They missed him at first and mourned for him
truly, but they have become accustomed to live without him, and
the household life goes on much as it did before.
It is now the afternoon of a mild October day, and the doors and
windows are opened wide to admit the warm south wind, which,
dallying for a moment with the curtains of costly lace, floats on
to the chamber above, where it toys with the waving plumes a young
girl is arranging upon her riding hat, pausing occasionally to
speak to the fair blonde who sits watching her movements, and
whose face betokens a greater maturity than her own, for Grace
Atherton's family Bible says she is thirty-two, while Edith is
seventeen.
Beautiful Edith Hastings. Eight years of delicate nurture, tender
care and perfect health have ripened her into a maiden of wondrous
beauty, and far and near the people talk of the blind man's ward,
the pride and glory of Collingwood. Neither pains nor money, nor
yet severe discipline, have been spared by Richard Harrington to
make her what she is, and while her imperious temper has bent to
the one, her intellect and manners have expanded and improved
beneath this influence of the other, and Richard has not only a
plaything and pet in the little girl he took from obscurity, but
also a companion and equal, capable of entering with him the mazy
labyrinths of science, and astonishing him with the wealth of her
richly stored mind.
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