The despairing agony in the orphan’s voice touched Mrs. Murray’s proud heart, and tears softened the indignant expression of her eyes, as she looked at the feeble form before her.

“Edna, my poor child, you must trust me.  One thing I must know—­I have a right to ask—­do you not love my son?  You need not blush to acknowledge it to me.”

She waited awhile, but there was no reply, and softly her arm stole around the girl’s waist.

“My daughter, you need not be ashamed of your affection for St. Elmo.”

Edna lifted her face from the mantel, and clasping her hands across her head, exclaimed: 

“Do I love him?  Oh! none but God can ever know how entirely my heart is his!  I have struggled against his fascination—­oh! indeed I have wrestled and prayed against it!  But to-day—­I do not deceive myself--I feel that I love him as I can never love any other human being.  You are his mother, and you will pity me when I tell you that I fall asleep praying for him—­that in my dreams I am with him once more—­ that the first thought on waking is still of him.  What do you suppose it cost me to give him up?  Oh! is it hard, think you, to live in the same world and yet never look on his face, never hear his voice?  God only knows how hard!  If he were dead, I could bear it better.  But, ah! to live with this great sea of silence between us—­ a dreary, cold, mocking sea, crossed by no word, no whisper, filled only with slowly, sadly sailing ghosts of precious memories!  Yes, yes! despite all his unworthiness—­despite the verdict of my judgment, and the upbraiding of my conscience—­I love him!  I love him!  You can sympathize with me.  Do not reproach me; pity me, oh! pity me in my feebleness!”

She put out her arms like a weary child and dropped her face on Mrs. Murray’s shoulder.

“My child, if you had seen him the night before I left home, you could not have resisted any longer the promptings of your own heart.  He told me all that had ever passed between you; how he had watched and tempted you; how devotedly he loved you; how he reverenced your purity of character; how your influence, your example, had first called him back to his early faith; and then he covered his face and said, ’Mother! mother! if God would only give her to me, I could, I would be a better man!’ Edna, I feel as if my son’s soul rested in your hands!  If you throw him off utterly, he may grow desperate, and go back to his old habits of reckless dissipation and blasphemy; and if he should! oh! if he is lost at last, I will hold you accountable, and charge you before God with his destruction!  Edna, beware!  You have a strange power over him; you can make him almost what you will.  If you will not listen to your own suffering heart, or to his love, hear me!  Hear a mother pleading for her son’s eternal safety!”

The haughty woman fell on her knees before the orphan and wept, and Edna instantly knelt beside her and clung to her.