"
She laughed bitterly. "I thought all the town knew by this time."
"Knew what?"
"Falk has run away to London with the daughter of Samuel Hogg."
"Samuel Hogg?"
"Yes, the man of the 'Dog and Pilchard' down in Seatown."
"Run away with her?"
"Yesterday. He sent us a letter saying that he had gone up to London to
earn his own living, had taken this girl with him, and would marry her
next week."
Morris was horrified.
"Without a word of warning? Without speaking to you? Horrible! The
daughter of that man.... I know something about him...the worst man in the
place."
Then followed a long silence. The effect on Morris was as it had been on
Mrs. Brandon--the actual deed was almost lost sight of in the sudden light
that it threw on his passion. From the very first the most appealing
element of her attraction to him had been her loneliness, the neglect from
which she suffered, the need she had of comfort.
He saw her as a woman who, for twenty years, had had no love, although in
her very nature she had hungered for it; and if she had not been treated
with actual cruelty, at least she had been so basely neglected that
cruelty was not far away.
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