THE WOMAN WHO DID
by
Grant Allen
1895
TO MY DEAR WIFE
TO WHOM I HAVE DEDICATED
MY TWENTY HAPPIEST YEARS
I DEDICATE ALSO
THIS BRIEF MEMORIAL
OF A LESS FORTUNATE LOVE
WRITTEN AT PERUGIA
SPRING 1893
FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE
WHOLLY AND SOLELY TO SATISFY
MY OWN TASTE
AND MY OWN CONSCIENCE
PREFACE
“But surely no woman would ever dare to do so,” said my friend.
“I knew a woman who did,” said I; “and this is her story.”
CHAPTER I
Mrs Dewsbury’s lawn was held by those who knew it the loveliest inSurrey. The smooth and springy sward that stretched in front of the house wasall composed of a tiny yellow clover. It gave beneath the foot like the pile onvelvet. One’s gaze looked forth from it upon the endless middle distancesof the oak-clad Weald, with the uncertain blue line of the South Downs in thebackground. Ridge behind ridge, the long, low hills of paludina limestone stoodout in successive tiers, each thrown up against its neighbour by the misty hazethat broods eternally over the wooded valley; till, roaming across them all,the eye rested at last on the rearing scarp of Chanctonbury Ring, faintlypencilled on the furthest skyline. Shadowy phantoms of dim heights framed theverge to east and west. Alan Merrick drank it in with profound satisfaction.After those sharp and clear-cut Italian outlines, hard as lapis lazuli, themysterious vagueness, the pregnant suggestiveness, of our English scenerystrikes the imagination; and Alan was fresh home from an early summer touramong the Peruginesque solidities of the Umbrian Apennines. “Howbeautiful it all is, after all,” he said,