"Toe think," said Jo. Briggs, "thet I was allowin'—only thet very afternoon—to go up that cañon arter game, and didn't go from some derned foolishness or other, and yer's Gabe, hevin' no call to go thar, jest comes along, accidental like, and, dern my skin! but he strikes onto a purty gal and a wife the first lick!"
"Thet's so," responded Barker, "it's all luck. Thar's thet Cy. Dudley, with plenty o' money and wantin' a wife bad, and ez is goin' to Sacramento to-morrow to prospect fur one, and he hez been up and down that cañon time outer mind, and no dam ever said 'break' to him! No, sir! Or take my own case; on'y last week when the Fiddletown coach went over the bank at Dry Creek, wasn't I the fust man thar ez cut the leaders adrift and bruk open the coach-door and helped out the passengers? And wot passengers? Six Chinymen by Jinks—and a Greaser! Thet's my luck."
There were few preliminaries to the marriage. The consent of Olly was easily gained. As an act of aggression and provocation towards Mrs. Markle, nothing could offer greater inducements. The superior gentility of the stranger, the fact of her being a stranger, and the expeditiousness of the courtship coming so hard upon Mrs. Markle's fickleness commended itself to the child's sense of justice and feminine retaliation. For herself, Olly hardly knew if she liked her prospective sister; she was gentle, she was kind, she seemed to love Gabriel—but Olly was often haunted by a vague instinct that Mrs. Markle would have been a better match—and with true feminine inconsistency she hated her the more for it. Possibly she tasted also something of the disappointment of the baffled match-maker in the depths of her childish consciousness.
It may be fairly presumed that the former Mrs. Devarges had confided to no one but her lawyer the secret of her assumption of the character of Grace Conroy. How far or how much more she had confided to that gentleman was known only to himself; he kept her secret, whatever might have been its extent, and received the announcement of her intended marriage to Gabriel with the superior smile of one to whom all things are possible from the unprofessional sex.
"Now that you are about to enter into actual possession," said Mr. Maxwell, quietly buttoning up his pocket again, "I suppose you will not require my services immediately."
It is said, upon what authority I know not, that Madame Devarges blushed slightly, heaved the least possible sigh as she shook her head and said, "I hope not," with an evident sincerity that left her legal adviser in some slight astonishment.
How far her intended husband participated in this confidence I do not know. He was evidently proud of alluding to her in the few brief days of his courtship as the widow of the "great Doctor Devarges," and his knowledge of her former husband to some extent mitigated in the public mind the apparent want of premeditation in the courtship.
"To think of the artfulness of that man," said Sal, confidentially, to Mrs. Markle, "and he a-gettin' up sympathy about his sufferin's at Starvation Camp, and all the while a-carryin' on with the widder of one o' them onfortunets. No wonder that man was queer! Wot you allowed in the innocents o' yer heart was bashfulness was jest conscience. I never let on to ye, Mrs. Markle, but I allus noticed thet thet Gabe never could meet my eye."
The flippant mind might have suggested that as both of Miss Sarah's eyes were afflicted with a cast, there might have been a physical impediment to this exchange of frankness, but then the flippant mind never enjoyed the confidence of this powerful young woman.
It was a month after the wedding, and Mrs. Markle was sitting alone in her parlour, whither she had retired after the professional duties of supper were over, when the front door opened, and Sal entered. It was Sunday evening, and Sal had been enjoying the brief recreation of gossip with the neighbours, and, as was alleged by the flippant mind before alluded to, some coquettish conversation and dalliance with certain youth of One Horse Gulch.