"
"Yes, that is true, my dear, forgiving child! and yet I can never think of
the suffering you endured during the summer that succeeded the Christmas
we have been talking of, without keen remorse."
"Yet, long before the next Christmas came I was happier than ever," she
said, looking up into his face with a smile full of filial love. "It was
the first in our own dear home at the Oaks, you remember, papa. You gave
me a lovely set of pearls--necklace and bracelets--and this," taking up a
pearl ring, "was Edward's gift. Mr. Travilla he was to me then, and no
thought of one day becoming his wife even so much as entered my head. But
years afterward he told me he had it in his mind even then; had already
resolved to wait till I grew up and win me for his wife if he could."
"Yes, he told me after you were grown and he had offered himself, that it
had been love at first sight with him, little child that you were when he
first made your acquaintance. That surprised me, though less than the
discovery that you fancied one so many years your senior."
"But so good, so noble, so lovable!" she said. "Surely, it was not half so
strange, papa, as that he should fancy a foolish young thing such as I was
then; not meaning that I am yet very greatly improved," she added, with a
half tearful smile.
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