“It was a brother who sent for you,” he said. “Come!”
She seated herself, speechless, almost breathless.
“Edith, where is Carl Yorke?” he asked gently.
She gave the answer with a quiet that looked like coldness. “He left in the steamer to-day for England. From there he continues his travels to the East, I do not know where else. No person is to know this but you and me, as his mother cannot be told.”
The color and the smile left Dick Rowan’s face. Surprise and pain for a moment deprived him of the power of speech.
“I am astonished and distressed!” he said, at length. “I wished to see him, to talk with him. But that he is not a Catholic, I should have wished to see you married soon.”
A deep blush of wounded delicacy rushed to Edith’s cheeks. “Dick Rowan,” she said, “you have yet much to learn about women, or, at least, about me. Whatever feelings of sympathy and affection I may have had for Carl Yorke, my conduct and conversation with him have been irreproachable, and so have my thoughts even. The thought of marriage has not crossed my mind. I do not wish to hear you speak of it.”
Her dignified answer disconcerted him for a moment. He had made the mistake nearly always made by men, often made by women, of misinterpreting the nature, or, at least, the degree of development, of an affection as yet angelically pure, if ardent.
“You were quite right in supposing that I would marry no one but a Catholic,” she remarked.
“I have done you a great wrong, Edith,” he said hastily, “and I wish to repair it as far as I can. But, first, will you tell me why you promised to marry me?”