Her companion obeyed her, and, as she read, her face grew stern and white—her eyes glittered with a fiery light which told of an outraged spirit aroused to a point where it would have been dangerous for the woman who once had deeply wronged her, had she been living, to have crossed her path again.
"If I had known!—if I had known—" she began, when she reached the end. Then, suddenly checking herself, she added, tenderly, to Edith: "My love, it seems so wonderful—all this that has happened to you and to me! We must take time to talk it all over by ourselves. You can excuse yourself to your friend, can you not, and come with me to the Waldorf? Say that I wish to keep you for the remainder of the day and night, but will return you to her in the morning."
Edith's face beamed with delight at this proposal.
"Yes, indeed," she said, rising to comply at once with the request. "I am sure Nellie will willingly give me up, when I whisper the truth in her ear. My dear—dear mother!" she added, tremulously, as she bent forward and kissed the beautiful face with quivering lips, "this wonderful revelation seems too joyful to be true!"
"Edith, my child," gravely said Isabel Stewart, as she held the girl a little away from her and searched her face with anxious eyes, "after learning what you did of me, from those horrible letters, is there no shrinking in your heart—is there no feeling of—of shame or of pitiful contempt for me?"
"Not an atom, dear," whispered the trustful maiden, whose keen intuitions had long since fathomed the character of the woman before her; "to me you are as pure and dear as if that man—whoever he may have been—had never cast a shadow upon your life by the shameful deception which he practiced upon you."
"My blessed little comforter! you shall be rewarded for your faith in me," returned Mrs. Stewart, her lips wreathed in fondest smiles, her eyes glowing with happiness. "But go excuse yourself to Mrs. Morrell, then we will take leave of our hostess, and go home."
Ten minutes later they were on their way to the Waldorf.
It was rather a silent drive, for both were still too deeply moved over their recent reunion to care to enter into details just then. It was happiness enough to sit side by side, hand clasped in hand, knowing that they were mother and daughter, and in tenderest sympathy with each other.
Upon arriving at her hotel Mrs. Stewart led the way directly to her delightful suite of rooms, where, the moment the door was closed, she turned and once more gathered Edith into her arms.