CHAPTER VIII 



eftie's secret 



The first and most pressing necessity of a woman's 

 life is — what? Love? No, a home. A home 

 imphes love and everything in life worth having. 



A girl without a home and without relations is 

 the lonehest thing on earth, simply because she is 

 a woman, and nothing has such a capacity for 

 loneUness as a woman. 



Give her anything in the way of a tie and she 

 will crystalhse on to it and take it to heart, just 

 as the sugar in a solution of barley-sugar takes the 

 string. 



So it came about that Violet Grimshaw found 

 herself, in less than three weeks after her arrival 

 at Drumgool, not only acclimatised to her new 

 surroundings but hteraUy one of the family. 

 She had caught on to them, and they had caught 

 on to her. French, with that charming easiness 

 which one finds rarely now a days, except in that 

 fast-vanishing individual, the real old Irish gentle- 

 man, had from the first treated her as though he 

 had known her for years. Guessing, with the 

 sure intuition of the irresponsible, the level- 

 headedness and worth behind her prettiness, he 



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