He
liked to think of her as a bright plumaged bird, not as sombre-
hued and wearing the habiliments which come only from some grave.
"Was it necessary that my darling should carry her love for a
stranger quite so far as this?" he asked. "Need you have dressed
in black?"
Without meaning it, his tone implied reproach, and it cut Edith
cruelly, making her wish that she had told him all, when she wrote
that she was coming home.
"Oh, Richard," she cried, "don't chide me for these outward tokens
of sorrow. Nina, dear, darling Nina, was my sister--my fathers
child. Temple was only a name he assumed to avoid arrest, so it
all got wrong. Everything is wrong," and Edith sobbed impetuously,
while Richard essayed to comfort her.
The dress of black was not displeasing to him now, and he passed
his hands caressingly over its heavy folds as if to ask
forgiveness for having said aught against it.
Gradually Edith grew calm, and after she had met the servants, and
the supper she could not taste was over, she repeated to Richard
the story she had heard from Marie, who had stopped for a time in
New York to visit her sister.
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