FOLLY CORNER BY MRS. H. DUDENEY AUTHOR OF “THE MATERNITY OF HARRIOTT WICKEN” [Illustration: Decorative Image] NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1900 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS RAHWAY, N. J. CONTENTS PROLOGUE. CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. CHAPTER XIX. CHAPTER XX. CHAPTER XXI. CHAPTER XXII. CHAPTER XXIII. PROLOGUE. THE steam of that stifling London day rose up in a choking, enervating haze from the hot grass. The shrill cries of children, loose from the Board School, cut the thick air. A train rushed across the bridge. Two or three cyclists tinkled their bells irritably as they spun down Wood Lane to the Uxbridge Road, leaving a cloud of gray grit behind them. Omnibuses pulled up at the corner of the short street near the few newly-built shops. From Portobello Road came the heavy rumble of more traffic, mixed with the nearer shout of costers vending dried fish and over-ripe fruit. She was a young woman. She stood still, in a limp, hopeless attitude, her face turned on Wormwood Scrubbs, her strained eyes vacantly fastened on the buildings, spires, and chimneys in the distance. Some simple sound from the frowning prison on her left made her turn her head with the swift, watching movement of a cat. But there was nothing to see; no hint, no hope. Behind those walls! Her throat, rising white and firm from the tumbled collar of the cotton blouse, contracted. Those walls! those impenetrable walls! those relentless walls! She put out two hands in baggy gloves; she held them up, flat palms upward, toward the speechless prison. Her attitude was one of strong appeal, of hope, almost--as if she half expected that despair would work a miracle. They stretched out, big, strong, shapeless in the old gloves--those quivering, appealing hands of hers. With a sharp agonized movement of the wrists she let her hands drop nervelessly to her side. A sob was strangled in her throat; she turned her head abruptly, so that her eyes no longer rested on the walls. With a sudden impulse she started running across the grass; ran across the road and under the bridge to the spot where an omnibus was waiting. It grew dusk as she rattled back on the garden-seat to London. One by one the lights of night gleamed out. The life of night began. She looked down and saw the interior of smoothly rolling carriages, with women in evening dress lying idly back inside. Women on foot, smartly clad and with happy faces, flitted along the white pavements. Women clambered to the top of the omnibus, chattering and tittering. The one who sat next her glanced curiously at her grim mouth and shadowed eyes.