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MRS. CHURCHILL had never been strong, and the
suddenness of her son's death, together with the
manner in which it occurred, shocked her nervous
system to such an extent that for weeks she kept her room,
seeing scarcely any one outside her own family except Mrs.
Burton and Georgie.

As another proof of her utter unselfishness, Georgie had
postponed her Chicago trip for an indefinite time, and devoted
herself to Mrs. Churchill with all a daughter's love
and care.

But alas for Edna! Her case was not in the best of
hands; indeed, Roy could hardly have chosen one more unlikely
to “bring his mother round” than Georgie Burton.
That Edna would be in her way at Leighton, Georgie had
decided from the moment she had looked upon the great,
sad eyes brimming with tears, and the childish mouth, quivering
in a way which made her big-hearted brother Jack long
to kiss the grief away and fold the little creature in his arms
as a mother would her child.

She seemed a mere child to both Jack and Georgie, the
latter of whom in her surprise at hearing she was Charlie
Churchill's wife had asked how old she was.

“Seventeen last May,” was the reply, and Georgie thought
with a sigh of the years which lay between herself and that
sweet age of girlhood.

Roy liked young girls, she had heard him say so, and knew
that he treated Maude Somerton, of nineteen, with far more
familiarity than he did Georgie Burton, of,—she never told
how many years. And Roy would like Edna, first as a sister
and then, perhaps, as something nearer, for that the girl

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was artful and ambitious, she did not doubt, and to have
her at Leighton was far too dangerous an experiment. In
this conviction she was strengthened after her talk with Roy,
and whenever Mrs. Churchill mentioned her, as she frequently
did, wondering what she would do, Georgie always
made some reply calculated to put down any feelings of
pity or interest which might be springing up in the mother's
heart. But she never said a word against Edna; everything
was in her favor, and still she managed to harm her
just the same, and to impress Mrs. Churchill with the idea
that she could not have her there, and so the tide was setting
in strongly against poor, widowed, friendless Edna.

It was two weeks now since the accident, and through
Jack Heyford, Georgie had heard that she was in Chicago
with Mrs. Dana, that she had been and still was sick, and
Jack didn't know what she was going to do if the Leightons
did not help her. Georgie did not read this letter either to
Roy or his mother. She merely said that Jack had seen
Edna, who was still with Mrs. Dana.

“Does he write what she intends doing?” Roy asked,
and Georgie replied that he did not, and then Roy fell into
a fit of musing, and was glad he had sent Charlie five hundred
dollars, and he wished he had made the check larger,
as he certainly would have done had he known what was to
follow.

“Poor Charlie!” he sighed. “He made me a world of
trouble, but I wish I had him back;” and then he remembered
the unpaid bills sent to him from Canandaigua since
his brother's death, and of which his mother must not know,
as some of them were contracted for Edna.

There was a jeweller's bill for the wedding ring, and a set
of coral, with gold watch and chain, the whole amounting to
two hundred dollars. And Roy paid it, and felt glad that

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Edna had the watch, and hoped it was pretty, and wished
Charlie had chosen a more expensive one.

He was beginning to feel greatly interested in this unknown
sister, and was thinking intently of her one morning,
when Russell brought him his letters, one of which was from
Edna herself. Hastily tearing it open he read:

“Mr. Robert Leighton: Dear Sir,—Please find inclosed
$300 of the $500 you sent to Charlie.

“I should not have kept any of the money, only there
were some expenses to pay, and I was sick and had not
anything. As soon as I get well and can find something to
do, I shall pay it all back with interest. Believe me, Mr.
Leighton, I certainly will.

And there, sure enough, it was, Edna's note to Robert
Leighton, Esq.:

“Chicago, October 18, 18—.

“For value received I promise to pay to Robert Leighton,
or bearer, the sum of two hundred dollars, with interest at
seven per cent per annum, from date.

Roy read these lines more than once, and his eyes were
moist with tears as he said aloud:

“Brave little woman. I like you now, if I never did before.”

He did not want the money; he wished in his heart that
Edna had it, and more too; and yet he was in some way
glad she had sent it back and written him that letter, which
gave him an insight into her character. She was not a mere
saucy, frolicsome girl, given to making caricatures of men
in poke bonnets; there was about her a courage and energy,

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and strict integrity, which he liked, and he felt some curiosity
to know if she would pay the two hundred dollars as
she had promised to do.

