“To make us seek ruin, to make us seek ruin and love those that hate.”
He walked on, a queer stirring at his heart. The thin voice of the girl in the villa had touched the romantic spot in him. He thought of that other girl at the inn—plump, blue-eyed, smiling. He thought of his carefully-worded advertisement which, by to-morrow, would be worming its way through Sussex, through Surrey and Hampshire to London perhaps.
It was a joke; he began to regret, to blame the cider, or the demure little rings of light hair on the waitress’ unlined brow.
And yet he could still hear the piano. He still felt the slow, wondering work of his heart.
FOLLY CORNER.
[CHAPTER I.]
THE story begins with the emotions of two women—the two women principally concerned—on a morning ten days after Jethro Jayne had imprudently indulged in sweet cider at the market dinner in Liddleshorn.
One woman was young—twenty-five or less. She was a big, fair girl; a handsome girl, in the elementary way that satisfies most men. She looked well able to take care of herself; an up-to-date girl, accustomed to fight her way alone, to meet men on their own ground, to jealously look after her own interests. There was, however, an occasional haggard line at her mouth, and in her well-opened, rather prominent gray eyes was a hunted, hopeless look.