"
"Was she really handsome, this Mrs. Temple?" she asked, anxious to
know how Richard Harrington's early love had looked.
Instinctively the hands of the blind man met together round
Edith's graceful neck, as he told her how beautiful that Swedish
mother was, with her glossy, raven hair, and her large, soft,
lustrous eyes, and as he talked, there crept into Edith's heart a
strange, inexplicable affection for that fair young Swede, who
Richard said was not as happy with her father-husband as she
should have been, and who, emigrating to another land, had died of
a homesick, broken heart.
"I am sorry I cursed her to-day," thought Edith, her tears falling
fast to the memory of the lonely, homesick woman, the mother of
Eloise.
"Had she married Richard," she thought, "he would not now be
sitting here in his blindness, for SHE would be with him, and
Eloise, too, or some one very much like her. I wish she were here
now," and after a moment she asked why he had not brought the
maiden home with him. "I should love her as much as my sister,"
she said; "and you'd be happier with two of us, wouldn't you?"
"No," he answered; "one young girl is enough for any house.
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