"I am afraid, sir, we never can be friends."
"Why not?"
"Because you have no confidence in me, and I would much sooner go for sympathy to one of your bronze monsters yonder on the doorsteps, than to you. Neither of us likes the other, and consequently a sham cordiality would be intolerably irksome. I shall not be here much longer; but while we are in the same house, I trust no bitter or unkind feelings will be entertained. I thank you, sir, for your polite offer of assistance, but hope I shall soon be able to maintain myself without burdening your mother any longer."
"How long have you burdened her?"
"Ever since that night when I was picked up lame and helpless, and placed in her kind hands."
"I should like to know whether you really love my mother?"
"Next to the memory of my grandfather, I love her and Mr. Hammond; and I feel that my gratitude is beyond expression. There, your mother is coming! I hear the carriage. Shall I tell her you are here?"
Without raising his face, he took the key of the door from his pocket, and held it toward her. "No; I will meet her in her own room."
Edna hastened to the library, and throwing herself into a chair, tried to collect her thoughts and reflect upon what had passed in the "Egyptian Museum."
Very soon Mrs. Murray's cry of joyful surprise rang through the house, and tears of sympathy rose to Edna's eyes as fancy pictured the happy meeting in the neighboring room. Notwithstanding the strong antipathy to Mr. Murray which she had assiduously cultivated, and despite her conviction that he held in derision the religious faith, to which she clung so tenaciously, she was now disquieted and pained to discover that his bronzed face possessed an attraction--an indescribable fascination--which she had found nowhere else. In striving to analyze the interest she was for the first time conscious of feeling, she soothed herself with the belief that it arose from curiosity concerning his past life, and sympathy for his evident misanthropy. It was in vain that she endeavored to fix her thoughts on a book; his eyes met hers on every page, and when the bell summoned her to a late supper, she was glad to escape from her own confused reflections.
Mrs. Murray and her son were standing on the rug before the grate, and as Edna entered, the former held out her hand.
"Have you seen my son? Come and congratulate me." She kissed the girl's forehead, and continued: "St. Elmo, has she not changed astonishingly? Would you have known her had you met her away from home?"