“Edith, of course,” said Grace.  “It’s just, like her.  Imitated me in every thing, I dare say.”

“Rather excelled you, I think, in putting on the fine lady,” returned the teasing Arthur, who saw at once that Edith Hastings was his fair cousin’s sensitive point.

“What else did she say?” asked Grace, but Arthur generously refrained from repeating the particulars of his interview with the little girl who, as the days went by, interested him so much that he forgot his Virginia pride, and greatly to Mrs. Atherton’s surprise, indulged with her in more than one playful romp, teasingly calling her his little “Metaphysics,” and asking if she hated him still.

She did not.  Next to Richard and Marie, she liked him better than any one she had ever seen, and she was enjoying his society so much when a most unlucky occurrence suddenly brought her happiness to an end, and afforded Grace an excuse for doing what she had latterly frequently desired to do, viz. that of sending the little girl back to the Asylum from which she had taken her.

Owing to the indisposition of the chambermaid, Edith was one day sent with water to Mr. St. Claire’s room.  Arthur was absent, but on the table his writing desk lay open, and Edith’s inquisitive eyes were not long in spying a handsome golden locket, left there evidently by mistake.  Two or three times she had detected him looking at this picture, and with an eager curiosity to see it also, she took the locket in her hand, and going to the window, touched the spring.

It was a wondrously beautiful face which met her view—­the face of a young girl, whose golden curls rippling softly over her white shoulders, and whose eyes of lustrous blue, reminded Edith of the angels about which Rachel sang so devoutly every Sunday.  To Edith there was about that face a nameless but mighty fascination, a something which made her warm blood chill and tingle in her veins, while there crept over her a second time dim visions of something far back in the past—­of purple fruit on vine-clad hills—­of music soft and low—­of days and nights on some tossing, moving object—­ and then of a huge white building, embowered in tall green trees, whose milk-white blossoms she gathered in her hand; while distinct from all the rest was this face, on which she gazed so earnestly.  It is true that all these thoughts were not clear to her mind; it was rather a confused mixture of ideas, one of which faded ere another came, so that there seemed no real connection between them; and had she embodied them in words, they would have been recognized as the idle fancies of a strange, old-fashioned child.  But the picture—­there was something in it which held Edith motionless, while her tongue seemed struggling to articulate a name, but failed in the attempt; and when, at last, her lips did move, they uttered the word Marie, as if she too, were associated with that sweet young face.