“I have been free from this horror so long that I cannot meet it again,” Clarice thought, as she folded the letter and felt her anger kindling again against Elithe, who had written to Samona of the wedding.
She knew this was unjust, but she was irritated and jealous, and smarting from her recent quarrel with Paul, for which Elithe was to blame.
“I wish she had never come to Oak City, and, like her aunt, I feel it in my bones that she is my evil star,” she thought.
Then she began to wonder why Jack wished particularly to come to Oak City, and why for the same reason he wished to be on good terms with his family.
“Elithe can have nothing to do with that. He has never seen her. If he had I might imagine all sorts of complications,” she thought, and was still cogitating on the subject when her mother joined her and the two talked up the matter together, Mrs. Percy evincing more dislike to Jack’s coming than Clarice herself.
Between the brother and sister there was some affection; between the stepmother and stepson, none, or at most very little. Mrs. Percy had suffered so much from Jack’s habits that she shrank from putting herself in the way of them again.
“He is safe in Montana; let him stay there, and write him such a letter as will keep him there,” she said.
This, however, was not so easy a task, and Clarice sat up half the night to accomplish it. Three different copies she wrote and three times tore them up; then wrote at last that she was very glad to hear from him (which was not true) and glad that he intended to refund her money (which was true). She was to be married in August, and had she known where a letter would find him she should have written to him, of course. This was her second lie, but, being fairly under way, she did not hesitate to tell another and say that the grand affair of which he had heard was a mistake. She was to be married quietly, with a few friends present, and it was hardly worth his coming so far for so small a matter. When the invitations were out she should send him one and hoped to see him on her wedding trip, as they were going to the Pacific coast by way of Helena and should stop at Samona if he were there, as she trusted he would be. He could take her through the mines and the cañons. Paul would enjoy it so much. She made no mention of Elithe except to say she had met her two or three times. She closed with “Yours affectionately till I meet you in Samona. Will let you know when to expect us.
CLARICE PERCY.”
That trip to the Pacific by way of Helena was born in her brain as she wrote. They had talked of the Canadian route to Victoria and then by steamer to San Francisco, with no thought of Helena or Samona. But they might change their minds and call on Jack if he proved quiescent and staid where he was. She could easily persuade Paul to go wherever she wished to go. On the whole, she was rather pleased with her effort, and had not told a very big falsehood unless it were with regard to the quiet wedding with a few friends.