Edna Browning;

Only once since Annie’s death had Maude and Edna spoken together of the suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty, which had come to them both as they watched Georgie Burton at Annie’s bedside. Then they had talked freely, and settling one point as a fact, had wondered when, and where, and who, and had both repelled the worst charge which can be brought against a woman. Annie had been born in wedlock, they fully believed; but if so, why so much reticence and mystery, they asked each other; and did Roy know, or would he ever know the truth?

“Somebody ought to tell him, and I’ve half a mind to do it myself,” Maude said; but Edna advised her to keep her own counsel, as after all they knew nothing certainly.

Whatever Georgie might have been, she was greatly improved since Annie’s death, and even the servants at Oakwood noticed how kind and gentle she was to every one around her. She did not visit Leighton as much as usual, and there was in her manner towards Roy a reserve, which became her better than her former gushing style. And still Roy was not satisfied, and often wondered at the feeling of ennui he experienced in her society, and the satisfaction he felt when he found her, as he frequently did, suffering from headache, and unable to see him, leaving him free to go back to Miss Overton, who never wearied him, but seemed always fresh and new. Before he left New York he had been a great deal with her, and he knew in his heart that the hours he enjoyed most were those spent alone with “Brownie” after his mother had retired. He had no intention of proving false to Georgie, and he did not stop to consider the wrong he was doing both to his bride-elect and Edna, until his mother gently hinted to him that possibly he might be doing harm by so much attention to Miss Overton. Though nearly blind, she could judge pretty well of what was passing around her, and could feel just how anxious and expectant Edna was when Roy was not present, and how flushed and excited and gay she became the moment he appeared, and she raised a warning voice, and said it was not fair to Georgie, that he ought to stay more with her, and less with Miss Overton.

“Had you chosen Dotty first,” she said, using the pet name which she had caught from Maude, and adopted as her own. “Had you chosen Dotty, I do not think I should have objected, for the girl is very dear to me; but you took Georgie, and now I would have you deal honorably with her, and not give her any cause for complaint, and, above all, I cannot have Dotty harmed.”

She spoke more for Edna than for Georgie, and Roy saw it, and wondered if it were true that Brownie cared for him, or could have cared, if there had been no Georgie in the way. There was perfect bliss for a moment in the thought that she might have been won, and then, good, honest, true-hearted man that he was, he said to himself:

“I have no right to lead her into temptation; no right to run into it myself; I am bound to Georgie. I will keep my vow, and keep it well, and Brownie shall not be the sufferer.”

After that there were no more interviews alone, no more hours by the piano, or reading aloud to her from the books they both liked best. Georgie had him all to herself, and if ever man tried to get up enthusiasm for another, Roy tried to do so for Georgie, and tried to make himself believe that he loved her and could be happy with her. It was easier to believe this in her present softened mood, and by being constantly with her, and shutting from his heart that other, fairer picture of a brown-eyed, sweet-faced maiden, he succeeded pretty well, and was tolerably happy and content until Edna went for the week to Rocky Point.

Then he awoke to the fact of all she was to him, and how dreary Leighton would be without her. It had been a satisfaction when returning from Oakwood to know that she was at his home waiting for him. Very delightful, too, it had been to have her opposite him at his table, pouring his coffee, and making his tea for him, as she had done all winter, his mother being now far too blind to see to do it; she had such pretty little dimpled hands, and she managed so gracefully, and fixed his coffee so exactly to his taste, that it was not strange he missed her quite as much as his mother did, and hailed with joy the day which brought her back to him.

He met her at the station himself. He certainly could do so much, he thought, especially as Georgie was at home with a nervous headache, and he had been sitting by her an hour, bathing her head, and reading to her until she fell asleep. He certainly had earned the right to go for Brownie, and hold her hand a moment in his own, after he had lifted her to the ground.

He did not tell her how glad he was to get her back; but she saw it in his face, and felt it in his manner, as he drove her slowly home.

It did seem like coming home, when Mrs. Churchill met her with kisses and loving words, and told how lonely she had been, and how rejoiced she was to see her again.

As they sat alone that evening, after Roy had gone to inquire after Georgie’s head, she recurred again to the forlorn week she had passed, and said, a little hesitatingly:

“I seem to be nothing without you, and what I want to say is this: I notice, sometimes, when Georgie is with me, that you go out, as if you thought I would rather be alone with her. I like her, of course, very much; but when she comes, please let it make no difference; I want you with me just the same. I am accustomed to you. I feel, somehow, rested, when you are with me.”

