"My love, cannot you restrain your curiosity upon that point? Will you not let the dead past bury its dead, without erecting a tablet to its memory?" her companion pleaded, gently. "It can do you no possible good—it might cause you infinite pain to know."
"Is the man living?" Edith sternly demanded.
Mrs. Stewart flushed.
"Yes," she replied, after a moment of hesitation.
"Then I must know—you must tell me, so that I may shun him as I would shun a deadly serpent," the young girl exclaimed, with compressed lips and flashing eyes.
Mrs. Stewart looked both pained and troubled.
"My love, I wish you would not press this point," she remarked, nervously.
"Edith turned and gazed searchingly into her eyes.
"Do you still cherish an atom of affection for him?" she inquired.
"No! a thousand times no!" was the emphatic response, accompanied by a gesture of abhorrence.