"Oh! and I have lived day after day in his presence! I have talked and jested with him! I have eaten of his bread, and his roof has sheltered me!" cried Edith, shivering with aversion. "Why, oh, why did not some instinct warn me of the wretched truth, and enable me to repudiate him and then fly from him as from some monster of evil? Ah, I was warned, if I had but heeded the signs," she continued, with flushed cheeks and flaming eyes. "There were many times when some word or look would make me shrink from him with a strange repugnance, and that last night in Wyoming—oh, he revealed his evil nature to me in a way that made me loathe him!"
"My child, pray calm yourself," pleaded her mother, regarding her with astonishment, for she never could have believed, but for this manifestation, that the usually gentle girl could have displayed so much spirit under any circumstances. "Come," she added, "sit down again, and explain what you meant by your reference to that last night at Wyoming."
And Edith, obeying her, related the conversation that had occurred between Mr. Goddard and herself, on the night of the ball, when the man had come to the dressing-room and asked her to button his gloves.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
FURTHER EXPLANATIONS BETWEEN MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.
"It was very, very strange that you should have drifted into his home in such a way," Mrs. Stewart observed, when Edith's narrative was ended. "But, dear, I am not sorry—it was perhaps the best thing that could have happened, under the circumstances, for it afforded you an opportunity to gain an insight into the man's character without having been previously influenced or prejudiced by any one. If you had never met him, you might have imagined, after hearing my story, that I was more bitter and unforgiving toward him than he justly merited."
"He must have recognized you instantly when you entered Mrs. Wallace's drawing-room to-day," said Edith, musingly; "for, did you notice how strangely he looked when Mrs. Baldwin called me Miss Allandale, and you came to me so eagerly?"
"Yes; the relationship you bear to us both must have flashed upon him with as great a shock as upon me," Mrs. Stewart returned.
"And how perfectly wretched he appeared when he came to the reception-room door to give me the letter," Edith remarked, musingly, as that white, pained face arose before her mind's eye.