Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. ARTHUR AND EDITH. If anything could have reconciled Edith to her fhtt, it would have been the fact that she was travelling with Arthur St. Claire, who, after entering the cars, cared lin her as tenderly as if she had been a lady of his own rank instead of a little disgraced waiting maid, whom he was taking back to the Asylum. It was preposterous, he thought, for Grace to call one as young as Edith a waiting maid, but it was like her, he knew. It had a lofty sound, and would impress some people with a sense of her greatness ; so he could excuse it much more readily than the injustice done to the child by charging her with a crime of which he knew she was innocent. This it was, perhaps, which made him so kind to her, seeking to divert her mind from her grief by asking her many questions concerning herself and her family. But Edith did not care to talk. All the way to Albany she continued crying; and when, at last, they stood within the noisy depot, Arthur saw that the tears were still rolling down her cheeks like rain. " Poor little girl How I pity her ! " he thought, as she placed her hand confidingly in his, and when he saw how hopelessly she looked into his face, as she asked, with quivering lip, if " it wasn't ever so far to New York yet ? " the resolution he had been trying all the day to make was fully decided upon, and when alone with Edith in Ihe room appropriated to her at the Delavan House, he asked her why she supposed Richard Harrington would be willing to take her to Collingwood. Very briefly Edith related to him the particulars of hei interviews with tho blind man, saying, when she had fin ished, . " Don't you believe he likes me ?" " I dare say he does," returned Arthur, at the same time asking 'T she would be afraid to stay alone one nig...