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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Woodlanders
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+Release Date: April, 1996 [eBook #482]
+[Most recently updated: February 4, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+The Woodlanders
+
+by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+ CHAPTER XXVIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+ CHAPTER XXXII.
+ CHAPTER XXXIII.
+ CHAPTER XXXIV.
+ CHAPTER XXXV.
+ CHAPTER XXXVI.
+ CHAPTER XXXVII.
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+ CHAPTER XXXIX.
+ CHAPTER XL.
+ CHAPTER XLI.
+ CHAPTER XLII.
+ CHAPTER XLIII.
+ CHAPTER XLIV.
+ CHAPTER XLV.
+ CHAPTER XLVI.
+ CHAPTER XLVII.
+ CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the
+forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to
+the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half
+of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands,
+interspersed with apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or
+fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by
+their drip and shade, stretching over the road with easeful
+horizontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an adequate
+support for their limbs. At one place, where a hill is crossed, the
+largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head
+of thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot is
+lonely.
+
+The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree
+that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like
+stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of
+what is with what might be probably accounts for this. To step, for
+instance, at the place under notice, from the hedge of the plantation
+into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and pause amid its emptiness for
+a moment, was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple
+absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn.
+
+At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter’s day, there
+stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the aforesaid
+manner. Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no
+means a “chosen vessel” for impressions, was temporarily influenced by
+some such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before he had
+emerged upon the highway.
+
+It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that
+he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a
+while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music
+in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment
+of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The
+dead men’s work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the
+blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it,
+were not his concern; for fate had given him no time for any but
+practical things.
+
+He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his
+walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony
+of his clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent
+ground for such complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the
+magician in character, if not to the ordinary observer, the expression
+enthroned there was absolute submission to and belief in a little
+assortment of forms and habitudes.
+
+At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or
+seemed likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of
+laboring wheels and the steady dig of a horse’s shoe-tips became
+audible; and there loomed in the notch of the hill and plantation that
+the road formed here at the summit a carrier’s van drawn by a single
+horse. When it got nearer, he said, with some relief to himself, “’Tis
+Mrs. Dollery’s—this will help me.”
+
+The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women. He held up his
+stick at its approach, and the woman who was driving drew rein.
+
+“I’ve been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last
+half-hour, Mrs. Dollery,” he said. “But though I’ve been to Great
+Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about the
+small village. You can help me, I dare say?”
+
+She assured him that she could—that as she went to Great Hintock her
+van passed near it—that it was only up the lane that branched out of
+the lane into which she was about to turn—just ahead. “Though,”
+continued Mrs. Dollery, “’tis such a little small place that, as a town
+gentleman, you’d need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye don’t
+know where ’tis. Bedad! I wouldn’t live there if they’d pay me to. Now
+at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit.”
+
+He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they were
+ever and anon brushed over by the horse’s tail.
+
+This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable
+attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew
+it well. The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of
+heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by
+harness and drudgery from colthood—though if all had their rights, he
+ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some
+Eastern plain instead of tugging here—had trodden this road almost
+daily for twenty years. Even his subjection was not made congruous
+throughout, for the harness being too short, his tail was not drawn
+through the crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one
+side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of
+ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas—the market-town to which he
+journeyed—as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a
+Dumpy level.
+
+The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion of the
+wheels, and at a point in it over the driver’s head was a hook to which
+the reins were hitched at times, when they formed a catenary curve from
+the horse’s shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain,
+whose only known purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having
+to hop up and down many times in the service of her passengers, wore,
+especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for
+modesty’s sake, and instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down with a
+handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which she was frequently
+subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she cleaned
+with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting. Looking
+at the van from the back, the spectator could thus see through its
+interior a square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw
+without, but intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who,
+as they rumbled onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in animated
+private converse, remained in happy unconsciousness that their
+mannerisms and facial peculiarities were sharply defined to the public
+eye.
+
+This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the
+happiest, of the week for them. Snugly ensconced under the tilt, they
+could forget the sorrows of the world without, and survey life and
+recapitulate the incidents of the day with placid smiles.
+
+The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and while
+the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a
+confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise of
+the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting
+forward.
+
+“’Tis Barber Percombe—he that’s got the waxen woman in his window at
+the top of Abbey Street,” said one. “What business can bring him from
+his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman hair-cutter, but a
+master-barber that’s left off his pole because ’tis not genteel!”
+
+They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had
+nodded and spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify the curiosity
+which he had aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas which had
+animated the inside of the van before his arrival was checked
+thenceforward.
+
+Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little lane,
+whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be discerned in
+the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in
+a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the woodland. From this
+self-contained place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of smoke,
+which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their root on
+quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and flitches. It was
+one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world where may
+usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than
+meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in
+inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less
+than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean
+are enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and
+closely knit interdependence of the lives therein.
+
+This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber’s search. The
+coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but the
+position of the sequestered little world could still be distinguished
+by a few faint lights, winking more or less ineffectually through the
+leafless boughs, and the undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form
+of balls of feathers, at roost among them.
+
+Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane, at the
+corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery’s van going on to the
+larger village, whose superiority to the despised smaller one as an
+exemplar of the world’s movements was not particularly apparent in its
+means of approach.
+
+“A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in league
+with the devil, lives in the place you be going to—not because there’s
+anybody for’n to cure there, but because ’tis the middle of his
+district.”
+
+The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at parting,
+as a last attempt to get at his errand that way.
+
+But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian plunged
+towards the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the dead leaves
+which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet. As very few
+people except themselves passed this way after dark, a majority of the
+denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains unnecessary; and on
+this account Mr. Percombe made it his business to stop opposite the
+casements of each cottage that he came to, with a demeanor which showed
+that he was endeavoring to conjecture, from the persons and things he
+observed within, the whereabouts of somebody or other who resided here.
+
+Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses, whose
+size, antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that
+notwithstanding their remoteness they must formerly have been, if they
+were not still, inhabited by people of a certain social standing, being
+neglected by him entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting
+cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other tenements,
+revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants, and joined
+with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot.
+
+Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which
+stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance,
+the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and
+making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen
+through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and
+watch. The house was rather large for a cottage, and the door, which
+opened immediately into the living-room, stood ajar, so that a ribbon
+of light fell through the opening into the dark atmosphere without.
+Every now and then a moth, decrepit from the late season, would flit
+for a moment across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl
+seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire,
+which was ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a leather
+glove, much too large for her, on the other, she was making spars, such
+as are used by thatchers, with great rapidity. She wore a leather apron
+for this purpose, which was also much too large for her figure. On her
+left hand lay a bundle of the straight, smooth sticks called
+spar-gads—the raw material of her manufacture; on her right, a heap of
+chips and ends—the refuse—with which the fire was maintained; in front,
+a pile of the finished articles. To produce them she took up each gad,
+looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length, split it
+into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous blows,
+which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling that of a
+bayonet.
+
+Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass candlestick
+stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an old coffin-stool,
+with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of the latter contrasting
+oddly with the black carved oak of the substructure. The social
+position of the household in the past was almost as definitively shown
+by the presence of this article as that of an esquire or nobleman by
+his old helmets or shields. It had been customary for every well-to-do
+villager, whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more
+permanent than that of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools
+for the use of his own dead; but for the last generation or two a
+feeling of cui bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and
+the stools were frequently made use of in the manner described.
+
+The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined the
+palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, and
+showed little hardness or roughness about it. The palm was red and
+blistering, as if this present occupation were not frequent enough with
+her to subdue it to what it worked in. As with so many right hands born
+to manual labor, there was nothing in its fundamental shape to bear out
+the physiological conventionalism that gradations of birth, gentle or
+mean, show themselves primarily in the form of this member. Nothing but
+a cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl should handle
+the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might have
+skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they only been set
+to do it in good time.
+
+Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a
+life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves upon a
+countenance they seem to wear away its individuality; but in the still
+water of privacy every tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in
+visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as readily as a child’s look by
+an intruder. In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the
+necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced
+the provisional curves of her childhood’s face to a premature finality.
+Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent
+particular—her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its
+color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but
+careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its
+true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut.
+
+On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now
+before us the new-comer’s eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his
+right hand mechanically played over something sticking up from his
+waistcoat-pocket—the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made them
+feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder’s mind
+the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a
+post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl’s hair
+alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and
+distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general,
+being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity.
+
+He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The young
+woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and
+exclaiming, “Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!” quite lost her
+color for a moment.
+
+He replied, “You should shut your door—then you’d hear folk open it.”
+
+“I can’t,” she said; “the chimney smokes so. Mr. Percombe, you look as
+unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you
+have not come out here on my account—for—”
+
+“Yes—to have your answer about this.” He touched her head with his
+cane, and she winced. “Do you agree?” he continued. “It is necessary
+that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going away, and it
+takes time to make up.”
+
+“Don’t press me—it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought no more
+of it. I can _not_ part with it—so there!”
+
+“Now, look here, Marty,” said the barber, sitting down on the
+coffin-stool table. “How much do you get for making these spars?”
+
+“Hush—father’s up-stairs awake, and he don’t know that I am doing his
+work.”
+
+“Well, now tell me,” said the man, more softly. “How much do you get?”
+
+“Eighteenpence a thousand,” she said, reluctantly.
+
+“Who are you making them for?”
+
+“Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here.”
+
+“And how many can you make in a day?”
+
+“In a day and half the night, three bundles—that’s a thousand and a
+half.”
+
+“Two and threepence.” The barber paused. “Well, look here,” he
+continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which
+calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary
+magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present
+purse and the woman’s love of comeliness, “here’s a sovereign—a gold
+sovereign, almost new.” He held it out between his finger and thumb.
+“That’s as much as you’d earn in a week and a half at that rough man’s
+work, and it’s yours for just letting me snip off what you’ve got too
+much of.”
+
+The girl’s bosom moved a very little. “Why can’t the lady send to some
+other girl who don’t value her hair—not to me?” she exclaimed.
+
+“Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and ’tis
+a shade you can’t match by dyeing. But you are not going to refuse me
+now I’ve come all the way from Sherton o’ purpose?”
+
+“I say I won’t sell it—to you or anybody.”
+
+“Now listen,” and he drew up a little closer beside her. “The lady is
+very rich, and won’t be particular to a few shillings; so I will
+advance to this on my own responsibility—I’ll make the one sovereign
+two, rather than go back empty-handed.”
+
+“No, no, no!” she cried, beginning to be much agitated. “You are
+a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe. You go on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus in
+the penny book. But I don’t want your money, and won’t agree. Why did
+you come? I said when you got me into your shop and urged me so much,
+that I didn’t mean to sell my hair!” The speaker was hot and stern.
+
+“Marty, now hearken. The lady that wants it wants it badly. And,
+between you and me, you’d better let her have it. ’Twill be bad for you
+if you don’t.”
+
+“Bad for me? Who is she, then?”
+
+The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question.
+
+“I am not at liberty to tell you. And as she is going abroad soon it
+makes no difference who she is at all.”
+
+“She wants it to go abroad wi’?”
+
+Percombe assented by a nod. The girl regarded him reflectively. “Barber
+Percombe,” she said, “I know who ’tis. ’Tis she at the House—Mrs.
+Charmond!”
+
+“That’s my secret. However, if you agree to let me have it, I’ll tell
+you in confidence.”
+
+“I’ll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth. It is
+Mrs. Charmond.”
+
+The barber dropped his voice. “Well—it is. You sat in front of her in
+church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair matched her
+own. Ever since then she’s been hankering for it, and at last decided
+to get it. As she won’t wear it till she goes off abroad, she knows
+nobody will recognize the change. I’m commissioned to get it for her,
+and then it is to be made up. I shouldn’t have vamped all these miles
+for any less important employer. Now, mind—’tis as much as my business
+with her is worth if it should be known that I’ve let out her name; but
+honor between us two, Marty, and you’ll say nothing that would injure
+me?”
+
+“I don’t wish to tell upon her,” said Marty, coolly. “But my hair is my
+own, and I’m going to keep it.”
+
+“Now, that’s not fair, after what I’ve told you,” said the nettled
+barber. “You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and in one of
+her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn’t like to turn out, it
+would be as well to oblige her. I say that as a friend. But I won’t
+press you to make up your mind to-night. You’ll be coming to market
+to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call then. If you think it over
+you’ll be inclined to bring what I want, I know.”
+
+“I’ve nothing more to say,” she answered.
+
+Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her
+further by speech. “As you are a trusty young woman,” he said, “I’ll
+put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see how
+handsome they are. Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the sovereigns.”
+He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small mantle looking-glass.
+“I hope you’ll bring it, for your sake and mine. I should have thought
+she could have suited herself elsewhere; but as it’s her fancy it must
+be indulged if possible. If you cut it off yourself, mind how you do it
+so as to keep all the locks one way.” He showed her how this was to be
+done.
+
+“But I sha’nt,” she replied, with laconic indifference. “I value my
+looks too much to spoil ’em. She wants my hair to get another lover
+with; though if stories are true she’s broke the heart of many a noble
+gentleman already.”
+
+“Lord, it’s wonderful how you guess things, Marty,” said the barber.
+“I’ve had it from them that know that there certainly is some foreign
+gentleman in her eye. However, mind what I ask.”
+
+“She’s not going to get him through me.”
+
+Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his cane
+on the coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. “Marty South,” he
+said, with deliberate emphasis, “_you’ve got a lover yourself_, and
+that’s why you won’t let it go!”
+
+She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices to
+heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, took up
+the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work without
+turning her face to him again. He regarded her head for a moment, went
+to the door, and with one look back at her, departed on his way
+homeward.
+
+Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying
+down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room,
+where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed
+that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing.
+At the top she gently approached a bedroom, and without entering, said,
+“Father, do you want anything?”
+
+A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, “I should be all
+right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!”
+
+“The tree again—always the tree! Oh, father, don’t worry so about that.
+You know it can do you no harm.”
+
+“Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?”
+
+“A Sherton man called—nothing to trouble about,” she said, soothingly.
+“Father,” she went on, “can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of our house if
+she’s minded to?”
+
+“Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned
+out of my body. ’Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne’s. But when my
+life drops ’twill be hers—not till then.” His words on this subject so
+far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his
+moaning strain: “And the tree will do it—that tree will soon be the
+death of me.”
+
+“Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?” She refrained from further
+speech, and descended to the ground-floor again.
+
+“Thank Heaven, then,” she said to herself, “what belongs to me I keep.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only
+remained two in the darkness. One of these came from a residence on the
+hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at present; the other shone
+from the window of Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect was
+produced here, however, by her rising when the clock struck ten and
+hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The door it was necessary to keep
+ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the smoke; but she
+obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging
+a cloth over that also. She was one of those people who, if they have
+to work harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a
+secret as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of
+wood-splintering which came from within, no wayfarer would have
+perceived that here the cottager did not sleep as elsewhere.
+
+Eleven, twelve, one o’clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, and
+the pile of chips and ends more bulky. Even the light on the hill had
+now been extinguished; but still she worked on. When the temperature of
+the night without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she opened a
+large blue umbrella to ward off the draught from the door. The two
+sovereigns confronted her from the looking-glass in such a manner as to
+suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on the watch for an opportunity.
+Whenever she sighed for weariness she lifted her gaze towards them, but
+withdrew it quickly, stroking her tresses with her fingers for a
+moment, as if to assure herself that they were still secure. When the
+clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars she had last made in
+a bundle resembling those that lay against the wall.
+
+She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the door.
+The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the
+very brink of an absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed
+in by her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze,
+and here there was no street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly
+transition between the inner glare and the outer dark. A lingering wind
+brought to her ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches in
+the neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and
+other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of
+owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon
+ill-balanced on its roosting-bough.
+
+But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see well
+enough for her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars under each arm, and
+guided by the serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, she went some
+hundred yards or more down the lane till she reached a long open shed,
+carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay about everywhere. Night,
+that strange personality, which within walls brings ominous
+introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open sky banishes
+such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired Marty
+South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars
+on the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro
+till her whole manufactured stock were deposited here.
+
+This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business
+hereabout, Mr. George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware
+merchant for whom Marty’s father did work of this sort by the piece. It
+formed one of the many rambling out-houses which surrounded his
+dwelling, an equally irregular block of building, whose immense
+chimneys could just be discerned even now. The four huge wagons under
+the shed were built on those ancient lines whose proportions have been
+ousted by modern patterns, their shapes bulging and curving at the base
+and ends like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which venerable
+hulks, indeed, these vehicles evidenced a constructed spirit curiously
+in harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles,
+another with ash poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had
+placed her thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles.
+
+She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment
+which follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the doing,
+when she heard a woman’s voice on the other side of the hedge say,
+anxiously, “George!” In a moment the name was repeated, with “Do come
+indoors! What are you doing there?”
+
+The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she saw
+enter the latter from the timber-merchant’s back door an elderly woman
+sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from which cast a moving
+thorn-pattern of shade on Marty’s face. Its rays soon fell upon a man
+whose clothes were roughly thrown on, standing in advance of the
+speaker. He was a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous
+mouth and a face cleanly shaven; and he walked along the path with his
+eyes bent on the ground. In the pair Marty South recognized her
+employer Melbury and his wife. She was the second Mrs. Melbury, the
+first having died shortly after the birth of the timber-merchant’s only
+child.
+
+“’Tis no use to stay in bed,” he said, as soon as she came up to where
+he was pacing restlessly about. “I can’t sleep—I keep thinking of
+things, and worrying about the girl, till I’m quite in a fever of
+anxiety.” He went on to say that he could not think why “she (Marty
+knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not answer his letter. She
+must be ill—she must, certainly,” he said.
+
+“No, no. ’Tis all right, George,” said his wife; and she assured him
+that such things always did appear so gloomy in the night-time, if
+people allowed their minds to run on them; that when morning came it
+was seen that such fears were nothing but shadows. “Grace is as well as
+you or I,” she declared.
+
+But he persisted that she did not see all—that she did not see as much
+as he. His daughter’s not writing was only one part of his worry. On
+account of her he was anxious concerning money affairs, which he would
+never alarm his mind about otherwise. The reason he gave was that, as
+she had nobody to depend upon for a provision but himself, he wished
+her, when he was gone, to be securely out of risk of poverty.
+
+To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure to marry well,
+and that hence a hundred pounds more or less from him would not make
+much difference.
+
+Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, naturally
+thought; but there she was wrong, and in that lay the source of his
+trouble. “I have a plan in my head about her,” he said; “and according
+to my plan she won’t marry a rich man.”
+
+“A plan for her not to marry well?” said his wife, surprised.
+
+“Well, in one sense it is that,” replied Melbury. “It is a plan for her
+to marry a particular person, and as he has not so much money as she
+might expect, it might be called as you call it. I may not be able to
+carry it out; and even if I do, it may not be a good thing for her. I
+want her to marry Giles Winterborne.”
+
+His companion repeated the name. “Well, it is all right,” she said,
+presently. “He adores the very ground she walks on; only he’s close,
+and won’t show it much.”
+
+Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself away.
+
+Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well enough.
+Winterborne had been interested in his daughter for years; that was
+what had led him into the notion of their union. And he knew that she
+used to have no objection to him. But it was not any difficulty about
+that which embarrassed him. It was that, since he had educated her so
+well, and so long, and so far above the level of daughters thereabout,
+it was _wasting her_ to give her to a man of no higher standing than
+the young man in question.
+
+“That’s what I have been thinking,” said Mrs. Melbury.
+
+“Well, then, Lucy, now you’ve hit it,” answered the timber-merchant,
+with feeling. “There lies my trouble. I vowed to let her marry him, and
+to make her as valuable as I could to him by schooling her as many
+years and as thoroughly as possible. I mean to keep my vow. I made it
+because I did his father a terrible wrong; and it was a weight on my
+conscience ever since that time till this scheme of making amends
+occurred to me through seeing that Giles liked her.”
+
+“Wronged his father?” asked Mrs. Melbury.
+
+“Yes, grievously wronged him,” said her husband.
+
+“Well, don’t think of it to-night,” she urged. “Come indoors.”
+
+“No, no, the air cools my head. I shall not stay long.” He was silent a
+while; then he told her, as nearly as Marty could gather, that his
+first wife, his daughter Grace’s mother, was first the sweetheart of
+Winterborne’s father, who loved her tenderly, till he, the speaker, won
+her away from him by a trick, because he wanted to marry her himself.
+He sadly went on to say that the other man’s happiness was ruined by
+it; that though he married Winterborne’s mother, it was but a
+half-hearted business with him. Melbury added that he was afterwards
+very miserable at what he had done; but that as time went on, and the
+children grew up, and seemed to be attached to each other, he
+determined to do all he could to right the wrong by letting his
+daughter marry the lad; not only that, but to give her the best
+education he could afford, so as to make the gift as valuable a one as
+it lay in his power to bestow. “I still mean to do it,” said Melbury.
+
+“Then do,” said she.
+
+“But all these things trouble me,” said he; “for I feel I am
+sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and often come down
+here and look at this.”
+
+“Look at what?” asked his wife.
+
+He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, and removed a
+tile which lay in the garden-path. “’Tis the track of her shoe that she
+made when she ran down here the day before she went away all those
+months ago. I covered it up when she was gone; and when I come here and
+look at it, I ask myself again, why should she be sacrificed to a poor
+man?”
+
+“It is not altogether a sacrifice,” said the woman. “He is in love with
+her, and he’s honest and upright. If she encourages him, what can you
+wish for more?”
+
+“I wish for nothing definite. But there’s a lot of things possible for
+her. Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined young lady, I hear, to
+go abroad with her—as companion or something of the kind. She’d jump at
+Grace.”
+
+“That’s all uncertain. Better stick to what’s sure.”
+
+“True, true,” said Melbury; “and I hope it will be for the best. Yes,
+let me get ’em married up as soon as I can, so as to have it over and
+done with.” He continued looking at the imprint, while he added,
+“Suppose she should be dying, and never make a track on this path any
+more?”
+
+“She’ll write soon, depend upon’t. Come, ’tis wrong to stay here and
+brood so.”
+
+He admitted it, but said he could not help it. “Whether she write or
+no, I shall fetch her in a few days.” And thus speaking, he covered the
+track, and preceded his wife indoors.
+
+Melbury, perhaps, was an unlucky man in having within him the sentiment
+which could indulge in this foolish fondness about the imprint of a
+daughter’s footstep. Nature does not carry on her government with a
+view to such feelings, and when advancing years render the open hearts
+of those who possess them less dexterous than formerly in shutting
+against the blast, they must suffer “buffeting at will by rain and
+storm” no less than Little Celandines.
+
+But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury’s, was the centre of Marty’s
+consciousness, and it was in relation to this that the matter struck
+her as she slowly withdrew.
+
+“That, then, is the secret of it all,” she said. “And Giles Winterborne
+is not for me, and the less I think of him the better.”
+
+She returned to her cottage. The sovereigns were staring at her from
+the looking-glass as she had left them. With a preoccupied countenance,
+and with tears in her eyes, she got a pair of scissors, and began
+mercilessly cutting off the long locks of her hair, arranging and tying
+them with their points all one way, as the barber had directed. Upon
+the pale scrubbed deal of the coffin-stool table they stretched like
+waving and ropy weeds over the washed gravel-bed of a clear stream.
+
+She would not turn again to the little looking-glass, out of humanity
+to herself, knowing what a deflowered visage would look back at her,
+and almost break her heart; she dreaded it as much as did her own
+ancestral goddess Sif the reflection in the pool after the rape of her
+locks by Loke the malicious. She steadily stuck to business, wrapped
+the hair in a parcel, and sealed it up, after which she raked out the
+fire and went to bed, having first set up an alarum made of a candle
+and piece of thread, with a stone attached.
+
+But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night. Having tossed till about
+five o’clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their long holes in
+the thatch above her sloping ceiling to their orifice at the eaves;
+whereupon she also arose, and descended to the ground-floor again.
+
+It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those
+automatic initiatory acts and touches which represent among housewives
+the installation of another day. While thus engaged she heard the
+rumbling of Mr. Melbury’s wagons, and knew that there, too, the day’s
+toil had begun.
+
+An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to blaze
+up cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden prominence
+as a shadow. At this a step approached the door.
+
+“Are folk astir here yet?” inquired a voice she knew well.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Winterborne,” said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet, which
+completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors. “Come in!”
+
+The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man not
+particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of
+affairs. There was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his mouth.
+He carried a horn lantern which hung upon a swivel, and wheeling as it
+dangled marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of the walls.
+
+He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they
+did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well.
+Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would go their
+journey with a short load that day.
+
+“They are done,” said Marty, “and lying in the cart-house.”
+
+“Done!” he repeated. “Your father has not been too ill to work after
+all, then?”
+
+She made some evasive reply. “I’ll show you where they be, if you are
+going down,” she added.
+
+They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in the
+top of the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where they
+appeared of giant size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had no
+remarks to make to each other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything
+could be more isolated or more self-contained than the lives of these
+two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour, when gray shades,
+material and mental, are so very gray. And yet, looked at in a certain
+way, their lonely courses formed no detached design at all, but were
+part of the pattern in the great web of human doings then weaving in
+both hemispheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn.
+
+The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars. Winterborne
+regarded them silently, then looked at her.
+
+“Now, Marty, I believe—” he said, and shook his head.
+
+“What?”
+
+“That you’ve done the work yourself.”
+
+“Don’t you tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?” she pleaded, by
+way of answer. “Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury may refuse my work if
+he knows it is mine.”
+
+“But how could you learn to do it? ’Tis a trade.”
+
+“Trade!” said she. “I’d be bound to learn it in two hours.”
+
+“Oh no, you wouldn’t, Mrs. Marty.” Winterborne held down his lantern,
+and examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay. “Marty,” he said,
+with dry admiration, “your father with his forty years of practice
+never made a spar better than that. They are too good for the thatching
+of houses—they are good enough for the furniture. But I won’t tell. Let
+me look at your hands—your poor hands!”
+
+He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and when she seemed
+reluctant to show her hands, he took hold of one and examined it as if
+it were his own. Her fingers were blistered.
+
+“They’ll get harder in time,” she said. “For if father continues ill, I
+shall have to go on wi’ it. Now I’ll help put ’em up in wagon.”
+
+Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, lifted her as she
+was about to stoop over the bundles, placed her behind him, and began
+throwing up the bundles himself. “Rather than you should do it I will,”
+he said. “But the men will be here directly. Why, Marty!—whatever has
+happened to your head? Lord, it has shrunk to nothing—it looks an apple
+upon a gate-post!”
+
+Her heart swelled, and she could not speak. At length she managed to
+groan, looking on the ground, “I’ve made myself ugly—and hateful—that’s
+what I’ve done!”
+
+“No, no,” he answered. “You’ve only cut your hair—I see now.”
+
+“Then why must you needs say that about apples and gate-posts?”
+
+“Let me see.”
+
+“No, no!” She ran off into the gloom of the sluggish dawn. He did not
+attempt to follow her. When she reached her father’s door she stood on
+the step and looked back. Mr. Melbury’s men had arrived, and were
+loading up the spars, and their lanterns appeared from the distance at
+which she stood to have wan circles round them, like eyes weary with
+watching. She observed them for a few seconds as they set about
+harnessing the horses, and then went indoors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and
+presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like
+a dead-born child. The villagers everywhere had already bestirred
+themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far less dreary hour
+of absolute darkness. It had been above an hour earlier, before a
+single bird had untucked his head, that twenty lights were struck in as
+many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty pairs of
+eyes stretched to the sky to forecast the weather for the day.
+
+Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that had
+been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that had been
+sucking the blood of the rabbits, discerning that their human neighbors
+were on the move, discreetly withdrew from publicity, and were seen and
+heard no more that day.
+
+The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury’s homestead, of which
+the wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection. It formed three sides of
+an open quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the
+largest and central one being the dwelling itself. The fourth side of
+the quadrangle was the public road.
+
+It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified aspect;
+which, taken with the fact that there were the remains of other such
+buildings thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had at some time or
+other been of greater importance than now, as its old name of Hintock
+St. Osmond also testified. The house was of no marked antiquity, yet of
+well-advanced age; older than a stale novelty, but no canonized
+antique; faded, not hoary; looking at you from the still distinct
+middle-distance of the early Georgian time, and awakening on that
+account the instincts of reminiscence more decidedly than the remoter
+and far grander memorials which have to speak from the misty reaches of
+mediaevalism. The faces, dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of
+the great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to
+gaze from those rectangular windows, and had stood under that
+key-stoned doorway, could be divined and measured by homely standards
+of to-day. It was a house in whose reverberations queer old personal
+tales were yet audible if properly listened for; and not, as with those
+of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility of echo.
+
+The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there was a
+porch and entrance that way. But the principal house-door opened on the
+square yard or quadrangle towards the road, formerly a regular carriage
+entrance, though the middle of the area was now made use of for
+stacking timber, fagots, bundles, and other products of the wood. It
+was divided from the lane by a lichen-coated wall, in which hung a pair
+of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpendicular, with a round white
+ball on the top of each.
+
+The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed erection,
+now used for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and copse-ware
+manufacture in general. Opposite were the wagon-sheds where Marty had
+deposited her spars.
+
+Here Winterborne had remained after the girl’s abrupt departure, to see
+that the wagon-loads were properly made up. Winterborne was connected
+with the Melbury family in various ways. In addition to the sentimental
+relationship which arose from his father having been the first Mrs.
+Melbury’s lover, Winterborne’s aunt had married and emigrated with the
+brother of the timber-merchant many years before—an alliance that was
+sufficient to place Winterborne, though the poorer, on a footing of
+social intimacy with the Melburys. As in most villages so secluded as
+this, intermarriages were of Hapsburgian frequency among the
+inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses in Little Hintock
+unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other.
+
+For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between Melbury
+and the younger man—a partnership based upon an unwritten code, by
+which each acted in the way he thought fair towards the other, on a
+give-and-take principle. Melbury, with his timber and copse-ware
+business, found that the weight of his labor came in winter and spring.
+Winterborne was in the apple and cider trade, and his requirements in
+cartage and other work came in the autumn of each year. Hence horses,
+wagons, and in some degree men, were handed over to him when the apples
+began to fall; he, in return, lending his assistance to Melbury in the
+busiest wood-cutting season, as now.
+
+Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him to
+remain till Mr. Melbury had seen him. Winterborne thereupon crossed
+over to the spar-house where two or three men were already at work, two
+of them being travelling spar-makers from White-hart Lane, who, when
+this kind of work began, made their appearance regularly, and when it
+was over disappeared in silence till the season came again.
+
+Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze of
+gad-cuds made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with that of
+the day as yet. In the hollow shades of the roof could be seen dangling
+etiolated arms of ivy which had crept through the joints of the tiles
+and were groping in vain for some support, their leaves being dwarfed
+and sickly for want of sunlight; others were pushing in with such force
+at the eaves as to lift from their supports the shelves that were fixed
+there.
+
+Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John
+Upjohn, engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by; old
+Timothy Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers, at work
+in Mr. Melbury’s pit outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the cider-house,
+and Robert Creedle, an old man who worked for Winterborne, and stood
+warming his hands; these latter being enticed in by the ruddy blaze,
+though they had no particular business there. None of them call for any
+remark except, perhaps, Creedle. To have completely described him it
+would have been necessary to write a military memoir, for he wore under
+his smock-frock a cast-off soldier’s jacket that had seen hot service,
+its collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a hunting
+memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by chance; also
+chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife had been
+given him by a weather-beaten sailor. But Creedle carried about with
+him on his uneventful rounds these silent testimonies of war, sport,
+and adventure, and thought nothing of their associations or their
+stories.
+
+Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the secondary
+intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on without requiring the
+sovereign attention of the head, the minds of its professors wandered
+considerably from the objects before them; hence the tales, chronicles,
+and ramifications of family history which were recounted here were of a
+very exhaustive kind, and sometimes so interminable as to defy
+description.
+
+Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back again
+outside the door; and the conversation interrupted by his momentary
+presence flowed anew, reaching his ears as an accompaniment to the
+regular dripping of the fog from the plantation boughs around.
+
+The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent one—the
+personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the surrounding woods
+and groves.
+
+“My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it,” said
+Creedle, “that she’d sit down to her dinner with a frock hardly higher
+than her elbows. ‘Oh, you wicked woman!’ he said to himself when he
+first see her, ‘you go to your church, and sit, and kneel, as if your
+knee-jints were greased with very saint’s anointment, and tell off your
+Hear-us-good-Lords like a business man counting money; and yet you can
+eat your victuals such a figure as that!’ Whether she’s a reformed
+character by this time I can’t say; but I don’t care who the man is,
+that’s how she went on when my brother-in-law lived there.”
+
+“Did she do it in her husband’s time?”
+
+“That I don’t know—hardly, I should think, considering his temper. Ah!”
+Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical form by slowly
+resigning his head to obliquity and letting his eyes water. “That man!
+‘Not if the angels of heaven come down, Creedle,’ he said, ‘shall you
+do another day’s work for me!’ Yes—he’d say anything—anything; and
+would as soon take a winged creature’s name in vain as yours or mine!
+Well, now I must get these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God,
+I must see about using ’em.”
+
+An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was Mr. Melbury’s servant,
+and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard between the
+house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now for fuel. She
+had two facial aspects—one, of a soft and flexible kind, she used
+indoors when assisting about the parlor or upstairs; the other, with
+stiff lines and corners, when she was bustling among the men in the
+spar-house or out-of-doors.
+
+“Ah, Grammer Oliver,” said John Upjohn, “it do do my heart good to see
+a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in mind that
+after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your smoke didn’t
+rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and
+that’s late, Grammer Oliver.”
+
+“If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of your
+scornful meanings. But your growing up was such a scrimped and scanty
+business that really a woman couldn’t feel hurt if you were to spit
+fire and brimstone itself at her. Here,” she added, holding out a
+spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a long
+black-pudding—“here’s something for thy breakfast, and if you want tea
+you must fetch it from in-doors.”
+
+“Mr. Melbury is late this morning,” said the bottom-sawyer.
+
+“Yes. ’Twas a dark dawn,” said Mrs. Oliver. “Even when I opened the
+door, so late as I was, you couldn’t have told poor men from gentlemen,
+or John from a reasonable-sized object. And I don’t think maister’s
+slept at all well to-night. He’s anxious about his daughter; and I know
+what that is, for I’ve cried bucketfuls for my own.”
+
+When the old woman had gone Creedle said,
+
+“He’ll fret his gizzard green if he don’t soon hear from that maid of
+his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to keep a maid
+at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in
+’em—’tis tempting Providence.”
+
+“It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl,” said young
+Timothy Tangs.
+
+“I can mind her mother,” said the hollow-turner. “Always a teuny,
+delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind.
+She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just
+about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship—ay, and a long
+apprenticeship ’twas. I served that master of mine six years and three
+hundred and fourteen days.”
+
+The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering
+their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years.
+
+“Mr. Winterborne’s father walked with her at one time,” said old
+Timothy Tangs. “But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman,
+and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her
+husband came to a puddle in their walks together he’d take her up like
+a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if
+he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he’ll make her as
+nesh as her mother was. But here he comes.”
+
+Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court
+from his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came
+straight to Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding night had quite
+gone.
+
+“I’d no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace didn’t
+come or write than I get a letter from her—‘Clifton: Wednesday. My dear
+father,’ says she, ‘I’m coming home to-morrow’ (that’s to-day), ‘but I
+didn’t think it worth while to write long beforehand.’ The little
+rascal, and didn’t she! Now, Giles, as you are going to Sherton market
+to-day with your apple-trees, why not join me and Grace there, and
+we’ll drive home all together?”
+
+He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same man
+as the man of the small dark hours. Ever it happens that even among the
+moodiest the tendency to be cheered is stronger than the tendency to be
+cast down; and a soul’s specific gravity stands permanently less than
+that of the sea of troubles into which it is thrown.
+
+Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion with
+something like alacrity. There was not much doubt that Marty’s grounds
+for cutting off her hair were substantial enough, if Ambrose’s eyes had
+been a reason for keeping it on. As for the timber-merchant, it was
+plain that his invitation had been given solely in pursuance of his
+scheme for uniting the pair. He had made up his mind to the course as a
+duty, and was strenuously bent upon following it out.
+
+Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the
+spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid.
+
+“Well, John, and Lot,” he said, nodding as he entered. “A rimy
+morning.”
+
+“’Tis, sir!” said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as yet been
+able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he felt the
+necessity of throwing some into his speech. “I don’t care who the man
+is, ’tis the rimiest morning we’ve had this fall.”
+
+“I heard you wondering why I’ve kept my daughter so long at
+boarding-school,” resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter which
+he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with the
+suddenness that was a trait in him. “Hey?” he asked, with affected
+shrewdness. “But you did, you know. Well, now, though it is my own
+business more than anybody else’s, I’ll tell ye. When I was a boy,
+another boy—the pa’son’s son—along with a lot of others, asked me ‘Who
+dragged Whom round the walls of What?’ and I said, ‘Sam Barrett, who
+dragged his wife in a chair round the tower corner when she went to be
+churched.’ They laughed at me with such torrents of scorn that I went
+home ashamed, and couldn’t sleep for shame; and I cried that night till
+my pillow was wet: till at last I thought to myself there and
+then—‘They may laugh at me for my ignorance, but that was father’s
+fault, and none o’ my making, and I must bear it. But they shall never
+laugh at my children, if I have any: I’ll starve first!’ Thank God,
+I’ve been able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and her
+scholarship is such that she stayed on as governess for a time. Let ’em
+laugh now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better informed
+than my girl Grace.”
+
+There was something between high indifference and humble emotion in his
+delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. Winterborne’s
+interest was of a kind which did not show itself in words; listening,
+he stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the embers with a spar-gad.
+
+“You’ll be, then, ready, Giles?” Melbury continued, awaking from a
+reverie. “Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday, Mr.
+Bawtree?”
+
+“Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still—you can’t victual your carcass
+there unless you’ve got money; and you can’t buy a cup of genuine
+there, whether or no....But as the saying is, ‘Go abroad and you’ll
+hear news of home.’ It seems that our new neighbor, this young Dr.
+What’s-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman; and there’s
+good reason for supposing he has sold his soul to the wicked one.”
+
+“’Od name it all,” murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed by the
+news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; “I’ve got to
+meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I’ve planned to go to
+Sherton Abbas for the maid.”
+
+“I won’t praise the doctor’s wisdom till I hear what sort of bargain
+he’s made,” said the top-sawyer.
+
+“’Tis only an old woman’s tale,” said Bawtree. “But it seems that he
+wanted certain books on some mysterious science or black-art, and in
+order that the people hereabout should not know anything about his dark
+readings, he ordered ’em direct from London, and not from the Sherton
+book-seller. The parcel was delivered by mistake at the pa’son’s, and
+he wasn’t at home; so his wife opened it, and went into hysterics when
+she read ’em, thinking her husband had turned heathen, and ’twould be
+the ruin of the children. But when he came he said he knew no more
+about ’em than she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier’s property.
+So he wrote ‘Beware!’ outside, and sent ’em on by the sexton.”
+
+“He must be a curious young man,” mused the hollow-turner.
+
+“He must,” said Timothy Tangs.
+
+“Nonsense,” said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, “he’s only a gentleman
+fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every kind of
+knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such
+matters his hobby.”
+
+“Well,” said old Timothy, “’tis a strange thing about doctors that the
+worse they be the better they be. I mean that if you hear anything of
+this sort about ’em, ten to one they can cure ye as nobody else can.”
+
+“True,” said Bawtree, emphatically. “And for my part I shall take my
+custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I’ve anything the
+matter with me. That last medicine old Jones gave me had no taste in it
+at all.”
+
+Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to these
+recitals, being moreover preoccupied with the business appointment
+which had come into his head. He walked up and down, looking on the
+floor—his usual custom when undecided. That stiffness about the arm,
+hip, and knee-joint which was apparent when he walked was the net
+product of the divers sprains and over-exertions that had been required
+of him in handling trees and timber when a young man, for he was of the
+sort called self-made, and had worked hard. He knew the origin of every
+one of these cramps: that in his left shoulder had come of carrying a
+pollard, unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one leg was
+caused by the crash of an elm against it when they were felling; that
+in the other was from lifting a bole. On many a morrow after wearying
+himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had risen from his bed
+fresh as usual; his lassitude had departed, apparently forever; and
+confident in the recuperative power of his youth, he had repeated the
+strains anew. But treacherous Time had been only hiding ill results
+when they could be guarded against, for greater accumulation when they
+could not. In his declining years the store had been unfolded in the
+form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in every one of which Melbury
+recognized some act which, had its consequence been contemporaneously
+made known, he would wisely have abstained from repeating.
+
+On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed. Reaching
+the kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to save
+house-labor, he sat down by the fire, and looked a long time at the
+pair of dancing shadows cast by each fire-iron and dog-knob on the
+whitewashed chimney-corner—a yellow one from the window, and a blue one
+from the fire.
+
+“I don’t quite know what to do to-day,” he said to his wife at last.
+“I’ve recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond’s steward in
+Round Wood at twelve o’clock, and yet I want to go for Grace.”
+
+“Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? ’Twill bring ’em together all
+the quicker.”
+
+“I could do that—but I should like to go myself. I always have gone,
+without fail, every time hitherto. It has been a great pleasure to
+drive into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and perhaps she’ll be
+disappointed if I stay away.”
+
+“You may be disappointed, but I don’t think she will, if you send
+Giles,” said Mrs. Melbury, dryly.
+
+“Very well—I’ll send him.”
+
+Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife’s words when
+strenuous argument would have had no effect. This second Mrs. Melbury
+was a placid woman, who had been nurse to his child Grace before her
+mother’s death. After that melancholy event little Grace had clung to
+the nurse with much affection; and ultimately Melbury, in dread lest
+the only woman who cared for the girl should be induced to leave her,
+persuaded the mild Lucy to marry him. The arrangement—for it was little
+more—had worked satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and Melbury
+had not repented.
+
+He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to whom he
+explained the change of plan. “As she won’t arrive till five o’clock,
+you can get your business very well over in time to receive her,” said
+Melbury. “The green gig will do for her; you’ll spin along quicker with
+that, and won’t be late upon the road. Her boxes can be called for by
+one of the wagons.”
+
+Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant’s restitutory aims,
+quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance. Wishing even more than
+her father to despatch his apple-tree business in the market before
+Grace’s arrival, he prepared to start at once.
+
+Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly. The gig-wheels,
+for instance, were not always washed during winter-time before a
+journey, the muddy roads rendering that labor useless; but they were
+washed to-day. The harness was blacked, and when the rather elderly
+white horse had been put in, and Winterborne was in his seat ready to
+start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a blacking-brush, and with his own
+hands touched over the yellow hoofs of the animal.
+
+“You see, Giles,” he said, as he blacked, “coming from a fashionable
+school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of home; and ’tis
+these little things that catch a dainty woman’s eye if they are
+neglected. We, living here alone, don’t notice how the whitey-brown
+creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh from a city—why, she’ll
+notice everything!”
+
+“That she will,” said Giles.
+
+“And scorn us if we don’t mind.”
+
+“Not scorn us.”
+
+“No, no, no—that’s only words. She’s too good a girl to do that. But
+when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since she last
+saw us, ’tis as well to meet her views as nearly as possible. Why, ’tis
+a year since she was in this old place, owing to her going abroad in
+the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it best for her; and naturally
+we shall look small, just at first—I only say just at first.”
+
+Mr. Melbury’s tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense of
+that inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and refined
+being, was she not his own all the time? Not so Giles; he felt
+doubtful—perhaps a trifle cynical—for that strand was wound into him
+with the rest. He looked at his clothes with misgiving, then with
+indifference.
+
+It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen
+apple-tree to market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt in.
+This had been tied across the gig; and as it would be left behind in
+the town, it would cause no inconvenience to Miss Grace Melbury coming
+home.
+
+He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and
+Melbury went in-doors. Before the gig had passed out of sight, Mr.
+Melbury reappeared and shouted after—
+
+“Here, Giles,” he said, breathlessly following with some wraps, “it may
+be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra about her.
+And, Giles,” he added, when the young man, having taken the articles,
+put the horse in motion once more, “tell her that I should have come
+myself, but I had particular business with Mrs. Charmond’s agent, which
+prevented me. Don’t forget.”
+
+He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk—a shape into
+which emotion with him often resolved itself—“There, now, I hope the
+two will bring it to a point and have done with it! ’Tis a pity to let
+such a girl throw herself away upon him—a thousand pities!...And yet
+’tis my duty for his father’s sake.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and
+without discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as
+lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the
+discernment of a somewhat rare power in him—that of keeping not only
+judgment but emotion suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it not.
+Neither did he observe what was also the fact, that though he cherished
+a true and warm feeling towards Grace Melbury, he was not altogether
+her fool just now. It must be remembered that he had not seen her for a
+year.
+
+Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had taken the spirit
+out of many a pedestrian in times when, with the majority, to travel
+meant to walk, he saw before him the trim figure of a young woman in
+pattens, journeying with that steadfast concentration which means
+purpose and not pleasure. He was soon near enough to see that she was
+Marty South. Click, click, click went the pattens; and she did not turn
+her head.
+
+She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the
+approaching gig was Giles. She had shrunk from being overtaken by him
+thus; but as it was inevitable, she had braced herself up for his
+inspection by closing her lips so as to make her mouth quite
+unemotional, and by throwing an additional firmness into her tread.
+
+“Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough, although
+the lanes are muddy.”
+
+“They save my boots.”
+
+“But twelve miles in pattens—’twill twist your feet off. Come, get up
+and ride with me.”
+
+She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them
+against the wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen
+apple-tree. She had so arranged her bonnet with a full border and
+trimmings that her lack of long hair did not much injure her
+appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was gone, and may have
+guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though infrequent,
+being not unheard of in that locality.
+
+But nature’s adornment was still hard by—in fact, within two feet of
+him, though he did not know it. In Marty’s basket was a brown paper
+packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by reason of the
+barber’s request for secrecy, she had not ventured to intrust to other
+hands.
+
+Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on.
+
+He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two; he
+would be quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on him.
+
+“You know why I don’t ask for him so often as I might, I suppose?” said
+Winterborne. “Or don’t you know?”
+
+“I think I do.”
+
+“Because of the houses?”
+
+She nodded.
+
+“Yes. I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about those houses,
+which I should lose by his death, more than about him. Marty, I do feel
+anxious about the houses, since half my income depends upon them; but I
+do likewise care for him; and it almost seems wrong that houses should
+be leased for lives, so as to lead to such mixed feelings.”
+
+“After father’s death they will be Mrs. Charmond’s?”
+
+“They’ll be hers.”
+
+“They are going to keep company with my hair,” she thought.
+
+Thus talking, they reached the town. By no pressure would she ride up
+the street with him. “That’s the right of another woman,” she said,
+with playful malice, as she put on her pattens. “I wonder what you are
+thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that handsome gig. Good-by.”
+
+He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on ahead into the
+streets—the churches, the abbey, and other buildings on this clear
+bright morning having the liny distinctness of architectural drawings,
+as if the original dream and vision of the conceiving master-mason,
+some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to fame, were for a few minutes
+flashed down through the centuries to an unappreciative age. Giles saw
+their eloquent look on this day of transparency, but could not construe
+it. He turned into the inn-yard.
+
+Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the
+hair-dresser’s, Mr. Percombe’s. Percombe was the chief of his trade in
+Sherton Abbas. He had the patronage of such county offshoots as had
+been obliged to seek the shelter of small houses in that ancient town,
+of the local clergy, and so on, for some of whom he had made wigs,
+while others among them had compensated for neglecting him in their
+lifetime by patronizing him when they were dead, and letting him shave
+their corpses. On the strength of all this he had taken down his pole,
+and called himself “Perruquier to the aristocracy.”
+
+Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his children’s
+mouths, and they had to be filled. So, behind his house there was a
+little yard, reached by a passage from the back street, and in that
+yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of quite another description
+than the ornamental one in the front street. Here on Saturday nights
+from seven till ten he took an almost innumerable succession of
+twopences from the farm laborers who flocked thither in crowds from the
+country. And thus he lived.
