"They are charming people," said her aunt, caressingly; "I am sure, my dear, you will like them very much, and be very happy with them. Of course, I would not wish my brother's child to go where she would not be with those who are likely to take some interest in her."
Edith could not help perceiving that her aunt was relieved by the prospect of her departure; and this thought, while it strengthened her in her resolve, made her feel her isolation still more deeply.
On board the same steamer with Mr. and Mrs. Blake and Edith was a little girl, an invalid, who interested the young English girl extremely. Edith had brought her bird with her. It was the only thing she had to remind her of happier days, and she could not bear to part with it. At little Ellen's earnest request, she hung the cage in her state-room, and, before the end of the voyage, the little sick girl had become so attached to the pretty bird, whose sweet song was almost the only cheering sound she heard during the long and weary days at sea, that she could not speak of parting with it without showing by her tearful eyes the pain it gave her. Edith felt that she ought not to deprive the little sufferer of so great a pleasure, and, concealing her reluctance to give up a souvenir she had cherished so long, she told little Ellen that the bird was to be hers. The child's evident delight was some compensation to Edith for her self-denial, yet it was with a sharp pang that she watched the cage as it was put in the carriage, after the arrival of the steamer at New York, to be conveyed to the upper part of the city, while Edith, with her new friends, went on board another steamer about to sail for Charleston.
Mr. Blake's residence was among the pine forests of the State; a region healthful, it is true, but peculiarly desolate, especially to one accustomed to the soft verdure and smiling landscape of England. The tall dark trees; unceasingly sighing forth their low and mournful murmurs, seemed to Edith a fit emblem of the griefs that were henceforward to darken her life.
There was but little in her new home to call her thoughts from the sad recollections to which they were constantly recurring. Mr. Blake and his wife were very kind to her, treating her rather as a guest than one to whose services they were entitled; but they lived in a part of the country very thinly settled, their nearest neighbor being at a distance of seven or eight miles, and there was a wearying monotony in Edith's daily life that weighed upon her spirits. Gratitude for the unvarying and thoughtful kindness shown to her by Mrs. Blake induced Edith to make every exertion to regain her accustomed cheerfulness, and she had, in some measure, succeeded, when the Christmas holidays came to remind her, by the contrast between her own position and that of the persons by whom she was surrounded, more painfully of her isolation. The little family gatherings, from which she could hardly absent herself without appearing unmindful of Mrs. Blake's gentle yet urgent requests, and yet where she felt herself among them, but not of them, recalled to her so forcibly the former seasons, when her happiness and pleasure were to all around her the one thing of the greatest importance, that, for the first time since her departure from England, Edith yielded to her feelings of loneliness, and every night wet her pillow with her tears. The reply of the Shunamite woman to the prophet's inquiry about her wants, "I dwell among mine own people," came with a new and touching significance to her mind, now that she began to feel that never again would she feel the sweet security and protection implied in such a position.
On New Year's eve, Edith slipped away from the merry group assembled in Mr. Blake's parlors to indulge her sad meditations for a little while without interruption. As she stood on the porch listening to the mournful music of the pines, whose aromatic incense filled the air with its healthful fragrance, and watching the moon as it slowly waded through the clouded sky, now shining out in full brilliancy, and then almost entirely darkened as it passed behind the thick masses of vapor that were hanging in the vast concave, she thought that just such sudden alternations of darkness and light had been her lot in this life.
"The clouds hang heavily over me now," thought she; "but there will be brightness soon."
Almost at the same moment there came the sound of an approaching arrival, and Edith hastily retreated to the house. She had hardly time to mingle with the gay family party, when, hearing her name called, she turned suddenly, while a thrill of amazed delight passed over her at the familiar tone, and saw before her Mr. Hildreth, whose smile shed a light and warmth upon her heart to which it had long been a stranger.
The clouds were at once lifted off from her soul, and she was once more the light-hearted girl she had been in her English home. In the midst of her happiness there was a feeling of insecurity, a doubt as to its continuance. But that Edith would not allow herself to dwell upon. It was happiness enough for the present to think that one whom she so highly esteemed still cared enough for her to seek her out in her secluded home.
But before the last hours of the old year had passed away, walking in the serene moonlight under those pine-trees to whose mournful murmur her thoughts had been so long attuned, Edith listened with a beating heart to the avowal of the same feelings which Mr. Hildreth had confessed to her father more than a year before. What had become of all the sadness that had brooded over Edith's heart so many months? It was gone like the clouds from the sky, but not to return, like them, in a few short hours.