Violet Lisle

Violet Lisle This issue of Street & Smith's Eagle Series presents "Violet Lisle" by Bertha M. Clay (1892), number 14 in the ten-cent series. The narrative opens in a rural English village setting near Penarth Abbey, where a curate named Martin Jenkins confesses his love to Violet, a young woman of aristocratic lineage sketching the ruins. Though Violet respects and likes Jenkins, she cannot reciprocate his affection. Jenkins reveals he has inherited twenty-five thousand pounds from a distant relative, freeing him from poverty and low social standing—wealth that might have made marriage to Violet acceptable to her father. Violet expresses genuine joy at his good fortune and encourages him to leave the village, inadvertently confirming through her happiness for him that she does not love him romantically.