And now for the first time she had heard from some friend that he went to Woodside Farm, and, naturally, as Miss Churchill was considered the prettiest girl in all the country round, her jealousy was aroused. She, however, little guessed how far her false lover had committed himself with his new love. He had, in fact, asked Margaret Churchill to be his wife, and though she had said him nay, he still held determinately to his purpose.
“No one and nothing shall come between us,” he muttered, with gloomy emphasis, with his teeth set hard, as he walked on homeward after his stormy interview with Elsie. And there was a look on his face, a dark, savage look, that boded ill for the poor girl who had loved him too well.
CHAPTER V.
MRS. TEMPLE.
“I can not get that girl’s face out of my head,” John Temple thought more than once, as he walked back to the Hall. Her beauty had indeed a wonderful charm for him. He had seen and known many pretty women, but to his mind none so fair and sweet as the Mayflower. And he liked to think of her by this name.
“She is just like a flower,” he told himself. “Ah! that such a face should ever fade!”
This idea made him more thoughtful. He began to muse on the brief tenure of earthly things. And as he approached the stately house that in all probability would one day be his, he was thinking thus still.
“I may never come here,” he thought, looking at the old Hall, with the summer sunshine falling on its gray walls; “never, nor child of mine.”
A shadow passed over his face; he struck impatiently with his walking stick at a tall thistle growing by the wayside, and there was a cloud still on his brow as he entered the hall, and went up the broad staircase that led to the bedroom appropriated to his use.