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"There's one thing sure about Eden ... in spite of the squabbles and disagreements of the elders, the place is a children's paradise." "That's only because they have all nature for their backyard no thanks to their elders," Hildreth answered, looking up into my face with a quick smile, "the grown-ups find misery wherever, they go." "Does that mean that you are unhappy?"
"The only thing that I can think of," interrupted the groom, "is for us to leave you girls with the horses, while we get to shore. Then you send 'em off one by one, and we'll catch 'em. Miss Hildreth, you send yours first. No, Miss Wales, you send mine first, then Miss Hildreth's may follow better. I'm awfully sorry to make you young ladies so much trouble."
Was not this the greatest opportunity in the world for Hildreth and me to put to practical test our theories ... proclaim ourselves for Free Love, as Mary Wollstonecraft and the philosopher Godwin had done, a century or so before us? The following day Ruth and I ate breakfast together, alone. I had behaved with unusual sedateness, had showed an aplomb I had never before evidenced.
Nevertheless she was glad and gratified that she did so. She was a very capable girl, no doubt of that, and she would feel much safer about Hildreth because of her care. It was just in her line. She was like all Yankee women just a better class of housemaids. This one was very accomplished. She had played the piano exquisitely and had acted the lady to perfection in last night's masquerade.
Again Judge Hildreth laughed that strange, feeble laugh. "Evadne is of age, Kate; she must do as she thinks right. As to the rest I think the less we say about the Hildreth honor now the better for us all." He was alone. Mrs. Hildreth had swept away in a storm of wrath. Evadne had followed her, leaving a soft kiss upon his brow.
People make a great talk about the dignity of labor, but a girl who works has no footing in polite society." Evadne's sweet laugh fell softly through the silence. "I don't believe I have any time for society, Aunt Kate. Life seems too real to be frittered away over afternoon teas." "Are you mad, Lawrence, to let her take this step? Think of the Hildreth honor!"
He was sincere. An incredible, naïve, almost idiotic purity shone in his face.... Again I was impelled to confess. Again I held my tongue. Again I lied. "Penton, what you have just said about you and Hildreth and your lives together, I shall consider as sacred between us." He gave me his hand.
It had ended, professionally, at a lonely little house in the heart of the forest, which Jarvis Hildreth, dying but a scant year since, had bequeathed to his orphaned children, Madge and Roger.
"Not too fast, Hildreth," he cautioned, dropping into the editor's den late one night. "You are doing mighty good work, but you are making it infinitely harder for me driving the game to deeper cover. One of my men had a clue: Bucks and Meigs were holding conferences with a man from the Belmount field whose record runs back to New York. But they have taken the alarm and thrown us off the track."
Each evening, by the open fire, I read aloud from the poets ... or Darrie or Hildreth did ... happy evenings by fire-light, that shall always live pleasantly in my memory.... We had but few disagreements, and those trifling ones. Darrie was herself in the midst of a romantic courtship.
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