“Oh, Richard,” she cried, “don’t chide me for these outward tokens of sorrow.  Nina, dear, darling Nina, was my sister—­my fathers child.  Temple was only a name he assumed to avoid arrest, so it all got wrong.  Everything is wrong,” and Edith sobbed impetuously, while Richard essayed to comfort her.

The dress of black was not displeasing to him now, and he passed his hands caressingly over its heavy folds as if to ask forgiveness for having said aught against it.

Gradually Edith grew calm, and after she had met the servants, and the supper she could not taste was over, she repeated to Richard the story she had heard from Marie, who had stopped for a time in New York to visit her sister.

A long time they sat together that night, while Richard told her how lonely he had been without her, and asked her many questions of Nina’s last days.

“Did she send no message to me?” he said.  “She used to like me, I fancied.”

Edith did not know how terrible a message Nina had sent to him, and she replied, “She talked of you a great deal, but I do not remember any particular word.  I told her I was to be your wife.” and Edith’s voice trembled, for this was but a prelude to what she meant to say ere she bade him good night.  She should breathe so much more freely if she knew her bridal was not so near, and her sister’s death was surely a sufficient reason for deferring it.

Summoning all her courage, she arose, and sitting on Richard’s knee, buttoned and unbuttoned his coat in a kind of abstracted manner, while she asked if it might be so.  “I know I promised for New Year’s night,” she said, “but little Nina died so recently and I loved her so much, May it be put off, Richard—­put over until June?”

Edith had not thought of this in Florida, but here at home, it came to her like succor to the drowning, and she anxiously awaited Richard’s answer.

A frown for an instant darkened his fine features, for he did not like this second deferring the day, but he was too unselfish to oppose it, and he answered,

“Yes, darling, if you will have it so.  It may be better to wait at least six months, shall it be in June, the fifteenth say?”

Edith was satisfied with this, and when they parted her heart was lighted of a heavy load, for six months seemed to her a great, great while.

The next day when Grace came up to call on Edith, and was told of the change, she shrugged her shoulders, for she knew that by this delay Richard stood far less chance of ever calling Edith his wife.  But she merely said it was well, congratulating Edith upon her good fortune in being an heiress, and asking many questions about Arthur and Nina, both, and at last taking her leave without a hint as to her suspicions of the future.  To Edith the idea had never occurred.  She should marry Richard of course, and nothing could happen to defer the day a third time.  So she said at least to Victor, when she told him of the arrangement, and with a very expressive whistle, Victor, too, shrugged his shoulders, thinking, that possibly he need not read Nina’s letter after all.  He would rather not if it could be avoided, for he knew how keen the pang it would indict upon his noble master, and he would not add one unnecessary drop to the cup of sorrow he saw preparing for poor Richard.