Edna did not reply, but she felt a great throb of something like homesickness rising in her heart as she thought of going away forever from the gentle lady, who, she was sure, did love, and would miss her so much.

Roy returned from Oakwood earlier than usual, reporting Georgie better, and telling of a burglary which had been committed the previous night, at a house up the mountain-road. Nothing of value was taken, he said; but it showed that thieves were around, and he charged Russell to be very careful in securing the house.

“I would not like to suffer again, as we did in New York,” he said; and then he told Edna how, years ago, his house in New York had been entered, and a quantity of plate and jewelry carried off, notwithstanding that Russell grappled with the thief in the lower hall, and gave him a black eye, by which he was afterward identified and brought to justice. “He must have been a very ingenious villain,” he said, “as, after he was tried, and found guilty, and sentenced to the penitentiary, he managed to break out of prison, and is still at large, and for aught I know, is the very scamp who robbed the house last night.”

Edna was not cowardly, and forgot all about Roy’s burglar until the next day, when Georgie came over to Leighton, and the story was told again by Mrs. Churchill, who had been a little timid the previous night, and thought, once or twice, that she heard something around the house.

Georgie was interested, and excited, and frightened.

“We had a burglar in our house once,” she said; “and since then I cannot even hear the word without its setting every nerve to quivering.”

“Then let’s talk of something pleasanter,—those trunks, for instance, which I saw in the express office this morning, and which must have contained the wedding finery, eh?” Roy said, playfully.

His allusion to the “wedding finery” was a fortunate one, and diverted Georgie’s thoughts from burglars to the beautiful dresses which had that morning come up from New York for herself and Maude, whose trousseau was purchased by Mr. Burton himself, and was to be scarcely less elegant than that of Georgie. Edna was to be one of the bridesmaids, and Mrs. Churchill was having her dress made in the house, and taking as much pride in it as if Edna had been her daughter.

And Edna tried hard to be happy, and sometimes made herself believe that she was, though a sense of loneliness and pain would steal over her whenever she saw Roy riding down the avenue, and knew where he was going, and that soon it would be a sin for her to watch him thus. Charlie’s grave was visited oftener now, and the girlish widow tried to get up a sentimental kind of sorrow for the dead, and to think that her heart was buried with him, knowing all the while that a hundred living Charlies could not make up for that something she craved so terribly.

The bridal day was fixed for the 20th of June, and Edna felt that she should be glad when it was over. She had no thought, or even wish, that anything would occur to prevent the affair, which was talked of now from morning till night in Summerville, and was even agitating the higher circle in New York; for many of Georgie’s friends were coming out to see her married, and rooms were engaged for them at the hotel and every other available house.

And now but three days remained before the 20th. A few of the city guests, Georgie’s more intimate friends, who were to be bridesmaids, had already come, and were stopping at Oakwood; and on the afternoon of the 17th, they went with Roy and Georgie to a pleasant point on the river, where they had a little pic-nic, and dined upon the grass, and made merry generally, until a roll of thunder overhead, and the sudden darkening of the sky warned them to hurry home if they would escape the storm, which came up so fast, and so furiously, that the horses of the carriage in which Georgie rode, frightened by the constant lightning and rapid thunder crashes, became unmanageable, and dashed along the highway at a rate which threatened destruction to the occupants of the carriage.

“We are lost! we shall all be killed!” Georgie shrieked, just as from a thicket of trees a man darted out, and, seizing the foaming steeds by the bridle, managed, by being himself dragged along with them, to check their headlong speed, and finally quiet them.

“Thank you, sir. We owe our lives to you. Please give me your name and address,” Roy said, but the man merely mumbled something inarticulate in reply, and slouching his hat over his face so as to shield it from the rain, walked rapidly away, just as the other carriage driven by Russell came up.

Roy’s ladies were very much frightened and excited, especially Georgie, whose face was white as ashes, when Roy turned to speak to her, and who shook as if she had an ague chill.

“I am so very nervous,” she said, by way of explanation, when, after she was safe at Oakwood, Maude commented upon her extreme pallor, and her general terrified appearance.

Through the blinding rain, which fell in torrents, she had caught a glimpse of the stranger’s face, as he sprang toward the horses, and that glimpse had frozen her with horror for a moment, and made her very teeth chatter with fear, and her hair prickle at its roots. Then, as she remembered how impossible it was for the dead to rise and assume a living form, she tried to reassure herself that she had not seen aright. It was a resemblance, nothing more; a mere likeness which she in her weak, nervous state had magnified into a certainty. He was dead, the curse of her life; she had nothing to fear; she was Roy’s wife, or would be in a few days, and there was no lawful reason why she should not be so. Thus she tried to reassure herself, until she became more quiet, and dressed for the evening, and met Roy, when he came, with a kiss and smile, and asked him in a rather indifferent manner if he knew who the stranger was who had come so bravely to their aid.

