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Not all the flush had faded from the face of the I-S Captain. "Grange of the Dart," he did not even sketch a salute. "Inter-Solar. Kallee, Cargo-master " And he did not name the hovering third member of his party. Jellico stood waiting and after a long moment of silence Grange was forced to state his business. "We have until noon " Jellico, his fingers hooked in his belt, simply waited.
On the afternoon of her wedding day the Penhallows held to the good, old-fashioned custom of evening weddings with a rousing dance afterwards Penhallow Grange was filled to overflowing with guests who had come there to have tea and rest themselves before going down to "young" John's. Many of them had driven fifty miles.
So I walked northwards down on the beach, across the grass-sprinkled sandhills and the mud-bottomed marshes. I walked with my cap stuffed in my pocket, my head bared to the freshening wind, and all the way I met no living creature. As I walked, my thoughts, which had been concentrated for these last few days upon my work, went back to that terrible half-hour at Braster Grange. I thought of Ray.
There is a chief at the stone house whom you have seen fighting bravely in many a battle. He is a bold warrior; none is so quick or so tireless as Captain la Grange. But he has a devil in his heart. The bad medicine of white man and redman, the fire-water, is always close to him, ready to whisper to him and guide him. It was not the father at Quebec that broke the faith with the Onondagas.
I shall expect to see you to-morrow morning, then, before I leave for town. But once more, keep your own counsel, and hope for nothing; then all that comes will be so much gain." He drew up the rein, touched his horse's side, and went off at a canter, leaving Grange standing in the cottage garden, one moment with his mind illumined by hope, the next black with despair.
Then she opened the second letter, which she had forgotten in the meanwhile. "They want me to stay at the Grange for a few weeks," she said, and smiled. "An hour ago I felt crushed and beaten and now, though my voice has probably gone for good, I don't seem to mind. Isn't it almost bewilderingly curious that both these letters should have come to sweep my troubles away to-night?"
"I would give anything all I have not to meet him when he comes back. But I don't know how to get away from him. He is sure to seek me out. And I I am only a girl. I can't prevent it." Again there sounded that piteous quiver in her words. It was like the cry of a lost child. Grange heard it, and clenched his hands, but he did not speak. He was gazing straight ahead, stern-eyed and still.
She had stayed with us once or twice before we came to the Grange, but we then knew no other particulars concerning her family, than that her father had been an Indian officer, and that he and her mother had both died in India when she was about six years old, leaving her to the care of an aunt living in England. I now, after a long, and I fear a tedious, preamble, come to my story.
Holbrook could know nothing of his wife's inheritance, nor of Mr. Medler's existence, supposing the lawyer's letter to have reached the Grange before Marian's disappearance, and to have been destroyed or carried away by her. He inquired the date of this letter; whereupon Mr. Medler referred to a letter-book in which there was a facsimile of the document.
She became for him in these days like a lily drooping in a shadowed place and in a thunderous air; something fading away mutely and sorrowfully, like the old figure of Mariana in the Grange, looking wearily through listless hours for something which had once beckoned to her with a radiant gesture, but which did not return.
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