+
+Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed her packet to him
+silently. “Thank you,” said the barber, quite joyfully. “I hardly
+expected it after what you said last night.”
+
+She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in each eye at this
+reminder.
+
+“Nothing of what I told you,” he whispered, there being others in the
+shop. “But I can trust you, I see.”
+
+She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went
+listlessly along the street to attend to other errands. These occupied
+her till four o’clock, at which time she recrossed the market-place. It
+was impossible to avoid rediscovering Winterborne every time she passed
+that way, for standing, as he always did at this season of the year,
+with his specimen apple-tree in the midst, the boughs rose above the
+heads of the crowd, and brought a delightful suggestion of orchards
+among the crowded buildings there. When her eye fell upon him for the
+last time he was standing somewhat apart, holding the tree like an
+ensign, and looking on the ground instead of pushing his produce as he
+ought to have been doing. He was, in fact, not a very successful seller
+either of his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking his mind,
+when he spoke at all, militating against this branch of his business.
+
+While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction away
+from Marty, his face simultaneously kindling with recognition and
+surprise. She followed his gaze, and saw walking across to him a
+flexible young creature in whom she perceived the features of her she
+had known as Miss Grace Melbury, but now looking glorified and refined
+above her former level. Winterborne, being fixed to the spot by his
+apple-tree, could not advance to meet her; he held out his spare hand
+with his hat in it, and with some embarrassment beheld her coming on
+tiptoe through the mud to the middle of the square where he stood.
+
+Miss Melbury’s arrival so early was, as Marty could see, unexpected by
+Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to receive her. Indeed,
+her father had named five o’clock as her probable time, for which
+reason that hour had been looming out all the day in his forward
+perspective, like an important edifice on a plain. Now here she was
+come, he knew not how, and his arranged welcome stultified.
+
+His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the road, and
+more still at the little look of embarrassment which appeared on hers
+at having to perform the meeting with him under an apple-tree ten feet
+high in the middle of the market-place. Having had occasion to take off
+the new gloves she had bought to come home in, she held out to him a
+hand graduating from pink at the tips of the fingers to white at the
+palm; and the reception formed a scene, with the tree over their heads,
+which was not by any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets.
+
+Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a restrained
+type, which perhaps was not unnatural. For true it was that Giles
+Winterborne, well-attired and well-mannered as he was for a yeoman,
+looked rough beside her. It had sometimes dimly occurred to him, in his
+ruminating silence at Little Hintock, that external phenomena—such as
+the lowness or height or color of a hat, the fold of a coat, the make
+of a boot, or the chance attitude or occupation of a limb at the
+instant of view—may have a great influence upon feminine opinion of a
+man’s worth—so frequently founded on non-essentials; but a certain
+causticity of mental tone towards himself and the world in general had
+prevented to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on the strength of
+that reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first sight
+of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness.
+
+He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find one who
+would accept the cumbersome gift, and the twain moved on towards the
+inn at which he had put up. Marty made as if to step forward for the
+pleasure of being recognized by Miss Melbury; but abruptly checking
+herself, she glided behind a carrier’s van, saying, dryly, “No; I baint
+wanted there,” and critically regarded Winterborne’s companion.
+
+It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with
+precision, either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point of
+view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a universe—how
+impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there never probably
+lived a person who was in herself more completely a _reductio ad
+absurdum_ of attempts to appraise a woman, even externally, by items of
+face and figure. Speaking generally, it may be said that she was
+sometimes beautiful, at other times not beautiful, according to the
+state of her health and spirits.
+
+In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear complexion,
+rather pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in movement. Her look
+expressed a tendency to wait for others’ thoughts before uttering her
+own; possibly also to wait for others’ deeds before her own doing. In
+her small, delicate mouth, which had perhaps hardly settled down to its
+matured curves, there was a gentleness that might hinder sufficient
+self-assertion for her own good. She had well-formed eyebrows which,
+had her portrait been painted, would probably have been done in Prout’s
+or Vandyke brown.
+
+There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a natural
+fitness and a style that was recent for the streets of Sherton. But,
+indeed, had it been the reverse, and quite striking, it would have
+meant just as little. For there can be hardly anything less connected
+with a woman’s personality than drapery which she has neither designed,
+manufactured, cut, sewed, or even seen, except by a glance of approval
+when told that such and such a shape and color must be had because it
+has been decided by others as imperative at that particular time.
+
+What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very little;
+in truth, mainly something that was not she. The woman herself was a
+shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do with the outlines
+presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom, whose true description
+could only be approximated by putting together a movement now and a
+glance then, in that patient and long-continued attentiveness which
+nothing but watchful loving-kindness ever troubles to give.
+
+There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, and Marty
+South took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view of escaping
+them on the way, lest they should feel compelled to spoil their
+_tête-à-tête_ by asking her to ride. She walked fast, and one-third of
+the journey was done, and the evening rapidly darkening, before she
+perceived any sign of them behind her. Then, while ascending a hill,
+she dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the lowest part of the
+incline, their heads slightly bent towards each other; drawn together,
+no doubt, by their souls, as the heads of a pair of horses well in hand
+are drawn in by the rein. She walked still faster.
+
+But between these and herself there was a carriage, apparently a
+brougham, coming in the same direction, with lighted lamps. When it
+overtook her—which was not soon, on account of her pace—the scene was
+much darker, and the lights glared in her eyes sufficiently to hide the
+details of the equipage.
+
+It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind this carriage and
+so keep along with it, to save herself the mortification of being
+overtaken and picked up for pity’s sake by the coming pair.
+Accordingly, as the carriage drew abreast of her in climbing the long
+ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the rays of the nearest lamp
+penetrating her very pores. She had only just dropped behind when the
+carriage stopped, and to her surprise the coachman asked her, over his
+shoulder, if she would ride. What made the question more surprising was
+that it came in obedience to an order from the interior of the vehicle.
+
+Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, after working all
+night and keeping afoot all day. She mounted beside the coachman,
+wondering why this good-fortune had happened to her. He was rather a
+great man in aspect, and she did not like to inquire of him for some
+time.
+
+At last she said, “Who has been so kind as to ask me to ride?”
+
+“Mrs. Charmond,” replied her statuesque companion.
+
+Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with her last
+night’s experiences. “Is this her carriage?” she whispered.
+
+“Yes; she’s inside.”
+
+Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have recognized
+her plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp; recognized,
+probably, her stubbly poll (since she had kept away her face), and
+thought that those stubbles were the result of her own desire.
+
+Marty South was not so very far wrong. Inside the carriage a pair of
+bright eyes looked from a ripely handsome face, and though behind those
+bright eyes was a mind of unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there beat
+a heart capable of quick extempore warmth—a heart which could, indeed,
+be passionately and imprudently warm on certain occasions. At present,
+after recognizing the girl, she had acted on a mere impulse, possibly
+feeling gratified at the denuded appearance which signified the success
+of her agent in obtaining what she had required.
+
+“’Tis wonderful that she should ask ye,” observed the magisterial
+coachman, presently. “I have never known her do it before, for as a
+rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all.”
+
+Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to see if she
+could get a glimpse of the Olympian creature who as the coachman had
+truly observed, hardly ever descended from her clouds into the Tempe of
+the parishioners. But she could discern nothing of the lady. She also
+looked for Miss Melbury and Winterborne. The nose of their horse
+sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs. Charmond’s carriage. But
+they never attempted to pass it till the latter conveyance turned
+towards the park gate, when they sped by. Here the carriage drew up
+that the gate might be opened, and in the momentary silence Marty heard
+a gentle oral sound, soft as a breeze.
+
+“What’s that?” she whispered.
+
+“Mis’ess yawning.”
+
+“Why should she yawn?”
+
+“Oh, because she’s been used to such wonderfully good life, and finds
+it dull here. She’ll soon be off again on account of it.”
+
+“So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!” the girl murmured. “Then
+things don’t fay with she any more than with we!”
+
+Marty now alighted; the lamp again shone upon her, and as the carriage
+rolled on, a soft voice said to her from the interior, “Good-night.”
+
+“Good-night, ma’am,” said Marty. But she had not been able to see the
+woman who began so greatly to interest her—the second person of her own
+sex who had operated strongly on her mind that day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their
+little experiences of the same homeward journey.
+
+As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people fell
+upon them, the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a pleasant
+place, and wondering in what relation he stood towards her. Winterborne
+himself was unconscious of this. Occupied solely with the idea of
+having her in charge, he did not notice much with outward eye, neither
+observing how she was dressed, nor the effect of the picture they
+together composed in the landscape.
+
+Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace being
+somewhat disconcerted, through not having understood till they were
+about to start that Giles was to be her sole conductor in place of her
+father. When they were in the open country he spoke.
+
+“Don’t Brownley’s farm-buildings look strange to you, now they have
+been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to the top
+of the hill?”
+
+She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any
+difference in them if he had not pointed it out.
+
+“They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn’t grind them all”
+(nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had been left
+lying ever since the ingathering).
+
+She said “Yes,” but looking at another orchard.
+
+“Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know bitter-sweets—you
+used to well enough!”
+
+“I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to
+distinguish.”
+
+Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowledge and
+interest which had formerly moved Grace’s mind had quite died away from
+her. He wondered whether the special attributes of his image in the
+past had evaporated like these other things.
+
+However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that where
+he was seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was beholding a far
+remoter scene—a scene no less innocent and simple, indeed, but much
+contrasting—a broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a fast city, the
+evergreen leaves shining in the evening sun, amid which bounding girls,
+gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black,
+and white, were playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the
+pride of life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from
+the open windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls—and this was a
+fact which Grace Melbury’s delicate femininity could not lose sight
+of—whose parents Giles would have addressed with a deferential Sir or
+Madam. Beside this visioned scene the homely farmsteads did not quite
+hold their own from her present twenty-year point of survey. For all
+his woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive simplicity of the
+subject he had started, and now sounded a deeper note.
+
+“’Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often think of
+it. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other when you were
+twenty and I twenty-five, we’d—”
+
+“It was child’s tattle.”
+
+“H’m!” said Giles, suddenly.
+
+“I mean we were young,” said she, more considerately. That gruff manner
+of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was unaltered in much.
+
+“Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father _sent_ me to meet
+you to-day.”
+
+“I know it, and I am glad of it.”
+
+He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: “At that time you were
+sitting beside me at the back of your father’s covered car, when we
+were coming home from gypsying, all the party being squeezed in
+together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen. It got darker and darker,
+and I said—I forget the exact words—but I put my arm round your waist
+and there you let it stay till your father, sitting in front suddenly
+stopped telling his story to Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The
+flash shone into the car, and showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew
+from your waist like lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of ’em
+had seen, and laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amazement, instead
+of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased. Have you
+forgot all that, or haven’t you?”
+
+She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned the
+circumstances. “But, goodness! I must have been in short frocks,” she
+said.
+
+“Come now, Miss Melbury, that won’t do! Short frocks, indeed! You know
+better, as well as I.”
+
+Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old friend
+she valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words with the easy
+elusiveness that will be polite at all costs. It might possibly be
+true, she added, that she was getting on in girlhood when that event
+took place; but if it were so, then she was virtually no less than an
+old woman now, so far did the time seem removed from her present. “Do
+you ever look at things philosophically instead of personally?” she
+asked.
+
+“I can’t say that I do,” answered Giles, his eyes lingering far ahead
+upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham.
+
+“I think you may, sometimes, with advantage,” said she. “Look at
+yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, and
+consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks in
+general, and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I tell you all
+about Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visited
+last summer?”
+
+“With all my heart.”
+
+She then described places and persons in such terms as might have been
+used for that purpose by any woman to any man within the four seas, so
+entirely absent from that description was everything specially
+appertaining to her own existence. When she had done she said, gayly,
+“Now do you tell me in return what has happened in Hintock since I have
+been away.”
+
+“Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me,” said Giles
+within him.
+
+It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss
+Melbury’s mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that
+she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing—that is to
+say, herself.
+
+He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when they
+drew near the carriage that had been preceding them for some time. Miss
+Melbury inquired if he knew whose carriage it was.
+
+Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into account. On
+examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond’s.
+
+Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel more
+nearly akin to it than to the one she was in.
+
+“Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to that,”
+said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation at what it
+bespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which had brought the
+nose of Mr. Melbury’s old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond’s
+much-eclipsing vehicle.
+
+“There’s Marty South sitting up with the coachman,” said he, discerning
+her by her dress.
+
+“Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very evening.
+How does she happen to be riding there?”
+
+“I don’t know. It is very singular.”
+
+Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road
+together, till Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, turned
+into Little Hintock, where almost the first house was the
+timber-merchant’s. Pencils of dancing light streamed out of the windows
+sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and glance over the
+polished leaves of laurel. The interior of the rooms could be seen
+distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, which in the parlor were
+reflected from the glass of the pictures and bookcase, and in the
+kitchen from the utensils and ware.
+
+“Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them,” she
+said.
+
+In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at one
+o’clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for Grace. A
+rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog,
+and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys along
+the ceiling to a large stone suspended in a corner of the room. Old
+Grammer Oliver came and wound it up with a rattle like that of a mill.
+
+In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury’s head fell on the wall and
+ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their
+presence was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to
+welcome her.
+
+The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some
+shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in
+rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to
+most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of
+towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all
+round, Grace’s reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But
+that more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that her
+father, in taking her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Giles
+without, as did also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the gig
+round to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who
+particularly attended to these matters when there was no conversation
+to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then
+returned to the door with the intention of entering the house.
+
+The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in
+themselves. The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated
+Grace’s face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and
+fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose
+hair about her temples as sunlight through a brake. Her father was
+surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed and
+progressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her.
+
+Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door,
+mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved
+in the jambs—initials of by-gone generations of householders who had
+lived and died there.
+
+No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family;
+they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had
+brought her home. Still, he was a little surprised that her father’s
+eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such an
+anticlimax as this.
+
+He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back
+when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of
+the timber-merchant’s roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was
+saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision,
+“nothing about me!” He looked also in the other direction, and saw
+against the sky the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty’s
+cottage, and thought of her too, struggling bravely along under that
+humble shelter, among her spar-gads and pots and skimmers.
+
+At the timber-merchant’s, in the mean time, the conversation flowed;
+and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on subjects in
+which he had no share. Among the excluding matters there was, for one,
+the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of his
+daughter, which took him so much unawares that, though it did not make
+him absolutely forget the existence of her conductor homeward, thrust
+Giles’s image back into quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain.
+Another was his interview with Mrs. Charmond’s agent that morning, at
+which the lady herself had been present for a few minutes. Melbury had
+purchased some standing timber from her a long time before, and now
+that the date had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost his
+own course. This was what the household were actually talking of during
+Giles’s cogitation without; and Melbury’s satisfaction with the clear
+atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity of the groves
+which enclosed his residence was the cause of a counterbalancing
+mistiness on the side towards Winterborne.
+
+“So thoroughly does she trust me,” said Melbury, “that I might fell,
+top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o’ timber whatever in her
+wood, and fix the price o’t, and settle the matter. But, name it all! I
+wouldn’t do such a thing. However, it may be useful to have this good
+understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in the place,
+and stayed here all the year round.”
+
+“I am afraid ’tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of Hintock,
+that makes her so easy about the trees,” said Mrs. Melbury.
+
+When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble
+pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she had
+latterly become wellnigh an alien. Each nook and each object revived a
+memory, and simultaneously modified it. The chambers seemed lower than
+they had appeared on any previous occasion of her return, the surfaces
+of both walls and ceilings standing in such relations to the eye that
+it could not avoid taking microscopic note of their irregularities and
+old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than
+when she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of little
+things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they
+had tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence.
+Over the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she
+had used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still the
+brown spot of smoke. She did not know that her father had taken
+especial care to keep it from being cleaned off.
+
+Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodious
+edifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since the
+morning; and when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife,
+to see that her room was comfortable and the fire burning, she prepared
+to retire for the night. No sooner, however, was she in bed than her
+momentary sleepiness took itself off, and she wished she had stayed up
+longer. She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noises that
+she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking towards
+the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she used to have
+it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops against
+the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this meeting-line of light and
+shade nothing was visible save one solitary point of light, which
+blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro before its beams. From its
+position it seemed to radiate from the window of a house on the
+hill-side. The house had been empty when she was last at home, and she
+wondered who inhabited the place now.
+
+Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she was
+watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at
+length shone blue as sapphire. Thus it remained several minutes, and
+then it passed through violet to red.
+
+Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up
+in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort,
+sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in
+Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and
+nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct
+result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season’s
+changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal
+sequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge.
+
+It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparing
+to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her
+father bolting the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and her father and
+mother passed her chamber. The last to come was Grammer Oliver.
+
+Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch,
+said, “I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me.”
+
+Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the bedclothes.
+Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself on the edge of
+Miss Melbury’s coverlet.
+
+“I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side,” said
+Grace.
+
+Mrs. Oliver looked across. “Oh, that,” she said, “is from the doctor’s.
+He’s often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you don’t know that we’ve
+a doctor living here now—Mr. Fitzpiers by name?”
+
+Grace admitted that she had not heard of him.
+
+“Well, then, miss, he’s come here to get up a practice. I know him very
+well, through going there to help ’em scrub sometimes, which your
+father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare time. Being a
+bachelor-man, he’ve only a lad in the house. Oh yes, I know him very
+well. Sometimes he’ll talk to me as if I were his own mother.”
+
+“Indeed.”
+
+“Yes. ‘Grammer,’ he said one day, when I asked him why he came here
+where there’s hardly anybody living, ‘I’ll tell you why I came here. I
+took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones’s practice ends to the
+north of this district, and where Mr. Taylor’s ends on the south, and
+little Jimmy Green’s on the east, and somebody else’s to the west. Then
+I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact middle of the country
+that was left between these bounds, and that middle was Little Hintock;
+so here I am....’ But, Lord, there: poor young man!”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“He said, ‘Grammer Oliver, I’ve been here three months, and although
+there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the villages round,
+and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don’t seem to get
+many patients. And there’s no society at all; and I’m pretty near
+melancholy mad,’ he said, with a great yawn. ‘I should be quite if it
+were not for my books, and my lab—laboratory, and what not. Grammer, I
+was made for higher things.’ And then he’d yawn and yawn again.”
+
+“Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he
+clever?”
+
+“Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a broken man
+or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an ache if you tell
+him nearly where ’tis; but these young men—they should live to my time
+of life, and then they’d see how clever they were at five-and-twenty!
+And yet he’s a projick, a real projick, and says the oddest of rozums.
+‘Ah, Grammer,’ he said, at another time, ‘let me tell you that
+Everything is Nothing. There’s only Me and not Me in the whole world.’
+And he told me that no man’s hands could help what they did, any more
+than the hands of a clock....Yes, he’s a man of strange meditations,
+and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star.”
+
+“He will soon go away, no doubt.”
+
+“I don’t think so.” Grace did not say “Why?” and Grammer hesitated. At
+last she went on: “Don’t tell your father or mother, miss, if I let you
+know a secret.”
+
+Grace gave the required promise.
+
+“Well, he talks of buying me; so he won’t go away just yet.”
+
+“Buying you!—how?”
+
+“Not my soul—my body, when I’m dead. One day when I was there cleaning,
+he said, ‘Grammer, you’ve a large brain—a very large organ of brain,’
+he said. ‘A woman’s is usually four ounces less than a man’s; but yours
+is man’s size.’ Well, then—hee, hee!—after he’d flattered me a bit like
+that, he said he’d give me ten pounds to have me as a natomy after my
+death. Well, knowing I’d no chick nor chiel left, and nobody with any
+interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can be of any use to my
+fellow-creatures after I’m gone they are welcome to my services; so I
+said I’d think it over, and would most likely agree and take the ten
+pounds. Now this is a secret, miss, between us two. The money would be
+very useful to me; and I see no harm in it.”
+
+“Of course there’s no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to do
+it? I wish you hadn’t told me.”
+
+“I wish I hadn’t—if you don’t like to know it, miss. But you needn’t
+mind. Lord—hee, hee!—I shall keep him waiting many a year yet, bless
+ye!”
+
+“I hope you will, I am sure.”
+
+The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversation
+languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melbury
+good-night. The latter’s eyes rested on the distant glimmer, around
+which she allowed her reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that
+shaped the doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines of
+intelligence just received. It was strange to her to come back from the
+world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like a tropical
+plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices which
+had nothing in common with the life around. Chemical experiments,
+anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had found a strange
+home here.
+
+Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man behind the
+light intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, till
+her eyes fell together with their own heaviness, and she slept.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer Oliver’s
+skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought Grace Melbury to
+the morning of the next day. It was fine. A north wind was blowing—that
+not unacceptable compromise between the atmospheric cutlery of the
+eastern blast and the spongy gales of the west quarter. She looked from
+her window in the direction of the light of the previous evening, and
+could just discern through the trees the shape of the surgeon’s house.
+Somehow, in the broad, practical daylight, that unknown and lonely
+gentleman seemed to be shorn of much of the interest which had invested
+his personality and pursuits in the hours of darkness, and as Grace’s
+dressing proceeded he faded from her mind.
+
+Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father’s favor, was
+rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury’s behavior. Despite his dry
+self-control, he could not help looking continually from his own door
+towards the timber-merchant’s, in the probability of somebody’s
+emergence therefrom. His attention was at length justified by the
+appearance of two figures, that of Mr. Melbury himself, and Grace
+beside him. They stepped out in a direction towards the densest quarter
+of the wood, and Winterborne walked contemplatively behind them, till
+all three were soon under the trees.
+
+Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there were sheltered
+hollows amid the Hintock plantations and copses in which a more tardy
+leave-taking than on windy summits was the rule with the foliage. This
+caused here and there an apparent mixture of the seasons; so that in
+some of the dells that they passed by holly-berries in full red were
+found growing beside oak and hazel whose leaves were as yet not far
+removed from green, and brambles whose verdure was rich and deep as in
+the month of August. To Grace these well-known peculiarities were as an
+old painting restored.
+
+Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to the curious which
+the features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter months.
+Angles were taking the place of curves, and reticulations of surfaces—a
+change constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate to the primitive on
+Nature’s canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step from the art of
+an advanced school of painting to that of the Pacific Islander.
+
+Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as they
+threaded their way through these sylvan phenomena. Mr. Melbury’s long
+legs, and gaiters drawn in to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop,
+his habit of getting lost in thought and arousing himself with an
+exclamation of “Hah!” accompanied with an upward jerk of the head,
+composed a personage recognizable by his neighbors as far as he could
+be seen. It seemed as if the squirrels and birds knew him. One of the
+former would occasionally run from the path to hide behind the arm of
+some tree, which the little animal carefully edged round _pari passu_
+with Melbury and his daughters movement onward, assuming a mock manner,
+as though he were saying, “Ho, ho; you are only a timber-merchant, and
+carry no gun!”
+
+They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through
+interspersed tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots,
+whose mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green gloves; elbowed
+old elms and ashes with great forks, in which stood pools of water that
+overflowed on rainy days, and ran down their stems in green cascades.
+On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs.
+Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what
+it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a
+city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was
+interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly
+strangled to death the promising sapling.
+
+They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the younger boughs
+still retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in the breeze with a
+sound almost metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled
+Jarnvid wood. Some flecks of white in Grace’s drapery had enabled Giles
+to keep her and her father in view till this time; but now he lost
+sight of them, and was obliged to follow by ear—no difficult matter,
+for on the line of their course every wood-pigeon rose from its perch
+with a continued clash, dashing its wings against the branches with
+wellnigh force enough to break every quill. By taking the track of this
+noise he soon came to a stile.
+
+Was it worth while to go farther? He examined the doughy soil at the
+foot of the stile, and saw among the large sole-and-heel tracks an
+impression of a slighter kind from a boot that was obviously not local,
+for Winterborne knew all the cobblers’ patterns in that district,
+because they were very few to know. The mud-picture was enough to make
+him swing himself over and proceed.
+
+The character of the woodland now changed. The bases of the smaller
+trees were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers points heaps of
+fresh-made chips, and the newly-cut stool of a tree, stared white
+through the undergrowth. There had been a large fall of timber this
+year, which explained the meaning of some sounds that soon reached him.
+
+A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human bark, which
+reminded Giles that there was a sale of trees and fagots that very day.
+Melbury would naturally be present. Thereupon Winterborne remembered
+that he himself wanted a few fagots, and entered upon the scene.
+
+A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or followed him
+when, between his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of plantation
+produce to another, like some philosopher of the Peripatetic school
+delivering his lectures in the shady groves of the Lyceum. His
+companions were timber-dealers, yeomen, farmers, villagers, and others;
+mostly woodland men, who on that account could afford to be curious in
+their walking-sticks, which consequently exhibited various
+monstrosities of vegetation, the chief being cork-screw shapes in black
+and white thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow torture of an
+encircling woodbine during their growth, as the Chinese have been said
+to mould human beings into grotesque toys by continued compression in
+infancy. Two women, wearing men’s jackets on their gowns, conducted in
+the rear of the halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped
+barrel of beer, from which they drew and replenished horns that were
+handed round, with bread-and-cheese from a basket.
+
+The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his
+walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any convenient
+object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a little boy’s head,
+or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no business there except to
+taste the brew; a proceeding which would have been deemed humorous but
+for the air of stern rigidity which that auctioneer’s face preserved,
+tending to show that the eccentricity was a result of that absence of
+mind which is engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy
+at all.
+
+Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the Peripatetics, and
+Grace beside him, clinging closely to his arm, her modern attire
+looking almost odd where everything else was old-fashioned, and
+throwing over the familiar garniture of the trees a homeliness that
+seemed to demand improvement by the addition of a few contemporary
+novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the selling with the interest
+which attaches to memories revived after an interval of obliviousness.
+
+Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant spoke,
+and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify his presence
+there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots that he did not
+want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted mood, in which the
+auctioneer’s voice seemed to become one of the natural sounds of the
+woodland. A few flakes of snow descended, at the sight of which a
+robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent winter, and seeing that no
+offence was meant by the human invasion, came and perched on the tip of
+the fagots that were being sold, and looked into the auctioneer’s face,
+while waiting for some chance crumb from the bread-basket. Standing a
+little behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail
+downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would choose
+her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which took up so much
+of his attention that his biddings proceeded incoherently; and when the
+auctioneer said, every now and then, with a nod towards him, “Yours,
+Mr. Winterborne,” he had no idea whether he had bought fagots, poles,
+or logwood.
+
+He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her father should
+show such inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace tightly on his
+arm to-day, when he had quite lately seemed anxious to recognize their
+betrothal as a fact. And thus musing, and joining in no conversation
+with other buyers except when directly addressed, he followed the
+assemblage hither and thither till the end of the auction, when Giles
+for the first time realized what his purchases had been. Hundreds of
+fagots, and divers lots of timber, had been set down to him, when all
+he had required had been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert
+Creedle’s use in baking and lighting fires.
+
+Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber merchant. But
+Melbury’s manner was short and distant; and Grace, too, looked vexed
+and reproachful. Winterborne then discovered that he had been
+unwittingly bidding against her father, and picking up his favorite
+lots in spite of him. With a very few words they left the spot and
+pursued their way homeward.
+
+Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and remained standing
+under the trees, all the other men having strayed silently away. He saw
+Melbury and his daughter pass down a glade without looking back. While
+they moved slowly through it a lady appeared on horseback in the middle
+distance, the line of her progress converging upon that of Melbury’s.
+They met, Melbury took off his hat, and she reined in her horse. A
+conversation was evidently in progress between Grace and her father and
+this equestrian, in whom he was almost sure that he recognized Mrs.
+Charmond, less by her outline than by the livery of the groom who had
+halted some yards off.
+
+The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause, during
+which much seemed to be said. When Melbury and Grace resumed their walk
+it was with something of a lighter tread than before.
+
+Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward. He was unwilling to
+let coldness grow up between himself and the Melburys for any trivial
+reason, and in the evening he went to their house. On drawing near the
+gate his attention was attracted by the sight of one of the bedrooms
+blinking into a state of illumination. In it stood Grace lighting
+several candles, her right hand elevating the taper, her left hand on
+her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed on each wick as it kindled, as
+if she saw in every flame’s growth the rise of a life to maturity. He
+wondered what such unusual brilliancy could mean to-night. On getting
+in-doors he found her father and step-mother in a state of suppressed
+excitement, which at first he could not comprehend.
+
+“I am sorry about my biddings to-day,” said Giles. “I don’t know what I
+was doing. I have come to say that any of the lots you may require are
+yours.”
+
+“Oh, never mind—never mind,” replied the timber-merchant, with a slight
+wave of his hand, “I have so much else to think of that I nearly had
+forgot it. Just now, too, there are matters of a different kind from
+trade to attend to, so don’t let it concern ye.”
+
+As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, down to him from a higher
+moral plane than his own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury.
+
+“Grace is going to the House to-morrow,” she said, quietly. “She is
+looking out her things now. I dare say she is wanting me this minute to
+assist her.” Thereupon Mrs. Melbury left the room.
+
+Nothing is more remarkable than the independent personality of the
+tongue now and then. Mr. Melbury knew that his words had been a sort of
+boast. He decried boasting, particularly to Giles; yet whenever the
+subject was Grace, his judgment resigned the ministry of speech in
+spite of him.
+
+Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little apprehension at
+the news. He repeated Mrs. Melbury’s words.
+
+“Yes,” said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged out of him what
+he could not in any circumstances have kept in. “Coming home from the
+woods this afternoon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. She spoke to
+me on a little matter of business, and then got acquainted with Grace.
+’Twas wonderful how she took to Grace in a few minutes; that
+freemasonry of education made ’em close at once. Naturally enough she
+was amazed that such an article—ha, ha!—could come out of my house. At
+last it led on to Mis’ess Grace being asked to the House. So she’s busy
+hunting up her frills and furbelows to go in.” As Giles remained in
+thought without responding, Melbury continued: “But I’ll call her
+down-stairs.”
+
+“No, no; don’t do that, since she’s busy,” said Winterborne.
+
+Melbury, feeling from the young man’s manner that his own talk had been
+too much at Giles and too little to him, repented at once. His face
+changed, and he said, in lower tones, with an effort, “She’s yours,
+Giles, as far as I am concerned.”
+
+“Thanks—my best thanks....But I think, since it is all right between us
+about the biddings, that I’ll not interrupt her now. I’ll step
+homeward, and call another time.”
+
+On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again. Grace,
+surrounded by a sufficient number of candles to answer all purposes of
+self-criticism, was standing before a cheval-glass that her father had
+lately bought expressly for her use; she was bonneted, cloaked, and
+gloved, and glanced over her shoulder into the mirror, estimating her
+aspect. Her face was lit with the natural elation of a young girl
+hoping to inaugurate on the morrow an intimate acquaintance with a new,
+interesting, and powerful friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge in a
+six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire, carried her
+over the ground the next morning with a springy tread. Her sense of
+being properly appreciated on her own native soil seemed to brighten
+the atmosphere and herbage around her, as the glowworm’s lamp
+irradiates the grass. Thus she moved along, a vessel of emotion going
+to empty itself on she knew not what.
+
+Twenty minutes’ walking through copses, over a stile, and along an
+upland lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom of
+which Hintock House appeared immediately beneath her eye. To describe
+it as standing in a hollow would not express the situation of the
+manor-house; it stood in a hole, notwithstanding that the hole was full
+of beauty. From the spot which Grace had reached a stone could easily
+have been thrown over or into, the birds’-nested chimneys of the
+mansion. Its walls were surmounted by a battlemented parapet; but the
+gray lead roofs were quite visible behind it, with their gutters, laps,
+rolls, and skylights, together with incised letterings and
+shoe-patterns cut by idlers thereon.
+
+The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation of
+Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich snuff-colored
+freestone from local quarries. The ashlar of the walls, where not
+overgrown with ivy and other creepers, was coated with lichen of every
+shade, intensifying its luxuriance with its nearness to the ground,
+till, below the plinth, it merged in moss.
+
+Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of whose
+trees were above the level of the chimneys. The corresponding high
+ground on which Grace stood was richly grassed, with only an old tree
+here and there. A few sheep lay about, which, as they ruminated, looked
+quietly into the bedroom windows. The situation of the house,
+prejudicial to humanity, was a stimulus to vegetation, on which account
+an endless shearing of the heavy-armed ivy was necessary, and a
+continual lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built in times
+when human constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the
+boisterous was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place,
+the insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an
+ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the fragility to
+which these have declined. The highest architectural cunning could have
+done nothing to make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and ruthless
+ignorance could have done little to make it unpicturesque. It was
+vegetable nature’s own home; a spot to inspire the painter and poet of
+still life—if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing
+atmosphere—and to draw groans from the gregariously disposed. Grace
+descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path into the drive, which
+swept round beneath the slope. The exterior of the house had been
+familiar to her from her childhood, but she had never been inside, and
+the approach to knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively
+experience. It was with a little flutter that she was shown in; but she
+recollected that Mrs. Charmond would probably be alone. Up to a few
+days before this time that lady had been accompanied in her comings,
+stayings, and goings by a relative believed to be her aunt; latterly,
+however, these two ladies had separated, owing, it was supposed, to a
+quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. Being presumably a
+woman who did not care for solitude, this deprivation might possibly
+account for her sudden interest in Grace.
+
+Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall when
+Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass doors between
+them. She came forward with a smile on her face, and told the young
+girl it was good of her to come.
+
+“Ah! you have noticed those,” she said, seeing that Grace’s eyes were
+attracted by some curious objects against the walls. “They are
+man-traps. My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns
+and such articles, collecting them from all his neighbors. He knew the
+histories of all these—which gin had broken a man’s leg, which gun had
+killed a man. That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a
+game-keeper in the track of a notorious poacher; but the keeper,
+forgetting what he had done, went that way himself, received the charge
+in the lower part of his body, and died of the wound. I don’t like them
+here, but I’ve never yet given directions for them to be taken away.”
+She added, playfully, “Man-traps are of rather ominous significance
+where a person of our sex lives, are they not?”
+
+Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one which
+her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating.
+
+“They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time happily
+past,” she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of these
+instruments of torture—some with semi-circular jaws, some with
+rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth, but a few with none,
+so that their jaws looked like the blank gums of old age.
+
+“Well, we must not take them too seriously,” said Mrs. Charmond, with
+an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When she had
+shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she deemed likely
+to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, ivories, miniatures,
+and so on—always with a mien of listlessness which might either have
+been constitutional, or partly owing to the situation of the place—they
+sat down to an early cup of tea.
+
+“Will you pour it out, please? Do,” she said, leaning back in her
+chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond
+eyes—those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early Italian
+art—became longer, and her voice more languishing. She showed that
+oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most frequent in women of
+darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond’s
+was; who lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak
+them, who inveigle rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents
+rather than steer.
+
+“I am the most inactive woman when I am here,” she said. “I think
+sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float
+about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be really
+my destiny, and I must struggle against such fancies.”
+
+“I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion—it is quite sad! I wish I
+could tend you and make you very happy.”
+
+There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound of
+Grace’s voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their
+customary reservations in talking to her. “It is tender and kind of you
+to feel that,” said Mrs. Charmond. “Perhaps I have given you the notion
+that my languor is more than it really is. But this place oppresses me,
+and I have a plan of going abroad a good deal. I used to go with a
+relative, but that arrangement has dropped through.” Regarding Grace
+with a final glance of criticism, she seemed to make up her mind to
+consider the young girl satisfactory, and continued: “Now I am often
+impelled to record my impressions of times and places. I have often
+thought of writing a ‘New _Sentimental Journey_.’ But I cannot find
+energy enough to do it alone. When I am at different places in the
+south of Europe I feel a crowd of ideas and fancies thronging upon me
+continually, but to unfold writing-materials, take up a cold steel pen,
+and put these impressions down systematically on cold, smooth
+paper—that I cannot do. So I have thought that if I always could have
+somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might dictate any
+ideas that come into my head. And directly I had made your acquaintance
+the other day it struck me that you would suit me so well. Would you
+like to undertake it? You might read to me, too, if desirable. Will you
+think it over, and ask your parents if they are willing?”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Grace. “I am almost sure they would be very glad.”
+
+“You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite honored by such
+intellectual company.”
+
+Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea.
+
+“Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?”
+
+“Oh no. Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they are
+not carried on by me.”
+
+“What—another student in that retreat?”
+
+“There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a great
+deal—I see his light sometimes through the trees late at night.”
+
+“Oh yes—a doctor—I believe I was told of him. It is a strange place for
+him to settle in.”
+
+“It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say. But he does not
+confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He investigates theology and
+metaphysics and all sorts of subjects.”
+
+“What is his name?”
+
+“Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the Fitzpierses
+of Buckbury-Fitzpiers—not a great many miles from here.”
+
+“I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I was
+never in the county till my husband brought me here.” Mrs. Charmond did
+not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious
+merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she
+herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering _weltbürgerliche_
+nature had grown tired of caring about—a peculiarity that made her a
+contrast to her neighbors. “It is of rather more importance to know
+what the man is himself than what his family is,” she said, “if he is
+going to practise upon us as a surgeon. Have you seen him?”
+
+Grace had not. “I think he is not a very old man,” she added.
+
+“Has he a wife?”
+
+“I am not aware that he has.”
+
+“Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know him when I
+come back. It will be very convenient to have a medical man—if he is
+clever—in one’s own parish. I get dreadfully nervous sometimes, living
+in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so far to send to. No doubt
+you feel Hintock to be a great change after watering-place life.”
+
+“I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its disadvantages.”
+Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of the attendant
+circumstances.
+
+They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease by her
+entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a woman not to
+know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive young girl who
+would probably be very quick to discern it, was to demolish her dignity
+rather than to establish it in that young girl’s eyes. So, being
+violently possessed with her idea of making use of this gentle
+acquaintance, ready and waiting at her own door, she took great pains
+to win her confidence at starting.
+
+Just before Grace’s departure the two chanced to pause before a mirror
+which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so as to bring
+into prominence their resemblances and their contrasts. Both looked
+attractive as glassed back by the faithful reflector; but Grace’s
+countenance had the effect of making Mrs. Charmond appear more than her
+full age. There are complexions which set off each other to great
+advantage, and there are those which antagonize, the one killing or
+damaging its neighbor unmercifully. This was unhappily the case here.
+Mrs. Charmond fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a
+cursory remark of her companion’s. However, she parted from her young
+friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know as
+soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had suggested.
+
+When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope she
+looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the door,
+meditatively regarding her.
+
+Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys,
+Winterborne’s thoughts ran upon Grace’s announced visit to Hintock
+House. Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of the way?
+Something told him that she might not, on such an occasion, care for
+his company.
+
+He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden next
+day, he saw her go past on the journey with such a pretty pride in the
+event. He wondered if her father’s ambition, which had purchased for
+her the means of intellectual light and culture far beyond those of any
+other native of the village, would conduce to the flight of her future
+interests above and away from the local life which was once to her the
+movement of the world.
+
+Nevertheless, he had her father’s permission to win her if he could;
+and to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon to a crisis,
+if he ever hoped to do so. If she should think herself too good for
+him, he could let her go and make the best of his loss; but until he
+had really tested her he could not say that she despised his suit. The
+question was how to quicken events towards an issue.
+
+He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as any
+would be to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her parents to
+come as chief guests.
+
+These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a slight
+knocking at his front door. He descended the path and looked out, and
+beheld Marty South, dressed for out-door work.
+
+“Why didn’t you come, Mr. Winterborne?” she said. “I’ve been waiting
+there hours and hours, and at last I thought I must try to find you.”
+
+“Bless my soul, I’d quite forgot,” said Giles.
+
+What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-trees to
+be planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared by the
+wood-cutters, and that he had arranged to plant them with his own
+hands. He had a marvellous power of making trees grow. Although he
+would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly, there was a sort of
+sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that he was
+operating on, so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days.
+When, on the other hand, any of the journeymen planted, although they
+seemed to go through an identically similar process, one quarter of the
+trees would die away during the ensuing August.
+
+Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at present,
+he contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in which he had no
+personal interest. Marty, who turned her hand to anything, was usually
+the one who performed the part of keeping the trees in a perpendicular
+position while he threw in the mould.
+
+He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further to
+proceed with the work by the knowledge that the ground was close to the
+way-side along which Grace must pass on her return from Hintock House.
+
+“You’ve a cold in the head, Marty,” he said, as they walked. “That
+comes of cutting off your hair.”
+
+“I suppose it do. Yes; I’ve three headaches going on in my head at the
+same time.”
+
+“Three headaches!”
+
+“Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my eyes,
+and a misery headache in the middle of my brain. However, I came out,
+for I thought you might be waiting and grumbling like anything if I was
+not there.”
+
+The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne’s fingers
+were endowed with a gentle conjuror’s touch in spreading the roots of
+each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, under which the
+delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper directions for
+growth. He put most of these roots towards the south-west; for, he
+said, in forty years’ time, when some great gale is blowing from that
+quarter, the trees will require the strongest holdfast on that side to
+stand against it and not fall.
+
+“How they sigh directly we put ’em upright, though while they are lying
+down they don’t sigh at all,” said Marty.
+
+“Do they?” said Giles. “I’ve never noticed it.”
+
+She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her
+finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to
+cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled—probably long
+after the two planters should be felled themselves.
+
+“It seems to me,” the girl continued, “as if they sigh because they are
+very sorry to begin life in earnest—just as we be.”
+
+“Just as we be?” He looked critically at her. “You ought not to feel
+like that, Marty.”
+
+Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they planted
+on through a great part of the day, almost without another word.
+Winterborne’s mind ran on his contemplated evening-party, his
+abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty’s presence
+beside him. From the nature of their employment, in which he handled
+the spade and she merely held the tree, it followed that he got good
+exercise and she got none. But she was an heroic girl, and though her
+out-stretched hand was chill as a stone, and her cheeks blue, and her
+cold worse than ever, she would not complain while he was disposed to
+continue work. But when he paused she said, “Mr. Winterborne, can I run
+down the lane and back to warm my feet?”
+
+“Why, yes, of course,” he said, awakening anew to her existence.
+“Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season. Now I
+warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was. You had no
+business to chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost right. Look
+here, cut off home at once.”
+
+“A run down the lane will be quite enough.”
+
+“No, it won’t. You ought not to have come out to-day at all.”
+
+“But I should like to finish the—”
+
+“Marty, I tell you to go home,” said he, peremptorily. “I can manage to
+keep the rest of them upright with a stick or something.”
+
+She went away without saying any more. When she had gone down the
+orchard a little distance she looked back. Giles suddenly went after
+her.
+
+“Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know. But warm
+yourself in your own way, I don’t care.”
+
+When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman’s dress through
+the holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road. It was Grace
+at last, on her way back from the interview with Mrs. Charmond. He
+threw down the tree he was planting, and was about to break through the
+belt of holly when he suddenly became aware of the presence of another
+man, who was looking over the hedge on the opposite side of the way
+upon the figure of the unconscious Grace. He appeared as a handsome and
+gentlemanly personage of six or eight and twenty, and was quizzing her
+through an eye-glass. Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he let
+his glass drop with a click upon the rail which protected the hedge,
+and walked away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that
+this must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed
+through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting object of
+their contemplation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+“I heard the bushes move long before I saw you,” she began. “I said
+first, ‘it is some terrible beast;’ next, ‘it is a poacher;’ next, ‘it
+is a friend!’”
+
+He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but the
+question whether he should tell her that she had been watched. He
+decided in the negative.
+
+“You have been to the house?” he said. “But I need not ask.” The fact
+was that there shone upon Miss Melbury’s face a species of exaltation,
+which saw no environing details nor his own occupation; nothing more
+than his bare presence.
+
+“Why need you not ask?”
+
+“Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the Mount.”
+
+She reddened a little and said, “How can you be so profane, Giles
+Winterborne?”
+
+“How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg pardon;
+I didn’t mean to speak so freely. How do you like her house and her?”
+
+“Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a child, when
+it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond’s late husband
+bought the property. She is SO nice!” And Grace fell into such an
+abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her
+niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air
+before them.
+
+“She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay much
+longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. She is going
+abroad. Only think, she would like me to go with her.”
+
+Giles’s features stiffened a little at the news. “Indeed; what for? But
+I won’t keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!” he cried to a swaying
+collection of clothes in the distance, which was the figure of Creedle
+his man. “Go on filling in there till I come back.”
+
+“I’m a-coming, sir; I’m a-coming.”
+
+“Well, the reason is this,” continued she, as they went on
+together—“Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character—a desire
+to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre Dumas, and Méry,
+and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find energy enough to do it
+herself.” And Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond’s proposal at
+large. “My notion is that Méry’s style will suit her best, because he
+writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she has,” Grace said,
+musingly.
+
+“Indeed!” said Winterborne, with mock awe. “Suppose you talk over my
+head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?”
+
+“Oh, I didn’t mean it!” she said, repentantly, looking into his eyes.
+“And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear old Hintock,
+_and the people in it_, fifty times better than all the Continent. But
+the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don’t you, Giles?”
+
+“It is well enough in one sense, but it will take you away,” said he,
+mollified.
+
+“Only for a short time. We should return in May.”
+
+“Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father.”
+
+Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He had awaited her
+coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal to have
+a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and
+jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the lofty
+matters of her converse and thought that he refrained.
+
+As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his
+planting, and could not help saying to himself as he walked, that this
+engagement of his was a very unpromising business. Her outing to-day
+had not improved it. A woman who could go to Hintock House and be
+friendly with its mistress, enter into the views of its mistress, talk
+like her, and dress not much unlike her, why, she would hardly be
+contented with him, a yeoman, now immersed in tree-planting, even
+though he planted them well. “And yet she’s a true-hearted girl,” he
+said, thinking of her words about Hintock. “I must bring matters to a
+point, and there’s an end of it.”
+
+When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back, and
+dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl as
+before.
+
+“Suppose, Marty,” he said, after a while, looking at her extended arm,
+upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple in the
+cold wind—“suppose you know a person, and want to bring that person to
+a good understanding with you, do you think a Christmas party of some
+sort is a warming-up thing, and likely to be useful in hastening on the
+matter?”
+
+“Is there to be dancing?”
+
+“There might be, certainly.”
+
+“Will He dance with She?”
+
+“Well, yes.”
+
+“Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I won’t be
+the one to say which.”
+
+“It shall be done,” said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke the
+words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, he added, “Here,
+Marty, I’ll send up a man to plant the rest to-morrow. I’ve other
+things to think of just now.”
+
+She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him walking
+with Grace Melbury. She looked towards the western sky, which was now
+aglow like some vast foundery wherein new worlds were being cast.
+Across it the bare bough of a tree stretched horizontally, revealing
+every twig against the red, and showing in dark profile every beck and
+movement of three pheasants that were settling themselves down on it in
+a row to roost.
+
+“It will be fine to-morrow,” said Marty, observing them with the
+vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, “for they are
+a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough. If it were going to be
+stormy they’d squeeze close to the trunk. The weather is almost all
+they have to think of, isn’t it, Mr. Winterborne? and so they must be
+lighter-hearted than we.”
+
+“I dare say they are,” said Winterborne.
+
+Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with no
+great hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant’s to
+ascertain if Grace and her parents would honor him with their presence.
+Having first to set his nightly gins in the garden, to catch the
+rabbits that ate his winter-greens, his call was delayed till just
+after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the Hintock houses but
+fitfully as yet, on account of the trees. Melbury was crossing his yard
+on his way to call on some one at the larger village, but he readily
+turned and walked up and down the path with the young man.
+
+Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller scale
+than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that his
+invitation was to a gathering of any importance. So he put it in the
+mild form of “Can you come in for an hour, when you have done business,
+the day after to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury, if they have
+nothing more pressing to do?”
+
+Melbury would give no answer at once. “No, I can’t tell you to-day,” he
+said. “I must talk it over with the women. As far as I am concerned, my
+dear Giles, you know I’ll come with pleasure. But how do I know what
+Grace’s notions may be? You see, she has been away among cultivated
+folks a good while; and now this acquaintance with Mrs. Charmond—Well,
+I’ll ask her. I can say no more.”
