Arthur and Edith

Very briefly Edith related to him the particulars of her
interviews with the blind man, saying, when she had finished, "Don't you believe he likes me?"

"I dare say he does," returned Arthur, at the same time asking if
she would be afraid to stay alone one night in that great hotel,
knowing he was gone?"

"Oh, Mr. Arthur, you won't leave me here?" and in her terror
Edith's arms wound themselves around the young man's neck as if
she would thus keep him there by force.

Unclasping her hand's, and holding them in his own, Arthur said, "Listen to me, Edith. I will take the Boston train which leaves
here very soon, and return to Shannondale, reaching there some
time to-night. I will go to Collingwood, will tell Mr. Harrington
what has happened, and ask him to take you, bringing him back here
with me, if he will---"

"And if he won't?" interrupted Edith, joy beaming in every
feature. "If he won't have me, Mr. Arthur, will you? Say, will you
have me if he won't?"

"Yes, yes, I'll have you," returned Arthur, laughing to himself,
as he thought of the construction which might be put upon this
mode of speech.

But a child nine and a half years old could not, he knew, have any
designs upon either himself or Richard Harrington, even had she
been their equal, which he fancied she was not. She was a poor,
neglected orphan, and as such he would care for her, though the
caring compelled him to do what scarcely anything else could have
done, to wit, to seek an interview with the man who held his
cherished secret.