Mrs. Leland was importuned to remain with the girls. Why should she return all alone to her western home?—though the probability now was that the west would be where their new home would be located. Just at this time, too, came the change that caused the sisters’ eyes to grow dim with tears and a feeling of sadness to pervade every heart. Frank was daily growing weaker, his cheek more hollow and white, his hands more waxy, and intuitively the girls clung to the more mature woman. On a bright sunny morning in the early part of May the tired lids closed, never to open again. Although almost every day brought a letter from some one of the absent ones yet they were still far-away when the death angel made his entrance into the midst of this happy circle, subduing their spirits with infinite sadness when they realized so well what had caused this painful result. So Frank’s body was laid away to sleep beneath the daisies, and Imelda’s and Cora’s tears mingled as they knew that another bond was broken—only they two remained, united by ties of blood, but they also realized that it was better so. At best he had been to them but a wreck of what he might have been. Margaret had joined them just in time to lay a flower upon his pulseless breast and was now with them again for a brief time.
The young physician, Paul Arthurs, and Milton Nesbit had settled close by, and Paul was beginning to have quite a practice as he was fast becoming known. For some time however, something seemed to have been secretly gnawing at his heart, and when his manner had been warmest towards the stately Edith he would suddenly and abruptly leave her, until his conduct became quite an enigma to her. One morning he laid a pack of written papers in her hand and told her to read, and——ah, well! why dwell upon a sad story longer than absolutely necessary? He loved the queenly girl but was conscious of such a lack of worth on his own part that he felt it would be best to give her up. Somewhere under the green sod slept a woman whom he believed the poison of his own body had murdered. Having first made a wreck of himself, almost, by early transgressions, the meaning of which he had been ignorant of, he had later contracted the germs of a loathsome disease. In his unpardonable ignorance he married a sweet, confiding, loving girl whom he loved with all his heart but whom he irreparably wronged by permitting his poisoned manhood to mingle with her pure womanhood; and when her baby girl was laid in her arms her eyes closed in that sleep that knows no waking, and the baby slept with her—under the circumstances the very best, probably, that could have happened. He was quite young when all this occurred—in the early twenties, a period of his life he never liked to think of. It was after that experience that he gave himself up to the study of medicine, and then he underwent a most rigid course of treatment, including very stringent rules or habits of diet, bathing and open air exercise.
“I can now look a pure woman in the eyes and know of a certainty that no harm can come to her through me, but for all that, the past is a blur upon my life, a stain which nothing can ever wash away. One word from you, my heart’s queen, will send me to my place and keep me there. I could not accept the sweet love shining in your eyes when I know my utter unworthiness, without laying bare the past, the memory of which follows me like a mocking fiend. Sweetheart, say but the word and I will never become an inmate of that home which now is being planned—if you deem me too impure, too unworthy to associate with the unsullied whiteness that will congregate there. But O, my darling! I love you as only a man can love when his manhood’s strength is most fully developed; but I must abide the verdict you may render.
Yours suppliantly,
Paul.”
And what had been sweet Edith’s verdict? When next they met it was in the garden, under the blossom-laden trees. Paul was sitting with his head resting on his hand unaware of her approaching footsteps. From the rear she approached until she stood close to his side, when without a moment’s warning two soft warm hands drew his head back, two warm, dewy clinging lips were touched to his bearded ones, and the next moment he was pressing his cherished Edith to his heart, pouring all the pent up love of a strong nature into her willing ears. His errors of the past belonged to the past. She saw only a noble manhood to which she felt it would be safe to trust her womanhood.
About this same time, also a strange restlessness took possession of Nesbit. A nightly visitor at Maple Lawn, he seemed to enjoy the society of the fair women there with the keenest relish. Alice’s slight figure seemed perpetually dancing before his eyes and a great longing filled his heart. Alice, too, was restless. The color would rush in waves over her face at the sound of approaching footsteps. Although he saw and understood, yet he never said a word. With all the sweet possibilities the future so temptingly held out to him he kept his lips firmly closed while he knew full well that this fair little woman might be his for the asking.
One morning in early June Nesbit electrified them all by abruptly saying that he was going to New York. All looked their surprise. Margaret asked,
“Why?”
Alice nervously plucked the first full-blown rose to pieces as her color changed from red to white and white to red, but Margaret’s question was evasively answered. Again she asked,