rator, and Edith's heart sank more and more in her bosom
as she proceeded, and feared that she was so shocking him by these
revelations that his affection for her would die with this expose of
her secret.

But he still held her hand clasped in his; and when, at the conclusion
of her story, she gently tried to withdraw it, his fingers closed more
firmly over hers, when, bending still nearer to her, he questioned, in
fond, eager tones:

"Was this the reason of your leaving New York so abruptly last
December?"

"Yes."

"Was it because you loved me and could not trust yourself to meet me
day after day without betraying the fact when you feared that the
knowledge of your birth might become a barrier between us? Tell me, my
darling, truly!"

"Yes," Edith confessed; "but how could you guess it--how could you
read my heart so like an open book?"

The young man laughed out musically, and there was a ring of joyous
triumph in the sound.

"'Tis said that 'love is blind,'" he said, "but mine was keen to read
the signs I coveted, and I believed, even when you were in your
deepest trouble, that you were beginning to love me, and that I should
eventually win you."

"Why! did you begin to--" Edith began, and then checked herself in
sudden confusion.

"Did I begin to plan to win you so far back as that?" he laughingly
exclaimed, and putting his own interpretation upon her half-finished
sentence. "My darling, I began to love you and to wish for you even
before your first day's work was done for me."

CHAPTER XXV.

A NEW CHARACTER IS INTRODUCED.

"And now, love," the eager wooer continued, as he dropped the hand he
had been holding and drew the happy girl into his arms, "you will give
yourself to me--you will give me the right to stand between you and
all future care or trouble?"

"Then you do not mind what I have just told you?" questioned Edith,
timidly.

"Not in the least, only so far as it occasions you unhappiness or
anxiety," unhesitatingly replied the young man. "You are unscathed by
it--the sin and the shame belong alone to the man who ruined the life
of your mother. You are my pearl, my fair lily, unspotted by any
blight, and I should be unworthy of you, indeed, did I allow what you
have told me to prejudice me in the slightest degree. Now tell me,
Edith, that henceforth there shall be no barrier between us--tell me
that you love me."

"How can I help it?" she murmured, as with a flood of ineffable