Roy did not know, but thought it very possible he was some workman on the farm near by, though his appearance was not quite that of a common laborer.

“Didn’t he have queer eyes? Wasn’t one of them turned, or put out, or something?” was Georgie’s next query, and Roy answered laughingly:

“Really, you were more observing than I was. Why I don’t know whether the man had two eyes or four. I only know that we owe our lives to him, whoever he may be.”

He did not tell her all that had transpired at Leighton with regard to the stranger, or how, when he left home, Russell was busy nailing windows which had no fastenings, and barricading doors, and doing numerous things, which indicated that from some quarter he was apprehending a night attack upon his master’s property. Russell, too, had seen the stranger’s face more distinctly than Georgie had, and he could have sworn, ay, did swear, that he had seen it before, and had his fingers on that throat down in the basement of his master’s house, years before, in New York.

“I know it is the same, and he’ll be here to-night, maybe, to try his luck again,” he said, to Roy and Edna, who made light of his fears, and told him he was always seeing burglars in the shade of every tree and around every corner of the house.

Remembering Georgie’s nervousness, Roy kindly suggested that she should not be told of Russell’s suspicion, and so he answered her lightly when she questioned him of the stranger, but felt a little startled when her description of the disfigured eye tallied so exactly with what Russell had said. He did not stay late at Oakwood that night, but returned earlier than usual to Leighton, which he found bolted, and barred, and locked, as if it had been some fortified castle ready to be besieged; but Russell’s burglar did not make his appearance, a little to the disappointment of the good man, who narrated to Edna the particulars in full of his encounter with the midnight robber, who managed to break away, and escape from justice after all.

“What was his name?” Edna asked, more by way of saying something than because she was specially interested in the subject.

“John Sand he gave, though we didn’t believe it was correct; we thought he took an assumed name to spare his wife. They said he had one, a very handsome young girl, and I think she was in the court-room when he was tried.”

Just then Edna was called away by Mrs. Churchill, and Russell was left alone to think over the one adventure of his life, his conflict with the robber, of which he was never weary of talking.

What Georgie had endured the previous night no one guessed. Tortured with doubts which nearly drove her wild, she paced her room for hours, going over again and again in her own mind all the evidence she had ever received of his death, the his referring to the original of the spectre haunting her so cruelly now.

“It must be that he is dead,” she said again and again, and then as she grew more quiet, she calmly asked herself what she would do if her fears proved true, and her answer was, “If already married to Roy, I will abide by his verdict: if not, if I know for sure before the twentieth, I’ll kill myself.”

There was a suicidal expression in her eyes as she said this, and she had the look of a woman capable of doing any thing if once driven to bay. It was nearly morning before Georgie slept, if indeed that state can be called sleep, in which so much of horror and fear is mingled as there was in her troubled dreams.

She was very pale and haggard when she came down to breakfast, and complained of her head, which she said was aching badly. She had suffered a great deal from nervous headache since Annie’s death, and had sometimes expressed a fear that she should one day be crazy. She almost looked so now, with her unnaturally pallid face and glittering black eyes, and Mrs. Burton, always alarmed when anything ailed Georgie, made her lie down in a quiet, shaded little room in the rear of the house, and then sat by her all the morning, until Roy came and asked to see her. Then Georgie made a great effort to shake off the incubus which had fastened upon her, and dressing herself with the utmost care, went down to her lover and friends, and tried to be merry and gay, and felt a great load lifted from her spirits when Roy said:

“I think I have ascertained who our deliverer was. It is a poor man living near the spot where we were providentially saved from destruction, and I have charged Russell to see him, and remunerate him properly. He has a large family of children, I believe.”

“How did you hear who it was?” Georgie asked, and Roy replied: “I saw a man this morning from that vicinity who told me.”

After that Georgie did not longer doubt, and long before Roy left her, her headache passed away and the bright color came back to her cheeks, and one could almost see the filling up of her shrivelled flesh, and the fading of the dark circles beneath her eyes. Georgie was happy again, and that night her sleep was undisturbed by troubled dreams, or horrid dread of retributive justice overtaking her at the very moment when the cup of joy was in her grasp and almost at her lips.