+
+When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way. He knew
+very well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either go or not
+go, according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for the moment, to
+suggest the negative. His errand took him past the church, and the way
+to his destination was either across the church-yard or along-side it,
+the distances being the same. For some reason or other he chose the
+former way.
+
+The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path, and the
+front of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, turned ill upon the
+grass, and approached a particular headstone, where he read, “In memory
+of John Winterborne,” with the subjoined date and age. It was the grave
+of Giles’s father.
+
+The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was humanized.
+“Jack, my wronged friend!” he said. “I’ll be faithful to my plan of
+making amends to ’ee.”
+
+When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs. Melbury,
+who were working at a little table by the fire,
+
+“Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day after
+to-morrow; and I’m thinking, that as ’tis Giles who asks us, we’ll go.”
+
+They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant sent
+Giles the next morning an answer in the affirmative.
+
+Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no
+particular hour in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and his
+family, expecting no other guests, chose their own time, which chanced
+to be rather early in the afternoon, by reason of the somewhat quicker
+despatch than usual of the timber-merchant’s business that day. To show
+their sense of the unimportance of the occasion, they walked quite
+slowly to the house, as if they were merely out for a ramble, and going
+to nothing special at all; or at most intending to pay a casual call
+and take a cup of tea.
+
+At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of Winterborne’s
+domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had planned an elaborate high
+tea for six o’clock or thereabouts, and a good roaring supper to come
+on about eleven. Being a bachelor of rather retiring habits, the whole
+of the preparations devolved upon himself and his trusty man and
+familiar, Robert Creedle, who did everything that required doing, from
+making Giles’s bed to catching moles in his field. He was a survival
+from the days when Giles’s father held the homestead, and Giles was a
+playing boy.
+
+These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to both,
+were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house, expecting nobody
+before six o’clock. Winterborne was standing before the brick oven in
+his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the
+blazing mass with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork,
+the heat shining out upon his streaming face and making his eyes like
+furnaces, the thorns crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having
+ranged the pastry dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be
+ready, was pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a
+rolling-pin. A great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door
+of the back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the
+snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter standing
+upside down on the hob to melt out the grease.
+
+Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window first
+the timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury in her best
+silk, and Grace in the fashionable attire which, in part brought home
+with her from the Continent, she had worn on her visit to Mrs.
+Charmond’s. The eyes of the three had been attracted to the proceedings
+within by the fierce illumination which the oven threw out upon the
+operators and their utensils.
+
+“Lord, Lord! if they baint come a’ready!” said Creedle.
+
+“No—hey?” said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in the
+background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight. As there was no
+help for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way.
+
+“My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time,” said the
+timber-merchant’s wife, her face lengthening with concern.
+
+“Oh, it is not much difference. I hope you’ll come in.”
+
+“But this means a regular randyvoo!” said Mr. Melbury, accusingly,
+glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick.
+
+“Well, yes,” said Giles.
+
+“And—not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?”
+
+“I told three of ’em they might drop in if they’d nothing else to do,”
+Giles mildly admitted.
+
+“Now, why the name didn’t ye tell us ’twas going to be a serious kind
+of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they don’t say?
+Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come back along in a
+couple of hours?”
+
+“I hope you’ll stay, if you’ll be so good as not to mind, now you are
+here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little time. I ought
+not to have been so backward.” Giles spoke quite anxiously for one of
+his undemonstrative temperament; for he feared that if the Melburys
+once were back in their own house they would not be disposed to turn
+out again.
+
+“’Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that’s what ’tis,” said Mr.
+Melbury, testily. “Don’t keep us here in the sitting-room; lead on to
+the bakehouse, man. Now we are here we’ll help ye get ready for the
+rest. Here, mis’ess, take off your things, and help him out in his
+baking, or he won’t get done to-night. I’ll finish heating the oven,
+and set you free to go and skiver up them ducks.” His eye had passed
+with pitiless directness of criticism into yet remote recesses of
+Winterborne’s awkwardly built premises, where the aforesaid birds were
+hanging.
+
+“And I’ll help finish the tarts,” said Grace, cheerfully.
+
+“I don’t know about that,” said her father. “’Tisn’t quite so much in
+your line as it is in your mother-law’s and mine.”
+
+“Of course I couldn’t let you, Grace!” said Giles, with some distress.
+
+“I’ll do it, of course,” said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her silk train,
+hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her sleeves, pinning
+them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his apron for her own
+use.
+
+So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped on
+the preparations. A kindly pity of his household management, which
+Winterborne saw in her eyes whenever he caught them, depressed him much
+more than her contempt would have done.
+
+Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the others
+was absorbed in the difficulties of a _cuisine_ based on utensils,
+cupboards, and provisions that were strange to them. He groaned to the
+young man in a whisper, “This is a bruckle het, maister, I’m much
+afeared! Who’d ha’ thought they’d ha’ come so soon?”
+
+The bitter placidity of Winterborne’s look adumbrated the misgivings he
+did not care to express. “Have you got the celery ready?” he asked,
+quickly.
+
+“Now that’s a thing I never could mind; no, not if you’d paid me in
+silver and gold. And I don’t care who the man is, I says that a stick
+of celery that isn’t scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is not clean.”
+
+“_Very_ well, very well! I’ll attend to it. You go and get ’em
+comfortable in-doors.”
+
+He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks to
+Creedle, who was still in a tragic mood. “If ye’d ha’ married, d’ye
+see, maister,” he said, “this caddle couldn’t have happened to us.”
+
+Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done that
+could insure the supper turning up ready at some time or other, Giles
+and his friends entered the parlor, where the Melburys again dropped
+into position as guests, though the room was not nearly so warm and
+cheerful as the blazing bakehouse. Others now arrived, among them
+Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner, and tea went off very well.
+
+Grace’s disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at
+deficiencies in Winterborne’s menage, was so uniform and persistent
+that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was
+aware of. That suppressed sympathy which had showed in her face ever
+since her arrival told him as much too plainly.
+
+“This muddling style of house-keeping is what you’ve not lately been
+used to, I suppose?” he said, when they were a little apart.
+
+“No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything here in
+dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is—not quite nice;
+but everything else is.”
+
+“The oil?”
+
+“On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one’s dress. Still, mine is
+not a new one.”
+
+Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright, had
+smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish, and
+refrained from rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the mirror-like
+effect that the mixture produced as laid on. Giles apologized and
+called Creedle; but he felt that the Fates were against him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked meats from the oven, laid
+on a snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as
+in Flemish “Last Suppers.” Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with
+amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior and make things
+pleasant, expressing his admiration of Creedle’s cleverness when they
+were alone.
+
+“I s’pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr.
+Creedle, was when you was in the militia?”
+
+“Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and many
+ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has worked hard in
+helping me to bring things to such perfection to-day. ‘Giles,’ says I,
+though he’s maister. Not that I should call’n maister by rights, for
+his father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had twinned
+us and been our nourishing.”
+
+“I s’pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr.
+Creedle?”
+
+“Oh yes. Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and
+hang-fairs and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah, many’s the
+patriarch I’ve seed come and go in this parish! There, he’s calling for
+more plates. Lord, why can’t ’em turn their plates bottom upward for
+pudding, as they used to do in former days?”
+
+Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a
+half-unconscious state. He could not get over the initial failures in
+his scheme for advancing his suit, and hence he did not know that he
+was eating mouthfuls of bread and nothing else, and continually
+snuffing the two candles next him till he had reduced them to mere
+glimmers drowned in their own grease. Creedle now appeared with a
+specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little
+three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into a
+dish, exclaiming, simultaneously, “Draw back, gentlemen and ladies,
+please!”
+
+A splash followed. Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod and blink, and
+put her handkerchief to her face.
+
+“Good heavens! what did you do that for, Creedle?” said Giles, sternly,
+and jumping up.
+
+“’Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister,” mildly expostulated
+Creedle, in an aside audible to all the company.
+
+“Well, yes—but—” replied Giles. He went over to Grace, and hoped none
+of it had gone into her eye.
+
+“Oh no,” she said. “Only a sprinkle on my face. It was nothing.”
+
+“Kiss it and make it well,” gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree.
+
+Miss Melbury blushed.
+
+The timber-merchant said, quickly, “Oh, it is nothing! She must bear
+these little mishaps.” But there could be discerned in his face
+something which said “I ought to have foreseen this.”
+
+Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not quite
+liked to see Grace present. He wished he had not asked such people as
+Bawtree and the hollow-turner. He had done it, in dearth of other
+friends, that the room might not appear empty. In his mind’s eye,
+before the event, they had been the mere background or padding of the
+scene, but somehow in reality they were the most prominent personages
+there.
+
+After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner
+monopolizing the new packs for an interminable game, in which a lump of
+chalk was incessantly used—a game those two always played wherever they
+were, taking a solitary candle and going to a private table in a corner
+with the mien of persons bent on weighty matters. The rest of the
+company on this account were obliged to put up with old packs for their
+round game, that had been lying by in a drawer ever since the time that
+Giles’s grandmother was alive. Each card had a great stain in the
+middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp and
+excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens
+wore a decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an
+impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than
+real regal characters. Every now and then the comparatively few remarks
+of the players at the round game were harshly intruded on by the
+measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner from the back
+of the room:
+
+“And I′ will hold′ a wa′-ger with you′
+That all′ these marks′ are thirt′-y two!”
+
+
+accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table; then an
+exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; then the commencement
+of the rhymes anew.
+
+The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with a satisfied
+sense of weight in his words, and by praising the party in a
+patronizing tone, when Winterborne expressed his fear that he and his
+were not enjoying themselves.
+
+“Oh yes, yes; pretty much. What handsome glasses those are! I didn’t
+know you had such glasses in the house. Now, Lucy” (to his wife), “you
+ought to get some like them for ourselves.” And when they had abandoned
+cards, and Winterborne was talking to Melbury by the fire, it was the
+timber-merchant who stood with his back to the mantle in a proprietary
+attitude, from which post of vantage he critically regarded Giles’s
+person, rather as a superficies than as a solid with ideas and feelings
+inside it, saying, “What a splendid coat that one is you have on,
+Giles! I can’t get such coats. You dress better than I.”
+
+After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great Hintock having
+arrived some time before. Grace had been away from home so long that
+she had forgotten the old figures, and hence did not join in the
+movement. Then Giles felt that all was over. As for her, she was
+thinking, as she watched the gyrations, of a very different measure
+that she had been accustomed to tread with a bevy of sylph-like
+creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a large house, most of whom
+were now moving in scenes widely removed from this, both as regarded
+place and character.
+
+A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with the
+abandoned cards. Grace assented to the proposal, and the woman told her
+tale unskilfully, for want of practice, as she declared.
+
+Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, “Tell her
+fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science—what do
+you call ’em? Phrenologists. You can’t teach her anything new. She’s
+been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at anything she can
+hear among us folks in Hintock.”
+
+At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family being the
+earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing their game
+doggedly in the corner, where they had completely covered Giles’s
+mahogany table with chalk scratches. The three walked home, the
+distance being short and the night clear.
+
+“Well, Giles is a very good fellow,” said Mr. Melbury, as they struck
+down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in which the
+stars seemed set.
+
+“Certainly he is,” said Grace, quickly, and in such a tone as to show
+that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard than he had stood
+before.
+
+When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the doctor’s
+house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his rooms,
+although it was now about two o’clock.
+
+“The doctor is not abed yet,” said Mrs. Melbury.
+
+“Hard study, no doubt,” said her husband.
+
+“One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about here by
+day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night. ’Tis
+astonishing how little we see of him.”
+
+Melbury’s mind seemed to turn with much relief to the contemplation of
+Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. “It is natural enough,”
+he replied. “What can a man of that sort find to interest him in
+Hintock? I don’t expect he’ll stay here long.”
+
+His mind reverted to Giles’s party, and when they were nearly home he
+spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: “It is hardly
+the line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she’s been
+accustomed to. I didn’t foresee that in sending her to boarding-school
+and letting her travel, and what not, to make her a good bargain for
+Giles, I should be really spoiling her for him. Ah, ’tis a thousand
+pities! But he ought to have her—he ought!”
+
+At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last really
+finished their play, could be heard coming along in the rear,
+vociferously singing a song to march-time, and keeping vigorous step to
+the same in far-reaching strides—
+
+“She may go, oh!
+She may go, oh!
+She may go to the d—— for me!”
+
+
+The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury. “That’s the
+sort of society we’ve been asked to meet,” he said. “For us old folk it
+didn’t matter; but for Grace—Giles should have known better!”
+
+Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just cleared
+out, the subject of their discourse was walking from room to room
+surveying the general displacement of furniture with no ecstatic
+feeling; rather the reverse, indeed. At last he entered the bakehouse,
+and found there Robert Creedle sitting over the embers, also lost in
+contemplation. Winterborne sat down beside him.
+
+“Well, Robert, you must be tired. You’d better get on to bed.”
+
+“Ay, ay, Giles—what do I call ye? Maister, I would say. But ’tis well
+to think the day _is_ done, when ’tis done.”
+
+Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled
+forehead was ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth, till
+it was like a vast scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders lying about
+everywhere. “Do you think it went off well, Creedle?” he asked.
+
+“The victuals did; that I know. And the drink did; that I steadfastly
+believe, from the holler sound of the barrels. Good, honest drink
+’twere, the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best wine that berries
+could rise to; and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves cider ever wrung
+down, leaving out the spice and sperrits I put into it, while that
+egg-flip would ha’ passed through muslin, so little curdled ’twere.
+’Twas good enough to make any king’s heart merry—ay, to make his whole
+carcass smile. Still, I don’t deny I’m afeared some things didn’t go
+well with He and his.” Creedle nodded in a direction which signified
+where the Melburys lived.
+
+“I’m afraid, too, that it was a failure there!”
+
+“If so, ’twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail might as well
+have come upon anybody else’s plate as hers.”
+
+“What snail?”
+
+“Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate when
+I brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves of
+wintergreen.”
+
+“How the deuce did a snail get there?”
+
+“That I don’t know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman was.”
+
+“But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn’t have been!”
+
+“Well, ’twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we
+expect him to be? I don’t care who the man is, snails and caterpillars
+always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing
+way.”
+
+“He wasn’t alive, I suppose?” said Giles, with a shudder on Grace’s
+account.
+
+“Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God forbid that
+a _live_ snail should be seed on any plate of victuals that’s served by
+Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don’t mind ’em myself—them small
+ones, for they were born on cabbage, and they’ve lived on cabbage, so
+they must be made of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed little lady,
+she didn’t say a word about it; though ’twould have made good small
+conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially as wit ran
+short among us sometimes.”
+
+“Oh yes—’tis all over!” murmured Giles to himself, shaking his head
+over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead more than
+ever. “Do you know, Robert,” he said, “that she’s been accustomed to
+servants and everything superfine these many years? How, then, could
+she stand our ways?”
+
+“Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere.
+They shouldn’t have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor
+men shouldn’t give randys, or if they do give ’em, only to their own
+race.”
+
+“Perhaps that’s true,” said Winterborne, rising and yawning a sigh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+“’Tis a pity—a thousand pities!” her father kept saying next morning at
+breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom.
+
+But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne’s suit at
+this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote—was, indeed,
+mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis was approaching, mainly
+as a result of his contrivances, and it would have to be met.
+
+But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what
+an immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his
+daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for
+several years upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marry
+Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant,
+apple-farmer, and what not, even were she willing to marry him herself.
+
+“She will be his wife if you don’t upset her notion that she’s bound to
+accept him as an understood thing,” said Mrs. Melbury. “Bless ye,
+she’ll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content with Giles’s way
+of living, which he’ll improve with what money she’ll have from you.
+’Tis the strangeness after her genteel life that makes her feel
+uncomfortable at first. Why, when _I_ saw Hintock the first time I
+thought I never could like it. But things gradually get familiar, and
+stone floors seem not so very cold and hard, and the hooting of the
+owls not so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very lonely, after a
+while.”
+
+“Yes, I believe ye. That’s just it. I _know_ Grace will gradually sink
+down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, and
+feel a drowsy content in being Giles’s wife. But I can’t bear the
+thought of dragging down to that old level as promising a piece of
+maidenhood as ever lived—fit to ornament a palace wi’—that I’ve taken
+so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her white hands getting redder every
+day, and her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl in talking, and
+her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock shail and wamble!”
+
+“She may shail, but she’ll never wamble,” replied his wife, decisively.
+
+When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late;
+not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence
+as discomposed by these other reflections.
+
+The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. “You used to
+complain with justice when I was a girl,” she said. “But I am a woman
+now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is something
+else!” Instead of sitting down she went outside the door.
+
+He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is
+in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped
+the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too
+elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated
+mood. Melbury followed her. She had rambled on to the paddock, where
+the white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties and
+thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable family of
+sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney,
+preening themselves in the rays of the sun.
+
+“Come in to breakfast, my girl,” he said. “And as to Giles, use your
+own mind. Whatever pleases you will please me.”
+
+“I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honor
+I ought to marry him, whenever I do marry.”
+
+He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heart
+there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles,
+though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes. But he would not
+distinctly express his views on the promise. “Very well,” he said. “But
+I hope I sha’n’t lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What did you think
+of the inside of Hintock House the other day?”
+
+“I liked it much.”
+
+“Different from friend Winterborne’s?”
+
+She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by her
+silence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons.
+
+“Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again—when, did you say?”
+
+“She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know if
+it suited her.” And with this subject upon their lips they entered to
+breakfast.
+
+Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. Nor was there any on
+Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a sign, and it
+looked suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not going further in the
+direction of “taking up” Grace at present.
+
+Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his daughter’s two
+indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond—the interview in the wood and
+a visit to the House—she had attended Winterborne’s party. No doubt the
+out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in the
+neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widely
+spoken of—Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all. What, then,
+so natural as that Mrs. Charmond should have heard the village news,
+and become quite disappointed in her expectations of Grace at finding
+she kept such company?
+
+Full of this _post hoc_ argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the infinite
+throng of other possible reasons and unreasons for a woman changing her
+mind. For instance, while knowing that his Grace was attractive, he
+quite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also great pretensions to beauty.
+In his simple estimate, an attractive woman attracted all around.
+
+So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the
+villagers at the unlucky Winterborne’s was the cause of her most
+grievous loss, as he deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House.
+
+“’Tis a thousand pities!” he would repeat to himself. “I am ruining her
+for conscience’ sake!”
+
+It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his
+mind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just as
+they finished breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person mounted
+on horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for
+some time, to catch their attention through the window. Grace had been
+the first to see him, and involuntarily exclaimed, “There he is—and a
+new horse!”
+
+On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended
+thoughts and compound feelings concerning him, could he have read them
+through those old panes. But he saw nothing: his features just now
+were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile at some other idea. So they
+rose from breakfast and went to the door, Grace with an anxious,
+wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. Melbury placid and
+inquiring. “We have come out to look at your horse,” she said.
+
+It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and explained
+that he had ridden a mile or two to try the animal’s paces. “I bought
+her,” he added, with warmth so severely repressed as to seem
+indifference, “because she has been used to carry a lady.”
+
+Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said, “And is she
+quiet?”
+
+Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. “I took care of
+that. She’s five-and-twenty, and very clever for her age.”
+
+“Well, get off and come in,” said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles
+dismounted accordingly.
+
+This event was the concrete result of Winterborne’s thoughts during the
+past week or two. The want of success with his evening party he had
+accepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there had
+been enthusiasm enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market to
+purchase this old mare, which had belonged to a neighboring parson with
+several daughters, and was offered him to carry either a gentleman or a
+lady, and to do odd jobs of carting and agriculture at a pinch. This
+obliging quadruped seemed to furnish Giles with a means of reinstating
+himself in Melbury’s good opinion as a man of considerateness by
+throwing out future possibilities to Grace.
+
+The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning, in the
+mood which is altogether peculiar to woman’s nature, and which, when
+reduced into plain words, seems as impossible as the penetrability of
+matter—that of entertaining a tender pity for the object of her own
+unnecessary coldness. The imperturbable poise which marked Winterborne
+in general was enlivened now by a freshness and animation that set a
+brightness in his eye and on his cheek. Mrs. Melbury asked him to have
+some breakfast, and he pleasurably replied that he would join them,
+with his usual lack of tactical observation, not perceiving that they
+had all finished the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, and
+that the note piped by the kettle denoted it to be nearly empty; so
+that fresh water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil,
+and a general renovation of the table carried out. Neither did he know,
+so full was he of his tender ulterior object in buying that horse, how
+many cups of tea he was gulping down one after another, nor how the
+morning was slipping, nor how he was keeping the family from dispersing
+about their duties.
+
+Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse’s purchase,
+looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the room, a way he
+always looked when he narrated anything that amused him. While he was
+still thinking of the scene he had described, Grace rose and said, “I
+have to go and help my mother now, Mr. Winterborne.”
+
+“H’m!” he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her.
+
+She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness; whereupon
+Giles, becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, jumped up, saying,
+“To be sure, to be sure!” wished them quickly good-morning, and bolted
+out of the house.
+
+Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position, with
+her at least. Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father saw with
+some regret) already the homeliness of Hintock life was fast becoming
+effaced from her observation as a singularity; just as the first
+strangeness of a face from which we have for years been separated
+insensibly passes off with renewed intercourse, and tones itself down
+into simple identity with the lineaments of the past.
+
+Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to the
+sacrifice of the gem he had been at such pains in mounting. He fain
+could hope, in the secret nether chamber of his mind, that something
+would happen, before the balance of her feeling had quite turned in
+Winterborne’s favor, to relieve his conscience and preserve her on her
+elevated plane.
+
+He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned all
+interest in his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it, and was
+as firmly convinced as ever that the comradeship which Grace had shown
+with Giles and his crew by attending his party had been the cause.
+
+Matters lingered on thus. And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on this
+side and on that is made to travel in specific directions, the little
+touches of circumstance in the life of this young girl shaped the
+curves of her career.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss Melbury went
+out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an hour’s
+leisure, offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and quite
+steady, filtering itself through the denuded mass of twigs without
+swaying them, but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks
+scratch its underlying neighbor restlessly. Grace’s lips sucked in this
+native air of hers like milk. They soon reached a place where the wood
+ran down into a corner, and went outside it towards comparatively open
+ground. Having looked round about, they were intending to re-enter the
+copse when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging brush, trotted past
+them tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some dead fern.
+They walked on, her father merely observing, after watching the animal,
+“They are hunting somewhere near.”
+
+Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and
+thither, as if there were little or no scent that day. Soon divers
+members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was evident from
+their movements that the chase had been stultified by general
+puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended victim. In a
+minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting with acteonic
+excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed her,
+asking if she had seen the fox.
+
+“Yes,” said she. “We saw him some time ago—just out there.”
+
+“Did you cry Halloo?”
+
+“We said nothing.”
+
+“Then why the d—— didn’t you, or get the old buffer to do it for you?”
+said the man, as he cantered away.
+
+She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her
+father’s face, saw that it was quite red.
+
+“He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!” said the old man, in the
+tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet
+applied to himself. “And he wouldn’t if he had been a gentleman. ’Twas
+not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well read
+and cultivated—how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy field-folk
+are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from trimming
+swedes or mangolds—joking with the rough work-folk and all that—I could
+have stood it. But hasn’t it cost me near a hundred a year to lift you
+out of all that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a
+woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? ’Twas because I
+was in your company. If a black-coated squire or pa’son had been
+walking with you instead of me he wouldn’t have spoken so.”
+
+“No, no, father; there’s nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!”
+
+“I tell you it is that! I’ve noticed, and I’ve noticed it many times,
+that a woman takes her color from the man she’s walking with. The woman
+who looks an unquestionable lady when she’s with a polished-up fellow,
+looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she’s hobbing and nobbing
+with a homely blade. You sha’n’t be treated like that for long, or at
+least your children sha’n’t. You shall have somebody to walk with you
+who looks more of a dandy than I—please God you shall!”
+
+“But, my dear father,” she said, much distressed, “I don’t mind at all.
+I don’t wish for more honor than I already have!”
+
+“A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter,” according to
+Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so
+than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace,
+she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to
+unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was
+conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the
+social hope of the family.
+
+“You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?” asked her
+father, in continuation of the subject.
+
+Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not been
+without its weight upon her.
+
+“Grace,” he said, just before they had reached the house, “if it costs
+me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a
+young woman’s niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry
+well.”
+
+He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze,
+which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance.
+
+She looked calmly at him. “And how about Mr. Winterborne?” she asked.
+“I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a question
+of keeping faith.”
+
+The timber-merchant’s eyes fell for a moment. “I don’t know—I don’t
+know,” he said. “’Tis a trying strait. Well, well; there’s no hurry.
+We’ll wait and see how he gets on.”
+
+That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment
+behind the large parlor. It had at one time been part of the bakehouse,
+with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr. Melbury, in
+turning it into an office, had built into the cavity an iron safe,
+which he used for holding his private papers. The door of the safe was
+now open, and his keys were hanging from it.
+
+“Sit down, Grace, and keep me company,” he said. “You may amuse
+yourself by looking over these.” He threw out a heap of papers before
+her.
+
+“What are they?” she asked.
+
+“Securities of various sorts.” He unfolded them one by one. “Papers
+worth so much money each. Now here’s a lot of turnpike bonds for one
+thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is worth two
+hundred pounds?”
+
+“No, indeed, if you didn’t say so.”
+
+“’Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for
+different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy Harbor
+bonds. We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because I send
+off timber there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They’ll interest ye.”
+
+“Yes, I will, some day,” said she, rising.
+
+“Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters.
+A young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs
+altogether. Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your
+husband’s title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands—”
+
+“Don’t say that, father—title-deeds; it sounds so vain!”
+
+“It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that
+piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas.”
+
+“Yes, but—” She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a low
+voice: “If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my
+sphere will be quite a middling one.”
+
+“Your sphere ought not to be middling,” he exclaimed, not in passion,
+but in earnest conviction. “You said you never felt more at home, more
+in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs.
+Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and
+made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room—surely you did!”
+
+“Yes, I did say so,” admitted Grace.
+
+“Was it true?”
+
+“Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, perhaps.”
+
+“Ah! Now, though you don’t see it, your feeling at the time was the
+right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh
+cultivation, so that going there with her was like meeting like. Since
+then you’ve been biding with us, and have fallen back a little, and so
+you don’t feel your place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look
+over these papers and see what you’ll be worth some day. For they’ll
+all be yours, you know; who have I got to leave ’em to but you? Perhaps
+when your education is backed up by what these papers represent, and
+that backed up by another such a set and their owner, men such as that
+fellow was this morning may think you a little more than a buffer’s
+girl.”
+
+So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded representatives
+of hard cash that her father put before her. To sow in her heart
+cravings for social position was obviously his strong desire, though in
+direct antagonism to a better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with
+him, and had, indeed, only succumbed that morning during the ramble.
+
+She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility of
+such a position was too great. She had made it for herself mainly by
+her appearance and attractive behavior to him since her return. “If I
+had only come home in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this
+might not have happened,” she thought. She deplored less the fact than
+the sad possibilities that might lie hidden therein.
+
+Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and
+reading the counterfoils. This, also, she obediently did, and at last
+came to two or three which had been drawn to defray some of the late
+expenses of her clothes, board, and education.
+
+“I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn,” she
+said, looking up sorrily.
+
+“I didn’t want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an idea
+of my investment transactions. But if you do cost as much as they,
+never mind. You’ll yield a better return.”
+
+“Don’t think of me like that!” she begged. “A mere chattel.”
+
+“A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that’s in your line I don’t
+forbid it, even if it tells against me,” he said, good-humoredly. And
+he looked her proudly up and down.
+
+A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper was
+ready, and in giving the information she added, incidentally, “So we
+shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock House for some time, I hear,
+Maister Melbury. Yes, she’s going off to foreign parts to-morrow, for
+the rest of the winter months; and be-chok’d if I don’t wish I could do
+the same, for my wynd-pipe is furred like a flue.”
+
+When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his daughter
+and said, “So, Grace, you’ve lost your new friend, and your chance of
+keeping her company and writing her travels is quite gone from ye!”
+
+Grace said nothing.
+
+“Now,” he went on, emphatically, “’tis Winterborne’s affair has done
+this. Oh yes, ’tis. So let me say one word. Promise me that you will
+not meet him again without my knowledge.”
+
+“I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or with
+it.”
+
+“So much the better. I don’t like the look of this at all. And I say it
+not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of tenderness to you.
+For how could a woman, brought up delicately as you have been, bear the
+roughness of a life with him?”
+
+She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a
+sense of the intractability of circumstances.
+
+At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a
+conversation about Winterborne in progress in the village street,
+opposite Mr. Melbury’s gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert
+Creedle had accidentally met.
+
+The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over the
+parish, the skin of his face being drawn two ways on the matter—towards
+brightness in respect of it as news, and towards concern in respect of
+it as circumstance.
+
+“Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to lose
+her father. He was almost well, but is much worse again. A man all skin
+and grief he ever were, and if he leave Little Hintock for a better
+land, won’t it make some difference to your Maister Winterborne,
+neighbor Creedle?”
+
+“Can I be a prophet in Israel?” said Creedle. “Won’t it! I was only
+shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing way, and all
+the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know what it means? It
+is upon John South’s life that all Mr. Winterborne’s houses hang. If so
+be South die, and so make his decease, thereupon the law is that the
+houses fall without the least chance of absolution into HER hands at
+the House. I told him so; but the words of the faithful be only as
+wind!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The news was true. The life—the one fragile life—that had been used as
+a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being frayed away. It
+was the last of a group of lives which had served this purpose, at the
+end of whose breathings the small homestead occupied by South himself,
+the larger one of Giles Winterborne, and half a dozen others that had
+been in the possession of various Hintock village families for the
+previous hundred years, and were now Winterborne’s, would fall in and
+become part of the encompassing estate.
+
+Yet a short two months earlier Marty’s father, aged fifty-five years,
+though something of a fidgety, anxious being, would have been looked on
+as a man whose existence was so far removed from hazardous as any in
+the parish, and as bidding fair to be prolonged for another quarter of
+a century.
+
+Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day thinking of the
+contingency. The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-plots,
+the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, and
+weathercock, were all slipping away over his head and beneath his feet,
+as if they were painted on a magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite
+of John South’s late indisposition he had not anticipated danger. To
+inquire concerning his health had been to show less sympathy than to
+remain silent, considering the material interest he possessed in the
+woodman’s life, and he had, accordingly, made a point of avoiding
+Marty’s house.
+
+While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him. It was
+Marty herself, and she showed her distress by her unconsciousness of a
+cropped poll.
+
+“Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree,” she
+said. “You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall one in front
+of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill us. Can you come
+and see if you can persuade him out of his notion? I can do nothing.”
+
+He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted him upstairs. John
+South was pillowed up in a chair between the bed and the window exactly
+opposite the latter, towards which his face was turned.
+
+“Ah, neighbor Winterborne,” he said. “I wouldn’t have minded if my life
+had only been my own to lose; I don’t vallie it in much of itself, and
+can let it go if ’tis required of me. But to think what ’tis worth to
+you, a young man rising in life, that do trouble me! It seems a trick
+of dishonesty towards ye to go off at fifty-five! I could bear up, I
+know I could, if it were not for the tree—yes, the tree, ’tis that’s
+killing me. There he stands, threatening my life every minute that the
+wind do blow. He’ll come down upon us and squat us dead; and what will
+ye do when the life on your property is taken away?”
+
+“Never you mind me—that’s of no consequence,” said Giles. “Think of
+yourself alone.”
+
+He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman’s gaze. The
+tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood, which stood at a
+distance of two-thirds its own height from the front of South’s
+dwelling. Whenever the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked,
+naturally enough; and the sight of its motion and sound of its sighs
+had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in the woodman’s mind that
+it would descend and kill him. Thus he would sit all day, in spite of
+persuasion, watching its every sway, and listening to the melancholy
+Gregorian melodies which the air wrung out of it. This fear it
+apparently was, rather than any organic disease which was eating away
+the health of John South.
+
+As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man with
+abject obedience. “Ah, when it was quite a small tree,” he said, “and I
+was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it off with my hook to
+make a clothes-line prop with. But I put off doing it, and then I again
+thought that I would; but I forgot it, and didn’t. And at last it got
+too big, and now ’tis my enemy, and will be the death o’ me. Little did
+I think, when I let that sapling stay, that a time would come when it
+would torment me, and dash me into my grave.”
+
+“No, no,” said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly. But they thought it
+possible that it might hasten him into his grave, though in another way
+than by falling.
+
+“I tell you what,” added Winterborne, “I’ll climb up this afternoon and
+shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won’t be so heavy, and the
+wind won’t affect it so.”
+
+“She won’t allow it—a strange woman come from nobody knows where—she
+won’t have it done.”
+
+“You mean Mrs. Charmond? Oh, she doesn’t know there’s such a tree on
+her estate. Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I’ll risk that
+much.”
+
+He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook from
+the woodman’s shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower part of
+the tree, where he began lopping off—“shrouding,” as they called it at
+Hintock—the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered under his attack,
+bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having cut away the lowest
+tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, and
+attacked those at the next level. Thus he ascended with the progress of
+his work far above the top of the ladder, cutting away his perches as
+he went, and leaving nothing but a bare stem below him.
+
+The work was troublesome, for the tree was large. The afternoon wore
+on, turning dark and misty about four o’clock. From time to time Giles
+cast his eyes across towards the bedroom window of South, where, by the
+flickering fire in the chamber, he could see the old man watching him,
+sitting motionless with a hand upon each arm of the chair. Beside him
+sat Marty, also straining her eyes towards the skyey field of his
+operations.
+
+A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, and he stopped his
+chopping. He was operating on another person’s property to prolong the
+years of a lease by whose termination that person would considerably
+benefit. In that aspect of the case he doubted if he ought to go on. On
+the other hand he was working to save a man’s life, and this seemed to
+empower him to adopt arbitrary measures.
+
+The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was weighing the
+circumstances he saw coming along the road through the increasing mist
+a figure which, indistinct as it was, he knew well. It was Grace
+Melbury, on her way out from the house, probably for a short evening
+walk before dark. He arranged himself for a greeting from her, since
+she could hardly avoid passing immediately beneath the tree.
+
+But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just at that time too
+full of the words of her father to give him any encouragement. The
+years-long regard that she had had for him was not kindled by her
+return into a flame of sufficient brilliancy to make her rebellious.
+Thinking that she might not see him, he cried, “Miss Melbury, here I
+am.”
+
+She looked up again. She was near enough to see the expression of his
+face, and the nails in his soles, silver-bright with constant walking.
+But she did not reply; and dropping her glance again, went on.
+
+Winterborne’s face grew strange; he mused, and proceeded automatically
+with his work. Grace meanwhile had not gone far. She had reached a
+gate, whereon she had leaned sadly, and whispered to herself, “What
+shall I do?”
+
+A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, passing under the
+tree again on her return. Again he addressed her. “Grace,” he said,
+when she was close to the trunk, “speak to me.” She shook her head
+without stopping, and went on to a little distance, where she stood
+observing him from behind the hedge.
+
+Her coldness had been kindly meant. If it was to be done, she had said
+to herself, it should be begun at once. While she stood out of
+observation Giles seemed to recognize her meaning; with a sudden start
+he worked on, climbing higher, and cutting himself off more and more
+from all intercourse with the sublunary world. At last he had worked
+himself so high up the elm, and the mist had so thickened, that he
+could only just be discerned as a dark-gray spot on the light-gray sky:
+he would have been altogether out of notice but for the stroke of his
+billhook and the flight of a bough downward, and its crash upon the
+hedge at intervals.
+
+It was not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were best.
+She went back a third time; he did not see her now, and she lingeringly
+gazed up at his unconscious figure, loath to put an end to any kind of
+hope that might live on in him still. “Giles— Mr. Winterborne,” she
+said.
+
+He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear. “Mr. Winterborne!”
+she cried again, and this time he stopped, looked down, and replied.
+
+“My silence just now was not accident,” she said, in an unequal voice.
+“My father says it is best not to think too much of that—engagement, or
+understanding between us, that you know of. I, too, think that upon the
+whole he is right. But we are friends, you know, Giles, and almost
+relations.”
+
+“Very well,” he answered, as if without surprise, in a voice which
+barely reached down the tree. “I have nothing to say in objection—I
+cannot say anything till I’ve thought a while.”
+
+She added, with emotion in her tone, “For myself, I would have married
+you—some day—I think. But I give way, for I see it would be unwise.”
+
+He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his elbow in a
+fork, and rested his head upon his hand. Thus he remained till the fog
+and the night had completely enclosed him from her view.
+
+Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved
+onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her eyes
+wet. Had Giles, instead of remaining still, immediately come down from
+the tree to her, would she have continued in that filial acquiescent
+frame of mind which she had announced to him as final? If it be true,
+as women themselves have declared, that one of their sex is never so
+much inclined to throw in her lot with a man for good and all as five
+minutes after she has told him such a thing cannot be, the
+probabilities are that something might have been done by the appearance
+of Winterborne on the ground beside Grace. But he continued motionless
+and silent in that gloomy Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and
+she proceeded on her way.
+
+The spot seemed now to be quite deserted. The light from South’s window
+made rays on the fog, but did not reach the tree. A quarter of an hour
+passed, and all was blackness overhead. Giles had not yet come down.
+
+Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a movement was
+audible, and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly to the ground. He
+had thought the matter out, and having returned the ladder and billhook
+to their places, pursued his way homeward. He would not allow this
+incident to affect his outer conduct any more than the danger to his
+leaseholds had done, and went to bed as usual. Two simultaneous
+troubles do not always make a double trouble; and thus it came to pass
+that Giles’s practical anxiety about his houses, which would have been
+enough to keep him awake half the night at any other time, was
+displaced and not reinforced by his sentimental trouble about Grace
+Melbury. This severance was in truth more like a burial of her than a
+rupture with her; but he did not realize so much at present; even when
+he arose in the morning he felt quite moody and stern: as yet the
+second note in the gamut of such emotions, a tender regret for his
+loss, had not made itself heard.
+
+A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning to a builder
+whose works were in a town many miles off. The proud trunks were taken
+up from the silent spot which had known them through the buddings and
+sheddings of their growth for the foregoing hundred years; chained down
+like slaves to a heavy timber carriage with enormous red wheels, and
+four of the most powerful of Melbury’s horses were harnessed in front
+to draw them.
+
+The horses wore their bells that day. There were sixteen to the team,
+carried on a frame above each animal’s shoulders, and tuned to scale,
+so as to form two octaves, running from the highest note on the right
+or off-side of the leader to the lowest on the left or near-side of the
+shaft-horse. Melbury was among the last to retain horse-bells in that
+neighborhood; for, living at Little Hintock, where the lanes yet
+remained as narrow as before the days of turnpike roads, these
+sound-signals were still as useful to him and his neighbors as they had
+ever been in former times. Much backing was saved in the course of a
+year by the warning notes they cast ahead; moreover, the tones of all
+the teams in the district being known to the carters of each, they
+could tell a long way off on a dark night whether they were about to
+encounter friends or strangers.
+
+The fog of the previous evening still lingered so heavily over the
+woods that the morning could not penetrate the trees till long after
+its time. The load being a ponderous one, the lane crooked, and the air
+so thick, Winterborne set out, as he often did, to accompany the team
+as far as the corner, where it would turn into a wider road.
+
+So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the roadside cottages by
+the weight of their progress, the sixteen bells chiming harmoniously
+over all, till they had risen out of the valley and were descending
+towards the more open route, the sparks rising from their creaking skid
+and nearly setting fire to the dead leaves alongside.
+
+Then occurred one of the very incidents against which the bells were an
+endeavor to guard. Suddenly there beamed into their eyes, quite close
+to them, the two lamps of a carriage, shorn of rays by the fog. Its
+approach had been quite unheard, by reason of their own noise. The
+carriage was a covered one, while behind it could be discerned another
+vehicle laden with luggage.
+
+Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the coachman
+telling the carter that he must turn back. The carter declared that
+this was impossible.
+
+“You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses,” said the coachman.
+
+“It is much easier for you to turn than for us,” said Winterborne.
+“We’ve five tons of timber on these wheels if we’ve an ounce.”
+
+“But I’ve another carriage with luggage at my back.”
+
+Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument. “But even with
+that,” he said, “you can back better than we. And you ought to, for you
+could hear our bells half a mile off.”
+
+“And you could see our lights.”
+
+“We couldn’t, because of the fog.”
+
+“Well, our time’s precious,” said the coachman, haughtily. “You are
+only going to some trumpery little village or other in the
+neighborhood, while we are going straight to Italy.”
+
+“Driving all the way, I suppose,” said Winterborne, sarcastically.
+
+The argument continued in these terms till a voice from the interior of
+the carriage inquired what was the matter. It was a lady’s.
+
+She was briefly informed of the timber people’s obstinacy; and then
+Giles could hear her telling the footman to direct the timber people to
+turn their horses’ heads.
+
+The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to say
+that he begged the lady’s pardon, but that he could not do as she
+requested; that though he would not assert it to be impossible, it was
+impossible by comparison with the slight difficulty to her party to
+back their light carriages. As fate would have it, the incident with
+Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles less gentle than he might
+otherwise have shown himself, his confidence in the sex being rudely
+shaken.
+
+In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled to
+back till they reached one of the sidings or turnouts constructed in
+the bank for the purpose. Then the team came on ponderously, and the
+clanging of its sixteen bells as it passed the discomfited carriages,
+tilted up against the bank, lent a particularly triumphant tone to the
+team’s progress—a tone which, in point of fact, did not at all attach
+to its conductor’s feelings.
+
+Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got past the yet
+stationary carriages he heard a soft voice say, “Who is that rude man?
+Not Melbury?” The sex of the speaker was so prominent in the voice that
+Winterborne felt a pang of regret.
+
+“No, ma’am. A younger man, in a smaller way of business in Little
+Hintock. Winterborne is his name.”
+
+Thus they parted company. “Why, Mr. Winterborne,” said the wagoner,
+when they were out of hearing, “that was She—Mrs. Charmond! Who’d ha’
+thought it? What in the world can a woman that does nothing be
+cock-watching out here at this time o’ day for? Oh, going to Italy—yes
+to be sure, I heard she was going abroad, she can’t endure the winter
+here.”
+
+Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew Mr.
+Melbury, in his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first to blame
+him if it became known. But saying no more, he accompanied the load to
+the end of the lane, and then turned back with an intention to call at
+South’s to learn the result of the experiment of the preceding evening.
+
+It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who now
+rose soon enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the
+unwontedness of the hour, had been commissioned by him to make the same
+inquiry at South’s. Marty had been standing at the door when Miss
+Melbury arrived. Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs. Charmond’s
+carriages, released from the obstruction up the lane, came bowling
+along, and the two girls turned to regard the spectacle.
+
+Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for them
+to discern her outline between the carriage windows. A noticeable
+feature in her _tournure_ was a magnificent mass of braided locks.
+
+“How well she looks this morning!” said Grace, forgetting Mrs.
+Charmond’s slight in her generous admiration. “Her hair so becomes her
+worn that way. I have never seen any more beautiful!”
+
+“Nor have I, miss,” said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her
+crown.
+
+Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were out of
+sight. She then learned of Marty that South was no better. Before she
+had come away Winterborne approached the house, but seeing that one of
+the two girls standing on the door-step was Grace, he suddenly turned
+back again and sought the shelter of his own home till she should have
+gone away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne’s mind
+the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from
+her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two
+Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of
+South’s death. He marvelled what people could have been thinking about
+in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more,
+what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village
+people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases. But having
+naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done
+his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with his
+father’s negligence in not insuring South’s life.
+
+After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs,
+turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between
+the mattress and the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had
+remained there unopened ever since his father’s death. It was the usual
+hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents. Winterborne
+sat down on the bed and looked them over. They were ordinary leases for
+three lives, which a member of the South family, some fifty years
+before this time, had accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of
+certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration of having the
+dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come into his
+father’s possession chiefly through his mother, who was a South.
+
+Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which
+Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the
+handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature
+the landholder’s. It was to the effect that at any time before the last
+of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or his
+representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and his
+son’s life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum;
+the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne’s consent
+to demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at
+an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way.
+
+The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles’s father had not
+taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son’s lives
+it was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alone had
+hindered him in the execution of his project, as it surely was, the
+elder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealing
+with house property in his small way.
+
+Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt that
+Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own life
+was concerned. This possibility cheered him much, for by those houses
+hung many things. Melbury’s doubt of the young man’s fitness to be the
+husband of Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness of
+his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to the
+business at once, the fine for renewal being a sum that he could easily
+muster. His scheme, however, could not be carried out in a day; and
+meanwhile he would run up to South’s, as he had intended to do, to
+learn the result of the experiment with the tree.
+
+Marty met him at the door. “Well, Marty,” he said; and was surprised to
+read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had imagined.
+
+“I am sorry for your labor,” she said. “It is all lost. He says the
+tree seems taller than ever.”
+
+Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did seem, the
+gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before.
+
+“It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it this
+morning,” she added. “He declares it will come down upon us and cleave
+us, like ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.’”
+
+“Well; can I do anything else?” asked he.
+
+“The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down.”
+
+“Oh—you’ve had the doctor?”
+
+“I didn’t send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that
+father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense.”
+
+“That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. We
+mustn’t cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose.”
+
+He went up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunt tree
+as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily the tree waved
+afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fog away,
+and his eyes turned with its wavings.
+
+They heard footsteps—a man’s, but of a lighter type than usual. “There
+is Doctor Fitzpiers again,” she said, and descended. Presently his
+tread was heard on the naked stairs.
+
+Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or less
+wont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room is that
+of a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient with that
+preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has wellnigh
+forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances since he
+dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the same apartment.
+He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was already a little acquainted,
+recalled the case to his thoughts, and went leisurely on to where South
+sat.
+
+Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His eyes
+were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy or
+of susceptivity—it was difficult to say which; it might have been a
+little of both. That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the
+surface of things and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whether
+his apparent depth of vision was real, or only an artistic accident of
+his corporeal moulding, nothing but his deeds could reveal.
+
+His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale than
+flushed; his nose—if a sketch of his features be _de rigueur_ for a
+person of his pretensions—was artistically beautiful enough to have
+been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence
+devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the
+double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness
+in its close. Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien,
+or his reflective manner, or the instinct towards profound things which
+was said to possess him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather
+than the dandy or macaroni—an effect which was helped by the absence of
+trinkets or other trivialities from his attire, though this was more
+finished and up to date than is usually the case among rural
+practitioners.
+
+Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little about
+him by report, might have said that he seemed likely to err rather in
+the possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a dreamy ’ist of
+some sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind of ’ism. However
+this may be, it will be seen that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare
+kind of gentleman and doctor to have descended, as from the clouds,
+upon Little Hintock.
+
+“This is an extraordinary case,” he said at last to Winterborne, after
+examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and learning that the
+craze about the elm was stronger than ever. “Come down-stairs, and I’ll
+tell you what I think.”
+
+They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, “The tree must be
+cut down, or I won’t answer for his life.”
+
+“’Tis Mrs. Charmond’s tree, and I suppose we must get permission?” said
+Giles. “If so, as she is gone away, I must speak to her agent.”
+
+“Oh—never mind whose tree it is—what’s a tree beside a life! Cut it
+down. I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet, but I am
+disposed to risk that much with her.”
+
+“’Tis timber,” rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would have been
+had not his own interests stood so closely involved. “They’ll never
+fell a stick about here without it being marked first, either by her or
+the agent.”
+
+“Then we’ll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long has he complained
+of the tree?” asked the doctor of Marty.
+
+“Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt him like an evil
+spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got human
+sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him, and
+keep him as its slave. Others have been like it afore in Hintock.”
+
+They could hear South’s voice up-stairs “Oh, he’s rocking this way; he
+must come! And then my poor life, that’s worth houses upon houses, will
+be squashed out o’ me. Oh! oh!”
+
+“That’s how he goes on,” she added. “And he’ll never look anywhere else
+but out of the window, and scarcely have the curtains drawn.”
+
+“Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond,” said Mr. Fitzpiers. “The
+best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark, or early
+in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn’t see it fall, for
+that would terrify him worse than ever. Keep the blind down till I
+come, and then I’ll assure him, and show him that his trouble is over.”
