2i8 GARRVOWEN 



Miss Grimshaw resumed her meditations, and 

 Effie, very quiet and strangely subdued, hung 

 beside her, looking also at the river. 



Even in the time of the Roman legionaries lovers 

 had haunted tliis place. What a story it could 

 have told of lovers and love-affairs gone to dust! 

 But from all its wealth of stories I doubt if it 

 could have matched in involution and cross- 

 purpose the love-affair in which figured Mr French, 

 Mr Dashwood and the girl in the Homburg hat, 

 who was now gazing at the wimpling water and 

 listening to the moist wind in the branches of the 

 trees. She was of the order of people who forgive 

 a blow struck in anger readily, but not a shght or 

 a fancied shght. French had shghted her, and 

 she would never forgive him. She had helped 

 him, plotted and planned for him, and it had all 

 ended in this! There was nothing for it but to 

 leave The Martens as quickly as might be and 

 return to London; and it was only now that she 

 recognised, fully shown up against the background 

 of her resentment, the pleasant ties and interests 

 that bound her to these people ; ties and interests 

 that would have to be broken and dissolved. So, 

 in a fever of irritation, she told herself as she 

 leaned on the low parapet and looked at the river, 

 whilst Effie broke pieces of mortar from the cracks 

 between the stones. 



What, perhaps, rankled deepest in her heart 

 was the expression used by French and repeated 

 by Eihe: " There is never a girl but you'll find a 



