“He should have married Thurley to meet his equal,” Ali Baba declared. “’Raine has as much chance with him as a paper-shell almond against a hickory nut! Yes, we got a letter from Thurley—she said they was well—that was about all!”
But the town never knew quite all about Dan’s sudden engagement to Lorraine nor Lorraine’s acceptance of Thurley’s suitor. They never knew that Dan, white-faced and with a strange, red light in his eyes, had come to Lorraine to plead with her that she marry him.
To Dan’s despairing anger of youth, Lorraine yielded because of her own despairing love. “I know you love Thurley,” she said, when he scarcely embraced her. “You want to show her some one loves you enough to marry you ... and you knew I always cared. Dan, will you learn to care afterwards? I’ll be the best wife I can! I’ll do everything you want me to do!” She wondered why he winced at the words.
He was thinking of Thurley’s wild rose, defiant, adorable self. It had all happened so quickly that he wondered if it were not some hideous, unfair nightmare from which he would soon waken—and meet Thurley!
But as he looked at her gentle face he knew it was reality; that for over three weeks Thurley had been away from the Corners, Abigail Clergy’s fortune at her disposal to prove that she could sing and the whole world would listen.
Only that hastily scribbled note was left him—he wondered some days when he was trying to attend to business and not act conscious of the glances of his clerks and customers, whether he might not burst out saying the words,
Dan—
Miss Clergy has promised to take me to New York and let me study. I was telling you the truth about it. I know it is for the best, we could never make each other happy—forgive and forget,
Thurley.