Phillippa was crying , with her head on Owen 's shoulder . Isabella Clark waited to see the mortgage burned up , and then she came to me in the hall , all smooth and smiling again . `` Really , it 's all very romantic , is n't it ? I suppose it 's better as it is , all things considered . Mark behaved splendidly , did n't he ? Not many men would have done as he did . '' For once in my life I agreed with Isabella . But I felt like having a good cry over it all -- and I had it . I was glad for my dearie 's sake and Owen 's ; but Mark Foster had paid the price of their joy , and I knew it had beggared him of happiness for life . XV . TANNIS OF THE FLATS Few people in Avonlea could understand why Elinor Blair had never married . She had been one of the most beautiful girls in our part of the Island and , as a woman of fifty , she was still very attractive . In her youth she had had ever so many beaux , as we of our generation well remembered ; but , after her return from visiting her brother Tom in the Canadian Northwest , more than twenty-five years ago , she had seemed to withdraw within herself , keeping all men at a safe , though friendly , distance . She had been a gay , laughing girl when she went West ; she came back quiet and serious , with a shadowed look in her eyes which time could not quite succeed in blotting out . Elinor had never talked much about her visit , except to describe the scenery and the life , which in that day was rough indeed . Not even to me , who had grown up next door to her and who had always seemed more a sister than a friend , did she speak of other than the merest commonplaces . But when Tom Blair made a flying trip back home , some ten years later , there were one or two of us to whom he related the story of Jerome Carey , -- a story revealing only too well the reason for Elinor 's sad eyes and utter indifference to masculine attentions . I can recall almost his exact words and the inflections of his voice , and I remember , too , that it seemed to me a far cry from the tranquil , pleasant scene before us , on that lovely summer day , to the elemental life of the Flats . The Flats was a forlorn little trading station fifteen miles up the river from Prince Albert , with a scanty population of half-breeds and three white men . When Jerome Carey was sent to take charge of the telegraph office there , he cursed his fate in the picturesque language permissible in the far Northwest .
Not that XXXXX was a profane man , even as men go in the West .
Avonlea Blair Carey Clark Isabella Mark Northwest Owen XV beaux