SINCE the night of the dance and the discovery of Lorenzo Brayton’s perfidy, George Brown had been dropping into the beauty parlor of Madame Violette regularly. It did not take a person of extraordinary cleverness to determine that the attraction for Brown was Margaret Dranger.
Something seemed to draw him to the girl when he wanted sympathy, not so much sympathy in words as that which one feels in the presence of another perfectly attuned. He tried to tell himself that he was a fool—that now, of all times, he would have to forego all thoughts of courtship and marriage, since his savings were gone and he would have to fight his way upward again. But he continued his calls.
He made friends with Raoul, and they sat together in Madame Violette’s little parlor and discussed what they would d