“I believe I'll let her alone for a while till I see what is
in her,” he said, “and, when I am satisfied, I'll go for her
myself and bring her home. My broken leg will be well
long before she can earn that money. Bravelittle woman!”

Roy sent this letter to his mother but withheld the one
which came to him next day from Edna, full of intense mortification
and earnest entreaties that he would not think her
base enough to have accepted Charlie's presents if she had
known they were not paid for. Somebody had written to
her that the jeweller in Canandaigua had a bill against Charlie
for a watch and chain, and coral set, which had been bought
with promise of immediate payment.

“They say the bill will be sent to you,” Edna wrote, “and
then you will despise me more than you do now, perhaps.
But, Mr. Leighton, I did not dream of such a thing. Charlie
gave them to me the morning we were married, and I did
not think it wrong to take them then. I never took anything
before, except a little locket with Charlie's face in it.
If you have not paid that bill, please don't. I can manage
it somehow. I know Mr. Greenough, and he'll take the
things back, perhaps. But if you have already paid it I shall
pay you. Don't think I won't, for I certainly shall. I can
work and earn money somehow. It may be a good while,
but I shall do it in time, and I want you to trust me and believe
that I never meant to be mean, or married Charlie because
he had money, for I didn't.”

Here something was scratched out, and after it Edna
wrote:

“Perhaps you will get a wrong impression if I do not
make some explanation. I did not care one bit for the
money I supposed Charlie had, but maybe if I had known

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he had nothing but what you gave him, I should not have
been married so soon. I should have told him to wait till
we were older and had something of our own. I am so
sorry, and I wish Mrs. Churchill had Charlie back and that
I was Edna Browning. I don't want her to hate me, for she
is Charlie's mother, and I did love him so much.

This was Edna's second letter to Roy, who felt the great
lumps rising in his throat as he read it, and who would like
to have choked the person who could have been malicious
enough to tell Edna about those bills.

“She did not mention the ring,” he said. “I hope she
knows nothing of that.”

But Edna did know of it, and the bitterest pang of all
was connected with that golden symbol which seemed to her
now like a mockery. She could not, however, confess to
Roy that her wedding ring was among the articles unpaid
for, so she made no mention of it, and Roy hoped she knew
nothing of it and never would.

“I'll write to her to-day,” he said, “and tell her to keep
that watch as a present from me, and I'll tell her too that by
and by I am coming out to bring her home. She is made
of the right kind of metal to suit me. Brave little woman.”

This seemed to be the name by which Roy thought of
Edna now, and he repeated it to himself as he went over
her letter again, and pitied her so much, but he did not
write to her that day as he intended doing. He was rather
indolent in matters not of a strictly business nature. He
hated letter-writing at any time, and especially now when
exertion of any kind was painful to him; and so the days
came and went until a week was gone, and still Edna's letter
was unanswered, and “the brave little woman” was not
quite so much in Roy's mind, for he had other and graver

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matters to occupy his attention and engross his thoughts.
His mother was very sick, and Georgie staid with her all the
time, and Maude Somerton came on Friday night and remained
till Monday morning, and Roy himself hobbled to
her room on crutches, and sat beside her for hours, while the
fever burned itself out, and she talked deliriously of her lost
boy and the girl who had led him to ruin.

“That girl will have two lives to answer for instead of one,
I fear,” Georgie said, with a sorrowful shake of the head,
and an appealing look at Roy, who made no reply.

He did not charge Edna with his brother's death, and
would feel no animosity toward her even if his mother died,
but he could not then speak for her, and brave Georgie's
look of indignation against “that girl.” This, however,
Maude Somerton did, and her blue eyes grew dark with passionate
excitement as she turned fiercely upon Georgie and
said:

“Better call her a murderess at once, and have her hung
as a warning to all young girls with faces pretty enough to
tempt a man to run away with them. You know, Georgie
Burton, she wasn't a bit more to blame than Charlie himself,
and it's a shame for one woman to speak so of another.”

To this outburst Georgie made no reply, but Roy in his
heart blessed the young girl for her defence of Edna, and
made a mental memorandum of a Christmas present he
meant to buy for Maude.

p595-055

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