CHAPTER XVI.
MARK AND TOM.
It was the morning of Fanny’s wedding day and the house in Madison Avenue was a scene of great excitement. Flowers and ferns and palms, and florists arranging them, were everywhere. Presents were constantly arriving until the room set apart for them could scarcely hold any more. Cards had been sent to Fanny’s father and Tom, who were in San Francisco, Mark at the Palace Hotel and Tom in a wholesale grocery. A pretty remembrance had come from each, with a letter from Mark wishing his daughter every possible happiness. So far as practicable Tom’s promise to Inez had been kept. Only a few of the people robbed were known to him or Mark by name. To these at intervals money had been sent, which produced nearly as great a sensation as the hold-ups had done. That the brigands had reformed or left the country was evident and Mark and Tom often heard the subject discussed, but Mark never joined in the discussion, or in any other. He was a silent, broken man, doing his work faithfully, but keeping apart by himself, with a sad, far-away look on his face, as if his thoughts were always with the two graves on the mountain side of the Yosemite.
Tom, whose temperament was different, was more social. It was seldom, however, that anything called a smile to his face, for he, too, was nearly always thinking—not so much of Inez’s grave as of the scene on the road and her face as it looked at him when bidding him go before she shot him, as she would shoot a dog. Just before Christmas he asked leave of his employer to go for a day to Salt Lake City. On his return he said to Mark, “It is all right. They are on the way.”
A few days later, and on the morning of the wedding day, Fanny and Roy were sitting together behind a forest of palms and azaleas, when the door bell rang for the twentieth time within an hour.
“Another present, I’ll bet you,” Roy said. “We shall have enough to set up a bazaar.”
“I hope it isn’t a clock. I have four already,” Fanny rejoined, going forward to take the carefully sealed package sent by express from Salt Lake City.
“Salt Lake City!” Fanny repeated, examining the package curiously. “Do we know anybody there? What do you suppose it is?”
Roy could not explain the presentiment he had as to what it was. He had expected something of the kind long before this, for he remembered that Inez had said, “Fanny will have her diamonds.”
“Open the package and see what it is,” he said.
The seals of wax were broken, the box opened, and Fanny gave a start of surprise as she saw the linen bag she had sewed with so much care into the ribbons on her hat.