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He pretended to guess. "It's something about Terence? Something about his father?" Again she was disarmed. If he were guilty, it was strange that he should approach the subject so openly. And she began to doubt. "Vance, he knows everything! Everything except the real name of Black Jack!" "Good heavens!"
"I am very anxious to see you to speak with you both. May I come in?" "Why, certainly, Miss Vance," he answered, still too much stupefied by her presence to realize it. She promptly entered, and saying, with a glance at the hall chair by the door, "My maid can sit here?" followed him to the room where he had left his wife. Mrs. March showed herself more capable of coping with the fact.
She turned and left him, disappearing slowly in the rain and mist. Two days later Mr. Perry met Miss Vance in Canterbury and told her of the marriage. She hurried back to London. She could not hide her distress and dismay from the two girls. "How did she force him into it? One is almost driven to believe in hypnotism," she cried. Lucy Dunbar had no joke to make about it to-day.
To crown all, the Blythes returned home, and that evening they and the manse children and Mary Vance kept sunset tryst once more in Rainbow Valley, where the daisies were floating upon the grass like spirits of the dew and the bells on the Tree Lovers rang like fairy chimes in the scented twilight. "Well, you kids have gone and done it now," was Mary's greeting, as she joined them in the Valley.
At the door, Vance turned and threw a quick, investigating glance in his direction. There seemed a hint of questioning in that glance; it might almost have been a tentative invitation. But, also, he wanted to see if their exit had been particularly noticed and by whom. This, briefly told, was the first manoeuvre by which Fate introduced them. There was nothing in it.
"They say those fellows generally whip their wives. He'd better not try it with Christine, I reckon, unless he's practised with a panther." One day, shortly after their return to town in the autumn from the brief summer outing they permitted themselves, the Marches met Margaret Vance.
Unhesitatingly and earnestly I replied, "Davis." A shade, as of disappointment, appeared for a moment upon his countenance, but instantly recovering himself, he said, "Well, if they nominate him, we will give him the usual majority in our precinct, but don't you think, Mr. Stevenson, it is a leetle airly to bring old Jeff out?" A name to conjure with in the old North State is Zeb Vance.
"I see; doubly bankrupt; friend and lover both. But they are easily replaced. I fancy I was half lost before I spoke. Had I remained silent, it would have been the same anyway. Time softens; new associations, new thoughts and faces; men with marvellous adventures " She stopped him abruptly. "It is useless, Vance, no matter what you may say. I shall not quarrel with you.
"Thank you," she answered proudly. "At any rate, I took the boy and called him Terence Colby." "Why that name," muttered Vance, "I never could understand." "Haven't I told you? No, and I hardly know whether to trust even you with the secret, Vance.
Those above looked away to a man till the two came up the bank hand in hand. "Gentlemen, my daughter." There was a great pride in his face. Frona embraced them all with a comrade smile, and each man felt that for an instant her eyes had looked straight into his. That Vance Corliss wanted to see more of the girl he had divided blankets with, goes with the saying.
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