+
+The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening. When it was
+dusk, and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple of woodmen
+to bring a crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree was soon nearly
+off at its base. He would not fell it completely then, on account of
+the possible crash, but next morning, before South was awake, they went
+and lowered it cautiously, in a direction away from the cottage. It was
+a business difficult to do quite silently; but it was done at last, and
+the elm of the same birth-year as the woodman’s lay stretched upon the
+ground. The weakest idler that passed could now set foot on marks
+formerly made in the upper forks by the shoes of adventurous climbers
+only; once inaccessible nests could be examined microscopically; and on
+swaying extremities where birds alone had perched, the by-standers sat
+down.
+
+As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne
+entered the house with him. Marty said that her father was wrapped up
+and ready, as usual, to be put into his chair. They ascended the
+stairs, and soon seated him. He began at once to complain of the tree,
+and the danger to his life and Winterborne’s house-property in
+consequence.
+
+The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed
+cotton curtains. “’Tis gone, see,” said Mr. Fitzpiers.
+
+As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the
+branched column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless, his
+eyes rose from their hollows till the whites showed all round; he fell
+back, and a bluish whiteness overspread him.
+
+Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as he came a little
+out of his fit, he gasped, “Oh, it is gone!—where?—where?”
+
+His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They were
+thunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did all they could.
+Nothing seemed to avail. Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, but
+uselessly. He lingered through the day, and died that evening as the
+sun went down.
+
+“D—d if my remedy hasn’t killed him!” murmured the doctor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and walked
+thoughtfully about the premises. On South’s own account he was
+genuinely sorry; and on Winterborne’s he was the more grieved in that
+this catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat harsh dismissal
+of Giles as the betrothed of his daughter.
+
+He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting on
+Giles a second trouble when the needful one inflicted by himself was
+all that the proper order of events demanded. “I told Giles’s father
+when he came into those houses not to spend too much money on lifehold
+property held neither for his own life nor his son’s,” he exclaimed.
+“But he wouldn’t listen to me. And now Giles has to suffer for it.”
+
+“Poor Giles!” murmured Grace.
+
+“Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable. It is almost
+as if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your escape, though I
+am sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not dismissed him already, we
+could hardly have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now. So I say,
+be thankful. I’ll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a pretender
+to the position of my son-in law, that can never be thought of more.”
+
+And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor
+Winterborne’s suit had been reduced was touching Grace’s heart to a
+warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years concerning
+him.
+
+He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house which
+had ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal survey of
+affairs. The pendulum of the clock bumped every now and then against
+one side of the case in which it swung, as the muffled drum to his
+worldly march. Looking out of the window he could perceive that a
+paralysis had come over Creedle’s occupation of manuring the garden,
+owing, obviously, to a conviction that they might not be living there
+long enough to profit by next season’s crop.
+
+He looked at the leases again and the letter attached. There was no
+doubt that he had lost his houses by an accident which might easily
+have been circumvented if he had known the true conditions of his
+holding. The time for performance had now lapsed in strict law; but
+might not the intention be considered by the landholder when she became
+aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to retain the holdings
+for the term of his life be conceded?
+
+His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the legal
+reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the upshot of the
+matter amounted to this, that it depended upon the mere caprice—good or
+ill—of the woman he had met the day before in such an unfortunate way,
+whether he was to possess his houses for life or no.
+
+While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and Melbury
+appeared, looking very sorry for his position. Winterborne welcomed him
+by a word and a look, and went on with his examination of the
+parchments. His visitor sat down.
+
+“Giles,” he said, “this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it. What
+are you going to do?”
+
+Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he had
+missed availing himself of his chance of renewal.
+
+“What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, the best thing you
+can do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw yourself upon
+her generosity.”
+
+“I would rather not,” murmured Giles.
+
+“But you must,” said Melbury.
+
+In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be
+persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to
+Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded to
+her.
+
+Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as almost
+to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home; and
+Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the
+divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock population. By this time
+all the villagers knew of the circumstances, and being wellnigh like
+one family, a keen interest was the result all round.
+
+Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. Had any of them
+looked in upon her during those moonlight nights which preceded the
+burial of her father, they would have seen the girl absolutely alone in
+the house with the dead man. Her own chamber being nearest the stairs,
+the coffin had been placed there for convenience; and at a certain hour
+of the night, when the moon arrived opposite the window, its beams
+streamed across the still profile of South, sublimed by the august
+presence of death, and onward a few feet farther upon the face of his
+daughter, lying in her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost
+as dignified as that of her companion—the repose of a guileless soul
+that had nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she
+did not overvalue.
+
+South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a
+reply from Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its tenor;
+but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her carriage,
+when, if ever he had heard an affronted tone on a woman’s lips, he had
+heard it on hers.
+
+The postman’s time for passing was just after Melbury’s men had
+assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his
+own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane
+every morning and meet the post-man at the end of one of the green
+rides through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch of which his
+laden figure could be seen a long way off. Grace also was very anxious;
+more anxious than her father; more, perhaps, than Winterborne himself.
+This anxiety led her into the spar-house on some pretext or other
+almost every morning while they were awaiting the reply.
+
+Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much
+interested, and not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been
+informed by an authority of what he had himself conjectured, that if
+the tree had been allowed to stand, the old man would have gone on
+complaining, but might have lived for twenty years.
+
+Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and
+looked up its long straight slope through the wet grays of winter dawn.
+But though the postman’s bowed figure loomed in view pretty regularly,
+he brought nothing for Giles. On the twelfth day the man of missives,
+while yet in the extreme distance, held up his hand, and Winterborne
+saw a letter in it. He took it into the spar-house before he broke the
+seal, and those who were there gathered round him while he read, Grace
+looking in at the door.
+
+The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at
+Sherton. Winterborne glanced it over and looked up.
+
+“It’s all over,” he said.
+
+“Ah!” said they altogether.
+
+“Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason for
+disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she
+contemplates pulling the houses down,” he said, quietly.
+
+“Only think of that!” said several.
+
+Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, “Then let
+her pull ’em down, and be d—d to her!”
+
+Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, “Ah, ’twas
+that sperrit that lost ’em for ye, maister!”
+
+Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever they
+were, kept them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt that, up
+to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace
+in the event of this negotiation turning out a success. Not being aware
+of the fact that her father could have settled upon her a fortune
+sufficient to enable both to live in comfort, he deemed it now an
+absurdity to dream any longer of such a vanity as making her his wife,
+and sank into silence forthwith.
+
+Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it is
+apt to express more than talkativeness when he dwells among friends.
+The countryman who is obliged to judge the time of day from changes in
+external nature sees a thousand successive tints and traits in the
+landscape which are never discerned by him who hears the regular chime
+of a clock, because they are never in request. In like manner do we use
+our eyes on our taciturn comrade. The infinitesimal movement of muscle,
+curve, hair, and wrinkle, which when accompanied by a voice goes
+unregarded, is watched and translated in the lack of it, till virtually
+the whole surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the reserved
+one’s moods and meanings.
+
+This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his neighbors
+after his stroke of ill-luck. He held his tongue; and they observed
+him, and knew that he was discomposed.
+
+Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than any
+one else, except his daughter. Had Winterborne been going on in the old
+fashion, Grace’s father could have alluded to his disapproval of the
+alliance every day with the greatest frankness; but to speak any
+further on the subject he could not find it in his heart to do now. He
+hoped that Giles would of his own accord make some final announcement
+that he entirely withdrew his pretensions to Grace, and so get the
+thing past and done with. For though Giles had in a measure acquiesced
+in the wish of her family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose
+to work upon Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the young man
+approaching along the road one day, he kept friendliness and frigidity
+exactly balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles’s manner
+was presumptive or not.
+
+His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims. “I am glad to
+meet ye, Mr. Melbury,” he said, in a low voice, whose quality he
+endeavored to make as practical as possible. “I am afraid I shall not
+be able to keep that mare I bought, and as I don’t care to sell her, I
+should like—if you don’t object—to give her to Miss Melbury. The horse
+is very quiet, and would be quite safe for her.”
+
+Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. “You sha’n’t hurt your pocket
+like that on our account, Giles. Grace shall have the horse, but I’ll
+pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you may have been put to
+for her keep.”
+
+He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged. They
+were now opposite Melbury’s house, and the timber-merchant pressed
+Winterborne to enter, Grace being out of the way.
+
+“Pull round the settle, Giles,” said the timber-merchant, as soon as
+they were within. “I should like to have a serious talk with you.”
+
+Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a
+friendly way. He declared that he did not like to be hard on a man when
+he was in difficulty; but he really did not see how Winterborne could
+marry his daughter now, without even a house to take her to.
+
+Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation. But from a
+momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace’s mind from her own
+lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. He accordingly
+departed somewhat abruptly, and went home to consider whether he would
+seek to bring about a meeting with her.
+
+In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he
+heard a scraping on the wall outside his house. The boughs of a monthly
+rose which grew there made such a noise sometimes, but as no wind was
+stirring he knew that it could not be the rose-tree. He took up the
+candle and went out. Nobody was near. As he turned, the light flickered
+on the whitewashed rough case of the front, and he saw words written
+thereon in charcoal, which he read as follows:
+
+“O Giles, you’ve lost your dwelling-place,
+And therefore, Giles, you’ll lose your Grace.”
+
+
+Giles went in-doors. He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of those
+lines, but he could not be sure. What suddenly filled his heart far
+more than curiosity about their authorship was a terrible belief that
+they were turning out to be true, try to see Grace as he might. They
+decided the question for him. He sat down and wrote a formal note to
+Melbury, in which he briefly stated that he was placed in such a
+position as to make him share to the full Melbury’s view of his own and
+his daughter’s promise, made some years before; to wish that it should
+be considered as cancelled, and they themselves quite released from any
+obligation on account of it.
+
+Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to get
+it out of his hands and have done with it; to which end he went off to
+Melbury’s at once. It was now so late that the family had all retired;
+he crept up to the house, thrust the note under the door, and stole
+away as silently as he had come.
+
+Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when he had
+read the letter his relief was great. “Very honorable of Giles, very
+honorable,” he kept saying to himself. “I shall not forget him. Now to
+keep her up to her own true level.”
+
+It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning,
+passing through the door and gate while her father was in the
+spar-house. To go in her customary direction she could not avoid
+passing Winterborne’s house. The morning sun was shining flat upon its
+white surface, and the words, which still remained, were immediately
+visible to her. She read them. Her face flushed to crimson. She could
+see Giles and Creedle talking together at the back; the charred
+spar-gad with which the lines had been written lay on the ground
+beneath the wall. Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne would observe
+her action, she quickly went up to the wall, rubbed out “lose” and
+inserted “keep” in its stead. Then she made the best of her way home
+without looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now if he
+chose.
+
+There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming to
+more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than ever she
+had done while he was her promised lover; that since his misfortune
+those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with
+her later experiences of life, had become obscured by the generous
+revival of an old romantic attachment to him. Though mentally trained
+and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared with her youthful
+time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to herself,
+have declined Winterborne without much discontent or unhappiness. Her
+feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall
+had thus quickened her to an unusual rashness.
+
+Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently. When her
+step-mother had left the room she said to her father, “I have made up
+my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the
+present at any rate, till I can see further what I ought to do.”
+
+Melbury looked much surprised.
+
+“Nonsense,” he said, sharply. “You don’t know what you are talking
+about. Look here.”
+
+He handed across to her the letter received from Giles.
+
+She read it, and said no more. Could he have seen her write on the
+wall? She did not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it this way, and
+there was nothing to do but to acquiesce.
+
+It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously enough,
+had _not_ perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the tree from the
+front of South’s late dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her door-way,
+a slim figure in meagre black, almost without womanly contours as yet.
+He went up to her and said, “Marty, why did you write that on my wall
+last night? It _was_ you, you know.”
+
+“Because it was the truth. I didn’t mean to let it stay, Mr.
+Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I was
+obliged to run off.”
+
+“Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your
+predictions can’t be worth much.”
+
+“I have not altered it.”
+
+“But you have.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“It is altered. Go and see.”
+
+She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he
+would _keep_ his Grace. Marty came back surprised.
+
+“Well, I never,” she said. “Who can have made such nonsense of it?”
+
+“Who, indeed?” said he.
+
+“I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone.”
+
+“You’d no business to rub it out. I didn’t tell you to. I meant to let
+it stay a little longer.”
+
+“Some idle boy did it, no doubt,” she murmured.
+
+As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was
+unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from
+his mind.
+
+From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne,
+though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the
+background of human life and action thereabout—a feat not particularly
+difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a
+lost prestige. Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no
+further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly
+launched was stranded and lost.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less
+pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than the
+timber-merchant’s. The latter had, without doubt, been once the
+manorial residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain of Little
+Hintock, of which the boundaries were now lost by its absorption with
+others of its kind into the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond. Though
+the Melburys themselves were unaware of the fact, there was every
+reason to believe—at least so the parson said—that the owners of that
+little manor had been Melbury’s own ancestors, the family name
+occurring in numerous documents relating to transfers of land about the
+time of the civil wars.
+
+Mr. Fitzpiers’s dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-like, and
+comparatively modern. It had been occupied, and was in part occupied
+still, by a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the surgeon’s arrival
+in quest of a home, had accommodated him by receding from their front
+rooms into the kitchen quarter, whence they administered to his wants,
+and emerged at regular intervals to receive from him a not unwelcome
+addition to their income.
+
+The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement that
+they might have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time of
+William and Mary. In a low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, was a door
+over which the hedge formed an arch, and from the inside of the door a
+straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran up the slope of the
+garden to the porch, which was exactly in the middle of the house
+front, with two windows on each side. Right and left of the path were
+first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next of currant; next of raspberry;
+next of strawberry; next of old-fashioned flowers; at the corners
+opposite the porch being spheres of box resembling a pair of school
+globes. Over the roof of the house could be seen the orchard, on yet
+higher ground, and behind the orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to
+the crest of the hill.
+
+Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor window was a
+swing-gate leading into a field, across which there ran a footpath. The
+swing-gate had just been repainted, and on one fine afternoon, before
+the paint was dry, and while gnats were still dying thereon, the
+surgeon was standing in his sitting-room abstractedly looking out at
+the different pedestrians who passed and repassed along that route.
+Being of a philosophical stamp, he perceived that the character of each
+of these travellers exhibited itself in a somewhat amusing manner by
+his or her method of handling the gate.
+
+As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the gate a
+kick and passed through. The women were more contrasting. To them the
+sticky wood-work was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a treachery, as
+the case might be.
+
+The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts tucked
+up and her hair uncombed. She grasped the gate without looking, giving
+it a supplementary push with her shoulder, when the white imprint drew
+from her an exclamation in language not too refined. She went to the
+green bank, sat down and rubbed herself in the grass, cursing the
+while.
+
+“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the doctor.
+
+The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the surgeon
+recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman South.
+Moreover, a black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning unpleasantly
+reminded him that he had ordered the felling of a tree which had caused
+her parent’s death and Winterborne’s losses. She walked and thought,
+and not recklessly; but her preoccupation led her to grasp
+unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it with her arm.
+Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled that new black frock,
+poor as it was, for it was probably her only one. She looked at her
+hand and arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off the disfigurement
+with an almost unmoved face, and as if without abandoning her original
+thoughts. Thus she went on her way.
+
+Then there came over the green quite a different sort of personage. She
+walked as delicately as if she had been bred in town, and as firmly as
+if she had been bred in the country; she seemed one who dimly knew her
+appearance to be attractive, but who retained some of the charm of
+being ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensiveness.
+She approached the gate. To let such a creature touch it even with a
+tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to
+tragical self-destruction. He jumped up and looked for his hat, but was
+unable to find the right one; glancing again out of the window he saw
+that he was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the gate,
+picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed open the
+obstacle without touching it at all.
+
+He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight, recognizing
+her as the very young lady whom he had seen once before and been unable
+to identify. Whose could that emotional face be? All the others he had
+seen in Hintock as yet oppressed him with their crude rusticity; the
+contrast offered by this suggested that she hailed from elsewhere.
+
+Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of
+seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and considered
+that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot
+she could not have come a very long distance. She must be somebody
+staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard
+so much—at any rate an inmate, and this probability was sufficient to
+set a mild radiance in the surgeon’s somewhat dull sky.
+
+Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be
+that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man,
+except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the
+discovery of principles to their application. The young lady remained
+in his thoughts. He might have followed her; but he was not
+constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pursuit. However,
+when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he insensibly took the
+direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace had been
+walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that
+day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be
+seen, returning by another route.
+
+Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the
+manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The
+mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond
+had gone away and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a
+vague disappointment that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom
+he had heard so much; and without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass
+from which the spirit had flown, he bent his steps homeward.
+
+Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient
+about two miles distant. Like the majority of young practitioners in
+his position he was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven
+his rounds by a servant in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a
+mirror; his way of getting about was by means of a gig which he drove
+himself, hitching the rein of the horse to the gate post, shutter hook,
+or garden paling of the domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to
+little boys to hold the animal during his stay—pennies which were well
+earned when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind
+that wore out the patience of the little boys.
+
+On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers
+had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent
+perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a
+particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that event should occur in
+the night. The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated the
+solitary midnight woodland. He was not altogether skilful with the
+reins, and it often occurred to his mind that if in some remote depths
+of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his being alone
+might be the death of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up any
+countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of
+treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the
+journey, and his convenient assistance in opening gates.
+
+The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in
+question when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of
+Winterborne, walking leisurely along, as if he had no object in life.
+Winterborne was a better class of companion than the doctor usually
+could get, and he at once pulled up and asked him if he would like a
+drive through the wood that fine night.
+
+Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor’s friendliness, but said
+that he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. Fitzpiers.
+
+They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network upon the
+stars, all the trees of a species alike in one respect, and no two of
+them alike in another. Looking up as they passed under a horizontal
+bough they sometimes saw objects like large tadpoles lodged
+diametrically across it, which Giles explained to be pheasants there at
+roost; and they sometimes heard the report of a gun, which reminded him
+that others knew what those tadpole shapes represented as well as he.
+
+Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time:
+
+“Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood—a very attractive
+girl—with a little white boa round her neck, and white fur round her
+gloves?”
+
+Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught
+the doctor peering at, was represented by these accessories. With a
+wary grimness, partly in his character, partly induced by the
+circumstances, he evaded an answer by saying, “I saw a young lady
+talking to Mrs. Charmond the other day; perhaps it was she.”
+
+Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking
+over the hedge. “It might have been,” he said. “She is quite a
+gentlewoman—the one I mean. She cannot be a permanent resident in
+Hintock or I should have seen her before. Nor does she look like one.”
+
+“She is not staying at Hintock House?”
+
+“No; it is closed.”
+
+“Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or farmhouses?”
+
+“Oh no—you mistake. She was a different sort of girl altogether.” As
+Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him accordingly, and apostrophized
+the night in continuation:
+
+“She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,
+A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
+One impulse of her being—in her lightness
+Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,
+Which wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue,
+To nourish some far desert: she did seem
+Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
+Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
+Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life’s dark stream.”
+
+
+The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he
+divined that they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his
+lost love’s charms upon Fitzpiers.
+
+“You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir,” he said, with a
+sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention
+Grace by name.
+
+“Oh no—I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I do by
+the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid like a
+Leyden-jar with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to
+disperse it. Human love is a subjective thing—the essence itself of
+man, as that great thinker Spinoza the philosopher says—_ipsa hominis
+essentia_—it is joy accompanied by an idea which we project against any
+suitable object in the line of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is
+projected against an oak, ash, or elm tree indifferently. So that if
+any other young lady had appeared instead of the one who did appear, I
+should have felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted
+precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I
+saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!”
+
+“Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, whether or
+no,” said Winterborne.
+
+“You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with something in
+my own head, and no thing in itself outside it at all.”
+
+“Is it part of a country doctor’s duties to learn that view of things,
+may I ask, sir?” said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic εἰρωνεία with
+such well-assumed simplicity that Fitzpiers answered, readily,
+
+“Oh no. The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in places
+like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of bitter stuff for
+this and that old woman—the bitterer the better—compounded from a few
+simple stereotyped prescriptions; occasional attendance at births,
+where mere presence is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong are the
+people; and a lance for an abscess now and then. Investigation and
+experiment cannot be carried on without more appliances than one has
+here—though I have attempted it a little.”
+
+Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been struck
+with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers’s manner and
+Grace’s, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject
+of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it
+was foreign to him.
+
+Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation to
+Grace till they were on their way back. They had stopped at a way-side
+inn for a glass of brandy and cider hot, and when they were again in
+motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the
+subject by saying, “I should like very much to know who that young lady
+was.”
+
+“What difference can it make, if she’s only the tree your rainbow falls
+on?”
+
+“Ha! ha! True.”
+
+“You have no wife, sir?”
+
+“I have no wife, and no idea of one. I hope to do better things than
+marry and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is well for a medical man
+to be married, and sometimes, begad, ’twould be pleasant enough in this
+place, with the wind roaring round the house, and the rain and the
+boughs beating against it. I hear that you lost your life-holds by the
+death of South?”
+
+“I did. I lost in more ways than one.”
+
+They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it could be
+called such where three-quarters of the road-side consisted of copse
+and orchard. One of the first houses to be passed was Melbury’s. A
+light was shining from a bedroom window facing lengthwise of the lane.
+Winterborne glanced at it, and saw what was coming. He had withheld an
+answer to the doctor’s inquiry to hinder his knowledge of Grace; but,
+as he thought to himself, “who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who
+hath bound the waters in a garment?” he could not hinder what was
+doomed to arrive, and might just as well have been outspoken. As they
+came up to the house, Grace’s figure was distinctly visible, drawing
+the two white curtains together which were used here instead of blinds.
+
+“Why, there she is!” said Fitzpiers. “How does she come there?”
+
+“In the most natural way in the world. It is her home. Mr. Melbury is
+her father.”
+
+“Oh, indeed—indeed—indeed! How comes he to have a daughter of that
+stamp?”
+
+Winterborne laughed coldly. “Won’t money do anything,” he said, “if
+you’ve promising material to work upon? Why shouldn’t a Hintock girl,
+taken early from home, and put under proper instruction, become as
+finished as any other young lady, if she’s got brains and good looks to
+begin with?”
+
+“No reason at all why she shouldn’t,” murmured the surgeon, with
+reflective disappointment. “Only I didn’t anticipate quite that kind of
+origin for her.”
+
+“And you think an inch or two less of her now.” There was a little
+tremor in Winterborne’s voice as he spoke.
+
+“Well,” said the doctor, with recovered warmth, “I am not so sure that
+I think less of her. At first it was a sort of blow; but, dammy! I’ll
+stick up for her. She’s charming, every inch of her!”
+
+“So she is,” said Winterborne, “but not to me.”
+
+From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander’s, Dr.
+Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of some
+haughtiness in her bearing towards him, and had, on that account,
+withheld her name. The supposition did not tend to diminish his
+admiration for her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Grace’s exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the
+window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in the
+house that day—nothing less than the illness of Grammer Oliver, a woman
+who had never till now lain down for such a reason in her life. Like
+others to whom unbroken years of health has made the idea of keeping
+their bed almost as repugnant as death itself, she had continued on
+foot till she literally fell on the floor; and though she had, as yet,
+been scarcely a day off duty, she had sickened into quite a different
+personage from the independent Grammer of the yard and spar-house. Ill
+as she was, on one point she was firm. On no account would she see a
+doctor; in other words, Fitzpiers.
+
+The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but the old
+woman’s. On the girl’s way to bed she had received a message from
+Grammer, to the effect that she would much like to speak to her that
+night.
+
+Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, so
+that the profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen shadow
+upon the whitened wall, her large head being still further magnified by
+an enormous turban, which was, really, her petticoat wound in a wreath
+round her temples. Grace put the room a little in order, and
+approaching the sick woman, said, “I am come, Grammer, as you wish. Do
+let us send for the doctor before it gets later.”
+
+“I will not have him,” said Grammer Oliver, decisively.
+
+“Then somebody to sit up with you.”
+
+“Can’t abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because ’ch have
+something on my mind. Dear Miss Grace, _I took that money of the
+doctor, after all!_”
+
+“What money?”
+
+“The ten pounds.”
+
+Grace did not quite understand.
+
+“The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I’ve a large brain.
+I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling concerned about it
+at all. I have not liked to tell ye that it was really settled with
+him, because you showed such horror at the notion. Well, having thought
+it over more at length, I wish I hadn’t done it; and it weighs upon my
+mind. John South’s death of fear about the tree makes me think that I
+shall die of this....’Ch have been going to ask him again to let me
+off, but I hadn’t the face.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I’ve spent some of the money—more’n two pounds o’t. It do wherrit me
+terribly; and I shall die o’ the thought of that paper I signed with my
+holy cross, as South died of his trouble.”
+
+“If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I’m sure, and think no more
+of it.”
+
+“‘Ch have done it once already, miss. But he laughed cruel like. ‘Yours
+is such a fine brain, Grammer,’ ’er said, ‘that science couldn’t afford
+to lose you. Besides, you’ve taken my money.’...Don’t let your father
+know of this, please, on no account whatever!”
+
+“No, no. I will let you have the money to return to him.”
+
+Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. “Even if I should
+be well enough to take it to him, he won’t like it. Though why he
+should so particular want to look into the works of a poor old woman’s
+head-piece like mine when there’s so many other folks about, I don’t
+know. I know how he’ll answer me: ‘A lonely person like you, Grammer,’
+er woll say. ‘What difference is it to you what becomes of ye when the
+breath’s out of your body?’ Oh, it do trouble me! If you only knew how
+he do chevy me round the chimmer in my dreams, you’d pity me. How I
+could do it I can’t think! But ’ch was always so rackless!...If I only
+had anybody to plead for me!”
+
+“Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure.”
+
+“Ay; but he wouldn’t hearken to she! It wants a younger face than hers
+to work upon such as he.”
+
+Grace started with comprehension. “You don’t think he would do it for
+me?” she said.
+
+“Oh, wouldn’t he!”
+
+“I couldn’t go to him, Grammer, on any account. I don’t know him at
+all.”
+
+“Ah, if I were a young lady,” said the artful Grammer, “and could save
+a poor old woman’s skellington from a heathen doctor instead of a
+Christian grave, I would do it, and be glad to. But nobody will do
+anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out of the way.”
+
+“You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that. But you are ill, I
+know, and that’s why you speak so. Now believe me, you are not going to
+die yet. Remember you told me yourself that you meant to keep him
+waiting many a year.”
+
+“Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in sickness
+one’s gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed small looks large;
+and the grim far-off seems near.”
+
+Grace’s eyes had tears in them. “I don’t like to go to him on such an
+errand, Grammer,” she said, brokenly. “But I will, to ease your mind.”
+
+It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next morning
+for the undertaking. She was all the more indisposed to the journey by
+reason of Grammer’s allusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr.
+Fitzpiers; and hence she most illogically did that which, had the
+doctor never seen her, would have operated to stultify the sole motive
+of her journey; that is to say, she put on a woollen veil, which hid
+all her face except an occasional spark of her eyes.
+
+Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and grewsome
+proceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver’s own desire, led Grace to take
+every precaution against being discovered. She went out by the garden
+door as the safest way, all the household having occupations at the
+other side. The morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthily
+opened it. The battle between frost and thaw was continuing in mid-air:
+the trees dripped on the garden-plots, where no vegetables would grow
+for the dripping, though they were planted year after year with that
+curious mechanical regularity of country people in the face of
+hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad gravel terrace was
+swamped; and Grace stood irresolute. Then she thought of poor Grammer,
+and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel in hand, and
+the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South’s ending in the
+same way; thereupon she stepped out into the drizzle.
+
+The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver’s account of the compact
+she had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace’s conception of
+Fitzpiers. She knew that he was a young man; but her single object in
+seeking an interview with him put all considerations of his age and
+social aspect from her mind. Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver’s
+shoes, he was simply a remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would not
+have mercy, and would have sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, she
+would have preferred to avoid knowing. But since, in such a small
+village, it was improbable that any long time could pass without their
+meeting, there was not much to deplore in her having to meet him now.
+
+But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury’s view of the doctor as a
+merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in
+accordance with fact. The real Dr. Fitzpiers was a man of too many
+hobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in the
+profession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wide practice in the
+rural district he had marked out as his field of survey for the
+present. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to pass in a
+grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual
+heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month
+he would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the
+Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature
+and metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such
+studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn with
+the rest, and it had been in a month of anatomical ardor without the
+possibility of a subject that he had proposed to Grammer Oliver the
+terms she had mentioned to her mistress.
+
+As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with Winterborne,
+he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest; perhaps
+his keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realm
+more to his taste than any other. Though his aims were desultory,
+Fitzpiers’s mental constitution was not without its admirable side; a
+keen inquirer he honestly was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp,
+visible so far through the trees of Hintock, lighted rank literatures
+of emotion and passion as often as, or oftener than, the books and
+_matériel_ of science.
+
+But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the loneliness
+of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature.
+Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is
+tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given certain
+conditions, but these are not the conditions which attach to the life
+of a professional man who drops down into such a place by mere
+accident. They were present to the lives of Winterborne, Melbury, and
+Grace; but not to the doctor’s. They are old association—an almost
+exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance with every object,
+animate and inanimate, within the observer’s horizon. He must know all
+about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have
+traversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose
+creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands
+planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses
+and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that
+particular brake; what domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or
+disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, the
+street, or on the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur, salubrity,
+convenience; but if it lack memories it will ultimately pall upon him
+who settles there without opportunity of intercourse with his kind.
+
+In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal friend,
+till he throws himself into the arms of any impostor who chooses to
+wear that title on his face. A young man may dream of an ideal friend
+likewise, but some humor of the blood will probably lead him to think
+rather of an ideal mistress, and at length the rustle of a woman’s
+dress, the sound of her voice, or the transit of her form across the
+field of his vision, will enkindle his soul with a flame that blinds
+his eyes.
+
+The discovery of the attractive Grace’s name and family would have been
+enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put her
+personality out of his head, to change the character of his interest in
+her. Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at most have
+played with it as a toy. He was that kind of a man. But situated here
+he could not go so far as amative cruelty. He dismissed all reverential
+thought about her, but he could not help taking her seriously.
+
+He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, did he go in this
+futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructed
+dialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to be the mistress
+of Hintock Manor-house, the mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularly
+ready and willing to be wooed by himself and nobody else. “Well, she
+isn’t that,” he said, finally. “But she’s a very sweet, nice,
+exceptional girl.”
+
+The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual. It was snowing with a
+fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray,
+without ever achieving whiteness. There was not a single letter for
+Fitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly newspaper.
+
+To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and gradually
+acquire energy till the evening came, and then, with lamp alight, and
+feeling full of vigor, to pursue some engrossing subject or other till
+the small hours, had hitherto been his practice. But to-day he could
+not settle into his chair. That self-contained position he had lately
+occupied, in which the only attention demanded was the concentration of
+the inner eye, all outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have
+been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an
+interest outside the house. He walked from one window to another, and
+became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude of
+remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable company.
+
+The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in
+the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the
+inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant
+for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter at
+Hintock. To people at home there these changeful tricks had their
+interests; the strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees
+had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently glued up by
+frozen thawings now; the similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds in
+framing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other such
+incidents, prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the
+natives. But these were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers,
+and the inner visions to which he had almost exclusively attended
+having suddenly failed in their power to absorb him, he felt
+unutterably dreary.
+
+He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The
+season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her
+out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to become
+acquainted. One thing was clear—any acquaintance with her could only,
+with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature of a
+flirtation; for he had high aims, and they would some day lead him into
+other spheres than this.
+
+Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which,
+as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood,
+being in fact a legitimate development from the settle. He tried to
+read as he reclined, but having sat up till three o’clock that morning,
+the book slipped from his hand and he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, always
+soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of her
+strange errand. However, it was heard by the farmer’s wife who kept the
+house, and Grace was admitted. Opening the door of the doctor’s room
+the housewife glanced in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss
+Melbury to enter and wait a few minutes while she should go and find
+him, believing him to be somewhere on the premises. Grace acquiesced,
+went in, and sat down close to the door.
+
+As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, and
+started at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the couch,
+like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb of the
+fifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means clasped in
+prayer. She had no doubt that this was the doctor. Awaken him herself
+she could not, and her immediate impulse was to go and pull the broad
+ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at one side of the fireplace.
+But expecting the landlady to re-enter in a moment she abandoned this
+intention, and stood gazing in great embarrassment at the reclining
+philosopher.
+
+The windows of Fitzpiers’s soul being at present shuttered, he probably
+appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation; but the light
+abstracted from his material presence by sleep was more than
+counterbalanced by the mysterious influence of that state, in a
+stranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so sensitive. So far as
+she could criticise at all, she became aware that she had encountered a
+specimen of creation altogether unusual in that locality. The occasions
+on which Grace had observed men of this stamp were when she had been
+far removed away from Hintock, and even then such examples as had met
+her eye were at a distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than the one
+who now confronted her.
+
+She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her mistake and
+returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. Approaching the chimney
+her back was to Fitzpiers, but she could see him in the glass. An
+indescribable thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes
+of the reflected image were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and under
+the curious unexpectedness of the sight she became as if spellbound,
+almost powerless to turn her head and regard the original. However, by
+an effort she did turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before.
+
+Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was sufficient
+to lead her to precipitately abandon her errand. She crossed quickly to
+the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and went out of the house
+unobserved. By the time that she had gone down the path and through the
+garden door into the lane she had recovered her equanimity. Here,
+screened by the hedge, she stood and considered a while.
+
+Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she had
+come out on such a morning because of the seriousness of the matter in
+hand; yet now she had allowed her mission to be stultified by a
+momentary tremulousness concerning an incident which perhaps had meant
+nothing after all.
+
+In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had been,
+had roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up. In the reflection from the mirror
+which Grace had beheld there was no mystery; he had opened his eyes for
+a few moments, but had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if,
+indeed, he had ever been positively awake. That somebody had just left
+the room he was certain, and that the lovely form which seemed to have
+visited him in a dream was no less than the real presentation of the
+person departed he could hardly doubt.
+
+Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edged
+gravel-path which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently
+open, and through it enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace having
+just at this juncture determined to return and attempt the interview a
+second time. That he saw her coming instead of going made him ask
+himself if his first impression of her were not a dream indeed. She
+came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so low over her head
+that he could hardly see her face. When she reached the point where the
+raspberry bushes ended and the strawberry bed began, she made a little
+pause.
+
+Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and
+hastily quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her. The nature
+of her errand he could not divine, but he was prepared to give her any
+amount of encouragement.
+
+“I beg pardon, Miss Melbury,” he said. “I saw you from the window, and
+fancied you might imagine that I was not at home—if it is I you were
+coming for.”
+
+“I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more,” she replied.
+“And I can say it here.”
+
+“No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come into the
+house, come as far as the porch.”
+
+Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together inside
+it, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her.
+
+“I have merely a request or petition to make,” she said. “My father’s
+servant is ill—a woman you know—and her illness is serious.”
+
+“I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see her at once?”
+
+“No; I particularly wish you not to come.”
+
+“Oh, indeed.”
+
+“Yes; and she wishes the same. It would make her seriously worse if you
+were to come. It would almost kill her....My errand is of a peculiar
+and awkward nature. It is concerning a subject which weighs on her
+mind—that unfortunate arrangement she made with you, that you might
+have her body—after death.”
+
+“Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head. Seriously ill,
+is she!”
+
+“And _so_ disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the money
+back—will you please return to her the agreement she signed?” Grace
+held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had kept ready
+tucked in her glove.
+
+Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his
+thoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace’s personality, and
+the sudden close relation in which he stood to her. The porch was
+narrow; the rain increased. It ran off the porch and dripped on the
+creepers, and from the creepers upon the edge of Grace’s cloak and
+skirts.
+
+“The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in,” he said. “It
+really makes my heart ache to let you stay here.”
+
+Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting-room; he
+flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would,
+Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and
+manner of this man, and distressful resignation sat on her as she
+glided past him into the room—brushing his coat with her elbow by
+reason of the narrowness.
+
+He followed her, shut the door—which she somehow had hoped he would
+leave open—and placing a chair for her, sat down. The concern which
+Grace felt at the development of these commonplace incidents was, of
+course, mainly owing to the strange effect upon her nerves of that view
+of him in the mirror gazing at her with open eyes when she had thought
+him sleeping, which made her fancy that his slumber might have been a
+feint based on inexplicable reasons.
+
+She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at a
+piece of live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, “Will
+you then reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer Oliver so
+foolishly gave?”
+
+“I’ll cancel it without reconsideration. Though you will allow me to
+have my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammer is a very wise
+woman, and she was as wise in that as in other things. You think there
+was something very fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury?
+But remember that the most eminent of our surgeons in past times have
+entered into such agreements.”
+
+“Not fiendish—strange.”
+
+“Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing,
+but in its relation to something extrinsic—in this case an unessential
+observer.”
+
+He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be
+unfolded and brought to her. A thick cross appeared in ink at the
+bottom—evidently from the hand of Grammer. Grace put the paper in her
+pocket with a look of much relief.
+
+As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come from
+Grace’s own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. “No, no. I
+shall not take it from the old woman,” he said. “It is more strange
+than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection
+that our acquaintance should be formed out of it.”
+
+“I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion.
+But I did not mean to be.”
+
+“Oh no, no.” He looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzled
+interest. “I cannot think, I cannot think,” he murmured. “Something
+bewilders me greatly.” He still reflected and hesitated. “Last night I
+sat up very late,” he at last went on, “and on that account I fell into
+a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And during my few
+minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed—what do you think?—that you stood
+in the room.”
+
+Should she tell? She merely blushed.
+
+“You may imagine,” Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had,
+indeed, been a dream, “that I should not have dreamed of you without
+considerable thinking about you first.”
+
+He could not be acting; of that she felt assured.
+
+“I fancied in my vision that you stood there,” he said, pointing to
+where she had paused. “I did not see you directly, but reflected in the
+glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for once
+carried out. Nature has at last recovered her lost union with the Idea!
+My thoughts ran in that direction because I had been reading the work
+of a transcendental philosopher last night; and I dare say it was the
+dose of Idealism that I received from it that made me scarcely able to
+distinguish between reality and fancy. I almost wept when I awoke, and
+found that you had appeared to me in Time, but not in Space, alas!”
+
+At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of
+Fitzpiers’s effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that it was
+intrinsically theatrical. It often happens that in situations of
+unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, real
+feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not easily distinguishable
+from rodomontade. A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth,
+with the evil consequence, if perceived, that the substance is
+estimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected.
+
+Grace, however, was no specialist in men’s manners, and she admired the
+sentiment without thinking of the form. And she was embarrassed:
+“lovely creature” made explanation awkward to her gentle modesty.
+
+“But can it be,” said he, suddenly, “that you really were here?”
+
+“I have to confess that I have been in the room once before,” faltered
+she. “The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch you; but as she
+did not return, I left.”
+
+“And you saw me asleep,” he murmured, with the faintest show of
+humiliation.
+
+“Yes—_if_ you were asleep, and did not deceive me.”
+
+“Why do you say if?”
+
+“I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I
+looked round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me.
+
+“Never,” said Fitzpiers, fervently—“never could I deceive you.”
+
+Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them might
+have spoiled the effect of that pretty speech. Never deceive her! But
+they knew nothing, and the phrase had its day.
+
+Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the
+compelling power of Fitzpiers’s atmosphere still held her there. She
+was like an inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up her
+position on the boards, and spoken her speeches, does not know how to
+move off. The thought of Grammer occurred to her. “I’ll go at once and
+tell poor Grammer of your generosity,” she said. “It will relieve her
+at once.”
+
+“Grammer’s a nervous disease, too—how singular!” he answered,
+accompanying her to the door. “One moment; look at this—it is something
+which may interest you.”
+
+He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and she
+saw a microscope on the table of the confronting room. “Look into it,
+please; you’ll be interested,” he repeated.
+
+She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned all
+over with a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort. “What do you
+think that is?” said Fitzpiers.
+
+She did not know.
+
+“That’s a fragment of old John South’s brain, which I am
+investigating.”
+
+She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how it
+should have got there. Fitzpiers laughed.
+
+“Here am I,” he said, “endeavoring to carry on simultaneously the study
+of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material world and the
+ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of contrast between them;
+and your finer sense is quite offended!”
+
+“Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers,” said Grace, earnestly. “It is not so at all. I
+know from seeing your light at night how deeply you meditate and work.
+Instead of condemning you for your studies, I admire you very much!”
+
+Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and
+self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more than
+wished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own.
+Whether anything of the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remained
+no longer at the microscope, but quickly went her way into the rain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Instead of resuming his investigation of South’s brain, which perhaps
+was not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected
+from the importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers reclined and
+ruminated on the interview. Grace’s curious susceptibility to his
+presence, though it was as if the currents of her life were disturbed
+rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general
+charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and
+zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he
+was an idealist. He believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect;
+that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk of commonplace; that
+results in a new and untried case might be different from those in
+other cases where the conditions had been precisely similar. Regarding
+his own personality as one of unbounded possibilities, because it was
+his own—notwithstanding that the factors of his life had worked out a
+sorry product for thousands—he saw nothing but what was regular in his
+discovery at Hintock of an altogether exceptional being of the other
+sex, who for nobody else would have had any existence.
+
+One habit of Fitzpiers’s—commoner in dreamers of more advanced age than
+in men of his years—was that of talking to himself. He paced round his
+room with a selective tread upon the more prominent blooms of the
+carpet, and murmured, “This phenomenal girl will be the light of my
+life while I am at Hintock; and the special beauty of the situation is
+that our attitude and relations to each other will be purely spiritual.
+Socially we can never be intimate. Anything like matrimonial intentions
+towards her, charming as she is, would be absurd. They would spoil the
+ethereal character of my regard. And, indeed, I have other aims on the
+practical side of my life.”
+
+Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he
+was bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of
+purse much longer. But as an object of contemplation for the present,
+as objective spirit rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would
+serve to keep his soul alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days.
+
+His first notion—acquired from the mere sight of her without
+converse—that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a timber-merchant’s
+pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that he had found what
+Grace intrinsically was. Personal intercourse with such as she could
+take no lower form than intellectual communion, and mutual explorations
+of the world of thought. Since he could not call at her father’s,
+having no practical views, cursory encounters in the lane, in the wood,
+coming and going to and from church, or in passing her dwelling, were
+what the acquaintance would have to feed on.
+
+Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves in
+the event. Rencounters of not more than a minute’s duration, frequently
+repeated, will build up mutual interest, even an intimacy, in a lonely
+place. Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the tree-twigs budded. There
+never was a particular moment at which it could be said they became
+friends; yet a delicate understanding now existed between two who in
+the winter had been strangers.
+
+Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had
+long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night.
+The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard. The
+flowers of late April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they
+had been blooming a long while, though there had been no trace of them
+the day before yesterday; birds began not to mind getting wet. In-door
+people said they had heard the nightingale, to which out-door people
+replied contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before.
+
+The young doctor’s practice being scarcely so large as a London
+surgeon’s, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice as he
+had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been
+necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions. One day, book
+in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly
+oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere around that
+sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt
+to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves
+with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard in the distance a
+curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was
+common enough here about this time, was not common to him.
+
+Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the
+noise. The barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard was
+the tear of the ripping tool as it ploughed its way along the sticky
+parting between the trunk and the rind. Melbury did a large business in
+bark, and as he was Grace’s father, and possibly might be found on the
+spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the scene even more than he might have
+been by its intrinsic interest. When he got nearer he recognized among
+the workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who probably had been
+“lent” by Winterborne; Marty South also assisted.
+
+Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by Creedle.
+With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from
+twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or
+two above the ground, an operation comparable to the “little toilet” of
+the executioner’s victim. After this it was barked in its erect
+position to a point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product of
+vegetable nature could ever be said to look ridiculous it was the case
+now, when the oak stood naked-legged, and as if ashamed, till the
+axe-man came and cut a ring round it, and the two Timothys finished the
+work with the crosscut-saw.
+
+As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and in a
+short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and larger
+limbs. Marty South was an adept at peeling the upper parts, and there
+she stood encaged amid the mass of twigs and buds like a great bird,
+running her tool into the smallest branches, beyond the farthest points
+to which the skill and patience of the men enabled them to
+proceed—branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed high above the
+bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and earliest rays of the sun
+and moon while the lower part of the forest was still in darkness.
+
+“You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty,” said
+Fitzpiers.
+
+“No, sir,” she said, holding up the tool—a horse’s leg-bone fitted into
+a handle and filed to an edge—“’tis only that they’ve less patience
+with the twigs, because their time is worth more than mine.”
+
+A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched hurdles and
+boughs, and in front of it was a fire, over which a kettle sung.
+Fitzpiers sat down inside the shelter, and went on with his reading,
+except when he looked up to observe the scene and the actors. The
+thought that he might settle here and become welded in with this sylvan
+life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed his mind for a moment. Why
+should he go farther into the world than where he was? The secret of
+quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations; these men’s
+thoughts were conterminous with the margin of the Hintock woodlands,
+and why should not his be likewise limited—a small practice among the
+people around him being the bound of his desires?
+
+Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the quivering
+boughs, came out from the reclining oak, and prepared tea. When it was
+ready the men were called; and Fitzpiers being in a mood to join, sat
+down with them.
+
+The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself when
+the faint creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, and one
+of the men said, “Here’s he.” Turning their heads they saw Melbury’s
+gig approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding moss.
+
+The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at
+every few steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where and
+how to duck her head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. They
+stopped at the spot where the bark-ripping had been temporarily
+suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of bark, and drawing
+near to where the workmen were sitting down, accepted their shouted
+invitation to have a dish of tea, for which purpose he hitched the
+horse to a bough. Grace declined to take any of their beverage, and
+remained in her place in the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight
+that came in thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were
+interspersed.
+
+When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first time
+perceived that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated
+Fitzpiers’s invitation to sit down on the log beside him.
+
+“Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here,” he said,
+obviously much pleased at the circumstance. “I wonder now if my
+daughter knows you are so nigh at hand. I don’t expect she do.”
+
+He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still turned
+in the opposite direction. “She doesn’t see us. Well, never mind: let
+her be.”
+
+Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers’s propinquity. She was
+thinking of something which had little connection with the scene before
+her—thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond; of
+her capricious conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was possibly
+enjoying at that very moment in other climes, to which Grace herself
+had hoped to be introduced by her friend’s means. She wondered if this
+patronizing lady would return to Hintock during the summer, and whether
+the acquaintance which had been nipped on the last occasion of her
+residence there would develop on the next.
+
+Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them directly
+to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard them often
+before. Marty, who poured out tea, was just saying, “I think I’ll take
+out a cup to Miss Grace,” when they heard a clashing of the
+gig-harness, and turning round Melbury saw that the horse had become
+restless, and was jerking about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its
+occupant, though she refrained from screaming. Melbury jumped up
+immediately, but not more quickly than Fitzpiers; and while her father
+ran to the horse’s head and speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers
+was alongside the gig assisting Grace to descend. Her surprise at his
+appearance was so great that, far from making a calm and independent
+descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms. He relinquished
+her when she touched ground, and hoped she was not frightened.
+
+“Oh no, not much,” she managed to say. “There was no danger—unless he
+had run under the trees where the boughs are low enough to hit my
+head.”
+
+“Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount of
+alarm.”
+
+He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she
+could not tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but much
+with himself. His contiguity had, in fact, the same effect upon her as
+on those former occasions when he had come closer to her than
+usual—that of producing in her an unaccountable tendency to
+tearfulness. Melbury soon put the horse to rights, and seeing that
+Grace was safe, turned again to the work-people. His daughter’s nervous
+distress had passed off in a few moments, and she said quite gayly to
+Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards the group, “There’s destiny in
+it, you see. I was doomed to join in your picnic, although I did not
+intend to do so.”
