pile, too, and never come back to claim me until he had as much as Pa.
So then I promised to wait for him to the end of time and pledged
myself not to marry anyone else while he lived. Why shouldn t we be
married right away, then, said he, and then I will feel sure of you;
and I won t claim to be your husband until I come back? Well, we
talked it over, and he had fixed it all up so nicely, with a clergyman
all ready in waiting, that we just did it right there; and then Frank
went off to seek his fortune, and I went back to Pa.
The next I heard of Frank was that he was in Montana, and then he went
prospecting in Arizona, and then I heard of him from New Mexico. After
that came a long newspaper story about how a miners camp had been
attacked by Apache Indians, and there was my Frank s name among the
killed. I fainted dead away, and I was very sick for months after. Pa
thought I had a decline and took me to half the doctors in Frisco. Not
a word of news came for a year and more, so that I never doubted that
Frank was really dead. Then Lord St. Simon came to Frisco, and we came
to London, and a marriage was arranged, and Pa was very pleased, but I
felt all the time that no man on this earth would ever take the place
in my heart that had been given to my poor Frank.
Still, if I had married Lord St. Simon, of course I d have done my
duty by him. We can t command our love, but we can our actions. I went
to the altar with him with the intention to make him just as good a
wife as it was in me to be. But you may imagine what I felt when, just
as I came to the altar rails, I glanced back and saw Frank standing and
looking at me out of the first pew. I thought it was his ghost at
first; but when I looked again there he was still, with a kind of
question in his eyes, as if to ask me whether I were glad or sorry to
see him. I wonder I didn t drop. I know that everything was turning
round, and the words of the clergyman were just like the buzz of a bee
in my ear. I didn t know what to do. Should I stop the service and make
a scene in the church? I glanced at him again, and he seemed to know
what I was thinking, for he raised his finger to his lips to tell me to
be still. Then I saw him scribble on a piece of paper, and I knew that
he was writing me a note. As I passed his pew on the way out I dropped
my bouquet over to him, and he slipped the note into my hand when he
returned me the flowers. It was only a line asking me to join him when
he made the sign to me to do so. Of course I never doubted for a moment
that my first duty was now to him, and I determined to do just whatever
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