Gay, jolly Sally Pendleton, with her flashing get-up—a combination of strangely unnatural canary-yellow hair, pink cheeks and lips, and floating, rainbow-hued ribbons—jarred upon his artistic tastes.
He did not admire a girl who went into convulsions of laughter, as Sally did, at everything that was said and done. In fact, he liked her less each time he saw her. But she was young—only eighteen—and she might, in time, have a little more sense, he reflected.
What should he do? He looked at the matter in every light; but, whichever way he turned, he found no comfort, no way out of the dilemma.
If he were to explain to the world that the engagement was only the outcome of a thoughtless wager, his friends would surely censure him for trying to back out; they would accuse him of acting the part of a coward. He could not endure the thought of their taking that view of it. All his friends knew his ideas concerning honor, particularly where a lady was concerned.
And now he was in honor bound to fulfill his part of the wager—marry Sally Pendleton, whom he was beginning to hate with a hatred that startled even himself.
Such a marriage would spoil his future, shipwreck his whole life, blast his every hope. But he himself was to blame. When that hoidenish, hair-brained girl had made such a daring wager, he should have declined to accept it; then this harvest of woe would not have to be reaped.
Suddenly a thought, an inspiration, came to him. He would go to Sally, point out to her the terrible mistake of this hasty betrothal, and she might release him from it.
CHAPTER V.
"SHALL WE BREAK THIS BETROTHAL, THAT WAS MADE ONLY IN FUN?"
The thought was like an inspiration to Jay Gardiner. He would go to Sally and ask her to break this hateful engagement; and surely she would be too proud to hold him to a betrothal from which he so ardently desired to be set free.