is, truly. How very happy you are in the knowledge of your parentage.”
“Yes; and for more reasons than one,” she answered, with a shy smile at him, accompanied with a rosy blush; then she added, more gravely: “But I wish my mother need not have suffered quite so deeply. If my father could but have known how sorry and repentant she was, and how truly good she was at heart, they might have grown to be very happy after awhile; he need not have lived such a lonely, sorrowful life, and all this sin and trouble need never have been. But”—with a sigh of regret—“we have no right to question the dealings of One who is wiser than we. There is some good reason for all the suffering there is in the world, and some one has somewhere said that ‘human lives are like some sweet plants, which must be crushed ere they give forth their sweetest fragrance.’”
“And we are told somewhere else that gold seven times tried is pure. How very free from dross, then, you must be, my darling,” Earle said, with playful tenderness.
“No, indeed, Earle; my trials and sorrows have been nothing compared to yours,” Editha said, earnestly.
“The bitterness of the past disappears in the brightness of the present, and what the future promises to be; and I do not forget, my darling, that but for your fortitude a dark shadow would still rest upon my life—you endured a great deal for my sake, Editha,” and his lips touched her forehead almost reverently.
“And I would have resisted until I died rather than have given up my treasure into the hands of that wicked man,” she cried, with something of the old wilful gleam in her eyes. “Do you know,” she added, eagerly, in the same breath, “that I have found the Lokers, and they are now just as comfortable as they can be.”
“And all owing to your own kindness of heart and liberal hand, no doubt,” Earle responded, with a smile.
“How could I help expressing my gratitude in some way for having that dark mystery solved and every stigma removed from your character? I did help them to begin with, but they are going to help themselves now. I stocked a cunning little store with fancy and useful articles, furnished two rooms in the rear for their private use, and they are really very successful in their little business.”
“With you for their chief patron, I presume,” was Earle’s laughing reply, as he gazed admiringly into her animated face.