—sang it before me, and with such an air of triumph and certainty as made me feel anything but pitiful toward him for a little while. Edith was offended, too. I saw her color with resentment. ‘Ma mie!’ It was too public a claiming. When we came back—you know what a night it was, mother.” Carl stopped, his face growing very red. “There are some things not easy to tell,” he said.
Mrs. Yorke put her arm around him, and drew his head to her bosom.
“Not even to your own mother, dear?” she whispered, with her cheek resting on his hair. “It was my heart that taught yours to beat, Carl.”
In that sweet confessional, he went on with his story. “It was such a scene as gives one that faint swaying of the brain that just shows the points in our prudent resolutions. The moonlight, the music, the air, the water, our very motion, were intoxicating. And Edith was there, and so beautiful!—an Undine, drooping over the boat-side, as though she might any moment slip into the water, and disappear, if I did not stay her. I sang what I would have said. I called her, and she turned to me!”
Carl lifted his head, caught his mother’s hands, and kissed them joyfully, then stood up before her with an air as triumphant as Dick Rowan’s own. “The time had come, and she was mine!” he exclaimed. “Edith belongs to me, mother!”
For the moment, everything else was forgotten; and the mother forgot, too, till she saw his face cloud over.
“Poor fellow!” said Carl, and knelt on the hassock again. “My heart aches for him. When he saw Edith look at me, he fainted. It seems cruel to be so happy at such a cost. I went up to Hester’s, last night, to see him, but he was not there, and it was too late to go to the ship. I would have borne any reproach from him. I would have been patient, and have explained everything to him. I think, mother, that I could even have made a friend of him. He is generous. But it is too late now.”
“You must go away at once, Carl,” Mrs. Yorke said presently. “It is the only proper thing to do. The family are pledged to Mr. Rowan, and, till all is settled between him and Edith, you must have no intercourse
with her here. My position is one of great delicacy. I cannot even advise Edith.”
While they talked, Edith had risen, and written two letters, one to Dick Rowan, the other to Father Rasle. Both were short, the former only a line.