“I wonder if the colonel is coming?” mused Jack Young, as he stopped to let Jean Forette hurry on a little in advance. Then a backward glance told him that two other figures were joining the procession. These last two—a man and a woman—walked more slowly, and they did not talk, except now and then to pass a few words.
“Then the marriage was legal, after all?” the woman asked.
“Yes, Kate, it was,” answered Colonel Ashley. “You are his lawful wife.”
“And he only told me I wasn't, so as to shame me—to make me leave him, and render me desperate?”
“That, and for other reasons. But the fact remains that you are his wife.”
“And this other ceremony—this other woman?”
“No legal wife at all.”
“I am sorry for her.”
“Yes, she is but a girl. If I had known in time I might have stopped it. But it is too late now. Is he there, Jack?” he asked, as he joined the man in the panama hat.
“Yes, sitting outside with Mazi. Going to close in?”