[18] March 21, 1863.
Frank Wallace has not been banished the house of Judge Owen, since that memorable night of July. He visits it, even takes Emily to the theatres, and is neither insulted nor interrupted. It is supposed that the Judge did not rule him out of the house, because he believed it to be of no use, holding that a man who had begun to come in disguise might continue the game if not allowed to come openly, and that to keep him out he would be obliged to remain at home all the time himself, and keep a sharp eye on the supposed milkman, the baker, the butcher, and even the man who carried in the coal.
It may be that after this lapse of time, the Judge even tolerates the scapegrace. Emily does, it is very evident, and as she has never since swerved in her warm friendship with the wild girl who arranged the masquerade, she is not at all likely to recede from her old position or to marry otherwise than as she pleases. The Judge had better reconsider his old decision, gracefully, for he is certainly overruled by that "full bench" consisting of Emily herself (Mrs. Owen reserving her opinion), Josephine Harris and Aunt Martha; and Frank Wallace will "take judgment" some day before he is aware of it, in the shape of pretty Emily Owen!
This is not a clergyman's or a county clerk's record of marriages, and it is a matter of regret that we cannot carry out the system inaugurated by Southworth and followed by Wood, of marrying off all the couples at the close of the relation, even down to the footman and the kitchen-girl. If we put them en train for that pleasant consummation, shall it not be held sufficient?
It would have been one of the pleasantest tasks of this narration to marry Walter Lane Harding, merchant and good fellow, to Bell Crawford, much more worthy to be his wife than when she was leaving the couch of her sick brother, with the gallant Colonel of the Two Hundredth as her attendant, in search of a peculiar shade of red ribbon. But Harding is a man of mercantile regularity of idea, and not even a novelist can move him more rapidly than he chooses. He left Niagara on the Monday following the departure of Bell Crawford and her brother on Saturday, but business may have had more to do with his return to this city than any outsider can know. He has since been very much in her society, and friends believe that they are sincerely attached to each other. It is highly probable that they will be at Kittatinny or the White Mountains together, during the summer; and a marriage between them, which is one of the eventual certainties, may take place at a moment when it is least expected by others, but when they (the parties most deeply interested, after all) happen to fancy that the time has come for such a culmination of the pleasant acquaintance. Walter Harding, meanwhile, has forsaken none of his old ways, and finds the same pleasure as of old, in the street, in the country or at places of intellectual amusement, in the company (when he can manage to light upon that ever-busy person) of his friend and companion Tom Leslie.
It has already been said, in a previous chapter, that Tom Leslie and John Crawford left the Cataract House within an hour after the discovery of the abduction of Marion Hobart, taking carriage into Canada. Perhaps neither of the two knew precisely what was his motive in the pursuit, except the one before named—curiosity. If Crawford felt that he had a duty to the young Virginian girl, and some claim upon her, under the bequest of her dying grandfather, he was yet fully satisfied that she had left with her own consent, and that she was now where he could take no legal steps to reclaim her from any false position in which she might have placed herself. Leslie had, and knew that he had, no right whatever to meddle with the movements of the suspicious parties, except that he might have obtained some description of Columbus' right by discovery. However, the reasons being what they might, the fact was patent—they were now in full chase of a will-of-the-wisp of most magnificent dimensions.
There was not much difficulty, on enquiry, to find that the carriage they were following (Leslie remembered that this was the second carriage he had followed, in that connection) had taken the road to St. Catharine's; and thither the pursuers posted. Parties who bore the description of those they named—one large, dark man and one very small lady—had taken refreshments at the principal hotel there, two hours before; and then they had apparently gone on to Toronto. They followed to Toronto. Some hours were spent at Toronto, in discovering that they had taken the rail to Montreal. The pursuers followed to Montreal, and late at night, on the day following the departure from Niagara, were at Donnegana's Hotel. No concealment had here been considered necessary by the fugitives, whatever they might have practised before; and on the register of Donnegana's, Leslie found an entry of the names of "Dexter Ralston and wife!"
"Phew!" he said, calling the attention of Crawford to the book, "they have been rapid. All my suspicious were correct, as usual. There never was such a match; but they have now acquired a legal right to remain together, even if there was power to separate them otherwise. They are married!"