He had one in his arms then, and two more were holding to his coat skirts and climbing up his knees, and Edna felt at once just how kind and generous and unselfish he was, and the terrible pain lessened a little, and the homesickness was not so great as before. He had a letter for her, he said, or rather one directed to Mr. Churchill, and placing in her hands the letter written by Mrs. Churchill to her son, he called his troop of children to come out while “Cousin Edna read her letter.” His wife had brought in a lamp, and sitting up in bed Edna held the letter a moment while her hand grew icy cold and her heart beat almost audibly. For a single moment she thought, “I will not open it. I will send it back unread;” then there came over her an intense desire to know what Mrs. Churchill or Roy thought about the marriage. Charlie had said to her on the morning of the bridal, “I have written to Roy and told him we were coming home after a little;” and this, of course, was the reply. “Maybe I shall know if what Miss Burton said was true or false, if I read this,” Edna thought, and with a hope for the best she opened the envelope and read the letter through, knowing when she had finished it how contemptuously Charlie’s mother looked upon the girl who had entangled her son into a _mésalliance_, and how mercenary her motives were regarded. “I cannot help feeling that if she had known all, your unfortunate entanglement would have been prevented,” Mrs. Churchill had written, and Edna commented sadly upon it: “Yes, if I had known all, it would have been prevented; but it is not the money,—no, not the money; oh, Charlie, it is losing faith in you which hurts me the worst,” she moaned; then, resentment toward Mrs. Churchill got the better of her grief, and she said, “I’ll write to that woman, and tell her how mistaken she is.” But only for an instant did she harbor such a thought. She would not wound Mrs. Churchill more deeply than she was already wounded. She would not write her at all, but to Roy, the heir,—Roy, the master of Leighton. The money came from him, and to him it should be returned, but not all at once. Fortunately for her Roy had sent a check payable to the bearer, and so she had no trouble in getting it cashed, and she decided that she must keep a part and pay it afterward. She had seen enough of the arrangements of the house to know that while there was not poverty, there was not a great plenty, and the owners could ill afford any additional expense. “I may be sick for weeks,” she thought, “and I shall need money, and that twenty-five dollars in poor Charlie’s purse will not go very far. Oh, if only Aunt Jerusha was kind and forgiving; she has means; she could help me, if she would.”