+
+Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the circle,
+and listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father and the
+bark-rippers sundry narratives of their fathers’, their grandfathers’,
+and their own adventures in these woods; of the mysterious sights they
+had seen—only to be accounted for by supernatural agency; of white
+witches and black witches; and the standard story of the spirits of the
+two brothers who had fought and fallen, and had haunted Hintock House
+till they were exorcised by the priest, and compelled to retreat to a
+swamp in this very wood, whence they were returning to their old
+quarters at the rate of a cock’s stride every New-year’s Day, old
+style; hence the local saying, “On New-year’s tide, a cock’s stride.”
+
+It was a pleasant time. The smoke from the little fire of peeled sticks
+rose between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its blue veil
+stretched the naked arms of the prostrate trees. The smell of the
+uncovered sap mingled with the smell of the burning wood, and the
+sticky inner surface of the scattered bark glistened as it revealed its
+pale madder hues to the eye. Melbury was so highly satisfied at having
+Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he would have sat on for any length
+of time, but Grace, on whom Fitzpiers’s eyes only too frequently
+alighted, seemed to think it incumbent upon her to make a show of
+going; and her father thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle.
+
+As the doctor had helped her out of it he appeared to think that he had
+excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the attention
+lingeringly enough.
+
+“What were you almost in tears about just now?” he asked, softly.
+
+“I don’t know,” she said: and the words were strictly true.
+
+Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove,
+their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths,
+primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and
+cracking up little sticks that lay across the track. Their way homeward
+ran along the crest of a lofty hill, whence on the right they beheld a
+wide valley, differing both in feature and atmosphere from that of the
+Hintock precincts. It was the cider country, which met the woodland
+district on the axis of this hill. Over the vale the air was blue as
+sapphire—such a blue as outside that apple-valley was never seen. Under
+the blue the orchards were in a blaze of bloom, some of the richly
+flowered trees running almost up to where they drove along. Over a gate
+which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms, regarding this
+fair promise so intently that he did not observe their passing.
+
+“That was Giles,” said Melbury, when they had gone by.
+
+“Was it? Poor Giles,” said she.
+
+“All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. If no
+blight happens before the setting the apple yield will be such as we
+have not had for years.”
+
+Meanwhile, in the wood they had come from, the men had sat on so long
+that they were indisposed to begin work again that evening; they were
+paid by the ton, and their time for labor was as they chose. They
+placed the last gatherings of bark in rows for the curers, which led
+them farther and farther away from the shed; and thus they gradually
+withdrew as the sun went down.
+
+Fitzpiers lingered yet. He had opened his book again, though he could
+hardly see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire, scarcely
+knowing of the men’s departure. He dreamed and mused till his
+consciousness seemed to occupy the whole space of the woodland around,
+so little was there of jarring sight or sound to hinder perfect unity
+with the sentiment of the place. The idea returned upon him of
+sacrificing all practical aims to live in calm contentment here, and
+instead of going on elaborating new conceptions with infinite pains, to
+accept quiet domesticity according to oldest and homeliest notions.
+These reflections detained him till the wood was embrowned with the
+coming night, and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to
+pour out all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far
+off.
+
+Fitzpiers’s eyes commanded as much of the ground in front as was open.
+Entering upon this he saw a figure, whose direction of movement was
+towards the spot where he sat. The surgeon was quite shrouded from
+observation by the recessed shadow of the hut, and there was no reason
+why he should move till the stranger had passed by. The shape resolved
+itself into a woman’s; she was looking on the ground, and walking
+slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course
+being precisely that of Mr. Melbury’s gig. Fitzpiers by a sort of
+divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace’s; her nearer
+approach made the guess a certainty.
+
+Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round by the prostrate
+trees that would have been invisible but for the white nakedness which
+enabled her to avoid them easily. Thus she approached the heap of
+ashes, and acting upon what was suggested by a still shining ember or
+two, she took a stick and stirred the heap, which thereupon burst into
+a flame. On looking around by the light thus obtained she for the first
+time saw the illumined face of Fitzpiers, precisely in the spot where
+she had left him.
+
+Grace gave a start and a scream: the place had been associated with him
+in her thoughts, but she had not expected to find him there still.
+Fitzpiers lost not a moment in rising and going to her side.
+
+“I frightened you dreadfully, I know,” he said. “I ought to have
+spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you. I have been sitting
+here ever since.”
+
+He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the
+impression that she was quite overcome, and in danger of falling. As
+soon as she could collect her ideas she gently withdrew from his grasp,
+and explained what she had returned for: in getting up or down from the
+gig, or when sitting by the hut fire, she had dropped her purse.
+
+“Now we will find it,” said Fitzpiers.
+
+He threw an armful of last year’s leaves on to the fire, which made the
+flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave themselves into
+a denser contrast, turning eve into night in a moment. By this radiance
+they groped about on their hands and knees, till Fitzpiers rested on
+his elbow, and looked at Grace. “We must always meet in odd
+circumstances,” he said; “and this is one of the oddest. I wonder if it
+means anything?”
+
+“Oh no, I am sure it doesn’t,” said Grace in haste, quickly assuming an
+erect posture. “Pray don’t say it any more.”
+
+“I hope there was not much money in the purse,” said Fitzpiers, rising
+to his feet more slowly, and brushing the leaves from his trousers.
+
+“Scarcely any. I cared most about the purse itself, because it was
+given me. Indeed, money is of little more use at Hintock than on
+Crusoe’s island; there’s hardly any way of spending it.”
+
+They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by his
+foot. “Here it is,” he said, “so that your father, mother, friend, or
+_admirer_ will not have his or her feelings hurt by a sense of your
+negligence after all.”
+
+“Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now.”
+
+“The admirer?” said Fitzpiers, slyly.
+
+“I don’t know if you would call him that,” said Grace, with simplicity.
+“The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, and this person is
+quite different.”
+
+“He has all the cardinal virtues.”
+
+“Perhaps—though I don’t know them precisely.”
+
+“You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better.
+According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance,
+Wisdom, and Love; and his is the best list that I know.”
+
+“I am afraid poor—” She was going to say that she feared
+Winterborne—the giver of the purse years before—had not much
+perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she determined to
+go no further in this direction, and was silent.
+
+These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. His
+sense of personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed in his
+eyes the true aspect of a mistress in her lover’s regard.
+
+“Miss Melbury,” he said, suddenly, “I divine that this virtuous man you
+mention has been refused by you?”
+
+She could do no otherwise than admit it.
+
+“I do not inquire without good reason. God forbid that I should kneel
+in another’s place at any shrine unfairly. But, my dear Miss Melbury,
+now that he is gone, may I draw near?”
+
+“I—I can’t say anything about that!” she cried, quickly. “Because when
+a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and like him more than
+you did before.”
+
+This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in the
+surgeon’s eyes: it rendered her adorable. “But cannot you say?” he
+pleaded, distractedly.
+
+“I’d rather not—I think I must go home at once.”
+
+“Oh yes,” said Fitzpiers. But as he did not move she felt it awkward to
+walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently together. A
+diversion was created by the accident of two birds, that had either
+been roosting above their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the
+other into the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a
+desperate quarrel that prevented the use of their wings. They speedily
+parted, however, and flew up, and were seen no more.
+
+“That’s the end of what is called love!” said some one.
+
+The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who
+approached with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to trace
+the birds. Suddenly perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, “Oh, Miss Melbury!
+I have been following they pigeons, and didn’t see you. And here’s Mr.
+Winterborne!” she continued, shyly, as she looked towards Fitzpiers,
+who stood in the background.
+
+“Marty,” Grace interrupted. “I want you to walk home with me—will you?
+Come along.” And without lingering longer she took hold of Marty’s arm
+and led her away.
+
+They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they lay,
+and onward among the growing trees, by a path where there were no oaks,
+and no barking, and no Fitzpiers—nothing but copse-wood, between which
+the primroses could be discerned in pale bunches. “I didn’t know Mr.
+Winterborne was there,” said Marty, breaking the silence when they had
+nearly reached Grace’s door.
+
+“Nor was he,” said Grace.
+
+“But, Miss Melbury, I saw him.”
+
+“No,” said Grace. “It was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is nothing
+to me.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the
+woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body
+of infinitely larger shape and importance. The boughs cast green
+shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there; and a
+fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury’s garden dripped on his
+seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with
+pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no
+good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off
+creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very
+satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at
+mid-day the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather
+in the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves.
+
+Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the
+hour grew later, and nine o’clock drew on, the irradiation of the
+daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of
+indistinctness. Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs
+strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of
+the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while
+such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed
+the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before the
+moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper
+heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open
+glades as there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became
+apparent that the margin of the wood which approached the
+timber-merchant’s premises was not to be left to the customary
+stillness of that reposeful time.
+
+Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden
+gate—where he now looked more frequently than into his books—fancying
+that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He was now irretrievably
+committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure
+that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once
+completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance—which he had
+hitherto deemed an impossibility—he was enchanted enough to fancy must
+be the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but
+several of the ordinary village girls in a group—some steadily walking,
+some in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was
+also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she informed
+him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to attempt some
+spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of their future
+partners for life. She declared it to be an ungodly performance, and
+one which she for her part would never countenance; saying which, she
+entered her house and retired to bed.
+
+The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up
+the road. They had turned into the wood at an opening between Melbury’s
+and Marty South’s; but Fitzpiers could easily track them by their
+voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones.
+
+In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware
+of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering
+stealthily after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by
+Marty South during the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and,
+being only a girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to
+wish to see the issue. The moon was so bright and the night so calm
+that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her;
+and thus, joined by Marty, these went onward in the same direction.
+
+Passing Winterborne’s house, they heard a noise of hammering. Marty
+explained it. This was the last night on which his paternal roof would
+shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired;
+and Giles was taking down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an
+early exit next morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him
+dearly.
+
+When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by Grammer
+Oliver (who was as young as the youngest in such matters), and Grace
+and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had arrived at the
+spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary intention of
+keeping their expedition a secret had been quite defeated. Grace and
+her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and at a little distance stood
+Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, intently observing Grace, who
+was in the full rays of the moon.
+
+He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty and
+Grammer, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly which
+sheltered Mrs. and Miss Melbury on its bright side. The two former
+conversed in low tones.
+
+“If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they’ll come as one,”
+said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. “Instead of my
+skellington he’ll carry home her living carcass before long. But though
+she’s a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me
+that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and
+that Miss Grace should make the best of Winterborne.”
+
+Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of whom
+were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the incantation,
+it being now about midnight.
+
+“Directly we see anything we’ll run home as fast as we can,” said one,
+whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest assented, not
+knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes around.
+
+“I wish we had not thought of trying this,” said another, “but had
+contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and
+hearing our husbands’ trades. It is too much like having dealings with
+the Evil One to try to raise their forms.”
+
+However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march
+forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper
+recesses of the wood. As far as the listeners could gather, the
+particular form of black-art to be practised on this occasion was one
+connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful of which was carried
+by each girl. At the moment of their advance they looked back, and
+discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the observers,
+stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the
+proceedings. By contrast with her life of late years they made her feel
+as if she had receded a couple of centuries in the world’s history. She
+was rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few
+whispered words, one of the girls—a bouncing maiden, plighted to young
+Timothy Tangs—asked her if she would join in. Grace, with some
+excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little in the rear of
+the rest.
+
+Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the
+faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again to Marty:
+“Why didn’t ye go and try your luck with the rest of the maids?”
+
+“I don’t believe in it,” said Marty, shortly.
+
+“Why, half the parish is here—the silly hussies should have kept it
+quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up with
+Robert Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o’ Providence
+sometimes. Do go and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush at
+the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes
+back, and she will most likely rush into his arms; for as soon as the
+clock strikes, they’ll bundle back home—along like hares. I’ve seen
+such larries before.”
+
+“Do you think I’d better?” said Marty, reluctantly.
+
+“Oh yes, he’ll bless ye for it.”
+
+“I don’t want that kind of blessing.” But after a moment’s thought she
+went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the satisfaction of
+seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy defile along which
+Grace would have to return.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and
+Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement on
+Grammer’s idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately
+discerned what her husband had not—that Grace was rapidly fascinating
+the surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers.
+
+“You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing,” she said to him,
+significantly. “She will run down through that opening much faster than
+she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls.”
+
+Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to
+Winterborne and stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose of the
+other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to look
+upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the off-hand
+manner of indifference which had grown upon him since his dismissal.
+
+Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon’s manoeuvre, and,
+still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to
+the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and
+“tole” her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in
+another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to
+obligation, walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon, still
+and silent, for the retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now
+quite out of hearing.
+
+The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great
+Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later that
+quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with the
+flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and rabbits
+bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after these the
+rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted the hurried
+approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns soon became
+visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the
+rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being
+contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a
+hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush
+where the undergrowth narrowed to a gorge. Marty arrived at her heels
+just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward
+in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his position, had
+turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not have
+thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury’s encouragement and the sentiment
+of an eve which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as the
+white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had
+been a bird.
+
+“Oh!” cried Grace, in her fright.
+
+“You are in my arms, dearest,” said Fitzpiers, “and I am going to claim
+you, and keep you there all our two lives!”
+
+She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds
+before she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and
+struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had
+been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most
+of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said in a
+trembling voice, “Mr. Fitzpiers, will you let me go?”
+
+“Certainly,” he said, laughing; “as soon as you have recovered.”
+
+She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him
+aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush away.
+But it had been enough—new relations between them had begun.
+
+The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They
+wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle.
+Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace had
+left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her,
+Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl came bounding
+down the same descent that had been followed by Grace—a fine-framed
+young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she said,
+with playful effrontery, “May’st kiss me if ‘canst catch me, Tim!”
+
+Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of the
+hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was impulsively
+disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she began racing away
+he started in pursuit.
+
+On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over
+her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so
+cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never
+allowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they ran and doubled,
+Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound of their companions
+had quite died away. He began to lose hope of ever overtaking her, when
+all at once, by way of encouragement, she turned to a fence in which
+there was a stile and leaped over it. Outside the scene was a changed
+one—a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in heaps, in the
+uninterrupted shine of the now high moon.
+
+Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had
+placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her.
+She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at once her light form
+disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in
+one of the hay-cocks.
+
+Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him
+thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one.
+As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by
+an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of
+a local ballad in the smallest voice she could assume:
+
+“O come in from the foggy, foggy dew.”
+
+
+In a minute or two he uncovered her.
+
+“Oh, ’tis not Tim!” said she, burying her face.
+
+Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its
+mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down on
+the next hay-cock, panting with his race.
+
+“Whom do you mean by Tim?” he asked, presently.
+
+“My young man, Tim Tangs,” said she.
+
+“Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?”
+
+“I did at first.”
+
+“But you didn’t at last?”
+
+“I didn’t at last.”
+
+“Do you much mind that it was not?”
+
+“No,” she answered, slyly.
+
+Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke looked
+very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to her out-door
+occupation being invisible under these pale rays. While they remain
+silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically
+from the top of a tree at the nearest corner of the wood. Besides this
+not a sound of any kind reached their ears, the time of nightingales
+being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance of two miles at least.
+In the opposite direction the hay-field stretched away into remoteness
+till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been looking
+on, and encountering one of the girls, had asked her what caused them
+all to fly.
+
+She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something very
+different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for one would
+never attempt such unholy ceremonies again. “We saw Satan pursuing us
+with his hour-glass. It was terrible!”
+
+This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards the
+spot from which the girls had retreated. After listening there a few
+minutes he heard slow footsteps rustling over the leaves, and looking
+through a tangled screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bough, he saw
+in the open space beyond a short stout man in evening-dress, carrying
+on one arm a light overcoat and also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as
+possibly to have suggested the “hour-glass” to his timid observers—if
+this were the person whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he
+silently gesticulated and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow
+showed him to have dark hair and a high forehead of the shape seen
+oftener in old prints and paintings than in real life. His curious and
+altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like those of one who is
+rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual place and hour, were
+sufficient to account for any trepidation among the Hintock daughters
+at encountering him.
+
+He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was; not
+observing Giles, who was of the color of his environment. The latter
+advanced into the light. The gentleman held up his hand and came
+towards Giles, the two meeting half-way.
+
+“I have lost my way,” said the stranger. “Perhaps you can put me in the
+path again.” He wiped his forehead with the air of one suffering under
+an agitation more than that of simple fatigue.
+
+“The turnpike-road is over there,” said Giles
+
+“I don’t want the turnpike-road,” said the gentleman, impatiently. “I
+came from that. I want Hintock House. Is there not a path to it across
+here?”
+
+“Well, yes, a sort of path. But it is hard to find from this point.
+I’ll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure.”
+
+“Thanks, my good friend. The truth is that I decided to walk across the
+country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I am staying for
+a day or two. But I did not know it was so far.”
+
+“It is about a mile to the house from here.”
+
+They walked on together. As there was no path, Giles occasionally
+stepped in front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to give
+his companion a passage, saying every now and then when the twigs, on
+being released, flew back like whips, “Mind your eyes, sir.” To which
+the stranger replied, “Yes, yes,” in a preoccupied tone.
+
+So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick
+succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger said,
+
+“Is it far?”
+
+“Not much farther,” said Winterborne. “The plantation runs up into a
+corner here, close behind the house.” He added with hesitation, “You
+know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not at home?”
+
+“You mistake,” said the other, quickly. “Mrs. Charmond has been away
+for some time, but she’s at home now.”
+
+Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the gentleman
+was wrong.
+
+“You are a native of this place?” the stranger said.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, you are happy in having a home. It is what I don’t possess.”
+
+“You come from far, seemingly?”
+
+“I come now from the south of Europe.”
+
+“Oh, indeed, sir. You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French gentleman,
+perhaps?”
+
+“I am not either.”
+
+Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who
+seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at length
+answered the question.
+
+“I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth,” he said.
+“I left my native country on the failure of the Southern cause, and
+have never returned to it since.”
+
+He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the wood.
+Here, striding over the fence out upon the upland sward, they could at
+once see the chimneys of the house in the gorge immediately beneath
+their position, silent, still, and pale.
+
+“Can you tell me the time?” the gentleman asked. “My watch has
+stopped.”
+
+“It is between twelve and one,” said Giles.
+
+His companion expressed his astonishment. “I thought it between nine
+and ten at latest! Dear me—dear me!”
+
+He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which
+looked like a sovereign, for the assistance rendered. Giles declined to
+accept anything, to the surprise of the stranger, who, on putting the
+money back into his pocket, said, awkwardly, “I offered it because I
+want you to utter no word about this meeting with me. Will you
+promise?”
+
+Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still while the other
+ascended the slope. At the bottom he looked back dubiously. Giles would
+no longer remain when he was so evidently desired to leave, and
+returned through the boughs to Hintock.
+
+He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and melancholy,
+might be that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs. Charmond whom he had
+heard so frequently spoken of, and whom it was said she had treated
+cavalierly. But he received no confirmation of his suspicion beyond a
+report which reached him a few days later that a gentleman had called
+up the servants who were taking care of Hintock House at an hour past
+midnight; and on learning that Mrs. Charmond, though returned from
+abroad, was as yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and gone away
+without leaving a card or any trace of himself.
+
+The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times before
+he swore, but this part of the narrative was not corroborated. Anyhow,
+such a gentleman had driven away from the hotel at Sherton next day in
+a carriage hired at that inn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of Midsummer Eve
+brought a visitor to Fitzpiers’s door; a voice that he knew sounded in
+the passage. Mr. Melbury had called. At first he had a particular
+objection to enter the parlor, because his boots were dusty, but as the
+surgeon insisted he waived the point and came in.
+
+Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers
+himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied gaze at
+the floor, he said, “I’ve called to ask you, doctor, quite privately, a
+question that troubles me. I’ve a daughter, Grace, an only daughter, as
+you may have heard. Well, she’s been out in the dew—on Midsummer Eve in
+particular she went out in thin slippers to watch some vagary of the
+Hintock maids—and she’s got a cough, a distinct hemming and hacking,
+that makes me uneasy. Now, I have decided to send her away to some
+seaside place for a change—”
+
+“Send her away!” Fitzpiers’s countenance had fallen.
+
+“Yes. And the question is, where would you advise me to send her?”
+
+The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when Fitzpiers was
+at the spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a necessity of his
+existence. The sudden pressure of her form upon his breast as she came
+headlong round the bush had never ceased to linger with him, ever since
+he adopted the manoeuvre for which the hour and the moonlight and the
+occasion had been the only excuse. Now she was to be sent away.
+Ambition? it could be postponed. Family? culture and reciprocity of
+tastes had taken the place of family nowadays. He allowed himself to be
+carried forward on the wave of his desire.
+
+“How strange, how very strange it is,” he said, “that you should have
+come to me about her just now. I have been thinking every day of coming
+to you on the very same errand.”
+
+“Ah!—you have noticed, too, that her health——”
+
+“I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there is
+nothing. But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several times by
+accident. I have admired her infinitely, and I was coming to ask you if
+I may become better acquainted with her—pay my addresses to her?”
+
+Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air of
+half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers’s face as
+he made this declaration.
+
+“You have—got to know her?” said Melbury, a spell of dead silence
+having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with
+almost visible effect.
+
+“Yes,” said Fitzpiers.
+
+“And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with a
+view to marriage—of course that is what you mean?”
+
+“Yes,” said the young man. “I mean, get acquainted with her, with a
+view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other, what
+would naturally follow.”
+
+The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his hand
+trembled as he laid by his walking-stick. “This takes me unawares,”
+said he, his voice wellnigh breaking down. “I don’t mean that there is
+anything unexpected in a gentleman being attracted by her; but it did
+not occur to me that it would be you. I always said,” continued he,
+with a lump in his throat, “that my Grace would make a mark at her own
+level some day. That was why I educated her. I said to myself, ‘I’ll do
+it, cost what it may;’ though her mother-law was pretty frightened at
+my paying out so much money year after year. I knew it would tell in
+the end. ‘Where you’ve not good material to work on, such doings would
+be waste and vanity,’ I said. ‘But where you have that material it is
+sure to be worth while.’”
+
+“I am glad you don’t object,” said Fitzpiers, almost wishing that Grace
+had not been quite so cheap for him.
+
+“If she is willing I don’t object, certainly. Indeed,” added the honest
+man, “it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel anything else
+than highly honored personally; and it is a great credit to her to have
+drawn to her a man of such good professional station and venerable old
+family. That huntsman-fellow little thought how wrong he was about her!
+Take her and welcome, sir.”
+
+“I’ll endeavor to ascertain her mind.”
+
+“Yes, yes. But she will be agreeable, I should think. She ought to be.”
+
+“I hope she may. Well, now you’ll expect to see me frequently.”
+
+“Oh yes. But, name it all—about her cough, and her going away. I had
+quite forgot that that was what I came about.”
+
+“I assure you,” said the surgeon, “that her cough can only be the
+result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to any
+seaside place at all.”
+
+Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take
+Fitzpiers’s professional opinion in circumstances which naturally led
+him to wish to keep her there. The doctor saw this, and honestly
+dreading to lose sight of her, he said, eagerly, “Between ourselves, if
+I am successful with her I will take her away myself for a month or
+two, as soon as we are married, which I hope will be before the chilly
+weather comes on. This will be so very much better than letting her go
+now.”
+
+The proposal pleased Melbury much. There could be hardly any danger in
+postponing any desirable change of air as long as the warm weather
+lasted, and for such a reason. Suddenly recollecting himself, he said,
+“Your time must be precious, doctor. I’ll get home-along. I am much
+obliged to ye. As you will see her often, you’ll discover for yourself
+if anything serious is the matter.”
+
+“I can assure you it is nothing,” said Fitzpiers, who had seen Grace
+much oftener already than her father knew of.
+
+When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his sensations,
+like a man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a medium of which he
+knows not the density or temperature. But he had done it, and Grace was
+the sweetest girl alive.
+
+As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in Melbury’s
+ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had said in the
+emotion of the moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and unsuited to a
+dialogue with an educated gentleman, the smallness of whose practice
+was more than compensated by the former greatness of his family. He had
+uttered thoughts before they were weighed, and almost before they were
+shaped. They had expressed in a certain sense his feeling at
+Fitzpiers’s news, but yet they were not right. Looking on the ground,
+and planting his stick at each tread as if it were a flag-staff, he
+reached his own precincts, where, as he passed through the court, he
+automatically stopped to look at the men working in the shed and
+around. One of them asked him a question about wagon-spokes.
+
+“Hey?” said Melbury, looking hard at him. The man repeated the words.
+
+Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he went up
+the court and entered the house. As time was no object with the
+journeymen, except as a thing to get past, they leisurely surveyed the
+door through which he had disappeared.
+
+“What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?” said Tangs the elder.
+“Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you’ve got a maid of yer
+own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him, that will take the
+squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But you’ll never be tall enough
+to accomplish such as she; and ’tis a lucky thing for ye, John, as
+things be. Well, he ought to have a dozen—that would bring him to
+reason. I see ’em walking together last Sunday, and when they came to a
+puddle he lifted her over like a halfpenny doll. He ought to have a
+dozen; he’d let ’em walk through puddles for themselves then.”
+
+Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who sees
+a vision before him. His wife was in the room. Without taking off his
+hat he sat down at random.
+
+“Luce—we’ve done it!” he said. “Yes—the thing is as I expected. The
+spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked. She’s done it, and
+done it well. Where is she—Grace, I mean?”
+
+“Up in her room—what has happened!”
+
+Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. “I
+told you so,” he said. “A maid like her couldn’t stay hid long, even in
+a place like this. But where is Grace? Let’s have her down.
+Here—Gra-a-ace!”
+
+She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently
+spoiled by this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry, however
+impatient his tones. “What is it, father?” said she, with a smile.
+
+“Why, you scamp, what’s this you’ve been doing? Not home here more than
+six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your father’s rank,
+making havoc in the educated classes.”
+
+Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her
+father’s meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a loss
+now.
+
+“No, no—of course you don’t know what I mean, or you pretend you don’t;
+though, for my part, I believe women can see these things through a
+double hedge. But I suppose I must tell ye. Why, you’ve flung your
+grapnel over the doctor, and he’s coming courting forthwith.”
+
+“Only think of that, my dear! Don’t you feel it a triumph?” said Mrs.
+Melbury.
+
+“Coming courting! I’ve done nothing to make him,” Grace exclaimed.
+
+“’Twasn’t necessary that you should, ’Tis voluntary that rules in these
+things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my consent.
+You’ll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say. I needn’t tell
+you to make it all smooth for him.”
+
+“You mean, to lead him on to marry me?”
+
+“I do. Haven’t I educated you for it?”
+
+Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no animation
+in her face. “Why is it settled off-hand in this way?” said she,
+coquettishly. “You’ll wait till you hear what I think of him, I
+suppose?”
+
+“Oh yes, of course. But you see what a good thing it will be.”
+
+She weighed the statement without speaking.
+
+“You will be restored to the society you’ve been taken away from,”
+continued her father; “for I don’t suppose he’ll stay here long.”
+
+She admitted the advantage; but it was plain that though Fitzpiers
+exercised a certain fascination over her when he was present, or even
+more, an almost psychic influence, and though his impulsive act in the
+wood had stirred her feelings indescribably, she had never regarded him
+in the light of a destined husband. “I don’t know what to answer,” she
+said. “I have learned that he is very clever.”
+
+“He’s all right, and he’s coming here to see you.”
+
+A premonition that she could not resist him if he came strangely moved
+her. “Of course, father, you remember that it is only lately that
+Giles—”
+
+“You know that you can’t think of him. He has given up all claim to
+you.”
+
+She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he could state
+his opinion, even though she had skill in speech, and her father had
+none. That Fitzpiers acted upon her like a dram, exciting her, throwing
+her into a novel atmosphere which biassed her doings until the
+influence was over, when she felt something of the nature of regret for
+the mood she had experienced—still more if she reflected on the silent,
+almost sarcastic, criticism apparent in Winterborne’s air towards
+her—could not be told to this worthy couple in words.
+
+It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called away from
+Hintock by an engagement to attend some medical meetings, and his
+visits, therefore, did not begin at once. A note, however, arrived from
+him addressed to Grace, deploring his enforced absence. As a material
+object this note was pretty and superfine, a note of a sort that she
+had been unaccustomed to see since her return to Hintock, except when a
+school friend wrote to her—a rare instance, for the girls were
+respecters of persons, and many cooled down towards the timber-dealer’s
+daughter when she was out of sight. Thus the receipt of it pleased her,
+and she afterwards walked about with a reflective air.
+
+In the evening her father, who knew that the note had come, said, “Why
+be ye not sitting down to answer your letter? That’s what young folks
+did in my time.”
+
+She replied that it did not require an answer.
+
+“Oh, you know best,” he said. Nevertheless, he went about his business
+doubting if she were right in not replying; possibly she might be so
+mismanaging matters as to risk the loss of an alliance which would
+bring her much happiness.
+
+Melbury’s respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his professional
+position, which was not much, than on the standing of his family in the
+county in by-gone days. That implicit faith in members of
+long-established families, as such, irrespective of their personal
+condition or character, which is still found among old-fashioned people
+in the rural districts reached its full intensity in Melbury. His
+daughter’s suitor was descended from a family he had heard of in his
+grandfather’s time as being once great, a family which had conferred
+its name upon a neighboring village; how, then, could anything be amiss
+in this betrothal?
+
+“I must keep her up to this,” he said to his wife. “She sees it is for
+her happiness; but still she’s young, and may want a little prompting
+from an older tongue.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when he
+wished to say anything specially impressive. Their way was over the top
+of that lofty ridge dividing their woodland from the cider district,
+whence they had in the spring beheld the miles of apple-trees in bloom.
+All was now deep green. The spot recalled to Grace’s mind the last
+occasion of her presence there, and she said, “The promise of an
+enormous apple-crop is fulfilling itself, is it not? I suppose Giles is
+getting his mills and presses ready.”
+
+This was just what her father had not come there to talk about. Without
+replying he raised his arm, and moved his finger till he fixed it at a
+point. “There,” he said, “you see that plantation reaching over the
+hill like a great slug, and just behind the hill a particularly green
+sheltered bottom? That’s where Mr. Fitzpiers’s family were lords of the
+manor for I don’t know how many hundred years, and there stands the
+village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. A wonderful property ’twas—wonderful!”
+
+“But they are not lords of the manor there now.”
+
+“Why, no. But good and great things die as well as little and foolish.
+The only ones representing the family now, I believe, are our doctor
+and a maiden lady living I don’t know where. You can’t help being
+happy, Grace, in allying yourself with such a romantical family. You’ll
+feel as if you’ve stepped into history.”
+
+“We’ve been at Hintock as long as they’ve been at Buckbury; is it not
+so? You say our name occurs in old deeds continually.”
+
+“Oh yes—as yeomen, copyholders, and such like. But think how much
+better this will be for ’ee. You’ll be living a high intellectual life,
+such as has now become natural to you; and though the doctor’s practice
+is small here, he’ll no doubt go to a dashing town when he’s got his
+hand in, and keep a stylish carriage, and you’ll be brought to know a
+good many ladies of excellent society. If you should ever meet me then,
+Grace, you can drive past me, looking the other way. I shouldn’t expect
+you to speak to me, or wish such a thing, unless it happened to be in
+some lonely, private place where ’twouldn’t lower ye at all. Don’t
+think such men as neighbor Giles your equal. He and I shall be good
+friends enough, but he’s not for the like of you. He’s lived our rough
+and homely life here, and his wife’s life must be rough and homely
+likewise.”
+
+So much pressure could not but produce some displacement. As Grace was
+left very much to herself, she took advantage of one fine day before
+Fitzpiers’s return to drive into the aforesaid vale where stood the
+village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. Leaving her father’s man at the inn with
+the horse and gig, she rambled onward to the ruins of a castle, which
+stood in a field hard by. She had no doubt that it represented the
+ancient stronghold of the Fitzpiers family.
+
+The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants of the lower
+vaulting, supported on low stout columns surmounted by the _crochet_
+capital of the period. The two or three arches of these vaults that
+were still in position were utilized by the adjoining farmer as shelter
+for his calves, the floor being spread with straw, amid which the young
+creatures rustled, cooling their thirsty tongues by licking the quaint
+Norman carving, which glistened with the moisture. It was a degradation
+of even such a rude form of art as this to be treatad so grossly, she
+thought, and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers assumed in her
+imagination the hues of a melancholy romanticism.
+
+It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the distance with a
+preoccupied mind. The idea of so modern a man in science and aesthetics
+as the young surgeon springing out of relics so ancient was a kind of
+novelty she had never before experienced. The combination lent him a
+social and intellectual interest which she dreaded, so much weight did
+it add to the strange influence he exercised upon her whenever he came
+near her.
+
+In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, rather a fearful
+consciousness of hazard in the air, she awaited his return.
+
+Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also. In his house there was an
+old work on medicine, published towards the end of the last century,
+and to put himself in harmony with events Melbury spread this work on
+his knees when he had done his day’s business, and read about Galen,
+Hippocrates, and Herophilus—of the dogmatic, the empiric, the
+hermetical, and other sects of practitioners that have arisen in
+history; and thence proceeded to the classification of maladies and the
+rules for their treatment, as laid down in this valuable book with
+absolute precision. Melbury regretted that the treatise was so old,
+fearing that he might in consequence be unable to hold as complete a
+conversation as he could wish with Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt,
+with more recent discoveries.
+
+The day of Fitzpiers’s return arrived, and he sent to say that he would
+call immediately. In the little time that was afforded for putting the
+house in order the sweeping of Melbury’s parlor was as the sweeping of
+the parlor at the Interpreter’s which wellnigh choked the Pilgrim. At
+the end of it Mrs. Melbury sat down, folded her hands and lips, and
+waited. Her husband restlessly walked in and out from the timber-yard,
+stared at the interior of the room, jerked out “ay, ay,” and retreated
+again. Between four and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to
+the hook outside the door.
+
+As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in the
+room, he seemed to have a misgiving. Nothing less than her actual
+presence could long keep him to the level of this impassioned
+enterprise, and that lacking he appeared as one who wished to retrace
+his steps.
+
+He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron’s level
+of thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and Grace came in.
+Fitzpiers was for once as agitated as she. Over and above the genuine
+emotion which she raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was
+casting a die by impulse which he might not have thrown by judgment.
+
+Mr. Melbury was not in the room. Having to attend to matters in the
+yard, he had delayed putting on his afternoon coat and waistcoat till
+the doctor’s appearance, when, not wishing to be backward in receiving
+him, he entered the parlor hastily buttoning up those garments. Grace’s
+fastidiousness was a little distressed that Fitzpiers should see by
+this action the strain his visit was putting upon her father; and to
+make matters worse for her just then, old Grammer seemed to have a
+passion for incessantly pumping in the back kitchen, leaving the doors
+open so that the banging and splashing were distinct above the parlor
+conversation.
+
+Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness Mr.
+Melbury broke in with speeches of labored precision on very remote
+topics, as if he feared to let Fitzpiers’s mind dwell critically on the
+subject nearest the hearts of all. In truth a constrained manner was
+natural enough in Melbury just now, for the greatest interest of his
+life was reaching its crisis. Could the real have been beheld instead
+of the corporeal merely, the corner of the room in which he sat would
+have been filled with a form typical of anxious suspense, large-eyed,
+tight-lipped, awaiting the issue. That paternal hopes and fears so
+intense should be bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly
+circumstanced, and not have dispersed themselves over the larger field
+of a whole family, involved dangerous risks to future happiness.
+
+Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time had apparently
+advanced his sentiments towards Grace, once and for all, from a vaguely
+liquescent to an organic shape. She would not have accompanied him to
+the door in response to his whispered “Come!” if her mother had not
+said in a matter-of-fact way, “Of course, Grace; go to the door with
+Mr. Fitzpiers.” Accordingly Grace went, both her parents remaining in
+the room. When the young pair were in the great brick-floored hall the
+lover took the girl’s hand in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led
+her on to the door, where he stealthily kissed her.
+
+She broke from him trembling, blushed and turned aside, hardly knowing
+how things had advanced to this. Fitzpiers drove off, kissing his hand
+to her, and waving it to Melbury who was visible through the window.
+Her father returned the surgeon’s action with a great flourish of his
+own hand and a satisfied smile.
+
+The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced in Grace’s
+brain during the visit passed off somewhat with his withdrawal. She
+felt like a woman who did not know what she had been doing for the
+previous hour, but supposed with trepidation that the afternoon’s
+proceedings, though vague, had amounted to an engagement between
+herself and the handsome, coercive, irresistible Fitzpiers.
+
+This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long summer
+days of that year. Grace was borne along upon a stream of reasonings,
+arguments, and persuasions, supplemented, it must be added, by
+inclinations of her own at times. No woman is without aspirations,
+which may be innocent enough within certain limits; and Grace had been
+so trained socially, and educated intellectually, as to see clearly
+enough a pleasure in the position of wife to such a man as Fitzpiers.
+His material standing of itself, either present or future, had little
+in it to give her ambition, but the possibilities of a refined and
+cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had their
+charm. It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying well which
+caused her to float with the current, and to yield to the immense
+influence which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever she shared his
+society.
+
+Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not she
+loved him as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to do so in
+time.
+
+One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk
+together, and for a short cut homeward passed through the shrubberies
+of Hintock House—still deserted, and still blankly confronting with its
+sightless shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes. Grace
+was tired, and they approached the wall, and sat together on one of the
+stone sills—still warm with the sun that had been pouring its rays upon
+them all the afternoon.
+
+“This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest,” said her
+betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at the old facade.
+
+“Oh yes,” said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy had ever
+crossed her mind. “She is away from home still,” Grace added in a
+minute, rather sadly, for she could not forget that she had somehow
+lost the valuable friendship of the lady of this bower.
+
+“Who is?—oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond. Do you know, dear, that at one
+time I thought you lived here.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Grace. “How was that?”
+
+He explained, as far as he could do so without mentioning his
+disappointment at finding it was otherwise; and then went on: “Well,
+never mind that. Now I want to ask you something. There is one detail
+of our wedding which I am sure you will leave to me. My inclination is
+not to be married at the horrid little church here, with all the yokels
+staring round at us, and a droning parson reading.”
+
+“Where, then, can it be? At a church in town?”
+
+“No. Not at a church at all. At a registry office. It is a quieter,
+snugger, and more convenient place in every way.”
+
+“Oh,” said she, with real distress. “How can I be married except at
+church, and with all my dear friends round me?”
+
+“Yeoman Winterborne among them.”
+
+“Yes—why not? You know there was nothing serious between him and me.”
+
+“You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church has this
+objection in our case: it would be a thing of report a long way round.
+Now I would gently, as gently as possible, indicate to you how
+inadvisable such publicity would be if we leave Hintock, and I purchase
+the practice that I contemplate purchasing at Budmouth—hardly more than
+twenty miles off. Forgive my saying that it will be far better if
+nobody there knows where you come from, nor anything about your
+parents. Your beauty and knowledge and manners will carry you anywhere
+if you are not hampered by such retrospective criticism.”
+
+“But could it not be a quiet ceremony, even at church?” she pleaded.
+
+“I don’t see the necessity of going there!” he said, a trifle
+impatiently. “Marriage is a civil contract, and the shorter and simpler
+it is made the better. People don’t go to church when they take a
+house, or even when they make a will.”
+
+“Oh, Edgar—I don’t like to hear you speak like that.”
+
+“Well, well—I didn’t mean to. But I have mentioned as much to your
+father, who has made no objection; and why should you?”
+
+She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ought to allow
+sentiment to give way to policy—if there were indeed policy in his
+plan. But she was indefinably depressed as they walked homeward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+He left her at the door of her father’s house. As he receded, and was
+clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace as a man
+who hardly appertained to her existence at all. Cleverer, greater than
+herself, one outside her mental orbit, as she considered him, he seemed
+to be her ruler rather than her equal, protector, and dear familiar
+friend.
+
+The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the shock given to
+her girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of marriage, together
+with the sure and near approach of the day fixed for committing her
+future to his keeping, made her so restless that she could scarcely
+sleep at all that night. She rose when the sparrows began to walk out
+of the roof-holes, sat on the floor of her room in the dim light, and
+by-and-by peeped out behind the window-curtains. It was even now day
+out-of-doors, though the tones of morning were feeble and wan, and it
+was long before the sun would be perceptible in this overshadowed vale.
+Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet. The tree-trunks,
+the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that aspect
+of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to
+such scenes. Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be
+combined with intense consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed
+all things, oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions.
+Beyond the road were some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs
+and over the apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed by the
+plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by her future
+husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely through its creepers. The
+window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains closely drawn, and
+not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from the rugged chimneys.
+
+Something broke the stillness. The front door of the house she was
+gazing at opened softly, and there came out into the porch a female
+figure, wrapped in a large shawl, beneath which was visible the white
+skirt of a long loose garment. A gray arm, stretching from within the
+porch, adjusted the shawl over the woman’s shoulders; it was withdrawn
+and disappeared, the door closing behind her.
+
+The woman went quickly down the box-edged path between the raspberries
+and currants, and as she walked her well-developed form and gait
+betrayed her individuality. It was Suke Damson, the affianced one of
+simple young Tim Tangs. At the bottom of the garden she entered the
+shelter of the tall hedge, and only the top of her head could be seen
+hastening in the direction of her own dwelling.
+
+Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the gray arm
+stretching from the porch, the sleeve of a dressing-gown which Mr.
+Fitzpiers had been wearing on her own memorable visit to him. Her face
+fired red. She had just before thought of dressing herself and taking a
+lonely walk under the trees, so coolly green this early morning; but
+she now sat down on her bed and fell into reverie. It seemed as if
+hardly any time had passed when she heard the household moving briskly
+about, and breakfast preparing down-stairs; though, on rousing herself
+to robe and descend, she found that the sun was throwing his rays
+completely over the tree-tops, a progress of natural phenomena denoting
+that at least three hours had elapsed since she last looked out of the
+window.
+
+When attired she searched about the house for her father; she found him
+at last in the garden, stooping to examine the potatoes for signs of
+disease. Hearing her rustle, he stood up and stretched his back and
+arms, saying, “Morning t’ye, Gracie. I congratulate ye. It is only a
+month to-day to the time!”
+
+She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded between the
+dewy rows of tall potato-green into the middle of the plot where he
+was.
+
+“I have been thinking very much about my position this morning—ever
+since it was light,” she began, excitedly, and trembling so that she
+could hardly stand. “And I feel it is a false one. I wish not to marry
+Mr. Fitzpiers. I wish not to marry anybody; but I’ll marry Giles
+Winterborne if you say I must as an alternative.”
+
+Her father’s face settled into rigidity, he turned pale, and came
+deliberately out of the plot before he answered her. She had never seen
+him look so incensed before.
+
+“Now, hearken to me,” he said. “There’s a time for a woman to alter her
+mind; and there’s a time when she can no longer alter it, if she has
+any right eye to her parents’ honor and the seemliness of things. That
+time has come. I won’t say to ye, you _shall_ marry him. But I will say
+that if you refuse, I shall forever be ashamed and a-weary of ye as a
+daughter, and shall look upon you as the hope of my life no more. What
+do you know about life and what it can bring forth, and how you ought
+to act to lead up to best ends? Oh, you are an ungrateful maid, Grace;
+you’ve seen that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye; that’s where the
+secret lies, I’ll warrant me!”
+
+“No, father, no! It is not Giles—it is something I cannot tell you of—”
+
+“Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it off;
+have your own way.”
+
+“But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it disgrace
+you?”
+
+Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the engagement
+to this acquaintance and to that, till she perceived that in his
+restlessness and pride he had published it everywhere. She went
+dismally away to a bower of laurel at the top of the garden. Her father
+followed her.
+
+“It is that Giles Winterborne!” he said, with an upbraiding gaze at
+her.
+
+“No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once,” she
+said, troubled to the verge of despair. “It is not Giles, it is Mr.
+Fitzpiers.”
+
+“You’ve had a tiff—a lovers’ tiff—that’s all, I suppose!”
+
+“It is some woman—”
+
+“Ay, ay; you are jealous. The old story. Don’t tell me. Now do you bide
+here. I’ll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in front of his
+house but a minute by-gone.”
+
+He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane. But she
+would not stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the
+garden-fence, walked away into the wood. Just about here the trees were
+large and wide apart, and there was no undergrowth, so that she could
+be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, greenish-white creature, as
+toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a foot-fall crushing dead
+leaves behind her, and found herself reconnoitered by Fitzpiers
+himself, approaching gay and fresh as the morning around them.
+
+His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than of
+rapture. But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her
+pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of
+her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that
+his eyes kindled as he drew near.
+
+“My darling, what is it? Your father says you are in the pouts, and
+jealous, and I don’t know what. Ha! ha! ha! as if there were any rival
+to you, except vegetable nature, in this home of recluses! We know
+better.”
+
+“Jealous; oh no, it is not so,” said she, gravely. “That’s a mistake of
+his and yours, sir. I spoke to him so closely about the question of
+marriage with you that he did not apprehend my state of mind.”
+
+“But there’s something wrong—eh?” he asked, eying her narrowly, and
+bending to kiss her. She shrank away, and his purposed kiss miscarried.
+
+“What is it?” he said, more seriously for this little defeat.
+
+She made no answer beyond, “Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no breakfast, I
+must go in.”
+
+“Come,” he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her. “Tell me at once, I
+say.”
+
+It was the greater strength against the smaller; but she was mastered
+less by his manner than by her own sense of the unfairness of silence.
+“I looked out of the window,” she said, with hesitation. “I’ll tell you
+by-and-by. I must go in-doors. I have had no breakfast.”
+
+By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to the fact. “Nor
+I,” said he, lightly. “Indeed, I rose late to-day. I have had a broken
+night, or rather morning. A girl of the village—I don’t know her
+name—came and rang at my bell as soon as it was light—between four and
+five, I should think it was—perfectly maddened with an aching tooth. As
+no-body heard her ring, she threw some gravel at my window, till at
+last I heard her and slipped on my dressing-gown and went down. The
+poor thing begged me with tears in her eyes to take out her tormentor,
+if I dragged her head off. Down she sat and out it came—a lovely molar,
+not a speck upon it; and off she went with it in her handkerchief, much
+contented, though it would have done good work for her for fifty years
+to come.”
+
+It was all so plausible—so completely explained. Knowing nothing of the
+incident in the wood on old Midsummer-eve, Grace felt that her
+suspicions were unworthy and absurd, and with the readiness of an
+honest heart she jumped at the opportunity of honoring his word. At the
+moment of her mental liberation the bushes about the garden had moved,
+and her father emerged into the shady glade. “Well, I hope it is made
+up?” he said, cheerily.
+
+“Oh yes,” said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, whose eyes were
+shyly bent downward.
+
+“Now,” said her father, “tell me, the pair of ye, that you still mean
+to take one another for good and all; and on the strength o’t you shall
+have another couple of hundred paid down. I swear it by the name.”
+
+Fitzpiers took her hand. “We declare it, do we not, my dear Grace?”
+said he.
+
+Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever anxious to please,
+she was disposed to settle the matter; yet, womanlike, she would not
+relinquish her opportunity of asking a concession of some sort. “If our
+wedding can be at church, I say yes,” she answered, in a measured
+voice. “If not, I say no.”
+
+Fitzpiers was generous in his turn. “It shall be so,” he rejoined,
+gracefully. “To holy church we’ll go, and much good may it do us.”
+
+They returned through the bushes indoors, Grace walking, full of
+thought between the other two, somewhat comforted, both by Fitzpiers’s
+ingenious explanation and by the sense that she was not to be deprived
+of a religious ceremony. “So let it be,” she said to herself. “Pray God
+it is for the best.”
+
+From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalcitration on her
+part. Fitzpiers kept himself continually near her, dominating any
+rebellious impulse, and shaping her will into passive concurrence with
+all his desires. Apart from his lover-like anxiety to possess her, the
+few golden hundreds of the timber-dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm
+background to Grace’s lovely face, and went some way to remove his
+uneasiness at the prospect of endangering his professional and social
+chances by an alliance with the family of a simple countryman.
