Page:Frank Owen - Woman Without Love (1949 reprint).djvu/42

 he now resided. Yekial Meigs was glad his friend was departing. That would leave him alone with the girl.

"I'll take good care of her," he assured Templeton, as they bade him good-bye at the railroad terminal in the Fair Grounds directly in the rear of the Administration Building. Templeton gave her his address and she promised to write to him, a promise which she kept at rare intervals during the following years.

When Templeton's train had left, Yekial Meigs smiled to himself. Now he would make a direct play to win the body of Mary Blaine. If he had to marry her to succeed in his wishes he would. In any event passion had seldom so mastered him. He was crazy over this slender girl. It is hardly necessary to write that Mary deliberately saw to it that he should fall under her spell. She was a good bit of a sorceress. She knew that Yekial had money and she was for sale. True, he was big and rather coarse, his face was not handsome and his whole appearance was uncouth. But Mary was not finicky. She could overlook a lot in a man if he were wealthy.

After supper that evening, he hired a carriage and they went for a leisurely drive along the roadway, beside the lake. They had left the Fair Grounds with its color and glamour. Now all was peace.

"It is almost like being home," said he. He was driving the carriage himself.

Mary sighed. The word home always made her feel lonesome. It brought back vividly to her mind all that she had lost. Since leaving her father's farm she had had less privacy than a gold fish. Now as she sat with Yekial Meigs, she felt in a somber mood.

"In my shack," he said, "there is a fireplace so tremendous that a dozen people could sit in front of it in comfort. Gosh! but it's good to sit beside it on winter evenings, looking over the papers while a pine log splutters and a strange wind moans and wails about the eaves. I was born in Indiana and perhaps that is why the place has so much appeal for me. If there is anything more restful than a harvest moon gleaming down over a little farm I don't know what it is."

Mary sighed softly.