Page:Delight - de la Roche - 1926.djvu/207

 so with a good deal of trepidation, for she was now somewhat of a personage herself, and a naturally shy girl.

Her romance with Edwin Silk had ended, less than a fortnight after Delight's departure, dramatically and with tragic splendour. Silk had died and left her all his fortune. He had driven to the village of Stead one Sunday with three other men, among them Bastien. They had played poker most of the night. In the morning, one of the men who had slept with Silk, found him dead in bed by his side. There was no inquest. Silk had always been a weakling, and the strain of losing three hundred dollars that night had been the last straw to a heart already degenerated.

Edwin Silk's last gesture was theatric. He had left what remained of his fortune to a kitchen girl. There were about two thousand pounds and an old cottage in Surrey, with an acre of land. . . . The shock of this legacy, coming after the shock of her lover's death, had been almost too much for Pearl. His attentions had kept her in a sort of daze; this sudden wealth almost bereft her of the power of thought. She knew that she was now a fine lady, but she had no friends other than the servants at The Duke, and no life outside her work and her sweethearting. This last was denied her, for she was now afraid of all men—Mrs. Bye had warned her that they would be hotfoot after her dollars—regarding them with fear and suspicion. She had no relations, so she took a room in a boarding-house that advertised itself as "refined," and sat there by the hour in her black velvet dress fingering her jet bracelet, and thinking of Edwin. She could not wish him back because latterly he had frightened her, but she had loved him, and the thought of his narrow head lying against her plump shoulder always brought the slow tears to her eyes.