The Love Secret

"EDWARD is to be in London next week," said Mrs. Ravensworth; "and I trust, Edith, that you will meet him with the frankness he is entitled to receive."

Edith Hamilton, who stood behind the chair of her aunt, did not make any answer.

Mrs. Ravensworth continued--"Edward's father was your father's own brother. A man of nobler spirit never moved on English soil; and I hear that Edward is the worthy son of a worthy sire."

"If he were as pure and perfect as an angel, aunt," replied Edith, "it would be all the same to me. I have never seen him, and cannot, therefore, meet him as one who has a right to claim my hand."

"Your father gave you away when you were a child, Edith; and Edward comes now to claim you by virtue of this betrothal."

"While I love the memory of my father, and honour him as a child should honour a parent," said Edith, with much seriousness, "I do not admit his right to give me away in marriage while I was yet a child. And, moreover, I do not think the man who would seek to consummate such a marriage contract worthy of any maiden's love. Only the heart that yields a free consent is worth having, and the man who would take any other is utterly unworthy of any woman's regard. By this rule I judge Edward to be unworthy, no matter what his father may have been."

"Then you mean," said Mrs. Ravensworth, "deliberately to violate the solemn contract made by your father with the father of Edward?"

"I cannot receive Edward as anything but a stranger," replied Edith. "It will not mend the error of my father for me to commit a still greater one."

"How commit a still greater one?" inquired Mrs. Ravensworth.

"Destroy the very foundation of a true marriage--freedom of choice and consent. There would be no freedom of choice on his part, and no privilege of consent on mine. Happiness could not follow such a union, and to enter into it would be doing a great wrong. No, aunt, I cannot receive Edward in any other way than as a stranger--for such he is."

"There is a clause in your father's will that you may have forgotten, Edith," said her aunt.

"That which makes me penniless if I do not marry Edward Hamden?"

"Yes."

"No--I have not forgotten it, aunt."

"And you mean to brave that consequence?"

"In a choice of evils we always take the least." Edith's voice trembled.

Mrs. Ravensworth did not reply for some moments. While she sat silent, the half-closed door near which Edith stood, and toward which her aunt's back was turned, softly opened, and a handsome youth, between whom and Edith glances of intelligence instantly passed, presented the startled maiden with a beautiful white rose, and