Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/263

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN like the air of Paris to bring out the tones and colorings and veinings of hotel life. But the greatest difference between the former and the present condition of this little party lay in the fact that in San Francisco its principal member was Mrs. Philip Horn, while in Paris it was Miss Edna Markham.

This change of name had been the result of nights of thought and hours of consultation. In San Francisco Edna felt herself to be Mrs. Horn as truly as if they had been married at high noon in one of the city churches, but although she could see no reason to change her faith in the reality of her conjugal status, she had begun to fear that Captain Horn might have different views upon the subject. This feeling had been brought about by the tone of his letters. If he should die, those letters might prove that she was then his widow, but it was plain that he did not wish to impress upon her mind that she was now his wife.

If she had remained in San Francisco, Edna would have retained the captain's name. There she was a stranger, and Captain Horn was well known. His agents knew her as Mrs. Horn, the people of the Mary Bartlett knew her as such, and she should not have thought of resigning it. But in Paris the case was very different. There she had friends, and expected to make more, and in that city she was quite sure that Captain Horn was very little known.

Edna's Parisian friends were all Americans, and some of them people of consideration, one of her old schoolmates being the wife of a secretary of the American legation. Could she appear before these friends as Mrs. Captain Philip Horn, feeling that not only was she utterly unable to produce Captain Horn, 249