The acquaintance thus begun soon ripened into a friendship. Mr. Frazier and Edith learned that Mr. Hildreth was an American from the city of New York. The letters of introduction that he had with him proved that he had a right to the best society in England, for which his polished manners and uncommon conversational powers showed that he was well fitted. He had been taking an invalid aunt to the south of France for the benefit of the climate, he told them, and after seeing her comfortably established there, he had taken advantage of a few months' leisure to travel wherever his fancy led him. He readily accepted Mr. Frazier's invitation to join him and his daughter in their tour. The similarity of taste they had shown so singularly was a sufficient evidence, he said, that any course they might take would be equally agreeable to both parties.
The next six weeks, Edith thought, were the most delightful she had ever spent. Nowhere does the society of an agreeable and intellectual person add more to the enjoyment of the company than in travelling. Although grave and quiet, Mr. Hildreth was full of thoughtfulness and observant care for the comfort of his fellow-travellers. Whenever he spoke to Edith, there was a gentle deference in his manner that, from one of his superior abilities, was irresistibly attractive.
On his side, Mr. Hildreth was no less charmed by those with whom he had been so strangely thrown. On the Sunday in which he had first seen them, he had been pleased and impressed by Mr. Frazier's sermon, and thought that he had never seen a face of more artless and attractive loveliness than Edith Frazier's. She reminded him of Chaucer's beauties, of a rose half opened and still wet with the morning dews, and of all that was most fresh and delicate in nature. Her mind answered to the promise of her countenance. Ignorant of the world and uncontaminated by it, she walked in almost unconscious innocence the simple path of duty. Her disposition, naturally cheerful and bright, had already begun to recover its buoyancy, and her happiness reacted on her graver companions, who seemed to vie with each other as to which should add most to her pleasure.
Seasons of unshaded happiness are generally as brief as bright. By the end of the six weeks, Mr. Hildreth received a letter from his aunt, who wrote urgently for his immediate presence. He took a reluctant leave of his companions, but not before he had had a long conversation with Mr. Frazier, in which he asked his permission to reveal to Edith the love that had already become a strong feeling in his heart.
Heretofore he had been thrown, he said, among a set of worldly and fashionable women, and had come to look upon simplicity and unworldliness as traits no longer to be met with among the educated and polished members of society, and Edith Frazier exhibited a character as new as attractive to him. She was the only woman that he had ever met, whose society and conversation never wearied or lost their interest to him.
Mr. Frazier's paternal pride was gratified at the tribute thus paid to Edith by a man like Mr. Hildreth, but he could not bear to think of giving up the only object of affection left to him, nor contemplate without pain the idea that his daughter's home might be in a distant land. He did all that he felt justified in doing to avert the day of separation, and pleading Edith's youth, requested Mr. Hildreth to postpone for a year his declaration. To this delay Mr. Hildreth was unwilling to consent; but at last was obliged unwillingly to yield to a probation of six months.
He left Edith, in accordance with the promise he had made Mr. Frazier, entirely unconscious of his feelings towards her, and for some time almost equally unaware of her own. She knew that the loss of his society had deprived her of the greater part of the pleasure she had taken in the new scenes through which she was journeying, but it was not until she was again settled in her own home at Hillcomb that she began to feel that Mr. Hildreth had been far more to her than a mere agreeable casual acquaintance.
This discovery mortified her extremely. She felt as though it was both wrong and humiliating, that one whom she had known so short a time, and who had shown no proof of regarding her as anything but a very young and rather pleasing girl, should engross so much of her thoughts. She resolved to use every means to crush the feelings that, new as they were, seemed to have struck their roots so deeply in her heart. But first she could not resist asking her father one question.
"Do you think we shall ever see Mr. Hildreth again, father?" said she one day, with affected indifference.
"Perhaps so," said he, quietly; "we can never tell what may happen."