"I do not see how it can be possible for him to have known one peaceful moment since the day of his desertion of you in Rome," Edith remarked, with a grave, thoughtful face.
"I do not think he has," said her mother. "No one can be really at peace while leading a life of sin and selfish indulgence. I would rather, a thousand times, have lived my life, saddened and overshadowed by a great wrong and a lasting disgrace—as I have believed it to be—than to have exchanged places with either Gerald Goddard or Anna Correlli."
"How relieved you must have been when you met Mr. Forsyth and learned that your marriage had been a legal one," Edith observed, while she uttered a sigh of gratitude as she realized that thus all reproach had also been removed from her.
"Indeed I was, love; but more on your account than mine. And I immediately returned to America to prove it, and then reveal to my dear old friend, Edith, the fact that no stigma rested upon the birth of the child whom she had so nobly adopted as her own. Poor Edith! I loved her with all my heart," interposed the fair woman, with starting tears. "I wish I might have seen her once more, to bless her, from the depths of my grateful soul, for having so sacredly treasured the jewel that I committed to her care. If I could but have known two years earlier, and found her, she never need have suffered the privations which I am sure hastened her untimely death. You, too, my darling, would have been spared the wretched experience of which you have told me."
"I do not mind so much for myself, but was in despair sometimes to see how much mamma missed and needed the comforts to which she had always been accustomed," said Edith, the tears rolling over her cheeks as she remembered the patient sufferer who never murmured, even when she was enduring the pangs of hunger.
"Well, dear, do not grieve," said Mrs. Stewart, folding her in a fond embrace. "I know, from what you have told me, that you did your utmost to shield her from every ill; and, judging from what you have said regarding the state of her health at the time of Mr. Allandale's death, I believe she could not have lived very much longer, even under the most favorable circumstances. Now, my child," she continued, more brightly, and to distract the girl's thoughts from the sad past, "since everything is all explained, tell me something about these new friends of whom you have spoken—Mr. Bryant, Mrs. Morrell and Mr. Raymond."
Edith blushed rosily at the mention of her lover's name, and almost involuntarily she slipped her hand into her pocket and clasped a letter that lay concealed there.
"Mr. Bryant is the gentleman in whose office I was working at the time of mamma's death," she explained. "He, too, was the one who was so kind when I got into trouble with the five-dollar gold piece, and so it was to him I applied for advice, after escaping from Emil Correlli."
"Ah!" simply remarked Mrs. Stewart, but she was quick to observe the shy smile that hovered about the beautiful girl's mouth while she was speaking of Roy.
"I telegraphed him to meet me when I should arrive in New York," Edith resumed, "because I knew it would be late, and I did not know where it would be best for me to go. He did so, and took me directly to his cousin, and that is how I happened to be with Mrs. Morrell."