+
+The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. Whenever
+Grace had any doubts of her position, the sense of contracting time was
+like a shortening chamber: at other moments she was comparatively
+blithe. Day after day waxed and waned; the one or two woodmen who
+sawed, shaped, spokeshaved on her father’s premises at this inactive
+season of the year, regularly came and unlocked the doors in the
+morning, locked them in the evening, supped, leaned over their
+garden-gates for a whiff of evening air, and to catch any last and
+farthest throb of news from the outer world, which entered and expired
+at Little Hintock like the exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost
+cavern of some innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news
+interfered with the nuptial purpose at their neighbor’s house. The
+sappy green twig-tips of the season’s growth would not, she thought, be
+appreciably woodier on the day she became a wife, so near was the time;
+the tints of the foliage would hardly have changed. Everything was so
+much as usual that no itinerant stranger would have supposed a woman’s
+fate to be hanging in the balance at that summer’s decline.
+
+But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough by those who had
+special knowledge. In the remote and fashionable town of Sandbourne
+something was growing up under the hands of several persons who had
+never seen Grace Melbury, never would see her, or care anything about
+her at all, though their creation had such interesting relation to her
+life that it would enclose her very heart at a moment when that heart
+would beat, if not with more emotional ardor, at least with more
+emotional turbulence than at any previous time.
+
+Why did Mrs. Dollery’s van, instead of passing along at the end of the
+smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn one Saturday night into
+Little Hintock Lane, and never pull up till it reached Mr. Melbury’s
+gates? The gilding shine of evening fell upon a large, flat box not
+less than a yard square, and safely tied with cord, as it was handed
+out from under the tilt with a great deal of care. But it was not heavy
+for its size; Mrs. Dollery herself carried it into the house. Tim
+Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, Suke Damson, and others, looked
+knowing, and made remarks to each other as they watched its entrance.
+Melbury stood at the door of the timber-shed in the attitude of a man
+to whom such an arrival was a trifling domestic detail with which he
+did not condescend to be concerned. Yet he well divined the contents of
+that box, and was in truth all the while in a pleasant exaltation at
+the proof that thus far, at any rate, no disappointment had supervened.
+While Mrs. Dollery remained—which was rather long, from her sense of
+the importance of her errand—he went into the out-house; but as soon as
+she had had her say, been paid, and had rumbled away, he entered the
+dwelling, to find there what he knew he should find—his wife and
+daughter in a flutter of excitement over the wedding-gown, just arrived
+from the leading dress-maker of Sandbourne watering-place aforesaid.
+
+During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or heard
+of. At the close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some of his
+furniture, packed up the rest—a few pieces endeared by associations, or
+necessary to his occupation—in the house of a friendly neighbor, and
+gone away. People said that a certain laxity had crept into his life;
+that he had never gone near a church latterly, and had been sometimes
+seen on Sundays with unblacked boots, lying on his elbow under a tree,
+with a cynical gaze at surrounding objects. He was likely to return to
+Hintock when the cider-making season came round, his apparatus being
+stored there, and travel with his mill and press from village to
+village.
+
+The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished yet. There was
+in Grace’s mind sometimes a certain anticipative satisfaction, the
+satisfaction of feeling that she would be the heroine of an hour;
+moreover, she was proud, as a cultivated woman, to be the wife of a
+cultivated man. It was an opportunity denied very frequently to young
+women in her position, nowadays not a few; those in whom parental
+discovery of the value of education has implanted tastes which parental
+circles fail to gratify. But what an attenuation was this cold pride of
+the dream of her youth, in which she had pictured herself walking in
+state towards the altar, flushed by the purple light and bloom of her
+own passion, without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the bond,
+and fervently receiving as her due
+
+“The homage of a thousand hearts; the fond, deep love of one.”
+
+
+Everything had been clear then, in imagination; now something was
+undefined. She had little carking anxieties; a curious fatefulness
+seemed to rule her, and she experienced a mournful want of some one to
+confide in.
+
+The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in fancy,
+catch the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as she came out
+of church, imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned Hintock bells.
+The dialogues seemed to grow louder, and the ding-ding-dong of those
+three crazed bells more persistent. She awoke: the morning had come.
+
+Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a
+yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to
+back premises of wonderful commodiousness. The windows to the street
+were mullioned into narrow lights, and only commanded a view of the
+opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose that the best and most
+luxurious private sitting-room that the inn could afford over-looked
+the nether parts of the establishment, where beyond the yard were to be
+seen gardens and orchards, now bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet and
+gold fruit, stretching to infinite distance under a luminous lavender
+mist. The time was early autumn,
+
+“When the fair apples, red as evening sky,
+Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground,
+When juicy pears, and berries of black dye,
+Do dance in air, and call the eyes around.”
+
+
+The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part of
+the identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton had in
+his mind.
+
+In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till the
+finger of fate touched her and turned her to a wife. It was two months
+after the wedding, and she was alone. Fitzpiers had walked out to see
+the abbey by the light of sunset, but she had been too fatigued to
+accompany him. They had reached the last stage of a long eight-weeks’
+tour, and were going on to Hintock that night.
+
+In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a scene
+natural to the locality at this time of the year. An apple-mill and
+press had been erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing
+fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding
+them, and others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed
+forth into tubs and pails. The superintendent of these proceedings, to
+whom the others spoke as master, was a young yeoman of prepossessing
+manner and aspect, whose form she recognized in a moment. He had hung
+his coat to a nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves
+rolled up beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the
+pomace into the bags of horse-hair. Fragments of apple-rind had
+alighted upon the brim of his hat—probably from the bursting of a
+bag—while brown pips of the same fruit were sticking among the down
+upon his fine, round arms.
+
+She realized in a moment how he had come there. Down in the heart of
+the apple country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus
+and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw
+“cheeses,” as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona’s
+plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively,
+where the apple produce was hardly sufficient to warrant each
+proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. This was the field of the
+travelling cider-maker. His press and mill were fixed to wheels instead
+of being set up in a cider-house; and with a couple of horses, buckets,
+tubs, strainers, and an assistant or two, he wandered from place to
+place, deriving very satisfactory returns for his trouble in such a
+prolific season as the present.
+
+The back parts of the town were just now abounding with
+apple-gatherings. They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose
+heaps; and the blue, stagnant air of autumn which hung over everything
+was heavy with a sweet cidery smell. Cakes of pomace lay against the
+walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to be used as fuel. Yet
+it was not the great make of the year as yet; before the standard crop
+came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, a large
+superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the trees of later
+harvest, which would not keep long. Thus, in the baskets, and quivering
+in the hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, including
+the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards,
+stubbards, ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous
+youth.
+
+Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped
+her. Perhaps she thought of the day—not so far distant—when that friend
+of her childhood had met her by her father’s arrangement in this same
+town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise
+rather implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier
+yet—days of childhood—when her mouth was somewhat more ready to receive
+a kiss from his than was his to bestow one. However, all that was over.
+She had felt superior to him then, and she felt superior to him now.
+
+She wondered why he never looked towards her open window. She did not
+know that in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at the inn
+that afternoon Winterborne had caught sight of her through the archway,
+had turned red, and was continuing his work with more concentrated
+attention on the very account of his discovery. Robert Creedle, too,
+who travelled with Giles, had been incidentally informed by the hostler
+that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were in the hotel, after which
+news Creedle kept shaking his head and saying to himself, “Ah!” very
+audibly, between his thrusts at the screw of the cider-press.
+
+“Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?” asked Winterborne, at
+last.
+
+“Ah, maister—’tis my thoughts—’tis my thoughts!...Yes, ye’ve lost a
+hundred load o’ timber well seasoned; ye’ve lost five hundred pound in
+good money; ye’ve lost the stone-windered house that’s big enough to
+hold a dozen families; ye’ve lost your share of half a dozen good
+wagons and their horses—all lost!—through your letting slip she that
+was once yer own!”
+
+“Good God, Creedle, you’ll drive me mad!” said Giles, sternly. “Don’t
+speak of that any more!”
+
+Thus the subject had ended in the yard. Meanwhile, the passive cause of
+all this loss still regarded the scene. She was beautifully dressed;
+she was seated in the most comfortable room that the inn afforded; her
+long journey had been full of variety, and almost luxuriously
+performed—for Fitzpiers did not study economy where pleasure was in
+question. Hence it perhaps arose that Giles and all his belongings
+seemed sorry and common to her for the moment—moving in a plane so far
+removed from her own of late that she could scarcely believe she had
+ever found congruity therein. “No—I could never have married him!” she
+said, gently shaking her head. “Dear father was right. It would have
+been too coarse a life for me.” And she looked at the rings of sapphire
+and opal upon her white and slender fingers that had been gifts from
+Fitzpiers.
+
+Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of the
+above-described pride of life—easily to be understood, and possibly
+excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she had married
+well—she said at last, with a smile on her lips, “Mr. Winterborne!”
+
+He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, “Mr.
+Winterborne!”
+
+Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to him to
+see the expression of his face might have doubted it; and she said a
+third time, with a timid loudness, “Mr. Winterborne! What, have you
+forgotten my voice?” She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming
+smile.
+
+He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the window.
+“Why do you call me?” he said, with a sternness that took her
+completely unawares, his face being now pale. “Is it not enough that
+you see me here moiling and muddling for my daily bread while you are
+sitting there in your success, that you can’t refrain from opening old
+wounds by calling out my name?”
+
+She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave his
+unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. “I am sorry
+I offended you by speaking,” she replied, meekly. “Believe me, I did
+not intend to do that. I could hardly sit here so near you without a
+word of recognition.”
+
+Winterborne’s heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by this
+time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice moved him.
+He assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, that he was not
+angry. He then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if she
+had had a pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights. She spoke
+of a few places that she had visited, and so the time passed till he
+withdrew to take his place at one of the levers which pulled round the
+screw.
+
+Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as his
+bitterness showed. But though in the heat of the moment he had
+reproached her keenly, his second mood was a far more tender one—that
+which could regard her renunciation of such as he as her glory and her
+privilege, his own fidelity notwithstanding. He could have declared
+with a contemporary poet—
+
+                    “If I forget,
+The salt creek may forget the ocean;
+                    If I forget
+The heart whence flows my heart’s bright motion,
+May I sink meanlier than the worst
+Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst,
+                    If I forget.
+
+
+                    “Though you forget,
+No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;
+                    Though you forget,
+You filled my barren life with treasure,
+You may withdraw the gift you gave;
+You still are queen, I still am slave,
+                    Though you forget.”
+
+
+She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind him
+of what he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the pressure
+of events had dissipated the dreams of their early youth. Grace was
+thus unexpectedly worsted in her encounter with her old friend. She had
+opened the window with a faint sense of triumph, but he had turned it
+into sadness; she did not quite comprehend the reason why. In truth it
+was because she was not cruel enough in her cruelty. If you have to use
+the knife, use it, say the great surgeons; and for her own peace Grace
+should have contemned Winterborne thoroughly or not at all. As it was,
+on closing the window an indescribable, some might have said dangerous,
+pity quavered in her bosom for him.
+
+Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a wonderful
+sunset there was to be seen.
+
+“I have not noticed it. But I have seen somebody out there that we
+know,” she replied, looking into the court.
+
+Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not
+recognize anybody.
+
+“Why, Mr. Winterborne—there he is, cider-making. He combines that with
+his other business, you know.”
+
+“Oh—that fellow,” said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming extinct.
+
+She, reproachfully: “What, call Mr. Winterborne a fellow, Edgar? It is
+true I was just saying to myself that I never could have married him;
+but I have much regard for him, and always shall.”
+
+“Well, do by all means, my dear one. I dare say I am inhuman, and
+supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle family;
+but I do honestly confess to you that I feel as if I belonged to a
+different species from the people who are working in that yard.”
+
+“And from me too, then. For my blood is no better than theirs.”
+
+He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, indeed, a
+startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be
+standing there beside him as his wife, if his sentiments were as he had
+said. In their travels together she had ranged so unerringly at his
+level in ideas, tastes, and habits that he had almost forgotten how his
+heart had played havoc with his principles in taking her to him.
+
+“Ah YOU—you are refined and educated into something quite different,”
+he said, self-assuringly.
+
+“I don’t quite like to think that,” she murmured with soft regret. “And
+I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne. Remember, I was brought up
+with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be radically
+different. At any rate, I don’t feel so. That is, no doubt, my fault,
+and a great blemish in me. But I hope you will put up with it, Edgar.”
+
+Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now
+getting on for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of their
+journey, so as to arrive at Hintock before it grew very late.
+
+In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard
+having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds
+audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the tightly
+screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had drunk itself so
+tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at
+the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, but Fitzpiers sat beside
+her almost silent. An indescribable oppressiveness had overtaken him
+with the near approach of the journey’s end and the realities of life
+that lay there.
+
+“You don’t say a word, Edgar,” she observed. “Aren’t you glad to get
+back? I am.”
+
+“You have friends here. I have none.”
+
+“But my friends are yours.”
+
+“Oh yes—in that sense.”
+
+The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock
+Lane. It had been decided that they should, at least for a time, take
+up their abode in her father’s roomy house, one wing of which was quite
+at their service, being almost disused by the Melburys. Workmen had
+been painting, papering, and whitewashing this set of rooms in the
+wedded pair’s absence; and so scrupulous had been the timber-dealer
+that there should occur no hitch or disappointment on their arrival,
+that not the smallest detail remained undone. To make it all complete a
+ground-floor room had been fitted up as a surgery, with an independent
+outer door, to which Fitzpiers’s brass plate was screwed—for mere
+ornament, such a sign being quite superfluous where everybody knew the
+latitude and longitude of his neighbors for miles round.
+
+Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, and all the
+house with deference. They went up to explore their rooms, that opened
+from a passage on the left hand of the staircase, the entrance to which
+could be shut off on the landing by a door that Melbury had hung for
+the purpose. A friendly fire was burning in the grate, although it was
+not cold. Fitzpiers said it was too soon for any sort of meal, they
+only having dined shortly before leaving Sherton-Abbas. He would walk
+across to his old lodging, to learn how his locum tenens had got on in
+his absence.
+
+In leaving Melbury’s door he looked back at the house. There was
+economy in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but in
+some way he was dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed him so
+deeply in son-in-lawship to Melbury. He went on to his former
+residence. His deputy was out, and Fitzpiers fell into conversation
+with his former landlady.
+
+“Well, Mrs. Cox, what’s the best news?” he asked of her, with cheery
+weariness.
+
+She was a little soured at losing by his marriage so profitable a
+tenant as the surgeon had proved to be during his residence under her
+roof; and the more so in there being hardly the remotest chance of her
+getting such another settler in the Hintock solitudes. “’Tis what I
+don’t wish to repeat, sir; least of all to you,” she mumbled.
+
+“Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead.”
+
+“It is what people say about your hasty marrying, Dr. Fitzpiers.
+Whereas they won’t believe you know such clever doctrines in physic as
+they once supposed of ye, seeing as you could marry into Mr. Melbury’s
+family, which is only Hintock-born, such as me.”
+
+“They are kindly welcome to their opinion,” said Fitzpiers, not
+allowing himself to recognize that he winced. “Anything else?”
+
+“Yes; _she’s_ come home at last.”
+
+“Who’s she?”
+
+“Mrs. Charmond.”
+
+“Oh, indeed!” said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest. “I’ve never
+seen her.”
+
+“She has seen you, sir, whether or no.”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“Yes; she saw you in some hotel or street for a minute or two while you
+were away travelling, and accidentally heard your name; and when she
+made some remark about you, Miss Ellis—that’s her maid—told her you was
+on your wedding-tower with Mr. Melbury’s daughter; and she said, ‘He
+ought to have done better than that. I fear he has spoiled his
+chances,’ she says.”
+
+Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and
+walked home with no very brisk step. He entered the door quietly, and
+went straight up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for their use
+by Melbury in his and his bride’s absence, expecting to find her there
+as he had left her. The fire was burning still, but there were no
+lights. He looked into the next apartment, fitted up as a little
+dining-room, but no supper was laid. He went to the top of the stairs,
+and heard a chorus of voices in the timber-merchant’s parlor below,
+Grace’s being occasionally intermingled.
+
+Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found quite
+a large gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances, praising and
+congratulating Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among them being the
+dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, and the master-blacksmith from Great Hintock;
+also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some others,
+with their wives, who lived hard by. Grace, girl that she was, had
+quite forgotten her new dignity and her husband’s; she was in the midst
+of them, blushing, and receiving their compliments with all the
+pleasure of old-comradeship.
+
+Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. Melbury
+was nowhere in the room, but Melbury’s wife, perceiving the doctor,
+came to him. “We thought, Grace and I,” she said, “that as they have
+called, hearing you were come, we could do no less than ask them to
+supper; and then Grace proposed that we should all sup together, as it
+is the first night of your return.”
+
+By this time Grace had come round to him. “Is it not good of them to
+welcome me so warmly?” she exclaimed, with tears of friendship in her
+eyes. “After so much good feeling I could not think of our shutting
+ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room.”
+
+“Certainly not—certainly not,” said Fitzpiers; and he entered the room
+with the heroic smile of a martyr.
+
+As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to see at
+once that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such
+demonstrative reception. He thereupon privately chid his wife for her
+forwardness in the matter. Mrs. Melbury declared that it was as much
+Grace’s doing as hers, after which there was no more to be said by that
+young woman’s tender father. By this time Fitzpiers was making the best
+of his position among the wide-elbowed and genial company who sat
+eating and drinking and laughing and joking around him; and getting
+warmed himself by the good cheer, was obliged to admit that, after all,
+the supper was not the least enjoyable he had ever known.
+
+At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his
+opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted him
+like a handwriting on the wall. Then his manner would become suddenly
+abstracted. At one moment he would mentally put an indignant query why
+Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make it her business to have
+opinions about his opportunities; at another he thought that he could
+hardly be angry with her for taking an interest in the doctor of her
+own parish. Then he would drink a glass of grog and so get rid of the
+misgiving. These hitches and quaffings were soon perceived by Grace as
+well as by her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when
+the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late rose
+and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words
+Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes
+they were gone.
+
+“Now, Grace,” said her husband as soon as he found himself alone with
+her in their private apartments, “we’ve had a very pleasant evening,
+and everybody has been very kind. But we must come to an understanding
+about our way of living here. If we continue in these rooms there must
+be no mixing in with your people below. I can’t stand it, and that’s
+the truth.”
+
+She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for
+those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he
+had professed to regard with so much interest. But she assented in a
+moment.
+
+“We must be simply your father’s tenants,” he continued, “and our
+goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived elsewhere.”
+
+“Certainly, Edgar—I quite see that it must be so.”
+
+“But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without knowing
+whether I should approve or disapprove. When I came I couldn’t help
+myself at all.”
+
+She, sighing: “Yes—I see I ought to have waited; though they came
+unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best.”
+
+Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his old
+rounds as usual. But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye as his to
+discern, or to think he discerned, that he was no longer regarded as an
+extrinsic, unfathomed gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific
+and social; but as Mr. Melbury’s compeer, and therefore in a degree
+only one of themselves. The Hintock woodlandlers held with all the
+strength of inherited conviction to the aristocratic principle, and as
+soon as they had discovered that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury
+Fitzpierses they had accorded to him for nothing a touching of
+hat-brims, promptness of service, and deference of approach, which
+Melbury had to do without, though he paid for it over and over. But
+now, having proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage,
+Fitzpiers was believed in no more as a superior hedged by his own
+divinity; while as doctor he began to be rated no higher than old
+Jones, whom they had so long despised.
+
+His few patients seemed in his two months’ absence to have dwindled
+considerably in number, and no sooner had he returned than there came
+to him from the Board of Guardians a complaint that a pauper had been
+neglected by his substitute. In a fit of pride Fitzpiers resigned his
+appointment as one of the surgeons to the union, which had been the
+nucleus of his practice here.
+
+At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening to Grace more
+briskly than usual. “They have written to me again about that practice
+in Budmouth that I once negotiated for,” he said to her. “The premium
+asked is eight hundred pounds, and I think that between your father and
+myself it ought to be raised. Then we can get away from this place
+forever.”
+
+The question had been mooted between them before, and she was not
+unprepared to consider it. They had not proceeded far with the
+discussion when a knock came to the door, and in a minute Grammer ran
+up to say that a message had arrived from Hintock House requesting Dr.
+Fitzpiers to attend there at once. Mrs. Charmond had met with a slight
+accident through the overturning of her carriage.
+
+“This is something, anyhow,” said Fitzpiers, rising with an interest
+which he could not have defined. “I have had a presentiment that this
+mysterious woman and I were to be better acquainted.”
+
+The latter words were murmured to himself alone.
+
+“Good-night,” said Grace, as soon as he was ready. “I shall be asleep,
+probably, when you return.”
+
+“Good-night,” he replied, inattentively, and went down-stairs. It was
+the first time since their marriage that he had left her without a
+kiss.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Winterborne’s house had been pulled down. On this account his face had
+been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably have
+disappeared from the place altogether but for his slight business
+connection with Melbury, on whose premises Giles kept his cider-making
+apparatus, now that he had no place of his own to stow it in. Coming
+here one evening on his way to a hut beyond the wood where he now
+slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-thatched pinion of his
+paternal roof had vanished from its site, and that the walls were
+levelled. In present circumstances he had a feeling for the spot that
+might have been called morbid, and when he had supped in the hut
+aforesaid he made use of the spare hour before bedtime to return to
+Little Hintock in the twilight and ramble over the patch of ground on
+which he had first seen the day.
+
+He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions. Even in the
+gloom he could trace where the different rooms had stood; could mark
+the shape of the kitchen chimney-corner, in which he had roasted apples
+and potatoes in his boyhood, cast his bullets, and burned his initials
+on articles that did and did not belong to him. The apple-trees still
+remained to show where the garden had been, the oldest of them even now
+retaining the crippled slant to north-east given them by the great
+November gale of 1824, which carried a brig bodily over the Chesil
+Bank. They were at present bent to still greater obliquity by the
+heaviness of their produce. Apples bobbed against his head, and in the
+grass beneath he crunched scores of them as he walked. There was nobody
+to gather them now.
+
+It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half leaning
+against one of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had become lost in
+his thoughts, as usual, till one little star after another had taken up
+a position in the piece of sky which now confronted him where his walls
+and chimneys had formerly raised their outlines. The house had jutted
+awkwardly into the road, and the opening caused by its absence was very
+distinct.
+
+In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels
+became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the blank
+sky, bearing down upon him with the bend in the lane which here
+occurred, and of which the house had been the cause. He could discern
+the figure of a woman high up on the driving-seat of a phaeton, a groom
+being just visible behind. Presently there was a slight scrape, then a
+scream. Winterborne went across to the spot, and found the phaeton half
+overturned, its driver sitting on the heap of rubbish which had once
+been his dwelling, and the man seizing the horses’ heads. The equipage
+was Mrs. Charmond’s, and the unseated charioteer that lady herself.
+
+To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent reply to the
+effect that she did not know. The damage in other respects was little
+or none: the phaeton was righted, Mrs. Charmond placed in it, and the
+reins given to the servant. It appeared that she had been deceived by
+the removal of the house, imagining the gap caused by the demolition to
+be the opening of the road, so that she turned in upon the ruins
+instead of at the bend a few yards farther on.
+
+“Drive home—drive home!” cried the lady, impatiently; and they started
+on their way. They had not, however, gone many paces when, the air
+being still, Winterborne heard her say “Stop; tell that man to call the
+doctor—Mr. Fitzpiers—and send him on to the House. I find I am hurt
+more seriously than I thought.”
+
+Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the
+doctor’s at once. Having delivered it, he stepped back into the
+darkness, and waited till he had seen Fitzpiers leave the door. He
+stood for a few minutes looking at the window which by its light
+revealed the room where Grace was sitting, and went away under the
+gloomy trees.
+
+Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he now saw open
+for the first time. Contrary to his expectation there was visible no
+sign of that confusion or alarm which a serious accident to the
+mistress of the abode would have occasioned. He was shown into a room
+at the top of the staircase, cosily and femininely draped, where, by
+the light of the shaded lamp, he saw a woman of full round figure
+reclining upon a couch in such a position as not to disturb a pile of
+magnificent hair on the crown of her head. A deep purple dressing-gown
+formed an admirable foil to the peculiarly rich brown of her
+hair-plaits; her left arm, which was naked nearly up to the shoulder,
+was thrown upward, and between the fingers of her right hand she held a
+cigarette, while she idly breathed from her plump lips a thin stream of
+smoke towards the ceiling.
+
+The doctor’s first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated prevision in
+having brought appliances for a serious case; the next, something more
+curious. While the scene and the moment were new to him and
+unanticipated, the sentiment and essence of the moment were
+indescribably familiar. What could be the cause of it? Probably a
+dream.
+
+Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her eyes to him, and he
+came and stood by her. She glanced up at his face across her brows and
+forehead, and then he observed a blush creep slowly over her decidedly
+handsome cheeks. Her eyes, which had lingered upon him with an
+inquiring, conscious expression, were hastily withdrawn, and she
+mechanically applied the cigarette again to her lips.
+
+For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arousing himself he
+addressed her, formally condoled with her, and made the usual
+professional inquiries about what had happened to her, and where she
+was hurt.
+
+“That’s what I want you to tell me,” she murmured, in tones of
+indefinable reserve. “I quite believe in you, for I know you are very
+accomplished, because you study so hard.”
+
+“I’ll do my best to justify your good opinion,” said the young man,
+bowing. “And none the less that I am happy to find the accident has not
+been serious.”
+
+“I am very much shaken,” she said.
+
+“Oh yes,” he replied; and completed his examination, which convinced
+him that there was really nothing the matter with her, and more than
+ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched, since she did not
+appear to be a timid woman. “You must rest a while, and I’ll send
+something,” he said.
+
+“Oh, I forgot,” she returned. “Look here.” And she showed him a little
+scrape on her arm—the full round arm that was exposed. “Put some
+court-plaster on that, please.”
+
+He obeyed. “And now,” she said, “before you go I want to put a question
+to you. Sit round there in front of me, on that low chair, and bring
+the candles, or one, to the little table. Do you smoke? Yes? That’s
+right—I am learning. Take one of these; and here’s a light.” She threw
+a matchbox across.
+
+Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new
+position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time
+afforded him a full view of her face. “How many years have passed since
+first we met!” she resumed, in a voice which she mainly endeavored to
+maintain at its former pitch of composure, and eying him with daring
+bashfulness.
+
+“_We_ met, do you say?”
+
+She nodded. “I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you were
+passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized you as
+one I had met in my girlhood. Do you remember, when you were studying
+at Heidelberg, an English family that was staying there, who used to
+walk—”
+
+“And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair—ah, I see
+it before my eyes!—who lost her gloves on the Great Terrace—who was
+going back in the dusk to find them—to whom I said, ‘I’ll go for them,’
+and you said, ‘Oh, they are not worth coming all the way up again for.’
+I _do_ remember, and how very long we stayed talking there! I went next
+morning while the dew was on the grass: there they lay—the little
+fingers sticking out damp and thin. I see them now! I picked them up,
+and then—”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I kissed them,” he rejoined, rather shamefacedly.
+
+“But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?”
+
+“Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how I
+could make the most of my _trouvaille_, and decided that I would call
+at your hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I waited till
+next day. I called, and you were gone.”
+
+“Yes,” answered she, with dry melancholy. “My mother, knowing my
+disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling
+in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden. As
+it is all over and past I’ll tell you one thing: I should have sent you
+a line passing warm had I known your name. That name I never knew till
+my maid said, as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, ‘There’s
+Dr. Fitzpiers.’”
+
+“Good Heaven!” said Fitzpiers, musingly. “How the time comes back to
+me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found that you
+really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my back.
+I went up to where you had stood when I last saw you—I flung myself on
+the grass, and—being not much more than a boy—my eyes were literally
+blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn’t
+forget your voice.”
+
+“For how long?”
+
+“Oh—ever so long. Days and days.”
+
+“Days and days! _Only_ days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days and
+days!”
+
+“But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was
+not a full-blown love—it was the merest bud—red, fresh, vivid, but
+small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It never
+matured.”
+
+“So much the better, perhaps.”
+
+“Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will against
+predestination. We were prevented meeting; we have met. One feature of
+the case remains the same amid many changes. You are still rich, and I
+am still poor. Better than that, you have (judging by your last remark)
+outgrown the foolish, impulsive passions of your early girl-hood. I
+have not outgrown mine.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” said she, with vibrations of strong feeling in her
+words. “I have been placed in a position which hinders such
+outgrowings. Besides, I don’t believe that the genuine subjects of
+emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such people get the
+worse they are. Possibly at ninety or a hundred they may feel they are
+cured; but a mere threescore and ten won’t do it—at least for me.”
+
+He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. Here was a soul of souls!
+
+“Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly,” he exclaimed. “But you speak sadly as
+well. Why is that?”
+
+“I always am sad when I come here,” she said, dropping to a low tone
+with a sense of having been too demonstrative.
+
+“Then may I inquire why you came?”
+
+“A man brought me. Women are always carried about like corks upon the
+waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you; but
+Hintock has the curious effect of bottling up the emotions till one can
+no longer hold them; I am often obliged to fly away and discharge my
+sentiments somewhere, or I should die outright.”
+
+“There is very good society in the county for those who have the
+privilege of entering it.”
+
+“Perhaps so. But the misery of remote country life is that your
+neighbors have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. My
+neighbors think I am an atheist, except those who think I am a Roman
+Catholic; and when I speak disrespectfully of the weather or the crops
+they think I am a blasphemer.”
+
+She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea.
+
+“You don’t wish me to stay any longer?” he inquired, when he found that
+she remained musing.
+
+“No—I think not.”
+
+“Then tell me that I am to be gone.”
+
+“Why? Cannot you go without?”
+
+“I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself.”
+
+“Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you’ll be in my way?”
+
+“I feared it might be so.”
+
+“Then fear no more. But good-night. Come to-morrow and see if I am
+going on right. This renewal of acquaintance touches me. I have already
+a friendship for you.”
+
+“If it depends upon myself it shall last forever.”
+
+“My best hopes that it may. Good-by.”
+
+Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to decide whether she
+had sent for him in the natural alarm which might have followed her
+mishap, or with the single view of making herself known to him as she
+had done, for which the capsize had afforded excellent opportunity.
+Outside the house he mused over the spot under the light of the stars.
+It seemed very strange that he should have come there more than once
+when its inhabitant was absent, and observed the house with a nameless
+interest; that he should have assumed off-hand before he knew Grace
+that it was here she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and seasons
+the individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself upon him
+as appertaining to some existence with which he was concerned.
+
+The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond’s for a day
+or two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her at the
+time, but it had been so evanescent that in the ordinary onward roll of
+affairs he would scarce ever have recalled it again. To find her here,
+however, in these somewhat romantic circumstances, magnified that
+by-gone and transitory tenderness to indescribable proportions.
+
+On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding it in a new
+way—from the Hintock House point of view rather than from his own and
+the Melburys’. The household had all gone to bed, and as he went
+up-stairs he heard the snore of the timber-merchant from his quarter of
+the building, and turned into the passage communicating with his own
+rooms in a strange access of sadness. A light was burning for him in
+the chamber; but Grace, though in bed, was not asleep. In a moment her
+sympathetic voice came from behind the curtains.
+
+“Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?”
+
+Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient that
+he was not on the instant ready with a reply.
+
+“Oh no,” he said. “There are no bones broken, but she is shaken. I am
+going again to-morrow.”
+
+Another inquiry or two, and Grace said,
+
+“Did she ask for me?”
+
+“Well—I think she did—I don’t quite remember; but I am under the
+impression that she spoke of you.”
+
+“Cannot you recollect at all what she said?”
+
+“I cannot, just this minute.”
+
+“At any rate she did not talk much about me?” said Grace with
+disappointment.
+
+“Oh no.”
+
+“But you did, perhaps,” she added, innocently fishing for a compliment.
+
+“Oh yes—you may depend upon that!” replied he, warmly, though scarcely
+thinking of what he was saying, so vividly was there present to his
+mind the personality of Mrs. Charmond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+The doctor’s professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeated
+the next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond reclining on a
+sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient who was in no great
+hurry to lose that title. On each occasion he looked gravely at the
+little scratch on her arm, as if it had been a serious wound.
+
+He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on her
+temple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black plaster on
+this conspicuous part of her person in preference to gold-beater’s
+skin, so that it might catch the eyes of the servants, and make his
+presence appear decidedly necessary, in case there should be any doubt
+of the fact.
+
+“Oh—you hurt me!” she exclaimed one day.
+
+He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the
+scrape had turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to
+vanishing altogether. “Wait a moment, then—I’ll damp it,” said
+Fitzpiers. He put his lips to the place and kept them there till the
+plaster came off easily. “It was at your request I put it on,” said he.
+
+“I know it,” she replied. “Is that blue vein still in my temple that
+used to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the cut had been
+a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood indeed!” Fitzpiers
+examined so closely that his breath touched her tenderly, at which
+their eyes rose to an encounter—hers showing themselves as deep and
+mysterious as interstellar space. She turned her face away suddenly.
+“Ah! none of that! none of that—I cannot coquet with you!” she cried.
+“Don’t suppose I consent to for one moment. Our poor, brief, youthful
+hour of love-making was too long ago to bear continuing now. It is as
+well that we should understand each other on that point before we go
+further.”
+
+“Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic gloves, so
+it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I am no trifler. I
+naturally cannot forget that little space in which I flitted across the
+field of your vision in those days of the past, and the recollection
+opens up all sorts of imaginings.”
+
+“Suppose my mother had not taken me away?” she murmured, her dreamy
+eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree.
+
+“I should have seen you again.”
+
+“And then?”
+
+“Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would have
+immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart at
+last.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Well—that’s the end of all love, according to Nature’s law. I can give
+no other reason.”
+
+“Oh, don’t speak like that,” she exclaimed. “Since we are only
+picturing the possibilities of that time, don’t, for pity’s sake, spoil
+the picture.” Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she added, with an
+incipient pout upon her full lips, “Let me think at least that if you
+had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me for ever
+and ever!”
+
+“You are right—think it with all your heart,” said he. “It is a
+pleasant thought, and costs nothing.”
+
+She weighed that remark in silence a while. “Did you ever hear anything
+of me from then till now?” she inquired.
+
+“Not a word.”
+
+“So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you.
+I may tell you about it some day. But don’t ever ask me to do it, and
+particularly do not press me to tell you now.”
+
+Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance
+on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in
+retrospect to the length and importance of years; made to form a canvas
+for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet,
+alluring assertions which could neither be proved nor disproved. Grace
+was never mentioned between them, but a rumor of his proposed domestic
+changes somehow reached her ears.
+
+“Doctor, you are going away,” she exclaimed, confronting him with
+accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her rich
+cooing voice. “Oh yes, you are,” she went on, springing to her feet
+with an air which might almost have been called passionate. “It is no
+use denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don’t blame
+you. Nobody can live at Hintock—least of all a professional man who
+wants to keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here to
+induce such a one to stay for other reasons. That’s right, that’s
+right—go away!”
+
+“But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am
+indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to feel
+about the business as I feel at this moment—perhaps I may conclude
+never to go at all.”
+
+“But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you
+don’t mean to take away with you?”
+
+Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she
+lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no
+mean strength—strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a
+stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there—the only
+certain element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one
+word could have expressed her it would have been Inconsequence. She was
+a woman of perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. She liked
+mystery, in her life, in her love, in her history. To be fair to her,
+there was nothing in the latter which she had any great reason to be
+ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud; but it
+had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she rarely
+volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious nature, the people
+on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous subtlety
+of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in sons of
+the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along under her
+government rather better than they would have done beneath a more
+equable rule.
+
+Now, with regard to the doctor’s notion of leaving Hintock, he had
+advanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth
+surgeon’s good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole
+matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours. The
+evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked and
+pondered between the high hedges, now greenish-white with wild
+clematis—here called “old-man’s beard,” from its aspect later in the
+year.
+
+The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his
+departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away,
+remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the
+grass—each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he
+had discovered the person and history, and, above all, mood of their
+owner. There was every temporal reason for leaving; it would be
+entering again into a world which he had only quitted in a passion for
+isolation, induced by a fit of Achillean moodiness after an imagined
+slight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here,
+and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which every step
+had been taken but the last. But could he find it in his heart—as he
+found it clearly enough in his conscience—to go away?
+
+He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly penned a
+letter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for the
+Budmouth practice. As the postman had already left Little Hintock for
+that night, he sent one of Melbury’s men to intercept a mail-cart on
+another turnpike-road, and so got the letter off.
+
+The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing was
+done. Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had he carried out
+this impulse—taken such wild trouble to effect a probable injury to his
+own and his young wife’s prospects? His motive was fantastic, glowing,
+shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky. Mrs. Charmond
+could overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, and to his
+wife, at the outside, a patron. In the unattached bachelor days of his
+first sojourning here how highly proper an emotional reason for
+lingering on would have appeared to troublesome dubiousness.
+Matrimonial ambition is such an honorable thing.
+
+“My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with a
+late letter to Budmouth,” cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to meet
+him under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, the
+folding star. “I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay the
+premium they ask, and that the tedious question had been settled. When
+do we go, Edgar?”
+
+“I have altered my mind,” said he. “They want too much—seven hundred
+and fifty is too large a sum—and in short, I have declined to go
+further. We must wait for another opportunity. I fear I am not a good
+business-man.” He spoke the last words with a momentary faltering at
+the great foolishness of his act; for, as he looked in her fair and
+honorable face, his heart reproached him for what he had done.
+
+Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally she liked
+the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. But her
+husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout
+since their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake.
+
+It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. The
+morning had been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves like
+grain against the walls and window-panes of the Hintock cottages. He
+went on foot across the wilder recesses of the park, where slimy
+streams of green moisture, exuding from decayed holes caused by old
+amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and elms, the rind below
+being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald. They were
+stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercest
+gale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled like
+an old crone’s face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above
+the foliage of their summits, they were nevertheless still green—though
+yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees.
+
+She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, and
+Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window-curtains were
+closed and a red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-of-doors
+it was broad daylight. Moreover, a large fire was burning in the grate,
+though it was not cold.
+
+“What does it all mean?” he asked.
+
+She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away. “Oh,” she
+murmured, “it is because the world is so dreary outside. Sorrow and
+bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating against the
+panes. I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snails
+creeping up the window-glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy this
+morning that I could have wept my life away. I cannot bear you to see
+my face; I keep it away from you purposely. Oh! why were we given
+hungry hearts and wild desires if we have to live in a world like this?
+Why should Death only lend what Life is compelled to borrow—rest?
+Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers.”
+
+“You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before _you_ can do it,
+Felice Charmond.”
+
+“Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of
+fears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The terrible
+insistencies of society—how severe they are, and cold and
+inexorable—ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of stone.
+Oh, I am afraid of them; a stab for this error, and a stab for
+that—correctives and regulations framed that society may tend to
+perfection—an end which I don’t care for in the least. Yet for this,
+all I do care for has to be stunted and starved.”
+
+Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. “What sets you in this mournful
+mood?” he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was the result of
+a loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.)
+
+“My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They begin to
+think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There—don’t be
+angry with me;” and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked
+anxiously at him. “It is necessary. It is best for both you and me.”
+
+“But,” said Fitzpiers, gloomily, “what have we done?”
+
+“Done—we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more. However,
+it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near
+Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined
+to her bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can’t get out of
+it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past.
+When are you going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock
+behind forever, with your pretty wife on your arm?”
+
+“I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to depart.”
+
+“You _have?_” she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty. “Why do
+you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I done!”
+
+“Nothing. Besides, you are going away.”
+
+“Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps I
+shall gain strength there—particularly strength of mind—I require it.
+And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and see
+me safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we’ll be friends—she
+and I. Oh, how this shutting up of one’s self does lead to indulgence
+in idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give your attendance to me
+after to-day. But I am glad that you are not going away—if your
+remaining does not injure your prospects at all.”
+
+As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preserved
+in her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she had
+conversed with him, equally departed from her. She became as heavy as
+lead—just as she had been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed to
+dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it
+made her lips tremulous and her closed eyes wet. His footsteps again
+startled her, and she turned round.
+
+“I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be
+fine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out those
+lights. Shall I do it for you?”
+
+“Please—if you don’t mind.”
+
+He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lamp
+and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of
+late autumn sunlight that poured in. “Shall I come round to you?” he
+asked, her back being towards him.
+
+“No,” she replied.
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because I am crying, and I don’t want to see you.”
+
+He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the
+rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in
+garish day.
+
+“Then I am going,” he said.
+
+“Very well,” she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and
+patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other.
+
+“Shall I write a line to you at—”
+
+“No, no.” A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, “It
+must not be, you know. It won’t do.”
+
+“Very well. Good-by.” The next moment he was gone.
+
+In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who
+dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers’s marriage.
+
+“Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne,” said the
+young woman.
+
+“And why didn’t she marry him?” said Mrs. Charmond.
+
+“Because, you see, ma’am, he lost his houses.”
+
+“Lost his houses? How came he to do that?”
+
+“The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent
+wouldn’t renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very
+good claim. That’s as I’ve heard it, ma’am, and it was through it that
+the match was broke off.”
+
+Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into
+a mood of dismal self-reproach. “In refusing that poor man his
+reasonable request,” she said to herself, “I foredoomed my rejuvenated
+girlhood’s romance. Who would have thought such a business matter could
+have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets and
+agonies and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring. Oh! I am
+glad I am going away.”
+
+She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairs
+she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon
+the lawn. It was not yet quite dark. Half-way up the steep green slope
+confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his way
+homeward by clambering here where there was no road, and in opposition
+to express orders that no path was to be made there. Tangs had
+momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs.
+Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail.
+His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel
+to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him.
+
+Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her
+constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung
+upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by the
+spectacle. She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom
+of the previous hour seeming to render it the more uncontrollable. It
+had not died out of her when she reached the dining-room; and even
+here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly shook as the scene
+returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity mingled with the
+remnants of those engendered by her grief.
+
+She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne, and
+a little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening with
+singing little amatory songs.
+
+“I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however,” she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. Middleton
+Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by
+road, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways.
+
+Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, that
+at moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous civility
+of mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting at
+meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doings
+interested him no longer, while towards her father his bearing was not
+far from supercilious. It was plain that his mind was entirely outside
+her life, whereabouts outside it she could not tell; in some region of
+science, possibly, or of psychological literature. But her hope that he
+was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her
+marriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply
+on the slender fact that he often sat up late.
+
+One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down Hill,
+the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing, and which opened
+on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or
+the Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to
+a distance of many miles. His attention was fixed on the landscape far
+away, and Grace’s approach was so noiseless that he did not hear her.
+When she came close she could see his lips moving unconsciously, as to
+some impassioned visionary theme.
+
+She spoke, and Fitzpiers started. “What are you looking at?” she asked.
+
+“Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle way,” he
+said.
+
+It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that
+cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further
+observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in
+silence. She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of
+his gaze. “Are you going to have out Darling this afternoon?” she
+asked, presently. Darling being the light-gray mare which Winterborne
+had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, the
+animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfect
+docility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too
+young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these
+qualities.
+
+“Yes,” he replied, “but not to drive. I am riding her. I practise
+crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take much
+shorter cuts on horseback.”
+
+He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only
+since Mrs. Charmond’s absence, his universal practice hitherto having
+been to drive.
+
+Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see
+a patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o’clock in the
+evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home.
+There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware that
+he had any patient more than five or six miles distant in that
+direction. The clock had struck one before Fitzpiers entered the house,
+and he came to his room softly, as if anxious not to disturb her.
+
+The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he.
+
+In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the man
+who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter
+was “hag-rid;” for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she
+was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was
+true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that
+she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed and
+fed her; but that did not account for the appearance she presented, if
+Mr. Fitzpiers’s journey had been only where he had stated. The
+phenomenal exhaustion of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient to
+develop a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, the
+narration of which occupied a considerable time.
+
+Grace returned in-doors. In passing through the outer room she picked
+up her husband’s overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a
+chair. A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she saw
+that it had been issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visited
+Middleton the previous night, a distance of at least five-and-thirty
+miles on horseback, there and back.
+
+During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first time
+that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could not resist
+an inference—strange as that inference was.
+
+A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and in
+the same direction. She knew that the state of the cottager who lived
+that way was a mere pretext; she was quite sure he was going to Mrs.
+Charmond. Grace was amazed at the mildness of the passion which the
+suspicion engendered in her. She was but little excited, and her
+jealousy was languid even to death. It told tales of the nature of her
+affection for him. In truth, her antenuptial regard for Fitzpiers had
+been rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being than of
+tender solicitude for a lover. It had been based upon mystery and
+strangeness—the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his
+professional skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was
+demolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely
+human as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand
+for an enduring and stanch affection—a sympathetic interdependence,
+wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive
+alliance. Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded confidence
+and truth out of which alone such a second union could spring; hence it
+was with a controllable emotion that she now watched the mare brought
+round.
+
+“I’ll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry,” she
+said, rather loath, after all, to let him go.
+
+“Do; there’s plenty of time,” replied her husband. Accordingly he led
+along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough nevertheless.
+Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and ascended Rub-Down Hill to
+the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days
+before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade her adieu
+with affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he looked
+weary-eyed.
+
+“Why do you go to-night?” she said. “You have been called up two nights
+in succession already.”
+
+“I must go,” he answered, almost gloomily. “Don’t wait up for me.” With
+these words he mounted his horse, passed through the gate which Grace
+held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridle-track to the
+valley.
+
+She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey
+onward. His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back
+beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill.
+Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding she was determined to be loyal
+if he proved true; and the determination to love one’s best will carry
+a heart a long way towards making that best an ever-growing thing. The
+conspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse and
+rider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with
+such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek
+creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient,
+particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying
+power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his
+character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not at all
+disdain to spend Melbury’s money, or appropriate to his own use the
+horse which belonged to Melbury’s daughter.
+
+And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous
+autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards lustrous
+with the reds of apple-crops, berries, and foliage, the whole
+intensified by the gilding of the declining sun. The earth this year
+had been prodigally bountiful, and now was the supreme moment of her
+bounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and
+blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of
+chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious
+sellers in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels were
+unsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one world
+in the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow.
+
+Herr Tannhäuser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him
+distinctly visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers’s voice at that
+moment she would have found him murmuring—
+
+“...Towards the loadstar of my one desire
+I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light.”
+
+
+But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the
+valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right,
+which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy clay, the
+character and herbage of the two formations being so distinct that the
+calcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a few years’ antiquity
+upon the level vale. He kept along the edge of this high, unenclosed
+country, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she could still see
+white Darling in relief upon it—a mere speck now—a Wouvermans
+eccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions. Upon this high ground
+he gradually disappeared.
+
+Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in pure
+love of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to convey her
+husband away from her to the side of a new-found idol. While she was
+musing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she discerned shapes
+moving up the valley towards her, quite near at hand, though till now
+hidden by the hedges. Surely they were Giles Winterborne, with his two
+horses and cider-apparatus, conducted by Robert Creedle. Up, upward
+they crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting every now and then like a
+star on the blades of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted to
+steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gate when
+he came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the
+ascent.
+
+“How do you do, Giles?” said she, under a sudden impulse to be familiar
+with him.
+
+He replied with much more reserve. “You are going for a walk, Mrs.
+Fitzpiers?” he added. “It is pleasant just now.”
+
+“No, I am returning,” said she.
+
+The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne walked
+by her side in the rear of the apple-mill.
+
+He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt
+to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggings
+dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of
+apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that
+atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an
+indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among
+the orchards. Her heart rose from its late sadness like a released
+spring; her senses revelled in the sudden lapse back to nature
+unadorned. The consciousness of having to be genteel because of her
+husband’s profession, the veneer of artificiality which she had
+acquired at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she became
+the crude, country girl of her latent, earliest instincts.
+
+Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved off
+by Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and undiluted
+manliness, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. This was an
+excursion of the imagination which she did not encourage, and she said
+suddenly, to disguise the confused regard which had followed her
+thoughts, “Did you meet my husband?”
+
+Winterborne, with some hesitation, “Yes.”
+
+“Where did you meet him?”
+
+“At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been making
+there for the last week.”
+
+“Haven’t they a mill of their own?”
+
+“Yes, but it’s out of repair.”
+
+“I think—I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?”
+
+“Yes. I have seen her at the windows once or twice.”
