News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1920-12-08
. CHAPTER XII.
Guild pro Quo,

It was his blessing that had done
t; up to then she had controlled her
ceilings in q fashion worthy of the
tile just bestowed upon herr If only
lie had stopped at that, and kept his
blessing to himself 1t sounded so
5ery much more like a knell that
Blanche had begun first TO laugh, and
hen to make such a fool of herself
as she herself reiterated) that she
vas obliged to run away in the worst
possible order
But that was not the end of those
our superfluous words of final bene-
fiction; before the night was out they
lad solved, to Blanche's satisfaction,
he hitherto impenetrable mystery of
Jazalet's conduct.
He had done something in Austria
ia. something that fixed gulf be-
:ween him and her. Blanche did not
mean something wrong, much less a
crime, least of all any sort of COM
)licity in the great crime which had
been committed while he was on his
way iiOiiiC' LUZ pllC bCllCFCd IhC
worst he had done was to emulate
mis- friend, Mr.. Potts, and to get en-
gaged or perhaps actually married to
somebody in the bush.
There was no reason why he should
not; there never had been any sort
or kind of understanding between her.
self and him; it was only as lifelong
friends that they had written to each
other, and that only once a year. Life
long friendships are additionally fatal
to romance. They had both been
free as air; and if he was free no
longer, she had absolutely no cause
for complaint, even if she was fool
enough to feel it.
All this she saw quite clearly in her
very honest heart. And yet, he might
have told her; he need not have flown
to see her, the instant he landed, or
seemed so overjoyed, and such boy
their common memories! He need not
have begun begging her, in a minute,
to go out to Australia, and then never
have mentioned it again; he might
just as well have told her if he had or
hoped to have a wife to welcome her!
OF course he saw it afterward, him
self; that was why the whole subject
Of Australia had been dropped so sud-
denly and for good. Most likely he
had married beneath him; if so, she
was very sorry, but he might have said
that he was married.
Curiously enough, it was over Mar
tina that she felt least able to forgive
him Martha would say nothing, but
let would be only less intolerable than
her unspolen sympathy with Blanche.
Martha had been perfectly awful about
the whole thing. And Martha had CON-
mitted the final outrage of being per-
fectly right, from her idiotic point of
view.
Now among all these meditations of
a long night and of still longer day,
in which nobody even troubled to send
her word of the~case at Kingston, it
would be too much to say. that no
thought of Hilton Toye ever entered
the mind of Blanche. She could not
help liking him; he amused her i'm
and he had proposed to her
twice, and warned her he would again.
She felt the force of his warning, be-
cause she felt his force of character
and will. She literally felt these
forces, as actual carnations from the
strongest personality that had ever
impinged upon her own.
In the day of reaction, such consid-
were bound to steal in as
single spies, each with a certain con-
ISOLATION, not altogether innocent of
But the battalion of
Toye's virtues only marched on
Blanche when Martha came to her, on
the little green rug of lawn behind
the house, to say that Mr.. Toye him
self had called and was in the draw
ing-room.
Blanche stole up past the door, and
made herself smarter than she
had ever done by day for Walter GAIA
let; at least she put on a "dressy"
Blouse. her calling skirt (which al