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Updated: June 12, 2025
Gwenda's joy was pure and profound and sufficient to itself. He gathered that it had been with her before he came and that it would remain with her after he had gone. He hated to think that she should know any joy that had not its beginning and its end in him. It took her from him. As long as it lasted he was faced with an incomprehensible and monstrous rivalry.
When Mary put these things together, she saw that nothing could be more certain than that, sooner or later, Ally or no Ally, Gwenda would have gone away. But this was after it had occurred to her that Rowcliffe ought to know what had happened and that she had got to tell him. And that was on the day after Gwenda's letter came, when Mrs.
Upon it as upon everything else connected with him, the fates seemed to smile, and Colonel Vaughan was soon won over by Gwenda's persuasions. "Well! pommy word, you know, Gwenda, I like the young fellow myself. Somehow or other he has taken us by storm. Of course, I should have been better pleased if he were Dr. Owen's son instead of his nephew."
She only said, "Have you seen the thorn-trees on Greffington Edge?" And Ally never answered. She was heading off a stream of jam that was creeping down Stevey's chin to plunge into his neck. "Gwenda's aasskin' yo 'ave yo seen t' thorn-trees on Greffington Edge," said Greatorex. He spoke to Ally as if she were deaf. She made a desperate effort to detach herself from Stevey. "The thorn-trees?
And to Rowcliffe it was as if Mary had said that wasn't Gwenda's way. "There's no doubt she's done the best thing. For herself, I mean." Rowcliffe assented. "Perhaps she has." And Mary, as if doubt had only just occurred to her, made a sudden little tremulous appeal. "You don't really think Garth was the place for her?" "I don't really think anything about it," Rowcliffe said. Mary was pensive.
Its lamps swung a shaft of light over the low garden wall. At the garden gate the car made a shuddering pause. Gwenda's face and all her body listened. A little unborn, undying hope quivered in her heart always at that pausing of the car at her gate. It hardly gave her time for one heart-beat before she heard the grinding of the gear as the car took the steep hill to Upthorne.
She loved Gwenda with a sad-eyed, remorseful love. She said to herself, "If I hadn't been so awful, Gwenda might have married Steven." She saw the appalling extent of Gwenda's sacrifice. She saw it as it was, monstrous, absurd, altogether futile. It was the futility of it that troubled Alice most.
To have interfered with the attic window would have been a breach of compact, an unholy invasion of her sister's rights. For the attic, the smallest, the coldest, the darkest and most thoroughly uncomfortable room in the whole house, was Gwenda's, made over to her in the Vicar's magnanimity, by way of compensation for the necessity that forced her to share her room with Alice.
It was not as if there was anything personal in Gwenda's changing attitudes. And Rowcliffe did indeed say to himself, Restless restless. Yes. That was the word for her; and he supposed she couldn't help it. The study door opened and shut. Mary's eyes made a sign to him that said, "We can't talk about this before my father. He won't like it." But Mr. Cartaret had gone upstairs.
But, though the idea of Gwenda's marrying was disagreeable to him for so many reasons, he was not going to forbid it absolutely. He was only going to insist that she should wait. It was only reasonable and decent that she should wait until Alice got either better or bad enough to be put under restraint. The Vicar's pity for himself reached its climax when he considered that awful alternative.
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