“What will be the end, Val?” she whispered.
Valentine groaned. “I try not to think of it, my dear. When I cannot put all thought of the future from me, it gives me more torment than I know how to bear. If only——”
The door opened, and in came Clementina, arresting what he had been about to say.
“This is the pattern you asked me for, Clementina,” Jane said, rising to depart on her return home. For she would not risk passing the Inlets after sunset.
A week or two went by, and the time of Valentine Chandler’s departure arrived. He had grown well and strong apparently, and went about to say Good-bye to people in a subdued fashion. The Squire took him apart when Val came for that purpose to us, and talked to him in private. Tod called it a “Curtain Lecture.” Valentine was to leave Crabb at daybreak on the Saturday morning for London, and go at once on board the ship lying in the docks about to steam away for Quebec.
It perhaps surprised none of us who knew the Chandler girls that they should be seen tearing over the parish on the Friday afternoon to invite people to tea. “It will be miserably dull this last evening, you know, Johnny,” they said to me in their flying visit; “we couldn’t stand it alone. Be sure to come in early: and leave word that Joseph Todhetley is to join us as soon as he gets back again.” For Tod had gone out.
According to orders, I was at North Villa betimes: and, just as on that other afternoon, I met Jane Preen at the gate. She had walked in from Duck Brook.
“You are going to spend the evening here, Jane?”
“Yes, it is the last evening,” she sighed. “Valentine wished it.”
“The girls have been to invite me; wouldn’t let me say No. There’s to be quite a party.”