“Of course I will, you foolish little girl. You are nervous and tired to-night,” he said; and then, as if struck with a sudden thought, he added: “Only tell me one thing,—if that young man had lived and not improved beyond what he was when you knew him, and you had grown to be what you are, could you have loved him now as you did then?” “Perhaps not. I never thought of it in that light,” Edith said; and her husband continued: “One question more. Do you believe you can in time love me as well as you did him?” “Yes, Howard, I know I can,” Edith spoke quickly, and her arms wound themselves involuntarily around her husband’s neck, while for the first time she kissed him unsolicited. “Then, my darling,” he responded, “there is nothing before us but happiness, if God so wills it, and may He deal by me as I do by you, my precious wife.” He was growing to love her so fast, and Edith knew it, and felt her misery giving way, and her heart grew light again as it had been when she fancied he knew the whole. Edith had known from the first that it was the colonel’s plan to visit Alnwick and go over the grand old castle which at this season of the year was open to visitors, and she did not oppose him, though the neighborhood of Alnwick was fraught with sad memories for her as having been Abelard’s home. His friends were still living there, she knew from Godfrey, and the first night at the inn where they took rooms was passed in wakefulness, with a feeling of oppression and sadness which she could not shake off. Abelard had told her so much of Alnwick and the castle, and had talked of the time when she would visit it with him; and now, he was dead, and she was there, the wife of another man, with that great secret weighing her down at times and casting a shadow on everything. How she wished she might see his home and the old mother he used to talk of so fondly, and yet when her husband said to her one morning: “Edith, I am going to call on some poor people who live about two miles from here. Perhaps you will like to go with me when I tell you who they are,” she trembled and grew cold, and scarcely heard a word of the story he told her, and which she knew so much better than he did. “I called upon them last summer,” he said, “when Godfrey was with me, and it is not necessary that I should go again, but I know it will please them, and I am so happy myself that I feel like conferring happiness on others. Will you go, darling? They will feel honored if I bring them my young bride.” “Oh, Howard, no! Please don’t ask me. I’d so much rather not,” Edith cried, feeling how terrible it would be to go with her husband into the presence of Abelard’s mother and hear her talk of him, as she assuredly would.