But it was more than the bad weather that brought that ache, and as the girl counted up the years that she might possibly live with that dull, cold pain perpetually in her heart, she may be forgiven because the tears came.
CHAPTER XXII.
A DEFINITION OF A WIFE.
Valentine returned to London on this same wet day.
It was raining hard as he started, and the summer wind blew a storm of raindrops against the window as he journeyed up from Dynechester.
Something in the sound of the wind and rain recalled the sea, and brought with it that curious longing that the sea can stir in some natures.
Valentine wondered in a dreamy way where Polly might be at this moment.
“I suppose she is with some relations,” he said to himself.
He wished vaguely he could know where she was, he had a distinct dislike to feeling that she had passed out of his radius, as it were. And then he wished vaguely that he could forget all about her.
But a heart’s love knows little of wisdom!
Arrived in London, Valentine had a mass of work to do, and in the course of getting through it fate brought him sharply up against the very man about whom he had been thinking so much, and not very gently.