Chapter III · (continued 4)
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"He will not go, father," said Kate, in a tender, appealing voice. "I know he will not go. We cannot let him go. Kinder friends he will not find anywhere than he has here. And we shall miss him from our home circle. There will be a vacant place at our board. Will you be happier away, Edwin?"
The last sentence was uttered in a tone of sisterly affection.
"Happier!" exclaimed the young man, thrown off his guard. "Happier! I shall be wretched while away."
"Then why go?" returned Kate, tenderly.
At this stage of affairs, Mr. Darlington got up, and retired; and we think we had as well retire with the reader.
The good ship "Leonora" sailed in about ten days. She had a supercargo on board; but his name was not Edwin Lee.
Fashionable people were greatly surprised when the beautiful Kate Darlington married her father's clerk; and moustached dandies curled their lip, but it mattered not to Kate. She had married a man in whose worth, affection, and manliness of character, she could repose a rational confidence. If not a fashionable, she was a happy wife.