p, she read my face with a quick, deep glance. "Yes," she
said, "I think I may tell you--some time": and so our conversation
ended, for she gave me no chance to say anything more.
That night I don't think even Dr. Pillsbury could have put me to sleep,
till toward morning at least. Mysteries had been my accustomed food for
days now, but none had before confronted me at once so mysterious and
so fascinating as this, the solution of which Edith Leete had forbidden
me even to seek. It was a double mystery. How, in the first place, was
it conceivable that she should know any secret about me, a stranger
from a strange age? In the second place, even if she should know such a
secret, how account for the agitating effect which the knowledge of it
seemed to have upon her? There are puzzles so difficult that one cannot
even get so far as a conjecture as to the solution, and this seemed one
of them. I am usually of too practical a turn to waste time on such
conundrums; but the difficulty of a riddle embodied in a beautiful
young girl does not detract from its fascination. In general, no doubt,
maidens' blushes may be safely assumed to tell the same tale to young
men in all ages and races, but to give that interpretation to Edith's
crimson cheeks would, considering my position and the length of time I
had known her, and still more the fact that this mystery dated from
before I had known her at all, be a piece of utter fatuity. And yet she
was an angel, and I should not have been a young man if reason and
common sense had been able quite to banish a roseate tinge from my
dreams that night.
Chapter 24
In the morning I went down stairs early in the hope of seeing Edith
alone. In this, however, I was disappointed. Not finding her in the
house, I sought her in the garden, but she was not there. In the course
of my wanderings I visited the underground chamber, and sat down there
to rest. Upon the reading table in the chamber several periodicals and
newspapers lay, and thinking that Dr. Leete might be interested in
glancing over a Boston daily of 1887, I brought one of the papers with
me into the house when I came.
At breakfast I met Edith. She blushed as she greeted me, but was
perfectly self-possessed. As we sat at table, Dr. Leete amused himself
with looking over the paper I had brought in. There was in it, as in
all the newspapers of that date, a great deal about the labor troubles,
strikes, lockouts, boycotts, the programm
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