Book 1 Chapter 7

For two or three weeks after his meeting with Mrs. Carstairs' brother, Anstice avoided both Cherry Orchard and Greengates.

From a chance word in the village he had learned that Bruce Cheniston was prolonging his visit to his sister; and that new and totally unreasoning jealousy which had assailed Anstice as he saw Cheniston bending over Iris Wayne at the piano told him with a horrid certainty that to the girl herself belonged the responsibility for this change in the young man's plans.

In his calmer moments Anstice could not help admitting the suitability of a friendship, at least, between the two. Although he had lost much of his attractive boyishness Cheniston was a good-looking fellow enough; and there was no denying the fact that he and Miss Wayne were a well-matched pair so far as youth and vitality and general good looks went; and yet Anstice could not visualize the pair together without a fierce, wild pang of jealousy which pierced his heart with an almost intolerable anguish.

For he wanted Iris Wayne for himself. He loved her; and therein lay tragedy; for he told himself miserably that he had no right to ask her to couple her radiant young life with his, already overshadowed by that past happening in India.

Not only that, but he was already over thirty, she but eighteen; and Sir Richard Wayne's daughter was only too well provided with this world's goods, while he, with all his training, all his toil, was even yet a comparatively poor man, with nothing to offer the girl in exchange for the luxurious home from which he would fain take her.