"I—I thought it was best," she faltered at last.
"Why for the 'best'?—for you or for me? Tell me, please," he pleaded, gently.
"For—both," she replied in a scarcely audible tone that thrilled him and made his face gleam with sudden tenderness.
"I—you will pardon me if I speak plainly—I thought it very strange," he remarked gravely. "It almost seemed to me as if you were fleeing from me, for I fully expected that you would return to the office on Thursday morning, as I had appointed. Had I done anything to offend you or drive you away—Edith?"
"No—oh, no," she quickly returned.
"I am very glad to know that," said her companion, a slight tremulousness in his tones, "for I have feared that I might have betrayed my feelings in a way to wound or annoy you; for, Edith—I can no longer keep the secret—I had learned to love you with all my heart during that week that you spent in my office, and I resolved, on parting with you at the carriage, the morning of your release, to confess the fact to you as soon as you returned to the office, ask you to be my wife and thus let me stand between you and the world for all time. Nay,"—as Edith here made a little gesture as if to check him—"I must make a full confession now, while I have the opportunity. I was almost in despair when I received your brief note telling me that you had left the city and without giving me the slightest clew to your destination. All my plans, all my fond anticipations, were dashed to the earth, dear. I loved you so I felt that I could not bear the separation. I love you still, my darling—my heart leaped for joy this afternoon when I received your telegram. And now, while I have you here all to myself, I have dared to tell you of it, and beg you to tell me if there is any hope for me? Can you love me in return!—will you be my wife—?"
"Oh, hush! you forget the wretched tie that binds me to that villain in Boston," cried Edith, and there was such keen pain in her voice that tears involuntarily started to her companion's eyes, while at the same time both words and tone thrilled him with sweetest hope.
"No tie binds you to him, dear," he whispered, tenderly. "Do you think I would have opened my heart to you thus if I had really believed you to be the wife of another?"
"Oh, do you mean that the marriage was not legal? Oh, if I could believe that!" Edith exclaimed, with a note of such eager hope in her tones that it almost amounted to the confession her lover had solicited from her.
But he yearned to hear it in so many words from her lips.