He had hurt her as she had never been hurt before, and all that she craved now was change. Change and amusement to drug her mind so that she need not think. Whether anyone else got hurt in the process was a question that never presented itself to her.
She had not expected to find amusement at Stockleigh. She had been driven there by an overmastering desire to escape from London—for a few weeks, at least, to get right away from her accustomed life and from everyone who knew her. And at Stockleigh she had found Dan Storran.
The homage that had leaped into his eyes the first moment they had rested on her, and which had slowly deepened as the days slipped by, had somehow soothed her, restoring her feminine poise which Michael’s sudden defection had shaken.
She knew—as every woman always does know when a man is attracted by her—that she had the power to stir this big, primitive countryman, whose way of life had never before brought him into contact with her type of woman, just as she had stirred other men. And she carelessly accepted the fact, without a thought that in playing with Dan Storran’s emotions she was dealing with a man who knew none of the moves of the game, to whom the art of love-making as a pastime was an unknown quantity, and whose fierce, elemental passions, once aroused, might prove difficult to curb. He amused her and kept her thoughts off recent happenings, and for the moment that was all that mattered.
CHAPTER XI
STORRAN OF STOCKLEIGH
It was a glorious morning. The sun blazed like a great golden shield out of a cloudless sky, and hardly a breath of air stirred the foliage of the trees.
Magda, to content an insatiable Coppertop, had good-naturally suffered herself to be dragged over the farm. They had visited the pigs—a new and numerous litter of fascinating black ones having recently made their debut into this world of sin—and had watched the cows being milked, and been chased by the irascible gander, and finally, laughing and breathless, they had made good their escape into the garden where Gillian sat sewing, and had flung themselves down exhaustedly on the grass at her feet.
“I’m in a state of mental and moral collapse, Gilly,” declared Magda, fanning herself vigorously with a cabbage leaf. “Whew! It is hot! As soon as I can generate enough energy, I propose to bathe. Will you come?”