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- 280 REMINISCENCES OF OLD VICTORIA
who can be sure? When I came here I thought that if I found the man with the shares I could get them for a song. I may yet, but my dear child tells me that he has seen here a man from Grass Valley named Barclay who is a friend of that shareholder, and," she added, bitterly, " perhaps he has got ahead of me. I must see the man at once and make him an offer. What do you think ?"
" I think you might as well save yourself further trouble. By this time the shareholder has been apprised of his good fortune."
" What!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet and transfixing me with her eyes. "Am I, then, too late?"
" Yes," I said, " you are too late. Forbes?that is the man's name?knows of his good fortune and I do not believe he would sell now at any price."
The woman gazed at me with the concentrated hate of a thousand furies. Her great eyes no longer bore an expression of pleading tenderness?they seemed to glint and expand and to shoot fierce flames from their depths. They no longer charmed, they terrified me! How I wished I had left the door open.
"Ah !" she screamed. " I see it all. I have been betrayed?sold out. You have broken my confidence."
" I have done nothing of the kind. I have never repeated to a soul what you told me."
"Then who could have done it?" she exclaimed, bursting into a fit of hysterical tears. " I have come all this way to secure the property and now find that I am too late. Shame ! shame !"
" I will tell you. Barclay is really here. He knew of the strike as soon as you did. He is in love with Miss Forbes and followed the family here to tell them the good news. He is with the man at this moment."
CHRISTMAS DINNER IN VICTORIA 281
" Curse him !" she cried through her set teeth.
I left the woman plunged in a state of deep despair. I told her son that he should go upstairs and attend to his mother, and proceeded to the Forbes cottage. There I found the family in a state of great excitement, for Barclay had told them all and already they were arranging plans for returning to California and taking steps to reopen the property.
Miss Forbes received me with great cordiality and the mother announced that the girl and Barclay were engaged to be married, the father having given his con-sent at once. The fond mother added that she regretted very much that her daughter would have to abandon her literary career which had begun so auspiciously through my discovery of her latent talent.
I looked at Barclay before I replied. His face was as blank as a piece of white paper. His eyes, however, danced in his head as if he enjoyed my predicament.
" Yes," I finally said, " Mr. Barclay has much to be answerable for. I shall lose a valued contributor. Perhaps," I ventured, " she will still continue to write from California, for she possesses poetical talent of a high order."
" I shall gladly do so," cried the young lady, " and without pay, too. I shall never forget your goodness."
I heard a low chuckling sound behind me. It was Barclay swallowing a laugh.
They went away in the course of a few days and we corresponded for a long time; but Mrs. Barclay never fulfilled her promise to cultivate the muse ; nor in her several letters did she refer to her poetical gift. Perhaps her husband told her of the pious fraud we practised upon her on Christmas Day, 1860. But whether
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