“Well, Robin, I give you leave to go. Be off within this very hour, and see that you bring me back some good news. Now that we have reason to believe the poor girl is in London, perhaps near us, I cannot rest until we find her—or prove the scent to have been a false one. Away with you!”
As the boy went out, Edith came back with her work basket.
“I’ve been thinking,” said I, as she sat down on a stool beside me, “that before beginning my story, it would be well that you should unburden your dear little heart of that family secret of yours which you thought at first was a sufficient bar to our union. But before you begin, let me solemnly assure you that your revelations, whatever they are, will utterly fail to move me. Though you should declare yourself to be the daughter of a thief, a costermonger, or a chimpanzee monkey—though you should profess yourself to have been a charwoman, a foundling, a Billingsgate fish-woman, or a female mountebank—my feelings and resolves will remain the same. Sufficient for me to know that you are you, and that you are mine!—There, go on.”
“Truly, then, if such be your feelings, there is no need of my going on, or even beginning,” she replied, with a smile, and yet with a touch of sadness in her tone which made me grasp her hand.
“Ah, Edith! I did not mean to hurt you by my jesting, and yet the spirit of what I say is true—absolutely true.”
“You did not hurt me, John; you merely brought to my remembrance my great sorrow and—”
“Your great sorrow!” I exclaimed in surprise, gazing at her smooth young face.
“Yes, my great sorrow, and I was going to add, my loss. But you shall hear. I have no family mystery to unfold. All that I wished you to know on that head was that I am without family altogether. All are dead. I have no relation on earth—not one.”
She said this with such deep pathos, while tears filled her eyes, that I could not have uttered a word of comfort to save my life.
“And,” she continued, “I am absolutely penniless. These two points at first made me repel you—at least, until I had explained them to you. Now that you look upon them as such trifles I need say no more. But the loss to which I have referred is, I fear, irreparable. You won’t think me selfish or tiresome if I go back to an early period of my history?”