+
+Grace waited an interval before she went on: “Did Mr. Fitzpiers take
+the way to Middleton?”
+
+“Yes...I met him on Darling.” As she did not reply, he added, with a
+gentler inflection, “You know why the mare was called that?”
+
+“Oh yes—of course,” she answered, quickly.
+
+They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole west
+sky was revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see far into the
+recesses of heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of golden
+arcades, and past fiery obstructions, fancied cairns, logan-stones,
+stalactites and stalagmite of topaz. Deeper than this their gaze passed
+thin flakes of incandescence, till it plunged into a bottomless medium
+of soft green fire.
+
+Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage, her
+revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire for
+primitive life, may have showed in her face. Winterborne was looking at
+her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in her bosom. Almost
+with the abstraction of a somnambulist he stretched out his hand and
+gently caressed the flower.
+
+She drew back. “What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!” she exclaimed,
+with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of all
+premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it
+was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. “You must
+bear in mind, Giles,” she said, kindly, “that we are not as we were;
+and some people might have said that what you did was taking a
+liberty.”
+
+It was more than she need have told him; his action of forgetfulness
+had made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. “I
+don’t know what I am coming to!” he exclaimed, savagely. “Ah—I was not
+once like this!” Tears of vexation were in his eyes.
+
+“No, now—it was nothing. I was too reproachful.”
+
+“It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like it
+done elsewhere—at Middleton lately,” he said, thoughtfully, after a
+while.
+
+“By whom?”
+
+“Don’t ask it.”
+
+She scanned him narrowly. “I know quite well enough,” she returned,
+indifferently. “It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond.
+Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me....Giles—tell me all
+you know about that—please do, Giles! But no—I won’t hear it. Let the
+subject cease. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my father.”
+
+They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continued
+along the highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gate
+that entered it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by
+nut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours.
+A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a similar one at
+right angles. Here Grace stopped; some few yards up the transverse ride
+the buxom Suke Damson was visible—her gown tucked up high through her
+pocket-hole, and no bonnet on her head—in the act of pulling down
+boughs from which she was gathering and eating nuts with great
+rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing near her engaged in the same
+pleasant meal.
+
+Crack, crack went Suke’s jaws every second or two. By an automatic
+chain of thought Grace’s mind reverted to the tooth-drawing scene
+described by her husband; and for the first time she wondered if that
+narrative were really true, Susan’s jaws being so obviously sound and
+strong. Grace turned up towards the nut-gatherers, and conquered her
+reluctance to speak to the girl who was a little in advance of Tim.
+“Good-evening, Susan,” she said.
+
+“Good-evening, Miss Melbury” (crack).
+
+“Mrs. Fitzpiers.”
+
+“Oh yes, ma’am—Mrs. Fitzpiers,” said Suke, with a peculiar smile.
+
+Grace, not to be daunted, continued: “Take care of your teeth, Suke.
+That accounts for the toothache.”
+
+“I don’t know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank the
+Lord” (crack).
+
+“Nor the loss of one, either?”
+
+“See for yourself, ma’am.” She parted her red lips, and exhibited the
+whole double row, full up and unimpaired.
+
+“You have never had one drawn?”
+
+“Never.”
+
+“So much the better for your stomach,” said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an
+altered voice. And turning away quickly, she went on.
+
+As her husband’s character thus shaped itself under the touch of time,
+Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered from that
+jealous excitement which is conventionally attributed to all wives in
+such circumstances. But though possessed by none of that feline
+wildness which it was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to
+know that she had made a frightful mistake in her marriage.
+Acquiescence in her father’s wishes had been degradation to herself.
+People are not given premonitions for nothing; she should have obeyed
+her impulse on that early morning, and steadfastly refused her hand.
+
+Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her about
+Suke—the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the aching
+enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story by
+explaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw!
+
+She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by the
+complications of her position. If his protestations to her before their
+marriage could be believed, her husband had felt affection of some sort
+for herself and this woman simultaneously; and was now again spreading
+the same emotion over Mrs. Charmond and herself conjointly, his manner
+being still kind and fond at times. But surely, rather than that, he
+must have played the hypocrite towards her in each case with elaborate
+completeness; and the thought of this sickened her, for it involved the
+conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motive for making her
+his wife must have been her little fortune. Yet here Grace made a
+mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpiers is unquestionably of such
+quality as to bear division and transference. He had indeed, once
+declared, though not to her, that on one occasion he had noticed
+himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at the same time.
+Therein it differed from the highest affection as the lower orders of
+the animal world differ from advanced organisms, partition causing, not
+death, but a multiplied existence. He had loved her sincerely, and had
+by no means ceased to love her now. But such double and treble
+barrelled hearts were naturally beyond her conception.
+
+Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She had had her day.
+
+“If he does not love me I will not love him!” said Grace, proudly. And
+though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing for
+Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in which it might
+be possible to carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy which
+made his courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he congratulated
+himself, meant, unknown to either wife or husband, more mischief than
+the inconvenient watchfulness of a jaundiced eye.
+
+Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and her
+husband had never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put on her
+dressing-gown, and went down-stairs. Her father, who slept lightly,
+heard her descend, and came to the stair-head.
+
+“Is that you, Grace? What’s the matter?” he said.
+
+“Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case at
+Owlscombe in White Hart Vale.”
+
+“But how’s that? I saw the woman’s husband at Great Hintock just afore
+bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then.”
+
+“Then he’s detained somewhere else,” said Grace. “Never mind me; he
+will soon be home. I expect him about one.”
+
+She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times. One
+o’clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but it
+passed now by a long way, and Fitzpiers did not come. Just before dawn
+she heard the men stirring in the yard; and the flashes of their
+lanterns spread every now and then through her window-blind. She
+remembered that her father had told her not to be disturbed if she
+noticed them, as they would be rising early to send off four loads of
+hurdles to a distant sheep-fair. Peeping out, she saw them bustling
+about, the hollow-turner among the rest; he was loading his
+wares—wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and
+so on—upon one of her father’s wagons, who carried them to the fair for
+him every year out of neighborly kindness.
+
+The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her
+husband was still absent; though it was now five o’clock. She could
+hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a
+later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond at
+Middleton; and he could have ridden home in two hours and a half. What,
+then, had become of him? That he had been out the greater part of the
+two preceding nights added to her uneasiness.
+
+She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of
+advancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men’s
+faces wan. As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm.
+
+“Edgar is not come,” she said. “And I have reason to know that he’s not
+attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights before this. I was
+going to the top of the hill to look for him.”
+
+“I’ll come with you,” said Melbury.
+
+She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw a
+peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and
+did not like the look of it. Telling the men he would be with them
+again soon, he walked beside her into the turnpike-road, and partly up
+the hill whence she had watched Fitzpiers the night before across the
+Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley. They halted beneath a half-dead
+oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out
+like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled round
+them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree,
+supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs
+downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a dim
+atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain
+edged with pink. There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers.
+
+“It is no use standing here,” said her father. “He may come home fifty
+ways...why, look here!—here be Darling’s tracks—turned homeward and
+nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours ago without your
+seeing him.”
+
+“He has not done that,” said she.
+
+They went back hastily. On entering their own gates they perceived that
+the men had left the wagons, and were standing round the door of the
+stable which had been appropriated to the doctor’s use. “Is there
+anything the matter?” cried Grace.
+
+“Oh no, ma’am. All’s well that ends well,” said old Timothy Tangs.
+“I’ve heard of such things before—among workfolk, though not among your
+gentle people—that’s true.”
+
+They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing in
+the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound asleep.
+Darling was munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her
+month, and the reins, which had fallen from Fitzpiers’s hand, hung upon
+her neck.
+
+Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse him.
+He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, “Ah, Felice!...Oh,
+it’s Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What—am I in the saddle?”
+
+“Yes,” said she. “How do you come here?”
+
+He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, “I was
+riding along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having been
+up so much of late. When I came opposite Holywell spring the mare
+turned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in,
+and she drank; I thought she would never finish. While she was
+drinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck twelve. I distinctly
+remember counting the strokes. From that moment I positively recollect
+nothing till I saw you here by my side.”
+
+“The name! If it had been any other horse he’d have had a broken neck!”
+murmured Melbury.
+
+“’Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at such
+times!” said John Upjohn. “And what’s more wonderful than keeping your
+seat in a deep, slumbering sleep? I’ve knowed men drowze off walking
+home from randies where the mead and other liquors have gone round
+well, and keep walking for more than a mile on end without waking.
+Well, doctor, I don’t care who the man is, ’tis a mercy you wasn’t a
+drownded, or a splintered, or a hanged up to a tree like Absalom—also a
+handsome gentleman like yerself, as the prophets say.”
+
+“True,” murmured old Timothy. “From the soul of his foot to the crown
+of his head there was no blemish in him.”
+
+“Or leastwise you might ha’ been a-wownded into tatters a’most, and no
+doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven mile!”
+
+While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, and
+taking Grace’s arm walked stiffly in-doors with her. Melbury stood
+staring at the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, was
+spattered with mud. There was no mud to speak of about the Hintocks
+just now—only in the clammy hollows of the vale beyond Owlscombe, the
+stiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the uplands were
+dry. While they were rubbing down the mare, Melbury’s mind coupled with
+the foreign quality of the mud the name he had heard unconsciously
+muttered by the surgeon when Grace took his hand—“Felice.” Who was
+Felice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she, as he knew, was staying at
+Middleton.
+
+Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers’s
+half-awakened soul—wherein there had been a picture of a recent
+interview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged
+him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey.
+“What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you.
+If they were to see you they would seize you as a thief!” And she had
+turbulently admitted to his wringing questions that her visit to
+Middleton had been undertaken less because of the invalid relative than
+in shamefaced fear of her own weakness if she remained near his home. A
+triumph then it was to Fitzpiers, poor and hampered as he had become,
+to recognize his real conquest of this beauty, delayed so many years.
+His was the selfish passion of Congreve’s Millamont, to whom love’s
+supreme delight lay in “that heart which others bleed for, bleed for
+me.”
+
+When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here and
+there about his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the comfortable
+views which had lately possessed him on his domestic concerns. It is
+true that he had for some days discerned that Grace more and more
+sought his company, preferred supervising his kitchen and bakehouse
+with her step-mother to occupying herself with the lighter details of
+her own apartments. She seemed no longer able to find in her own hearth
+an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee after
+leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into the parent
+hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of the kind
+till now.
+
+Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense that he alone
+would be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be brought upon
+her for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain under his roof he
+had faced the numerous inconveniences involved in giving up the best
+part of his house to Fitzpiers. There was no room for doubt that, had
+he allowed events to take their natural course, she would have accepted
+Winterborne, and realized his old dream of restitution to that young
+man’s family.
+
+That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature for a
+moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In the
+pure and simple life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him that
+after marriage a man might be faithless. That he could sweep to the
+heights of Mrs. Charmond’s position, lift the veil of Isis, so to
+speak, would have amazed Melbury by its audacity if he had not
+suspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he and his simple
+Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two sophisticated
+beings—versed in the world’s ways, armed with every apparatus for
+victory? In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer felt as inferior
+as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons of modern warfare.
+
+Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. The village was
+silent, most of the folk having gone to the fair. Fitzpiers had retired
+to bed, and was sleeping off his fatigue. She went to the stable and
+looked at poor Darling: in all probability Giles Winterborne, by
+obtaining for her a horse of such intelligence and docility, had been
+the means of saving her husband’s life. She paused over the strange
+thought; and then there appeared her father behind her. She saw that he
+knew things were not as they ought to be, from the troubled dulness of
+his eye, and from his face, different points of which had independent
+motions, twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to himself, and
+involuntary.
+
+“He was detained, I suppose, last night?” said Melbury.
+
+“Oh yes; a bad case in the vale,” she replied, calmly.
+
+“Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home.”
+
+“But he couldn’t, father.”
+
+Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see his whilom truthful
+girl brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that.
+
+That night carking care sat beside Melbury’s pillow, and his stiff
+limbs tossed at its presence. “I can’t lie here any longer,” he
+muttered. Striking a light, he wandered about the room. “What have I
+done—what have I done for her?” he said to his wife, who had anxiously
+awakened. “I had long planned that she should marry the son of the man
+I wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I told you all about it,
+Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! but I was not content with
+doing right, I wanted to do more!”
+
+“Don’t raft yourself without good need, George,” she replied. “I won’t
+quite believe that things are so much amiss. I won’t believe that Mrs.
+Charmond has encouraged him. Even supposing she has encouraged a great
+many, she can have no motive to do it now. What so likely as that she
+is not yet quite well, and doesn’t care to let another doctor come near
+her?”
+
+He did not heed. “Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing a
+curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no
+employment now!”
+
+“Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond’s past history? Perhaps that
+would throw some light upon things. Before she came here as the wife of
+old Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems to have heard
+aught of her. Why not make inquiries? And then do ye wait and see more;
+there’ll be plenty of opportunity. Time enough to cry when you know
+’tis a crying matter; and ’tis bad to meet troubles half-way.”
+
+There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. Melbury
+resolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, but oppressed
+between-whiles with much fear.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For the
+present, therefore, he simply watched.
+
+The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought almost
+a miraculous change in Melbury’s nature. No man so furtive for the time
+as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has been
+abused. Melbury’s heretofore confidential candor towards his
+gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did
+injury to his every action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman
+once given to a man for life took, as a rule, her lot as it came and
+made the best of it, without external interference; but for the first
+time he asked himself why this so generally should be so. Moreover,
+this case was not, he argued, like ordinary cases. Leaving out the
+question of Grace being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar
+situation, as it were in mid-air between two planes of society,
+together with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband’s neglect a far
+more tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large
+circle of friends to fall back upon. Wisely or unwisely, and whatever
+other fathers did, he resolved to fight his daughter’s battle still.
+
+Mrs. Charmond had returned. But Hintock House scarcely gave forth signs
+of life, so quietly had she reentered it. He went to church at Great
+Hintock one afternoon as usual, there being no service at the smaller
+village. A few minutes before his departure, he had casually heard
+Fitzpiers, who was no church-goer, tell his wife that he was going to
+walk in the wood. Melbury entered the building and sat down in his pew;
+the parson came in, then Mrs. Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers.
+
+The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite sure that a
+mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between those two;
+he fancied that more than once their eyes met. At the end, Fitzpiers so
+timed his movement into the aisle that it exactly coincided with Felice
+Charmond’s from the opposite side, and they walked out with their
+garments in contact, the surgeon being just that two or three inches in
+her rear which made it convenient for his eyes to rest upon her cheek.
+The cheek warmed up to a richer tone.
+
+This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. If she
+had been playing with him in an idle freak the game might soon have
+wearied her; but the smallest germ of passion—and women of the world do
+not change color for nothing—was a threatening development. The mere
+presence of Fitzpiers in the building, after his statement, was
+wellnigh conclusive as far as he was concerned; but Melbury resolved
+yet to watch.
+
+He had to wait long. Autumn drew shiveringly to its end. One day
+something seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves of
+vegetables had shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung like faded
+linen rags; then the forest leaves, which had been descending at
+leisure, descended in haste and in multitudes, and all the golden
+colors that had hung overhead were now crowded together in a degraded
+mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads got redder and hornier, and
+curled themselves up to rot. The only suspicious features in Mrs.
+Charmond’s existence at this season were two: the first, that she lived
+with no companion or relative about her, which, considering her age and
+attractions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely
+country-house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years, start
+from Hintock to winter abroad. In Fitzpiers, the only change from his
+last autumn’s habits lay in his abandonment of night study—his lamp
+never shone from his new dwelling as from his old.
+
+If the suspected ones met, it was by such adroit contrivances that even
+Melbury’s vigilance could not encounter them together. A simple call at
+her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about it, and that he had
+paid two or three such calls was certain. What had passed at those
+interviews was known only to the parties themselves; but that Felice
+Charmond was under some one’s influence Melbury soon had opportunity of
+perceiving.
+
+Winter had come on. Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and
+evenings, and flocks of wood-pigeons made themselves prominent again.
+One day in February, about six months after the marriage of Fitzpiers,
+Melbury was returning from Great Hintock on foot through the lane, when
+he saw before him the surgeon also walking. Melbury would have
+overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned in through a gate to
+one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of the wood,
+which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine
+curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost
+simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a
+little basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate,
+unaccompanied by a servant. She turned in at the same place without
+having seen either Melbury or apparently Fitzpiers. Melbury was soon at
+the spot, despite his aches and his sixty years. Mrs. Charmond had come
+up with the doctor, who was standing immediately behind the carriage.
+She had turned to him, her arm being thrown carelessly over the back of
+the seat. They looked in each other’s faces without uttering a word, an
+arch yet gloomy smile wreathing her lips. Fitzpiers clasped her hanging
+hand, and, while she still remained in the same listless attitude,
+looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily unbuttoned her glove, and
+stripped her hand of it by rolling back the gauntlet over the fingers,
+so that it came off inside out. He then raised her hand to his month,
+she still reclining passively, watching him as she might have watched a
+fly upon her dress. At last she said, “Well, sir, what excuse for this
+disobedience?”
+
+“I make none.”
+
+“Then go your way, and let me go mine.” She snatched away her hand,
+touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there, holding
+the reversed glove.
+
+Melbury’s first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers, and
+upbraid him bitterly. But a moment’s thought was sufficient to show him
+the futility of any such simple proceeding. There was not, after all,
+so much in what he had witnessed as in what that scene might be the
+surface and froth of—probably a state of mind on which censure operates
+as an aggravation rather than as a cure. Moreover, he said to himself
+that the point of attack should be the woman, if either. He therefore
+kept out of sight, and musing sadly, even tearfully—for he was meek as
+a child in matters concerning his daughter—continued his way towards
+Hintock.
+
+The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never more finely
+exemplified than in this instance. Through her guarded manner, her
+dignified speech, her placid countenance, he discerned the interior of
+Grace’s life only too truly, hidden as were its incidents from every
+outer eye.
+
+These incidents had become painful enough. Fitzpiers had latterly
+developed an irritable discontent which vented itself in monologues
+when Grace was present to hear them. The early morning of this day had
+been dull, after a night of wind, and on looking out of the window
+Fitzpiers had observed some of Melbury’s men dragging away a large limb
+which had been snapped off a beech-tree. Everything was cold and
+colorless.
+
+“My good Heaven!” he said, as he stood in his dressing-gown. “This is
+life!” He did not know whether Grace was awake or not, and he would not
+turn his head to ascertain. “Ah, fool,” he went on to himself, “to clip
+your own wings when you were free to soar!...But I could not rest till
+I had done it. Why do I never recognize an opportunity till I have
+missed it, nor the good or ill of a step till it is irrevocable!...I
+fell in love....Love, indeed!—
+
+“‘Love’s but the frailty of the mind
+When ’tis not with ambition joined;
+A sickly flame which if not fed, expires,
+And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!’
+
+
+Ah, old author of ‘The Way of the World,’ you knew—you knew!” Grace
+moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. He was
+sorry—though he had not taken any precaution to prevent her.
+
+He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an extreme
+reserve. It was enough, however, to make him repent that he should have
+done anything to produce discomfort; for he attributed her manner
+entirely to what he had said. But Grace’s manner had not its cause
+either in his sayings or in his doings. She had not heard a single word
+of his regrets. Something even nearer home than her husband’s blighted
+prospects—if blighted they were—was the origin of her mood, a mood that
+was the mere continuation of what her father had noticed when he would
+have preferred a passionate jealousy in her, as the more natural.
+
+She had made a discovery—one which to a girl of honest nature was
+almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that her
+early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into
+luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was great and
+little in life. His homeliness no longer offended her acquired tastes;
+his comparative want of so-called culture did not now jar on her
+intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior
+roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage how much that
+was humanly not great could co-exist with attainments of an exceptional
+order, there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had
+formerly clung to in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness,
+tenderness, devotion, for her only existed in their purity now in the
+breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one who had manifested them
+towards her from his youth up.
+
+There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles as a
+man whom she had wronged—a man who had been unfortunate in his worldly
+transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, he had, like
+Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing
+
+“As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.”
+
+
+It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband’s
+murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her.
+
+When her father approached the house after witnessing the interview
+between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking out of her
+sitting-room window, as if she had nothing to do, or think of, or care
+for. He stood still.
+
+“Ah, Grace,” he said, regarding her fixedly.
+
+“Yes, father,” she murmured.
+
+“Waiting for your dear husband?” he inquired, speaking with the sarcasm
+of pitiful affection.
+
+“Oh no—not especially. He has a great many patients to see this
+afternoon.”
+
+Melbury came quite close. “Grace, what’s the use of talking like that,
+when you know—Here, come down and walk with me out in the garden,
+child.”
+
+He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This apparent
+indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she had rushed in
+all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of
+conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice Charmond _unguibus et
+rostro_, and accused her even in exaggerated shape of stealing away her
+husband. Such a storm might have cleared the air.
+
+She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. “You
+know as well as I do,” he resumed, “that there is something threatening
+mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I
+don’t see the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that this
+quietude is wrong conduct in you. You should look more into matters.”
+
+“I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to
+action.”
+
+Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions—did she not feel jealous?
+was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained him. “You are
+very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say,” he remarked, pointedly.
+
+“I am what I feel, father,” she repeated.
+
+He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her
+offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days
+before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the fact that
+she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more than she had
+ever done when she was comparatively free to choose him.
+
+“What would you have me do?” she asked, in a low voice.
+
+He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical
+matter before them. “I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond,” he said.
+
+“Go to Mrs. Charmond—what for?” said she.
+
+“Well—if I must speak plain, dear Grace—to ask her, appeal to her in
+the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on
+things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband. It lies
+with her entirely to do one or the other—that I can see.”
+
+Grace’s face had heated at her father’s words, and the very rustle of
+her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. “I shall not think of
+going to her, father—of course I could not!” she answered.
+
+“Why—don’t ’ee want to be happier than you be at present?” said
+Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself.
+
+“I don’t wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I can
+bear it in silence.”
+
+“But, my dear maid, you are too young—you don’t know what the present
+state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done a’ready! Your
+husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had
+not been for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is
+poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly bad, not
+bad by calculation; and just a word to her now might save ’ee a peck of
+woes.”
+
+“Ah, I loved her once,” said Grace, with a broken articulation, “and
+she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. Let her do
+her worst: I don’t care.”
+
+“You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to start
+with. You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become the
+wife of a professional man of unusually good family. Surely you ought
+to make the best of your position.”
+
+“I don’t see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I wish you
+had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I worked in the woods
+like Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I want to be no better than
+she.”
+
+“Why?” said her amazed father.
+
+“Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles. I
+say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools
+you set your mind on. It all arose out of that, father. If I had stayed
+at home I should have married—” She closed up her mouth suddenly and
+was silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying.
+
+Melbury was much grieved. “What, and would you like to have grown up as
+we be here in Hintock—knowing no more, and with no more chance of
+seeing good life than we have here?”
+
+“Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of,
+and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, the misery
+of those January days when I had got back to school, and left you all
+here in the wood so happy. I used to wonder why I had to bear it. And I
+was always a little despised by the other girls at school, because they
+knew where I came from, and that my parents were not in so good a
+station as theirs.”
+
+Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and
+intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he
+should have let young hearts have their way, or rather should have
+helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her to him according
+to his original plan; but he was not prepared for her deprecation of
+those attainments whose completion had been a labor of years, and a
+severe tax upon his purse.
+
+“Very well,” he said, with much heaviness of spirit. “If you don’t like
+to go to her I don’t wish to force you.”
+
+And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy this
+perilous state of things? For days he sat in a moody attitude over the
+fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his
+drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it. He spent a week and more
+thus composing a letter to the chief offender, which he would every now
+and then attempt to complete, and suddenly crumple up in his hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of
+the woodmen’s homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to
+have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the
+timber-dealer’s troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of
+conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. Tantalizing phenomena,
+at once showing and concealing the real relationship of the persons
+concerned, caused a diffusion of excited surprise. Honest people as the
+woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected that they could remain
+immersed in the study of their trees and gardens amid such
+circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers of
+Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady.
+
+Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this
+case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which,
+with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of
+Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were rencounters
+accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, sudden misgivings on
+one side, sudden self-reproaches on the other. The inner state of the
+twain was one as of confused noise that would not allow the accents of
+calmer reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this direction, and
+headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified collapses;
+not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against
+judgment.
+
+It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for he
+had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as it now
+had done. What should he do—appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since
+Grace would not? He bethought himself of Winterborne, and resolved to
+consult him, feeling the strong need of some friend of his own sex to
+whom he might unburden his mind.
+
+He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on which
+he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a false companion
+unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and
+speciousness where all had seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to
+form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or the fruit-promise, so
+great was his self-abasement.
+
+It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. The woods
+seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every
+bare twig; the sky had no color, and the trees rose before him as
+haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality were passed.
+Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he believed him to be occupying
+a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. Charmond’s estate, though
+still within the circuit of the woodland. The timber-merchant’s thin
+legs stalked on through the pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead
+leaves of last year; while every now and then a hasty “Ay?” escaped his
+lips in reply to some bitter proposition.
+
+His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind which
+arose sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that way, he saw
+Winterborne just in front of him. It just now happened that Giles,
+after being for a long time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of
+the busiest men in the neighborhood. It is often thus; fallen friends,
+lost sight of, we expect to find starving; we discover them going on
+fairly well. Without any solicitation, or desire for profit on his
+part, he had been asked to execute during that winter a very large
+order for hurdles and other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been
+obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing. He was now engaged
+in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work
+daily like an automaton.
+
+The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole of the
+copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that
+hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making a hurdle,
+the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, over which he
+bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a square, compact pile like the
+altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, which bristled on
+all sides with the sharp points of their stakes. At a little distance
+the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his contract.
+Rows of copse-wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under the axe;
+and a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of which
+burned the fire whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so dank that
+the smoke hung heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without rising
+from the ground.
+
+After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew nearer, and
+briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily engaged, with an
+undertone of slight surprise that Winterborne could seem so thriving
+after being deprived of Grace. Melbury was not without emotion at the
+meeting; for Grace’s affairs had divided them, and ended their intimacy
+of old times.
+
+Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes from
+his occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of him.
+
+“’Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared,” said Melbury.
+
+“Yes, there or thereabouts,” said Winterborne, a chop of the billhook
+jerking the last word into two pieces.
+
+There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from
+Winterborne’s hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and legs
+of his visitor, who took no heed.
+
+“Ah, Giles—you should have been my partner. You should have been my
+son-in-law,” the old man said at last. “It would have been far better
+for her and for me.”
+
+Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend,
+and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded
+only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. “Is she ill?” he
+said, hurriedly.
+
+“No, no.” Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and then, as
+though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away.
+
+Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and
+walked after Melbury.
+
+“Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir,” he said,
+“especially since we don’t stand as we used to stand to one another;
+but I hope it is well with them all over your way?”
+
+“No,” said Melbury—“no.” He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk of a
+young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. “I would that his ear had
+been where that rind is!” he exclaimed; “I should have treated him to
+little compared wi what he deserves.”
+
+“Now,” said Winterborne, “don’t be in a hurry to go home. I’ve put some
+cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we’ll sit and drink it and
+talk this over.”
+
+Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back
+to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodmen
+having gone. He drew out the cider-mug from the ashes and they drank
+together.
+
+“Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now,” repeated
+Melbury. “I’ll tell you why for the first time.”
+
+He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of how
+he won away Giles’s father’s chosen one—by nothing worse than a lover’s
+cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in love, would
+certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained how he
+had always intended to make reparation to Winterborne the father by
+giving Grace to Winterborne the son, till the devil tempted him in the
+person of Fitzpiers, and he broke his virtuous vow.
+
+“How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who’d have supposed he’d
+have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have had her,
+Giles, and there’s an end on’t.”
+
+Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously
+cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury’s concentration on
+the more vital subject had blinded him. The young man endeavored to
+make the best of the case for Grace’s sake.
+
+“She would hardly have been happy with me,” he said, in the dry,
+unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. “I was not well
+enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn’t have surrounded her
+with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all.”
+
+“Nonsense—you are quite wrong there,” said the unwise old man,
+doggedly. “She told me only this day that she hates refinements and
+such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is
+thrown away upon her quite. She’d fain be like Marty South—think o’
+that! That’s the top of her ambition! Perhaps she’s right. Giles, she
+loved you—under the rind; and, what’s more, she loves ye still—worse
+luck for the poor maid!”
+
+If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he
+might have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The
+darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog
+from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain.
+
+“Oh, she never cared much for me,” Giles managed to say, as he stirred
+the embers with a brand.
+
+“She did, and does, I tell ye,” said the other, obstinately. “However,
+all that’s vain talking now. What I come to ask you about is a more
+practical matter—how to make the best of things as they are. I am
+thinking of a desperate step—of calling on the woman Charmond. I am
+going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. ’Tis she who holds the
+balance in her hands—not he. While she’s got the will to lead him
+astray he will follow—poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer—and how
+long she’ll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything
+about her character before she came to Hintock?”
+
+“She’s been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe,” replied Giles,
+with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. “One who
+has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not married.
+Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress.”
+
+“Hey? But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?”
+
+“Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north,
+twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and
+came down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays.”
+
+“Yes, yes—I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I fear
+it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a
+woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements
+her trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it
+makes my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable
+tribe.”
+
+Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat
+about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weavings a large
+drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly into the fire. Mrs.
+Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it
+was not in his heart to let her be condemned without a trial.
+
+“She is said to be generous,” he answered. “You might not appeal to her
+in vain.”
+
+“It shall be done,” said Melbury, rising. “For good or for evil, to
+Mrs. Charmond I’ll go.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+At nine o’clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining
+broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started
+for Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at once by the
+absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to attend, really
+or ostensibly, some professional meetings. He said nothing of his
+destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing that they might
+entreat him to abandon so risky a project, and went out unobserved. He
+had chosen his time with a view, as he supposed, of conveniently
+catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just finished her breakfast, before
+any other business people should be about, if any came. Plodding
+thoughtfully onward, he crossed a glade lying between Little Hintock
+Woods and the plantation which abutted on the park; and the spot being
+open, he was discerned there by Winterborne from the copse on the next
+hill, where he and his men were working. Knowing his mission, the
+younger man hastened down from the copse and managed to intercept the
+timber-merchant.
+
+“I have been thinking of this, sir,” he said, “and I am of opinion that
+it would be best to put off your visit for the present.”
+
+But Melbury would not even stop to hear him. His mind was made up, the
+appeal was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched him sadly till
+he entered the second plantation and disappeared.
+
+Melbury rang at the tradesmen’s door of the manor-house, and was at
+once informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he might
+have guessed had he been anybody but the man he was. Melbury said he
+would wait, whereupon the young man informed him in a neighborly way
+that, between themselves, she was in bed and asleep.
+
+“Never mind,” said Melbury, retreating into the court, “I’ll stand
+about here.” Charged so fully with his mission, he shrank from contact
+with anybody.
+
+But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still nobody
+came to him. At last he entered the house and sat down in a small
+waiting-room, from which he got glimpses of the kitchen corridor, and
+of the white-capped maids flitting jauntily hither and thither. They
+had heard of his arrival, but had not seen him enter, and, imagining
+him still in the court, discussed freely the possible reason of his
+calling. They marvelled at his temerity; for though most of the tongues
+which had been let loose attributed the chief blame-worthiness to
+Fitzpiers, these of her household preferred to regard their mistress as
+the deeper sinner.
+
+Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn
+walking-stick, whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its use. The
+scene to him was not the material environment of his person, but a
+tragic vision that travelled with him like an envelope. Through this
+vision the incidents of the moment but gleamed confusedly here and
+there, as an outer landscape through the high-colored scenes of a
+stained window. He waited thus an hour, an hour and a half, two hours.
+He began to look pale and ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked
+him to have a glass of wine. Melbury roused himself and said, “No, no.
+Is she almost ready?”
+
+“She is just finishing breakfast,” said the butler. “She will soon see
+you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here.”
+
+“What! haven’t you told her before?” said Melbury.
+
+“Oh no,” said the other. “You see you came so very early.”
+
+At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not in her
+private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he heard her
+coming from the front staircase, and she entered where he stood.
+
+At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and more.
+She might almost have been taken for the typical _femme de trente ans_,
+though she was really not more than seven or eight and twenty. There
+being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl thrown loosely
+round her shoulders, and obviously without the least suspicion that
+Melbury had called upon any other errand than timber. Felice was,
+indeed, the only woman in the parish who had not heard the rumor of her
+own weaknesses; she was at this moment living in a fool’s paradise in
+respect of that rumor, though not in respect of the weaknesses
+themselves, which, if the truth be told, caused her grave misgivings.
+
+“Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that were to
+be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I believe.”
+
+“Yes,” said Melbury.
+
+“How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just now!”
+
+She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous person’s
+affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect
+social machine. Hence her words “very nice,” “so charming,” were
+uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal.
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair, and
+she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began: “Mrs.
+Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter—at least to me—than
+tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my manner of speaking
+upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set ’em down to my want of
+practice, and not to my want of care.”
+
+Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess his
+meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact with
+anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his preliminaries alone
+were enough to distress her. “Yes, what is it?” she said.
+
+“I am an old man,” said Melbury, “whom, somewhat late in life, God
+thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her mother was
+a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the child
+was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me,
+for she was all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I married as
+second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her. In
+due time the question of her education came on, and I said, ‘I will
+educate the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.’ Of her possible
+marriage I could not bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she
+should cleave to another man, and grow to think his house her home
+rather than mine. But I saw it was the law of nature that this should
+be, and that it was for the maid’s happiness that she should have a
+home when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to help it
+on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to make
+amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession, to my
+friend’s son, seeing that they liked each other well. Things came about
+which made me doubt if it would be for my daughter’s happiness to do
+this, inasmuch as the young man was poor, and she was delicately
+reared. Another man came and paid court to her—one her equal in
+breeding and accomplishments; in every way it seemed to me that he only
+could give her the home which her training had made a necessity almost.
+I urged her on, and she married him. But, ma’am, a fatal mistake was at
+the root of my reckoning. I found that this well-born gentleman I had
+calculated on so surely was not stanch of heart, and that therein lay a
+danger of great sorrow for my daughter. Madam, he saw you, and you know
+the rest....I have come to make no demands—to utter no threats; I have
+come simply as a father in great grief about this only child, and I
+beseech you to deal kindly with my daughter, and to do nothing which
+can turn her husband’s heart away from her forever. Forbid him your
+presence, ma’am, and speak to him on his duty as one with your power
+over him well can do, and I am hopeful that the rent between them may
+be patched up. For it is not as if you would lose by so doing; your
+course is far higher than the courses of a simple professional man, and
+the gratitude you would win from me and mine by your kindness is more
+than I can say.”
+
+Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indignation on
+comprehending Melbury’s story; hot and cold by turns, she had murmured,
+“Leave me, leave me!” But as he seemed to take no notice of this, his
+words began to influence her, and when he ceased speaking she said,
+with hurried, hot breath, “What has led you to think this of me? Who
+says I have won your daughter’s husband away from her? Some monstrous
+calumnies are afloat—of which I have known nothing until now!”
+
+Melbury started, and looked at her simply. “But surely, ma’am, you know
+the truth better than I?”
+
+Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on her
+handsome face for the first time showed themselves as an extrinsic
+film. “Will you leave me to myself?” she said, with a faintness which
+suggested a guilty conscience. “This is so utterly unexpected—you
+obtain admission to my presence by misrepresentation—”
+
+“As God’s in heaven, ma’am, that’s not true. I made no pretence; and I
+thought in reason you would know why I had come. This gossip—”
+
+“I have heard nothing of it. Tell me of it, I say.”
+
+“Tell you, ma’am—not I. What the gossip is, no matter. What really is,
+you know. Set facts right, and the scandal will right of itself. But
+pardon me—I speak roughly; and I came to speak gently, to coax you, beg
+you to be my daughter’s friend. She loved you once, ma’am; you began by
+liking her. Then you dropped her without a reason, and it hurt her warm
+heart more than I can tell ye. But you were within your right as the
+superior, no doubt. But if you would consider her position now—surely,
+surely, you would do her no harm!”
+
+“Certainly I would do her no harm—I—” Melbury’s eye met hers. It was
+curious, but the allusion to Grace’s former love for her seemed to
+touch her more than all Melbury’s other arguments. “Oh, Melbury,” she
+burst out, “you have made me so unhappy! How could you come to me like
+this! It is too dreadful! Now go away—go, go!”
+
+“I will,” he said, in a husky tone.
+
+As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and there sat
+and writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation mingled
+with better sentiments.
+
+Mrs. Charmond’s mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods of
+stress and storm. She had never so clearly perceived till now that her
+soul was being slowly invaded by a delirium which had brought about all
+this; that she was losing judgment and dignity under it, becoming an
+animated impulse only, a passion incarnate. A fascination had led her
+on; it was as if she had been seized by a hand of velvet; and this was
+where she found herself—overshadowed with sudden night, as if a tornado
+had passed by.
+
+While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview,
+lunch-time came, and then the early afternoon, almost without her
+consciousness. Then “a strange gentleman who says it is not necessary
+to give his name,” was suddenly announced.
+
+“I cannot see him, whoever he may be. I am not at home to anybody.”
+
+She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt to
+recover some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she put on
+her hat and cloak and went out-of-doors, taking a path which led her up
+the slopes to the nearest spur of the wood. She disliked the woods, but
+they had the advantage of being a place in which she could walk
+comparatively unobserved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters
+concerned. It was not till the Hintock dinner-time—one o’clock—that
+Grace discovered her father’s absence from the house after a departure
+in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a little reasoning
+and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion on his destination,
+and to divine his errand.
+
+Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in
+truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did not
+know. In an indefinite dread that something serious would arise out of
+Melbury’s visit by reason of the inequalities of temper and nervous
+irritation to which he was subject, something possibly that would bring
+her much more misery than accompanied her present negative state of
+mind, she left the house about three o’clock, and took a loitering walk
+in the woodland track by which she imagined he would come home. This
+track under the bare trees and over the cracking sticks, screened and
+roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of
+boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees
+behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his
+men were clearing the undergrowth.
+
+Had Giles’s attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not
+have seen her; but ever since Melbury’s passage across the opposite
+glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace
+herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, since her
+father’s avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury’s return with his
+tidings. Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened up to
+her.
+
+She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of
+the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. “I am
+only looking for my father,” she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic
+intonation.
+
+“I was looking for him too,” said Giles. “I think he may perhaps have
+gone on farther.”
+
+“Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?” she said, turning her
+large tender eyes anxiously upon him. “Did he tell you what for?”
+
+Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her
+father had visited him the evening before, and that their old
+friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest.
+
+“Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!” she cried. And
+then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling each
+other’s souls. Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of these
+wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them,
+craving, even to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan
+life of her father which in the best probable succession of events
+would shortly be denied her.
+
+At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was
+shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings.
+While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at her in their
+mutual embarrassment at each other’s presence, they beheld approaching
+the girl a lady in a dark fur mantle and a black hat, having a white
+veil tied picturesquely round it. She spoke to Marty, who turned and
+courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation with her. It was Mrs.
+Charmond.
+
+On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under the
+fret and fever of her mind with more vigor than she was accustomed to
+show in her normal moods—a fever which the solace of a cigarette did
+not entirely allay. Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed Marty
+at work, threw away her cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, chop,
+went Marty’s little billhook with never more assiduity, till Mrs.
+Charmond spoke.
+
+“Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?” she
+asked.
+
+“Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma’am,” said Marty.
+
+“Oh,” said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had not
+recognized Grace at that distance. “And the man she is talking to?”
+
+“That’s Mr. Winterborne.”
+
+A redness stole into Marty’s face as she mentioned Giles’s name, which
+Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the state of the
+girl’s heart. “Are you engaged to him?” she asked, softly.
+
+“No, ma’am,” said Marty. “_She_ was once; and I think—”
+
+But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her thoughts
+on this matter—which were nothing less than one of extraordinary
+acuteness for a girl so young and inexperienced—namely, that she saw
+danger to two hearts naturally honest in Grace being thrown back into
+Winterborne’s society by the neglect of her husband. Mrs. Charmond,
+however, with the almost supersensory means to knowledge which women
+have on such occasions, quite understood what Marty had intended to
+convey, and the picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away,
+involving the wreck of poor Marty’s hopes, prompted her to more
+generous resolves than all Melbury’s remonstrances had been able to
+stimulate.
+
+Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and went on
+over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne were standing.
+They saw her approach, and Winterborne said, “She is coming to you; it
+is a good omen. She dislikes me, so I’ll go away.” He accordingly
+retreated to where he had been working before Grace came, and Grace’s
+formidable rival approached her, each woman taking the other’s measure
+as she came near.
+
+“Dear—Mrs. Fitzpiers,” said Felice Charmond, with some inward turmoil
+which stopped her speech. “I have not seen you for a long time.”
+
+She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild animal
+on first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of
+civilization. Was it really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? If it
+was, she could no longer form any guess as to what it signified.
+
+“I want to talk with you,” said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for the
+gaze of the young woman had chilled her through. “Can you walk on with
+me till we are quite alone?”
+
+Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork and
+they moved evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the woods.
+They went farther, much farther than Mrs. Charmond had meant to go; but
+she could not begin her conversation, and in default of it kept
+walking.
+
+“I have seen your father,” she at length resumed. “And—I am much
+troubled by what he told me.”
+
+“What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence on
+anything he may have said to you.”
+
+“Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily divine?”
+
+“True—true,” returned Grace, mournfully. “Why should you repeat what we
+both know to be in our minds already?”
+
+“Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband—” The moment that the speaker’s tongue
+touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of self-consciousness
+flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by a lightning gleam,
+what filled it to overflowing. So transitory was the expression that
+none but a sensitive woman, and she in Grace’s position, would have had
+the power to catch its meaning. Upon her the phase was not lost.
+
+“Then you _do_ love him!” she exclaimed, in a tone of much surprise.
+
+“What do you mean, my young friend?”
+
+“Why,” cried Grace, “I thought till now that you had only been cruelly
+flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments—a rich lady with a
+poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she despised not much
+less than her who belongs to him. But I guess from your manner that you
+love him desperately, and I don’t hate you as I did before.”
+
+“Yes, indeed,” continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue,
+“since it is not playing in your case at all, but _real_. Oh, I do pity
+you, more than I despise you, for _you_ will s-s-suffer most!”
+
+Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. “I ought not to allow
+myself to argue with you,” she exclaimed. “I demean myself by doing it.
+But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time I try to tell you
+how mistaken you are!” Much of her confusion resulted from her wonder
+and alarm at finding herself in a sense dominated mentally and
+emotionally by this simple school-girl. “I do not love him,” she went
+on, with desperate untruth. “It was a kindness—my making somewhat more
+of him than one usually does of one’s doctor. I was lonely; I
+talked—well, I trifled with him. I am very sorry if such child’s
+playing out of pure friendship has been a serious matter to you. Who
+could have expected it? But the world is so simple here.”
+
+“Oh, that’s affectation,” said Grace, shaking her head. “It is no
+use—you _love_ him. I can see in your face that in this matter of my
+husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings. During these
+last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet; but you have
+not been insincere, and that almost disarms me.”
+
+“I _have_ been insincere—if you will have the word—I mean I _have_
+coquetted, and do _not_ love him!”
+
+But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. “You may have trifled
+with others, but him you love as you never loved another man.”
+
+“Oh, well—I won’t argue,” said Mrs. Charmond, laughing faintly. “And
+you come to reproach me for it, child.”
+
+“No,” said Grace, magnanimously. “You may go on loving him if you
+like—I don’t mind at all. You’ll find it, let me tell you, a bitterer
+business for yourself than for me in the end. He’ll get tired of you
+soon, as tired as can be—you don’t know him so well as I—and then you
+may wish you had never seen him!”
+
+Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was
+extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have
+characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her
+interlocutor. “You exaggerate—cruel, silly young woman,” she
+reiterated, writhing with little agonies. “It is nothing but playful
+friendship—nothing! It will be proved by my future conduct. I shall at
+once refuse to see him more—since it will make no difference to my
+heart, and much to my name.”
+
+“I question if you will refuse to see him again,” said Grace, dryly, as
+with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. “But I am not incensed
+against you as you are against me,” she added, abandoning the tree to
+its natural perpendicular. “Before I came I had been despising you for
+wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection. When Edgar
+has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours
+and unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles across
+the country at midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with
+mud, to get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man—the
+plaything of a finished coquette. I thought that what was getting to be
+a tragedy to me was a comedy to you. But now I see that tragedy lies on
+YOUR side of the situation no less than on mine, and more; that if I
+have felt trouble at my position, you have felt anguish at yours; that
+if I have had disappointments, you have had despairs. Heaven may
+fortify _me_—God help _you!_”
+
+“I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence,” returned the
+other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely collapsed.
+“My acts will be my proofs. In the world which you have seen nothing
+of, friendships between men and women are not unknown, and it would
+have been better both for you and your father if you had each judged me
+more respectfully, and left me alone. As it is I wish never to see or
+speak to you, madam, any more.”
+
+Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away. The two went apart in
+directly opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by
+their umbrageous surroundings and by the shadows of eve.
+
+In the excitement of their long argument they had walked onward and
+zigzagged about without regarding direction or distance. All sound of
+the woodcutters had long since faded into remoteness, and even had not
+the interval been too great for hearing them they would have been
+silent and homeward bound at this twilight hour. But Grace went on her
+course without any misgiving, though there was much underwood here,
+with only the narrowest passages for walking, across which brambles
+hung. She had not, however, traversed this the wildest part of the wood
+since her childhood, and the transformation of outlines had been great;
+old trees which once were landmarks had been felled or blown down, and
+the bushes which then had been small and scrubby were now large and
+overhanging. She soon found that her ideas as to direction were
+vague—that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all. If the
+evening had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not put on its
+night moan so distinctly, Grace would not have minded; but she was
+rather frightened now, and began to strike across hither and thither in
+random courses.
+
+Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind-voices, and still no
+recognizable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any sound of the
+Hintocks floated near, though she had wandered probably between one and
+two hours, and began to be weary. She was vexed at her foolishness,
+since the ground she had covered, if in a straight line, must
+inevitably have taken her out of the wood to some remote village or
+other; but she had wasted her forces in countermarches; and now, in
+much alarm, wondered if she would have to pass the night here. She
+stood still to meditate, and fancied that between the soughing of the
+wind she heard shuffling footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of
+rabbits or hares. Though fearing at first to meet anybody on the chance
+of his being a friend, she decided that the fellow night-rambler, even
+if a poacher, would not injure her, and that he might possibly be some
+one sent to search for her. She accordingly shouted a rather timid
+“Hoi!”
+
+The cry was immediately returned by the other person; and Grace running
+at once in the direction whence it came beheld an indistinct figure
+hastening up to her as rapidly. They were almost in each other’s arms
+when she recognized in her vis-a-vis the outline and white veil of her
+whom she had parted from an hour and a half before—Mrs. Charmond.
+
+“I have lost my way, I have lost my way,” cried that lady. “Oh—is it
+indeed you? I am so glad to meet you or anybody. I have been wandering
+up and down ever since we parted, and am nearly dead with terror and
+misery and fatigue!”
+
+“So am I,” said Grace. “What _shall_ we, _shall_ we do?”
+
+“You won’t go away from me?” asked her companion, anxiously.
+
+“No, indeed. Are you very tired?”
+
+“I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the ankles.”
+
+Grace reflected. “Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the best thing for
+us to do would be to sit down for half an hour, and then start again
+when we have thoroughly rested. By walking straight we must come to a
+track leading somewhere before the morning.”
+
+They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from the
+wind, and sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp and dry,
+that remained from the previous season forming a sort of nest for them.
+But it was cold, nevertheless, on this March night, particularly for
+Grace, who with the sanguine prematureness of youth in matters of
+dress, had considered it spring-time, and hence was not so warmly clad
+as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore her winter fur. But after sitting a
+while the latter lady shivered no less than Grace as the warmth
+imparted by her hasty walking began to go off, and they felt the cold
+air drawing through the holly leaves which scratched their backs and
+shoulders. Moreover, they could hear some drops of rain falling on the
+trees, though none reached the nook in which they had ensconced
+themselves.
