Page:Frank Stockton--Adventures of Captain Horn.djvu/264

ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN HORN but that she might never be able to do so? Should the captain not return, and should she have proofs of his death, or sufficient reason to believe it, she might then do as she pleased about claiming her place as his widow. But should he return, he should not find that she had trammelled and impeded his plans and purposes by announcing herself as his wife. She did not expect ever to live in San Francisco again, and in no other place need she be known as Mrs. Horn.

As to the business objects of her exceptional marriage, they were, in a large degree, already attained. The money Captain Horn had remitted to her in San Francisco was a sum so large as to astound her, and when she reached Paris she lost no time in depositing her funds under her maiden name. For the sake of security, some of the money was sent to a London banker, and in Paris she did not deposit with the banking house which Captain Horn had mentioned. But directions were left with that house that if a letter ever came to Mrs. Philip Horn, it was to be sent to her in care of Mrs. Cliff, and, to facilitate the reception of such a letter, Mrs. Cliff made Wraxton, Fuguet & Co. her bankers, and all her letters were addressed to them. But at Edna's bankers she was known as Miss Markham, and her only Parisian connection with the name of Horn was through Mrs. Cliff.

The amount of money now possessed by Edna was, indeed, a very fair fortune for her, without regarding it, as Captain Horn had requested, as a remittance to be used as a year's income. In his letters accompanying his remittances the captain had always spoken of them as her share of the gold brought away, and in 250