Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II AN ANIMAL, AT BAY AS Agatha Renier walked back to the scene of the tumult that had brought so startling a vista of wealth and all its possibilities before her, she felt a great longing to be done with the never ending tasks in the grim fortress of toil she had now known for several years. She had seen many a fair and blooming girl transformed by the pitiless process of work into a pallid drudge. Only last night she had looked into her little round mirror at home with a sort of dread lest she herself were going the way of others. " Tell me the truth, glass," she had said, " no flattery, mind." She had laughed, yet with a sigh of relief, to find how reassuring was the answering message of the shining circle. It had told her that her finely- molded oval face was as delicately tinted over its olive surface as ever; that her skin was of that satin texture that speaks of perfect health; that her brown eyes were as limpid and brilliant as a pool on some rocky ledge; that her dark hair waved with its usual saucy abandon around her low, smooth forehead; that her full lips were of the same hue as the little coral trees in her grandfather's quaint cabin-room. All was eminently satisfactory in this regard, and,being a very human young woman, Agatha had rejoiced in her own beauty. " I'll do for a while yet," she had told her mirror and herself. Why she should not " do " at sixteen might perhaps not have been clear to other auditors; but Agatha's was a life that made for a sadly brief childhood. In those days of Old Chetford's industrial history babies, almost, were pressed into the ranks of the providers, and as they stumbled on with tired little feet, they became old before they were fairly young. She herself had not been put to the toil under compulsion. Her gran...