Father Gabriel wished fervently that
Jerome Carey might soon be transferred elsewhere. He even went
to Prince Albert and did a little wire-pulling on his own
account, but nothing came of it. He was on the wrong side of
politics.
The other malcontent was Lazarre Mérimée, a lazy,
besotted French half-breed, who was, after his fashion, in love
with Tannis. He could never have got her, and he knew it--old
Auguste and young Paul would have incontinently riddled him with
bullets had he ventured near the house as a suitor,--but he hated
Carey none the less, and watched for a chance to do him an
ill-turn. There is no worse enemy in all the world than a
half-breed. Your true Indian is bad enough, but his diluted
descendant is ten times worse.
As for Tannis, she loved Carey with all her heart, and that was
all there was about it.
If Elinor Blair had never gone to Prince Albert there is no
knowing what might have happened, after all. Carey, so powerful
in propinquity, might even have ended by learning to love Tannis
and marrying her, to his own worldly undoing. But Elinor did go
to Prince Albert, and her going ended all things for Tannis of
the Flats.
Carey met her one evening in September, when he had ridden into
town to attend a dance, leaving Paul Dumont in charge of the
telegraph office. Elinor had just arrived in Prince Albert on a
visit to Tom, to which she had been looking forward during the
five years since he had married and moved out West from Avonlea.
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