Arthur and Edith

If anything could have reconciled Edith to her fate, it would have
been the fact that she was travelling with Arthur St. Claire, who,
after entering the cars, cared for her as tenderly as if she had
been a lady of his own rank, instead of a little disgraced waiting
maid, whom he was taking back, to the Asylum. It was preposterous,
he thought, for Grace to call one as young as Edith a waiting
maid, but it was like her, he knew. It had a lofty sound, and
would impress some people with a sense of her greatness; so he
could excuse it much more readily than the injustice done to the
child by charging her with a crime of which he knew she was
innocent.

This it was, perhaps, which made him so kind to her,
seeking to divert her mind from her grief by asking her many
questions concerning herself and her family. But Edith did not
care to talk. All the way to Albany she continued crying; and
when, at last, they stood within the noisy depot, Arthur saw that
the tears were still rolling down her cheeks like rain.

"Poor little girl. How I pity her!" he thought, as she placed her
hand confidingly in his, and when he saw how hopelessly she looked
into his face, as she asked, with quivering lip, if "it wasn't
ever so far to New York yet?" the resolution he had been trying
all the day to make was fully decided upon, and when alone with
Edith in the room appropriated to her at, the Delavan House, he
asked her why she supposed Richard Harrington would be willing to
take her to Collingwood.