On the wings of fate

by Effie Adelaide Rowlands

He went through such business as they had to transact as quickly as possible; and he left the house eventually with a curious longing not to set foot in it again.

Christina might have been content with the success of her introduction of Hubert Kestridge’s name could she have known how painfully the matter clung to Valentine’s memory all the day. He could think of nothing else, and the more he thought, the more he seemed to light on a truth, and to feel that he stood in close contact with the secret of Polly’s young life.

Up to now he had had a warm liking for Kestridge, but there seemed an element in this recital of the marriage with one sister, instead of another, that suggested cruelty. For it was, in a degree, incongruous to Valentine’s knowledge of Polly’s proud, high-spirited nature to credit her with wearing her heart out in a love given unsought.

There must have been some deeper chord struck between herself and Kestridge other than simply cousinly affection. Probably Kestridge had flirted with pretty Polly, and then at last, had turned away from her, and married her sister. Whichever way he turned the matter, it remained hurtful to him, and at last he resolved not to think further about it, and to put, if he could, all memory of the girl he loved from his mind.

There was nothing, not even the shadow, of a pessimist about Valentine Ambleton. He was far too clear sighted, too practical, to be anything but optimistic in almost everything, and up to this moment he had been strongly optimistic in his thoughts and dreams for the future.

True, Polly had given him little enough encouragement. Friends they had become, in a sense, but he found her a thorny little individual, and nothing he had done had seemed to bring them any nearer. Yet he had not renounced his hope, rather had it grown stronger and more earnest of late.

His cousin’s sad and unexpected death had put Valentine in a very different position. He was now a wealthy man, a man whom any woman, however worldly, would have been glad to marry, and he had rejoiced in the knowledge of his money, and of his many possessions, purely because of his love for Polly, and for his Sister Grace.

Each time he had gone, at Christina’s bidding, to the shabby old house in Kensington, his eyes had been blind to her beauty, his senses had never once been moved by the fascination of her presence.

He had looked only to see Polly; he had dreamed only of the moment when he could transplant her, this slender, brown-skinned little creature, with her bewitching eyes, and sharp, childlike speech, away from this, her shabby and trouble-shadowed old home, away back to that other where he had spent the happiest days of his boyhood, and in and about which all the memories of his life seemed woven.

And each day he had gone hoping to find that the time was propitious, and that this happy moment might be his, and every day he had left the house chilled and disappointed, because he had never seen Polly, or seeing her, he had found her short tongued and very cold, but never so chilled and disappointed as to-day.