“I do know, dear, and of course shall remain as long as Mr. Dalton may need either you or me; but, oh! my darling, you cannot tell how thankful I am that I am not doomed to spend my life in gloom and alone; everything has looked so dreary and desolate to me until to-day.”
Editha did not reply, but she laid her cheek against his in mute sympathy, and with a sigh that told him she had also experienced something of the desolateness of which he spoke.
“You have not seen Mr. Tressalia yet, I suppose?” she said, after a few minutes of silence.
“No, dear, I have not seen him since the day I had such a struggle with my selfishness, and sent him hither to win you and be happy if he could.”
His arm tightened around the slight form at his side as he said this, and Editha knew how he must have suffered in that struggle to renounce her so utterly.
“Did you send him to me, Earle?” she asked, with a startled look.
“Yes, dear; Paul Tressalia is one of earth’s noblest men. I believed you lost to me forever. You once told me if there had been no Earle Wayne in the world, you might have loved him. I wanted you to be happy—I wanted him to know something of the comfort of life, and I knew of no one whom I would rather have win a sister of mine than him. It was a miserable kind of an arrangement all round, but I knew of nothing better.”
Earle spoke with a tinge of the bitterness he had experienced at the time, as if even the memory of it was exceedingly painful.
“Dear Earle, you might have known it could not be,” she whispered, sliding one hand into his and dropping her flushed face upon his shoulder.
“Never—not even if our relations had remained as we have believed them to be?”