The next six weeks, Edith thought, were the most delightful she had ever spent. Nowhere does the society of an agreeable and intellectual person add more to the enjoyment of the company than in travelling. Although grave and quiet, Mr. Hildreth was full of thoughtfulness and observant care for the comfort of his fellow-travellers. Whenever he spoke to Edith, there was a gentle deference in his manner that, from one of his superior abilities, was irresistibly attractive.
On his side, Mr. Hildreth was no less charmed by those with whom he had been so strangely thrown. On the Sunday in which he had first seen them, he had been pleased and impressed by Mr. Frazier's sermon, and thought that he had never seen a face of more artless and attractive loveliness than Edith Frazier's. She reminded him of Chaucer's beauties, of a rose half opened and still wet with the morning dews, and of all that was most fresh and delicate in nature. Her mind answered to the promise of her countenance. Ignorant of the world and uncontaminated by it, she walked in almost unconscious innocence the simple path of duty. Her disposition, naturally cheerful and bright, had already begun to recover its buoyancy, and her happiness reacted on her graver companions, who seemed to vie with each other as to which should add most to her pleasure.
Seasons of unshaded happiness are generally as brief as bright. By the end of the six weeks, Mr. Hildreth received a letter from his aunt, who wrote urgently for his immediate presence. He took a reluctant leave of his companions, but not before he had had a long conversation with Mr. Frazier, in which he asked his permission to reveal to Edith the love that had already become a strong feeling in his heart.
Heretofore he had been thrown, he said, among a set of worldly and fashionable women, and had come to look upon simplicity and unworldliness as traits no longer to be met with among the educated and polished members of society, and Edith Frazier exhibited a character as new as attractive to him. She was the only woman that he had ever met, whose society and conversation never wearied or lost their interest to him.
Mr. Frazier's paternal pride was gratified at the tribute thus paid to Edith by a man like Mr. Hildreth, but he could not bear to think of giving up the only object of affection left to him, nor contemplate without pain the idea that his daughter's home might be in a distant land. He did all that he felt justified in doing to avert the day of separation, and pleading Edith's youth, requested Mr. Hildreth to postpone for a year his declaration. To this delay Mr. Hildreth was unwilling to consent; but at last was obliged unwillingly to yield to a probation of six months.