Since the previous evening she had not spoken to St. Elmo, who did not appear at breakfast; but when she passed him in the hall an hour later, he was talking to his mother, and took no notice of her bow.

Now as the carriage approached the house, she glanced in the direction of his apartment, and saw him sitting at the window, with his elbow resting on the sill, and his cheek on his hand.

She went at once to Mrs. Murray, and the interview was long and painful.  The latter wept freely, and insisted that if the orphan grew weary of teaching (as she knew would happen), she should come back immediately to Le Bocage; where a home would always be hers, and to which a true friend would welcome her.

At length, when Estelle Harding came in with some letters, which she wished to submit to her aunt’s inspection, Edna retreated to her own quiet room.  She went to her bureau to complete the packing of her clothes, and found on the marble slab a box and note directed to her.

Mr. Murray’s handwriting was remarkably graceful, and Edna broke the seal which bore his motto, Nemo me impune lacessit.

“Edna:  I send for your examination the contents of the little tomb, which you guarded so faithfully.  Read the letters written before I was betrayed.  The locket attached to a ribbon, which was always worn over my heart, and the miniatures which it contains are those of Agnes Hunt and Murray Hammond.  Read all the record, and then judge me, as you hope to be judged.  I sit alone, amid the mouldering, blackened ruins of my youth; will you not listen to the prayer of my heart, and the half-smothered pleadings of your own, and come to me in my desolation, and help me to build up a new and noble life?  Oh, my darling, you can make me what you will.  While you read and ponder, I am praying.  Aye, praying for the first time in twenty years! praying that if God ever hears prayer, He will influence your decision, and bring you to me.  Edna, my darling!  I wait for you.  “Your own,
                     “St. Elmo.”

Ah! how her tortured heart writhed and bled; how piteously it pleaded for him, and for itself!

Edna opened the locket, and if Gertrude had stepped into the golden frame, the likeness could not have been more startling.  She looked at it until her lips blanched and were tightly compressed, and the memory of Gertrude became paramount.  Murray Hammond’s face she barely glanced at, and its extraordinary beauty stared at her like that of some avenging angel.  With a shudder she put it away, and turned to the letters that St. Elmo had written to Agnes and to Murray, in the early, happy days of his engagement.