One was smooth, leading to gardens of pleasure; the other rough, toilsome, and strewn with failures, but at the end of it was a goal well worth working for. His inheritance was all he needed to enter one; but on the other hand, hard, unfaltering work lay before him and was the only way to success.
His strong young face was set in lines of unwonted determination. "Farewell to an idle society life," he said aloud, "here's to hard work, self-respect, and perhaps an honourable name."
There was not a little comment in his set when it became known that Hardy had left town without assigning any reasons, length of stay, or even leaving an address.
He retired to an obscure hamlet on the Jersey coast and secured a room in a rambling old house which faced the sea. Here he could work; he could study hard, or write, and become, perhaps, a strong man intellectually, instead of being a fastidious ornament in a drawing-room where he felt his financial value was the key-note to his popularity.
The white-haired mistress of the mansion, however, had a confession to make which did not agree at all with his inclinations.
"I've got another boarder," she said, "but she's a quiet, nice-appearing girl and I guess she won't disturb you any."
"Girl!" Hardy scowled, then recovered himself. "Please, don't take any more boarders," he said smilingly, "I'll make it worth your while."
When he said "please" women instinctively obeyed him. Mrs. Kitson readily promised to abstain from further extension of the hilarious pastime of taking boarders, which she had hitherto found to be necessary to her pocket-book, if not to her inclinations.
He spent the afternoon in getting his traps settled in his new location. The quiet was broken only by the boom of the breakers on the shore below, and the room was guiltless of sofa pillows and photograph frames with which women are wont to burden a helpless bachelor. He felt a certain sense of emancipation.