+
+“If we were to cling close together,” said Mrs. Charmond, “we should
+keep each other warm. But,” she added, in an uneven voice, “I suppose
+you won’t come near me for the world!”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because—well, you know.”
+
+“Yes. I will—I don’t hate you at all.”
+
+They consequently crept up to one another, and being in the dark,
+lonely and weary, did what neither had dreamed of doing beforehand,
+clasped each other closely, Mrs. Charmond’s furs consoling Grace’s cold
+face, and each one’s body as she breathed alternately heaving against
+that of her companion.
+
+When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond said, “I am so
+wretched!” in a heavy, emotional whisper.
+
+“You are frightened,” said Grace, kindly. “But there is nothing to
+fear; I know these woods well.”
+
+“I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other things.”
+
+Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the younger
+woman could feel her neighbor’s breathings grow deeper and more
+spasmodic, as though uncontrollable feelings were germinating.
+
+“After I had left you,” she went on, “I regretted something I had said.
+I have to make a confession—I must make it!” she whispered, brokenly,
+the instinct to indulge in warmth of sentiment which had led this woman
+of passions to respond to Fitzpiers in the first place leading her now
+to find luxurious comfort in opening her heart to his wife. “I said to
+you I could give him up without pain or deprivation—that he had only
+been my pastime. That was untrue—it was said to deceive you. I could
+not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I _cannot_
+give him up—even if I would—of myself alone.”
+
+“Why? Because you love him, you mean.”
+
+Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement.
+
+“I knew I was right!” said Grace, exaltedly. “But that should not deter
+you,” she presently added, in a moral tone. “Oh, do struggle against
+it, and you will conquer!”
+
+“You are so simple, so simple!” cried Felice. “You think, because you
+guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you know the
+extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good deal more may
+have been going on than you have fathomed with all your insight. I
+_cannot_ give him up until he chooses to give up me.”
+
+“But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and the
+cut must come from you.”
+
+“Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I must! I
+shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after meeting you like
+this and finding how guileless you are.” She thereupon whispered a few
+words in the girl’s ear, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing.
+
+Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang to
+her feet.
+
+“Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation transcending
+her utmost suspicion. “Can it be—can it be!”
+
+She turned as if to hasten away. But Felice Charmond’s sobs came to her
+ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees rocked and
+chanted their diriges and placebos around her, and she did not know
+which way to go. After a moment of energy she felt mild again, and
+turned to the motionless woman at her feet.
+
+“Are you rested?” she asked, in what seemed something like her own
+voice grown ten years older.
+
+Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose.
+
+“You mean to betray me!” she said from the bitterest depths of her
+soul. “Oh fool, fool I!”
+
+“No,” said Grace, shortly. “I mean no such thing. But let us be quick
+now. We have a serious undertaking before us. Think of nothing but
+going straight on.”
+
+They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now growing
+wet, and treading down woodbine, but still keeping a pretty straight
+course. Grace began to be thoroughly worn out, and her companion too,
+when, on a sudden, they broke into the deserted highway at the hill-top
+on which the Sherton man had waited for Mrs. Dollery’s van. Grace
+recognized the spot as soon as she looked around her.
+
+“How we have got here I cannot tell,” she said, with cold civility. “We
+have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. The hazel copse is
+quite on the other side. Now we have only to follow the road.”
+
+They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the track
+to Little Hintock, and so reached the park.
+
+“Here I turn back,” said Grace, in the same passionless voice. “You are
+quite near home.”
+
+Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission.
+
+“I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to
+unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as the
+grave,” she said. “I cannot help it now. Is it to be a secret—or do you
+mean war?”
+
+“A secret, certainly,” said Grace, mournfully. “How can you expect war
+from such a helpless, wretched being as I!”
+
+“And I’ll do my best not to see him. I am his slave; but I’ll try.”
+
+Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small dagger
+now.
+
+“Pray don’t distress yourself,” she said, with exquisitely fine scorn.
+“You may keep him—for me.” Had she been wounded instead of mortified
+she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers’s hold upon her heart
+was slight.
+
+They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward. Passing
+Marty’s cottage she observed through the window that the girl was
+writing instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what her
+correspondence could be. Directly afterwards she met people in search
+of her, and reached the house to find all in serious alarm. She soon
+explained that she had lost her way, and her general depression was
+attributed to exhaustion on that account.
+
+Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been
+surprised.
+
+The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the
+young girl, and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that
+Mrs. Charmond wore her hair. It was poor Marty’s only card, and she
+played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and thinking her revelation a
+fatal one for a lover.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between
+Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from
+London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired
+carriage. In his eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his
+refined face showed a vague disquietude. He appeared now like one of
+those who impress the beholder as having suffered wrong in being born.
+
+His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it
+seemed even gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly
+dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the
+irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers’s very
+door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of his
+unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of his
+sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first—a letter
+from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again. To bring about
+their severance still more effectually, she added, she had decided
+during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the Continent.
+
+The time was that dull interval in a woodlander’s life which coincides
+with great activity in the life of the woodland itself—a period
+following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the
+barking season, when the saps are just beginning to heave with the
+force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of the forest.
+
+Winterborne’s contract was completed, and the plantations were
+deserted. It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales
+would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and “the Mother of the Months”
+was in her most attenuated phase—starved and bent to a mere bowed
+skeleton, which glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers’s
+company.
+
+When he reached home he went straight up to his wife’s sitting-room. He
+found it deserted, and without a fire. He had mentioned no day for his
+return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to
+receive him. On descending to the other wing of the house and inquiring
+of Mrs. Melbury, he learned with much surprise that Grace had gone on a
+visit to an acquaintance at Shottsford-Forum three days earlier; that
+tidings had on this morning reached her father of her being very unwell
+there, in consequence of which he had ridden over to see her.
+
+Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now
+lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the
+entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on
+the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled about the
+fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable. Fitzpiers
+considered that Grace ought to have let him know her plans more
+accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went
+desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down,
+and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of
+smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson’s chimney, signifying that the
+young woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper.
+
+He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite side of
+the court. Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to the sawyers,
+and was telling them in a loud voice news in which the name of Mrs.
+Charmond soon arrested his ears.
+
+“Grammer, don’t make so much noise with that grate,” said the surgeon;
+at which Grammer reared herself upon her knees and held the fuel
+suspended in her hand, while Fitzpiers half opened the casement.
+
+“She is off to foreign lands again at last—hev made up her mind quite
+sudden-like—and it is thoughted she’ll leave in a day or two. She’s
+been all as if her mind were low for some days past—with a sort of
+sorrow in her face, as if she reproached her own soul. She’s the wrong
+sort of woman for Hintock—hardly knowing a beech from a woak—that I
+own. But I don’t care who the man is, she’s been a very kind friend to
+me.
+
+“Well, the day after to-morrow is the Sabbath day, and without charity
+we are but tinkling simples; but this I do say, that her going will be
+a blessed thing for a certain married couple who remain.”
+
+The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of it, restless
+as the last leaf upon a tree. “A sort of sorrow in her face, as if she
+reproached her own soul.” Poor Felice. How Felice’s frame must be
+pulsing under the conditions of which he had just heard the caricature;
+how her fair temples must ache; what a mood of wretchedness she must be
+in! But for the mixing up of his name with hers, and her determination
+to sunder their too close acquaintance on that account, she would
+probably have sent for him professionally. She was now sitting alone,
+suffering, perhaps wishing that she had not forbidden him to come
+again.
+
+Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to wait for the
+meal which was in course of preparation, he made himself ready for
+riding, descended to the yard, stood by the stable-door while Darling
+was being saddled, and rode off down the lane. He would have preferred
+walking, but was weary with his day’s travel.
+
+As he approached the door of Marty South’s cottage, which it was
+necessary to pass on his way, she came from the porch as if she had
+been awaiting him, and met him in the middle of the road, holding up a
+letter. Fitzpiers took it without stopping, and asked over his shoulder
+from whom it came.
+
+Marty hesitated. “From me,” she said, shyly, though with noticeable
+firmness.
+
+This letter contained, in fact, Marty’s declaration that she was the
+original owner of Mrs. Charmond’s supplementary locks, and enclosed a
+sample from the native stock, which had grown considerably by this
+time. It was her long contemplated apple of discord, and much her hand
+trembled as she handed the document up to him.
+
+But it was impossible on account of the gloom for Fitzpiers to read it
+then, while he had the curiosity to do so, and he put it in his pocket.
+His imagination having already centred itself on Hintock House, in his
+pocket the letter remained unopened and forgotten, all the while that
+Marty was hopefully picturing its excellent weaning effect upon him.
+
+He was not long in reaching the precincts of the Manor House. He drew
+rein under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the front, and
+reflected a while. His entry would not be altogether unnatural in the
+circumstances of her possible indisposition; but upon the whole he
+thought it best to avoid riding up to the door. By silently approaching
+he could retreat unobserved in the event of her not being alone.
+Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling to a stray bough hanging a
+little below the general browsing line of the trees, and proceeded to
+the door on foot.
+
+In the mean time Melbury had returned from Shottsford-Forum. The great
+court or quadrangle of the timber-merchant’s house, divided from the
+shady lane by an ivy-covered wall, was entered by two white gates, one
+standing near each extremity of the wall. It so happened that at the
+moment when Fitzpiers was riding out at the lower gate on his way to
+the Manor House, Melbury was approaching the upper gate to enter it.
+Fitzpiers being in front of Melbury was seen by the latter, but the
+surgeon, never turning his head, did not observe his father-in-law,
+ambling slowly and silently along under the trees, though his horse too
+was a gray one.
+
+“How is Grace?” said his wife, as soon as he entered.
+
+Melbury looked gloomy. “She is not at all well,” he said. “I don’t like
+the looks of her at all. I couldn’t bear the notion of her biding away
+in a strange place any longer, and I begged her to let me get her home.
+At last she agreed to it, but not till after much persuading. I was
+then sorry that I rode over instead of driving; but I have hired a nice
+comfortable carriage—the easiest-going I could get—and she’ll be here
+in a couple of hours or less. I rode on ahead to tell you to get her
+room ready; but I see her husband has come back.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Melbury. She expressed her concern that her husband
+had hired a carriage all the way from Shottsford. “What it will cost!”
+she said.
+
+“I don’t care what it costs!” he exclaimed, testily. “I was determined
+to get her home. Why she went away I can’t think! She acts in a way
+that is not at all likely to mend matters as far as I can see.” (Grace
+had not told her father of her interview with Mrs. Charmond, and the
+disclosure that had been whispered in her startled ear.) “Since Edgar
+is come,” he continued, “he might have waited in till I got home, to
+ask me how she was, if only for a compliment. I saw him go out; where
+is he gone?”
+
+Mrs. Melbury did not know positively; but she told her husband that
+there was not much doubt about the place of his first visit after an
+absence. She had, in fact, seen Fitzpiers take the direction of the
+Manor House.
+
+Melbury said no more. It was exasperating to him that just at this
+moment, when there was every reason for Fitzpiers to stay indoors, or
+at any rate to ride along the Shottsford road to meet his ailing wife,
+he should be doing despite to her by going elsewhere. The old man went
+out-of-doors again; and his horse being hardly unsaddled as yet, he
+told Upjohn to retighten the girths, when he again mounted, and rode
+off at the heels of the surgeon.
+
+By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go any
+lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his daughter’s
+husband. He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means,
+rough or fair: in his view there could come of his interference nothing
+worse than what existed at present. And yet to every bad there is a
+worse.
+
+He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the park on this
+side, and cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of
+Fitzpiers’s horse, till he reached the clump of trees under which his
+precursor had halted. The whitish object that was indistinctly visible
+here in the gloom of the boughs he found to be Darling, as left by
+Fitzpiers.
+
+“D—n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an honest way?” said
+Melbury.
+
+He profited by Fitzpiers’s example; dismounting, he tied his horse
+under an adjoining tree, and went on to the house on foot, as the other
+had done. He was no longer disposed to stick at trifles in his
+investigation, and did not hesitate to gently open the front door
+without ringing.
+
+The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and wainscot, was
+lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. Not a soul was visible. He
+went into the corridor and listened at a door which he knew to be that
+of the drawing-room; there was no sound, and on turning the handle he
+found the room empty. A fire burning low in the grate was the sole
+light of the apartment; its beams flashed mockingly on the somewhat
+showy Versaillese furniture and gilding here, in style as unlike that
+of the structural parts of the building as it was possible to be, and
+probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English gloom
+of the place. Disappointed in his hope of confronting his son-in-law
+here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without light or fire,
+and pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified that she had not
+dined there that day.
+
+By this time Melbury’s mood had a little mollified. Everything here was
+so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no longer
+incited to provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with anybody. The
+comparative stateliness of the apartments influenced him to an emotion,
+rather than to a belief, that where all was outwardly so good and
+proper there could not be quite that delinquency within which he had
+suspected. It occurred to him, too, that even if his suspicion were
+justified, his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into the house might
+end in confounding its inhabitant at the expense of his daughter’s
+dignity and his own. Any ill result would be pretty sure to hit Grace
+hardest in the long-run. He would, after all, adopt the more rational
+course, and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs.
+Charmond.
+
+He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come. Passing the door
+of the drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise within which
+was not the crackling of the fire. Melbury gently reopened the door to
+a distance of a few inches, and saw at the opposite window two figures
+in the act of stepping out—a man and a woman—in whom he recognized the
+lady of the house and his son-in-law. In a moment they had disappeared
+amid the gloom of the lawn.
+
+He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage-entrance
+door, coming round to the lawn front in time to see the two figures
+parting at the railing which divided the precincts of the house from
+the open park. Mrs. Charmond turned to hasten back immediately that
+Fitzpiers had left her side, and he was speedily absorbed into the
+duskiness of the trees.
+
+Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the drawing-room, and
+then followed after Fitzpiers, thinking that he would allow the latter
+to mount and ride ahead a little way before overtaking him and giving
+him a piece of his mind. His son-in-law might possibly see the second
+horse near his own; but that would do him no harm, and might prepare
+him for what he was to expect.
+
+The event, however, was different from the plan. On plunging into the
+thick shade of the clump of oaks, he could not perceive his horse
+Blossom anywhere; but feeling his way carefully along, he by-and-by
+discerned Fitzpiers’s mare Darling still standing as before under the
+adjoining tree. For a moment Melbury thought that his own horse, being
+young and strong, had broken away from her fastening; but on listening
+intently he could hear her ambling comfortably along a little way
+ahead, and a creaking of the saddle which showed that she had a rider.
+Walking on as far as the small gate in the corner of the park, he met a
+laborer, who, in reply to Melbury’s inquiry if he had seen any person
+on a gray horse, said that he had only met Dr. Fitzpiers.
+
+It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had mounted
+the mare which did not belong to him in mistake for his own—an
+oversight easily explicable, in a man ever unwitting in horse-flesh, by
+the darkness of the spot and the near similarity of the animals in
+appearance, though Melbury’s was readily enough seen to be the grayer
+horse by day. He hastened back, and did what seemed best in the
+circumstances—got upon old Darling, and rode rapidly after Fitzpiers.
+
+Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding along the cart-way
+which led through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mould with large ruts
+that were formed by the timber-wagons in fetching the spoil of the
+plantations, when all at once he descried in front, at a point where
+the road took a turning round a large chestnut-tree, the form of his
+own horse Blossom, at which Melbury quickened Darling’s pace, thinking
+to come up with Fitzpiers.
+
+Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider. At Melbury’s approach
+it galloped friskily away under the trees in a homeward direction.
+Thinking something was wrong, the timber-merchant dismounted as soon as
+he reached the chestnut, and after feeling about for a minute or two
+discovered Fitzpiers lying on the ground.
+
+“Here—help!” cried the latter as soon as he felt Melbury’s touch; “I
+have been thrown off, but there’s not much harm done, I think.”
+
+Since Melbury could not now very well read the younger man the lecture
+he had intended, and as friendliness would be hypocrisy, his instinct
+was to speak not a single word to his son-in-law. He raised Fitzpiers
+into a sitting posture, and found that he was a little stunned and
+stupefied, but, as he had said, not otherwise hurt. How this fall had
+come about was readily conjecturable: Fitzpiers, imagining there was
+only old Darling under him, had been taken unawares by the younger
+horse’s sprightliness.
+
+Melbury was a traveller of the old-fashioned sort; having just come
+from Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket the pilgrim’s flask
+of rum which he always carried on journeys exceeding a dozen miles,
+though he seldom drank much of it. He poured it down the surgeon’s
+throat, with such effect that he quickly revived. Melbury got him on
+his legs; but the question was what to do with him. He could not walk
+more than a few steps, and the other horse had gone away.
+
+With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling,
+mounting himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist with one
+arm. Darling being broad, straight-backed, and high in the withers, was
+well able to carry double, at any rate as far as Hintock, and at a
+gentle pace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the copse
+where Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil where the oaks
+grew; past Great Willy, the largest oak in the wood, and thence towards
+Nellcombe Bottom, intensely dark now with overgrowth, and popularly
+supposed to be haunted by the spirits of the fratricides exorcised from
+Hintock House.
+
+By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical strength. But
+he had eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast in London that
+morning, his anxiety about Felice having hurried him away from home
+before dining; as a consequence, the old rum administered by his
+father-in-law flew to the young man’s head and loosened his tongue,
+without his ever having recognized who it was that had lent him a
+kindly hand. He began to speak in desultory sentences, Melbury still
+supporting him.
+
+“I’ve come all the way from London to-day,” said Fitzpiers. “Ah, that’s
+the place to meet your equals. I live at Hintock—worse, at Little
+Hintock—and I am quite lost there. There’s not a man within ten miles
+of Hintock who can comprehend me. I tell you, Farmer What’s-your-name,
+that I’m a man of education. I know several languages; the poets and I
+are familiar friends; I used to read more in metaphysics than anybody
+within fifty miles; and since I gave that up there’s nobody can match
+me in the whole county of Wessex as a scientist. Yet I an doomed to
+live with tradespeople in a miserable little hole like Hintock!”
+
+“Indeed!” muttered Melbury.
+
+Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared himself
+up suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held, thrusting his
+shoulders so violently against Melbury’s breast as to make it difficult
+for the old man to keep a hold on the reins. “People don’t appreciate
+me here!” the surgeon exclaimed; lowering his voice, he added, softly
+and slowly, “except one—except one!...A passionate soul, as warm as she
+is clever, as beautiful as she is warm, and as rich as she is
+beautiful. I say, old fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather
+tight—rather like the eagle’s, you know, that ate out the liver of
+Pro—Pre—the man on Mount Caucasus. People don’t appreciate me, I say,
+except _her!_ Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man! She would have been mine,
+she would have taken my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so. I
+stooped to mate beneath me, and now I rue it.”
+
+The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury, corporeally
+and mentally. He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with his left arm, and
+he began to hate the contact. He hardly knew what to do. It was useless
+to remonstrate with Fitzpiers, in his intellectual confusion from the
+rum and from the fall. He remained silent, his hold upon his companion,
+however, being stern rather than compassionate.
+
+“You hurt me a little, farmer—though I am much obliged to you for your
+kindness. People don’t appreciate me, I say. Between ourselves, I am
+losing my practice here; and why? Because I see matchless attraction
+where matchless attraction is, both in person and position. I mention
+no names, so nobody will be the wiser. But I have lost her, in a
+legitimate sense, that is. If I were a free man now, things have come
+to such a pass that she could not refuse me; while with her fortune
+(which I don’t covet for itself) I should have a chance of satisfying
+an honorable ambition—a chance I have never had yet, and now never,
+never shall have, probably!”
+
+Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other’s backbone, and his
+brain on fire with indignation, ventured to mutter huskily, “Why?”
+
+The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied, “Because I am
+tied and bound to another by law, as tightly as I am to you by your
+arm—not that I complain of your arm—I thank you for helping me. Well,
+where are we? Not nearly home yet?...Home, say I. It _is_ a home! When
+I might have been at the other house over there.” In a stupefied way he
+flung his hand in the direction of the park. “I was just two months too
+early in committing myself. Had I only seen the other first—”
+
+Here the old man’s arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake. “What are you
+doing?” continued the latter. “Keep still, please, or put me down. I
+was saying that I lost her by a mere little two months! There is no
+chance for me now in this world, and it makes me reckless—reckless!
+Unless, indeed, anything should happen to the other one. She is amiable
+enough; but if anything should happen to her—and I hear she is
+ill—well, if it _should_, I should be free—and my fame, my happiness,
+would be insured.”
+
+These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in front
+of the timber-merchant. Unable longer to master himself, Melbury, the
+skin of his face compressed, whipped away his spare arm from
+Fitzpiers’s waist, and seized him by the collar.
+
+“You heartless villain—after all that we have done for ye!” he cried,
+with a quivering lip. “And the money of hers that you’ve had, and the
+roof we’ve provided to shelter ye! It is to me, George Melbury, that
+you dare to talk like that!” The exclamation was accompanied by a
+powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung the young man head-long
+into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy thud upon the stumps of some
+undergrowth which had been cut during the winter preceding. Darling
+continued her walk for a few paces farther and stopped.
+
+“God forgive me!” Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. “He
+tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I’ve murdered him!”
+
+He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which
+Fitzpiers had fallen. To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon rise
+to his feet with a bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly under the
+trees.
+
+Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers’s footsteps died away.
+“It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of Providence in
+providing leaves for his fall,” he said to himself. And then his mind
+reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, and his indignation so mounted
+within him that he almost wished the fall had put an end to the young
+man there and then.
+
+He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing
+under some bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward
+and easily caught the younger animal, now disheartened at its freak. He
+then made the pair of them fast to a tree, and turning back, endeavored
+to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully that, after all, he
+had gone further than he intended with the offender.
+
+But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing
+layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been
+leaves, he could not find him. He stood still listening and looking
+round. The breeze was oozing through the network of boughs as through a
+strainer; the trunks and larger branches stood against the light of the
+sky in the forms of writhing men, gigantic candelabra, pikes, halberds,
+lances, and whatever besides the fancy chose to make of them. Giving up
+the search, Melbury came back to the horses, and walked slowly
+homeward, leading one in each hand.
+
+It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been returning
+from Great to Little Hintock about the time of Fitzpiers’s and
+Melbury’s passage home along that route. A horse-collar that had been
+left at the harness-mender’s to be repaired was required for use at
+five o’clock next morning, and in consequence the boy had to fetch it
+overnight. He put his head through the collar, and accompanied his walk
+by whistling the one tune he knew, as an antidote to fear.
+
+The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily along
+the track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect friend or foe,
+prudence suggested that he should cease his whistling and retreat among
+the trees till the horse and his rider had gone by; a course to which
+he was still more inclined when he found how noiselessly they
+approached, and saw that the horse looked pale, and remembered what he
+had read about Death in the Revelation. He therefore deposited the
+collar by a tree, and hid himself behind it. The horseman came on, and
+the youth, whose eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his great relief
+recognized the doctor.
+
+As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken Blossom for
+Darling, and he had not discovered his mistake when he came up opposite
+the boy, though he was somewhat surprised at the liveliness of his
+usually placid mare. The only other pair of eyes on the spot whose
+vision was keen as the young carter’s were those of the horse; and,
+with that strongly conservative objection to the unusual which animals
+show, Blossom, on eying the collar under the tree—quite invisible to
+Fitzpiers—exercised none of the patience of the older horse, but shied
+sufficiently to unseat so second-rate an equestrian as the surgeon.
+
+He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterwards found him. The
+boy ran away, salving his conscience for the desertion by thinking how
+vigorously he would spread the alarm of the accident when he got to
+Hintock—which he uncompromisingly did, incrusting the skeleton event
+with a load of dramatic horrors.
+
+Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, though not by her
+husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shottsford-Forum, had been paid for and
+dismissed. The long drive had somewhat revived her, her illness being a
+feverish intermittent nervousness which had more to do with mind than
+body, and she walked about her sitting-room in something of a hopeful
+mood. Mrs. Melbury had told her as soon as she arrived that her husband
+had returned from London. He had gone out, she said, to see a patient,
+as she supposed, and he must soon be back, since he had had no dinner
+or tea. Grace would not allow her mind to harbor any suspicion of his
+whereabouts, and her step-mother said nothing of Mrs. Charmond’s
+rumored sorrows and plans of departure.
+
+So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently. She had left
+Hintock in a turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs. Charmond,
+and had intended not to be at home when her husband returned. But she
+had thought the matter over, and had allowed her father’s influence to
+prevail and bring her back; and now somewhat regretted that Edgar’s
+arrival had preceded hers.
+
+By-and-by Mrs. Melbury came up-stairs with a slight air of flurry and
+abruptness.
+
+“I have something to tell—some bad news,” she said. “But you must not
+be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been. Edgar has been
+thrown off his horse. We don’t think he is hurt much. It happened in
+the wood the other side of Nellcombe Bottom, where ’tis said the ghosts
+of the brothers walk.”
+
+She went on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the invented
+horrors that had been communicated by the boy. “I thought it better to
+tell you at once,” she added, “in case he should not be very well able
+to walk home, and somebody should bring him.”
+
+Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than she represented,
+and Grace knew that she thought so. She sat down dazed for a few
+minutes, returning a negative to her step-mother’s inquiry if she could
+do anything for her. “But please go into the bedroom,” Grace said, on
+second thoughts, “and see if all is ready there—in case it is serious.”
+Mrs. Melbury thereupon called Grammer, and they did as directed,
+supplying the room with everything they could think of for the
+accommodation of an injured man.
+
+Nobody was left in the lower part of the house. Not many minutes passed
+when Grace heard a knock at the door—a single knock, not loud enough to
+reach the ears of those in the bedroom. She went to the top of the
+stairs and said, faintly, “Come up,” knowing that the door stood, as
+usual in such houses, wide open.
+
+Retreating into the gloom of the broad landing she saw rise up the
+stairs a woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice
+revealed her to be Suke Damson, in great fright and sorrow. A streak of
+light from the partially closed door of Grace’s room fell upon her face
+as she came forward, and it was drawn and pale.
+
+“Oh, Miss Melbury—I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers,” she said, wringing her
+hands. “This terrible news. Is he dead? Is he hurted very bad? Tell me;
+I couldn’t help coming; please forgive me, Miss Melbury—Mrs. Fitzpiers
+I would say!”
+
+Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the landing, and put
+her hands to her now flushed face and head. Could she order Suke Damson
+down-stairs and out of the house? Her husband might be brought in at
+any moment, and what would happen? But could she order this genuinely
+grieved woman away?
+
+There was a dead silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said, “Why
+don’t ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can’t I see
+him—would it be so very wrong?”
+
+Before Grace had answered somebody else came to the door below—a
+foot-fall light as a roe’s. There was a hurried tapping upon the panel,
+as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner thought not
+whether a knocker were there or no. Without a pause, and possibly
+guided by the stray beam of light on the landing, the newcomer ascended
+the staircase as the first had done. Grace was sufficiently visible,
+and the lady, for a lady it was, came to her side.
+
+“I could make nobody hear down-stairs,” said Felice Charmond, with lips
+whose dryness could almost be heard, and panting, as she stood like one
+ready to sink on the floor with distress. “What is—the matter—tell me
+the worst! Can he live?” She looked at Grace imploringly, without
+perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at such a presence, had shrunk away
+into the shade.
+
+Mrs. Charmond’s little feet were covered with mud; she was quite
+unconscious of her appearance now. “I have heard such a dreadful
+report,” she went on; “I came to ascertain the truth of it. Is
+he—killed?”
+
+“She won’t tell us—he’s dying—he’s in that room!” burst out Suke,
+regardless of consequences, as she heard the distant movements of Mrs.
+Melbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of the passage.
+
+“Where?” said Mrs. Charmond; and on Suke pointing out the direction,
+she made as if to go thither.
+
+Grace barred the way. “He is not there,” she said. “I have not seen him
+any more than you. I have heard a report only—not so bad as you think.
+It must have been exaggerated to you.”
+
+“Please do not conceal anything—let me know all!” said Felice,
+doubtingly.
+
+“You shall know all I know—you have a perfect right to know—who can
+have a better than either of you?” said Grace, with a delicate sting
+which was lost upon Felice Charmond now. “I repeat, I have only heard a
+less alarming account than you have heard; how much it means, and how
+little, I cannot say. I pray God that it means not much—in common
+humanity. You probably pray the same—_for other reasons_.”
+
+She regarded them both there in the dim light a while.
+
+They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not heeding
+her mood. A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew. It was well, very
+well, conventionally, to address either one of them in the wife’s
+regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for
+losing their hearts to her husband. But life, what was it, and who was
+she? She had, like the singer of the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and
+chastened all the day long; but could she, by retributive words, in
+order to please herself—the individual—“offend against the generation,”
+as he would not?
+
+“He is dying, perhaps,” blubbered Suke Damson, putting her apron to her
+eyes.
+
+In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affection, agony of
+heart, all for a man who had wronged them—had never really behaved
+towards either of them anyhow but selfishly. Neither one but would have
+wellnigh sacrificed half her life to him, even now. The tears which his
+possibly critical situation could not bring to her eyes surged over at
+the contemplation of these fellow-women. She turned to the balustrade,
+bent herself upon it, and wept.
+
+Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her handkerchief, and
+letting the tears run down silently. While these three poor women stood
+together thus, pitying another though most to be pitied themselves, the
+pacing of a horse or horses became audible in the court, and in a
+moment Melbury’s voice was heard calling to his stableman. Grace at
+once started up, ran down the stairs and out into the quadrangle as her
+father crossed it towards the door. “Father, what is the matter with
+him?” she cried.
+
+“Who—Edgar?” said Melbury, abruptly. “Matter? Nothing. What, my dear,
+and have you got home safe? Why, you are better already! But you ought
+not to be out in the air like this.”
+
+“But he has been thrown off his horse!”
+
+“I know; I know. I saw it. He got up again, and walked off as well as
+ever. A fall on the leaves didn’t hurt a spry fellow like him. He did
+not come this way,” he added, significantly. “I suppose he went to look
+for his horse. I tried to find him, but could not. But after seeing him
+go away under the trees I found the horse, and have led it home for
+safety. So he must walk. Now, don’t you stay out here in this night
+air.”
+
+She returned to the house with her father. When she had again ascended
+to the landing and to her own rooms beyond it was a great relief to her
+to find that both Petticoat the First and Petticoat the Second of her
+_Bien-aimé_ had silently disappeared. They had, in all probability,
+heard the words of her father, and departed with their anxieties
+relieved.
+
+Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied themselves to see
+that she was comfortable. Perceiving soon that she would prefer to be
+left alone they went away.
+
+Grace waited on. The clock raised its voice now and then, but her
+husband did not return. At her father’s usual hour for retiring he
+again came in to see her. “Do not stay up,” she said, as soon as he
+entered. “I am not at all tired. I will sit up for him.”
+
+“I think it will be useless, Grace,” said Melbury, slowly.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“I have had a bitter quarrel with him; and on that account I hardly
+think he will return to-night.”
+
+“A quarrel? Was that after the fall seen by the boy?”
+
+Melbury nodded an affirmative, without taking his eyes off the candle.
+
+“Yes; it was as we were coming home together,” he said.
+
+Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father was speaking.
+“How could you want to quarrel with him?” she cried, suddenly. “Why
+could you not let him come home quietly if he were inclined to? He is
+my husband; and now you have married me to him surely you need not
+provoke him unnecessarily. First you induce me to accept him, and then
+you do things that divide us more than we should naturally be divided!”
+
+“How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?” said Melbury, with
+indignant sorrow. “_I_ divide you from your husband, indeed! You little
+think—”
+
+He was inclined to say more—to tell her the whole story of the
+encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely
+in hearing her despised. But it would have greatly distressed her, and
+he forbore. “You had better lie down. You are tired,” he said,
+soothingly. “Good-night.”
+
+The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, broken
+only by the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury’s stables. Despite
+her father’s advice Grace still waited up. But nobody came.
+
+It was a critical time in Grace’s emotional life that night. She
+thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot
+Winterborne.
+
+“How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!” she said to herself.
+“How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he is
+attractive.” The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these ideas
+might have been transformed into their corresponding emotions by a show
+of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There was, in truth, a love-bird
+yearning to fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly.
+
+But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken
+about the condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall headlong on stumps
+of underwood with impunity. Had the old man been able to watch
+Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have observed that on rising and
+walking into the thicket he dropped blood as he went; that he had not
+proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs of being dizzy, and,
+raising his hands to his head, reeled and fell down.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock that
+night. Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a customary
+hour; and over her drawing-room fire at the Manor House she sat as
+motionless and in as deep a reverie as Grace in her little apartment at
+the homestead.
+
+Having caught ear of Melbury’s intelligence while she stood on the
+landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental distress,
+her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a rush. She
+descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost, keeping close to
+the walls of the building till she got round to the gate of the
+quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed almost before Grace
+and her father had finished their discourse. Suke Damson had thought it
+well to imitate her superior in this respect, and, descending the back
+stairs as Felice descended the front, went out at the side door and
+home to her cottage.
+
+Once outside Melbury’s gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed to
+the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and splitting
+her thin boots in her haste. She entered her own dwelling, as she had
+emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. In other circumstances she
+would have felt some timidity at undertaking such an unpremeditated
+excursion alone; but her anxiety for another had cast out her fear for
+herself.
+
+Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it—the candles
+still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters gently pulled to,
+so as to hide the state of the window from the cursory glance of a
+servant entering the apartment. She had been gone about three-quarters
+of an hour by the clock, and nobody seemed to have discovered her
+absence. Tired in body but tense in mind, she sat down, palpitating,
+round-eyed, bewildered at what she had done.
+
+She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now that
+the emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief that
+Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. This was
+how she had set about doing her best to escape her passionate bondage
+to him! Somehow, in declaring to Grace and to herself the unseemliness
+of her infatuation, she had grown a convert to its irresistibility. If
+Heaven would only give her strength; but Heaven never did! One thing
+was indispensable; she must go away from Hintock if she meant to
+withstand further temptation. The struggle was too wearying, too
+hopeless, while she remained. It was but a continual capitulation of
+conscience to what she dared not name.
+
+By degrees, as she sat, Felice’s mind—helped perhaps by the anticlimax
+of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her fright about
+him—grew wondrously strong in wise resolve. For the moment she was in a
+mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, “to run mad with
+discretion;” and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure that
+she wished to set about going that very minute. Jumping up from her
+seat, she began to gather together some small personal knick-knacks
+scattered about the room, to feel that preparations were really in
+train.
+
+While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight noise
+out-of-doors, and stood still. Surely it was a tapping at the window. A
+thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek. He had come to that
+window before; yet was it possible that he should dare to do so now!
+All the servants were in bed, and in the ordinary course of affairs she
+would have retired also. Then she remembered that on stepping in by the
+casement and closing it, she had not fastened the window-shutter, so
+that a streak of light from the interior of the room might have
+revealed her vigil to an observer on the lawn. How all things conspired
+against her keeping faith with Grace!
+
+The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird; her
+illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back the
+shutter, determining, however, to shake her head at him and keep the
+casement securely closed.
+
+What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter than
+a helpless woman’s at midnight. In the centre of the lowest pane of the
+window, close to the glass, was a human face, which she barely
+recognized as the face of Fitzpiers. It was surrounded with the
+darkness of the night without, corpse-like in its pallor, and covered
+with blood. As disclosed in the square area of the pane it met her
+frightened eyes like a replica of the Sudarium of St. Veronica.
+
+He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly. Her rapid mind pieced
+together in an instant a possible concatenation of events which might
+have led to this tragical issue. She unlatched the casement with a
+terrified hand, and bending down to where he was crouching, pressed her
+face to his with passionate solicitude. She assisted him into the room
+without a word, to do which it was almost necessary to lift him bodily.
+Quickly closing the window and fastening the shutters, she bent over
+him breathlessly.
+
+“Are you hurt much—much?” she cried, faintly. “Oh, oh, how is this!”
+
+“Rather much—but don’t be frightened,” he answered in a difficult
+whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if possible.
+“A little water, please.”
+
+She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and glass,
+from which he eagerly drank. He could then speak much better, and with
+her help got upon the nearest couch.
+
+“Are you dying, Edgar?” she said. “Do speak to me!”
+
+“I am half dead,” said Fitzpiers. “But perhaps I shall get over
+it....It is chiefly loss of blood.”
+
+“But I thought your fall did not hurt you,” said she. “Who did this?”
+
+“Felice—my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a mile on
+my hands and knees—God, I thought I should never have got here!...I
+have come to you—be-cause you are the only friend—I have in the world
+now....I can never go back to Hintock—never—to the roof of the
+Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever medicine this bitter
+feud!...If I were only well again—”
+
+“Let me bind your head, now that you have rested.”
+
+“Yes—but wait a moment—it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, or I
+should be a dead man before now. While in the wood I managed to make a
+tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well as I could
+in the dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me till I am well?
+Whatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. My practice is nearly
+gone, you know—and after this I would not care to recover it if I
+could.”
+
+By this time Felice’s tears began to blind her. Where were now her
+discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To administer to him
+in his pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her single thought. The
+first step was to hide him, and she asked herself where. A place
+occurred to her mind.
+
+She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him
+much. Then she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now keep
+himself upright by leaning upon her on one side and a walking-stick on
+the other, they went thus in slow march out of the room and up the
+stairs. At the top she took him along a gallery, pausing whenever he
+required rest, and thence up a smaller staircase to the least used part
+of the house, where she unlocked a door. Within was a lumber-room,
+containing abandoned furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles
+which obscured the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks
+and lairs in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye
+gaze in at the door. The articles were mainly those that had belonged
+to the previous owner of the house, and had been bought in by the late
+Mr. Charmond at the auction; but changing fashion, and the tastes of a
+young wife, had caused them to be relegated to this dungeon.
+
+Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had hauled
+out materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in one of the
+aforesaid nooks. She obtained water and a basin, and washed the dried
+blood from his face and hands; and when he was comfortably reclining,
+fetched food from the larder. While he ate her eyes lingered anxiously
+on his face, following its every movement with such loving-kindness as
+only a fond woman can show.
+
+He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with her.
+
+“What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage any
+man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his presence. But
+I did not know him, and I was stupefied by what he had given me, so
+that I hardly was aware of what I said. Well—the veil of that temple is
+rent in twain!...As I am not going to be seen again in Hintock, my
+first efforts must be directed to allay any alarm that may be felt at
+my absence, before I am able to get clear away. Nobody must suspect
+that I have been hurt, or there will be a country talk about me.
+Felice, I must at once concoct a letter to check all search for me. I
+think if you can bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do it now. I
+could rest better if it were done. Poor thing! how I tire her with
+running up and down!”
+
+She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a
+support to his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal wife.
+
+“The animosity shown towards me by your father,” he wrote, in this
+coldest of marital epistles, “is such that I cannot return again to a
+roof which is his, even though it shelters you. A parting is
+unavoidable, as you are sure to be on his side in this division. I am
+starting on a journey which will take me a long way from Hintock, and
+you must not expect to see me there again for some time.”
+
+He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional
+engagements and other practical matters, concluding without a hint of
+his destination, or a notion of when she would see him again. He
+offered to read the note to Felice before he closed it up, but she
+would not hear or see it; that side of his obligations distressed her
+beyond endurance. She turned away from Fitzpiers, and sobbed bitterly.
+
+“If you can get this posted at a place some miles away,” he whispered,
+exhausted by the effort of writing—“at Shottsford or Port-Bredy, or
+still better, Budmouth—it will divert all suspicion from this house as
+the place of my refuge.”
+
+“I will drive to one or other of the places myself—anything to keep it
+unknown,” she murmured, her voice weighted with vague foreboding, now
+that the excitement of helping him had passed away.
+
+Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to be done. “In
+creeping over the fence on to the lawn,” he said, “I made the rail
+bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint—I could see it in
+the dark. At all hazards it should be washed off. Could you do that
+also, Felice?”
+
+What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was she
+went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-floor, then
+to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid under her cloak;
+then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into the night. The white
+railing stared out in the darkness at her approach, and a ray from the
+enshrouded lantern fell upon the blood—just where he had told her it
+would be found. She shuddered. It was almost too much to bear in one
+day—but with a shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and returned to
+the house.
+
+The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less than
+two hours. When all was done, and she had smoothed his extemporized
+bed, and placed everything within his reach that she could think of,
+she took her leave of him, and locked him in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+When her husband’s letter reached Grace’s hands, bearing upon it the
+postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind that
+Fitzpiers was within a mile of her still. She felt relieved that he did
+not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whatever its
+nature might have been; but the general frigidity of his communication
+quenched in her the incipient spark that events had kindled so shortly
+before.
+
+From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that the
+doctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household was aware
+that he did not return on the night of his accident, no excitement
+manifested itself in the village.
+
+Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal birds and
+animals observed that late one evening, towards the middle of the
+month, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under one arm and a
+stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House across the lawn to the
+shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow and laborious walk to the
+nearest point of the turnpike-road. The mysterious personage was so
+disguised that his own wife would hardly have known him. Felice
+Charmond was a practised hand at make-ups, as well she might be; and
+she had done her utmost in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old
+materials of her art in the recesses of the lumber-room.
+
+In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed him to
+Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the south
+coast, and immediately crossed the Channel.
+
+But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs.
+Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long term
+of travel and residence on the Continent. She went off one morning as
+unostentatiously as could be, and took no maid with her, having, she
+said, engaged one to meet her at a point farther on in her route. After
+that, Hintock House, so frequently deserted, was again to be let.
+Spring had not merged in summer when a clinching rumor, founded on the
+best of evidence, reached the parish and neighborhood. Mrs. Charmond
+and Fitzpiers had been seen together in Baden, in relations which set
+at rest the question that had agitated the little community ever since
+the winter.
+
+Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than Grace.
+His spirit seemed broken.
+
+But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here, as
+he was passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition expressed
+largely by his gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice formerly
+familiar. He turned and saw a certain Fred Beaucock—once a promising
+lawyer’s clerk and local dandy, who had been called the cleverest
+fellow in Sherton, without whose brains the firm of solicitors
+employing him would be nowhere. But later on Beaucock had fallen into
+the mire. He was invited out a good deal, sang songs at agricultural
+meetings and burgesses’ dinners; in sum, victualled himself with
+spirits more frequently than was good for the clever brains or body
+either. He lost his situation, and after an absence spent in trying his
+powers elsewhere, came back to his native town, where, at the time of
+the foregoing events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for astonishingly
+small fees—mostly carrying on his profession on public-house settles,
+in whose recesses he might often have been overheard making
+country-people’s wills for half a crown; calling with a learned voice
+for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny sheet of paper, on which he drew up the
+testament while resting it in a little space wiped with his hand on the
+table amid the liquid circles formed by the cups and glasses. An idea
+implanted early in life is difficult to uproot, and many elderly
+tradespeople still clung to the notion that Fred Beaucock knew a great
+deal of law.
+
+It was he who had called Melbury by name. “You look very down, Mr.
+Melbury—very, if I may say as much,” he observed, when the
+timber-merchant turned. “But I know—I know. A very sad case—very. I was
+bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally no stranger to such
+matters. Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her remedy.”
+
+“How—what—a remedy?” said Melbury.
+
+“Under the new law, sir. A new court was established last year, and
+under the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap. eighty-five,
+unmarrying is as easy as marrying. No more Acts of Parliament
+necessary; no longer one law for the rich and another for the poor. But
+come inside—I was just going to have a nibleykin of rum hot—I’ll
+explain it all to you.”
+
+The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. And
+though he was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no taste
+for entering a tavern with Fred Beaucock—nay, would have been quite
+uninfluenced by such a character on any other matter in the world—such
+fascination lay in the idea of delivering his poor girl from bondage,
+that it deprived him of the critical faculty. He could not resist the
+ex-lawyer’s clerk, and entered the inn.
+
+Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter of
+course, Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal gravity which
+would hardly allow him to be conscious of the spirits before him,
+though they nevertheless disappeared with mysterious quickness.
+
+How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce laws
+which Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of ignorance,
+and how much of dupery, was never ascertained. But he related such a
+plausible story of the ease with which Grace could become a free woman
+that her father was irradiated with the project; and though he scarcely
+wetted his lips, Melbury never knew how he came out of the inn, or when
+or where he mounted his gig to pursue his way homeward. But home he
+found himself, his brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorously
+as a gong in the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen Grace, he
+was accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if
+he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel.
+
+He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a heap of
+rendlewood—as barked oak was here called—which lay under a
+privet-hedge.
+
+“Giles,” he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, “there’s a new
+law in the land! Grace can be free quite easily. I only knew it by the
+merest accident. I might not have found it out for the next ten years.
+She can get rid of him—d’ye hear?—get rid of him. Think of that, my
+friend Giles!”
+
+He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy. A subdued
+tremulousness about the mouth was all the response that Winterborne
+made; and Melbury added, “My boy, you shall have her yet—if you want
+her.” His feelings had gathered volume as he said this, and the
+articulate sound of the old idea drowned his sight in mist.
+
+“Are you sure—about this new law?” asked Winterborne, so disquieted by
+a gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with fearful doubt that
+he evaded the full acceptance of Melbury’s last statement.
+
+Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk with
+Beaucock it had come into his mind that he had seen some time ago in
+the weekly paper an allusion to such a legal change; but, having no
+interest in those desperate remedies at the moment, he had passed it
+over. “But I’m not going to let the matter rest doubtful for a single
+day,” he continued. “I am going to London. Beaucock will go with me,
+and we shall get the best advice as soon as we possibly can. Beaucock
+is a thorough lawyer—nothing the matter with him but a fiery palate. I
+knew him as the stay and refuge of Sherton in knots of law at one
+time.”
+
+Winterborne’s replies were of the vaguest. The new possibility was
+almost unthinkable by him at the moment. He was what was called at
+Hintock “a solid-going fellow;” he maintained his abeyant mood, not
+from want of reciprocity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by life
+as he knew it.
+
+“But,” continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two of
+anxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by time
+and care, “Grace is not at all well. Nothing constitutional, you know;
+but she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that night of
+fright. I don’t doubt but that she will be all right soon....I wonder
+how she is this evening?” He rose with the words, as if he had too long
+forgotten her personality in the excitement of her previsioned career.
+
+They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden brown,
+and now went towards Melbury’s house, Giles a few steps in the rear of
+his old friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm of the moment to
+outstep the ordinary walking of Winterborne. He felt shy of entering
+Grace’s presence as her reconstituted lover—which was how her father’s
+manner would be sure to present him—before definite information as to
+her future state was forthcoming; it seemed too nearly like the act of
+those who rush in where angels fear to tread.
+
+A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was prompt
+enough in coming. No sooner had he followed the timber-merchant in at
+the door than he heard Grammer inform him that Mrs. Fitzpiers was still
+more unwell than she had been in the morning. Old Dr. Jones being in
+the neighborhood they had called him in, and he had instantly directed
+them to get her to bed. They were not, however, to consider her illness
+serious—a feverish, nervous attack the result of recent events, was
+what she was suffering from, and she would doubtless be well in a few
+days.
+
+Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her that
+evening was disappointed. Even this aggravation of her morning
+condition did not greatly depress Melbury. He knew, he said, that his
+daughter’s constitution was sound enough. It was only these domestic
+troubles that were pulling her down. Once free she would be blooming
+again. Melbury diagnosed rightly, as parents usually do.
+
+He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another visit
+and assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness, especially
+on an errand of that sort, which would the sooner put an end to her
+suspense.
+
+The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was told in
+Hintock that Mr. Fitzpiers’s hat had been found in the wood. Later on
+in the afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury, and, by a piece of
+ill-fortune, into Grace’s presence. It had doubtless lain in the wood
+ever since his fall from the horse, but it looked so clean and
+uninjured—the summer weather and leafy shelter having much favored its
+preservation—that Grace could not believe it had remained so long
+concealed. A very little of fact was enough to set her fevered fancy at
+work at this juncture; she thought him still in the neighborhood; she
+feared his sudden appearance; and her nervous malady developed
+consequences so grave that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and the
+household was alarmed.
+
+It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the summer
+scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours during the
+night. The bird’s note, so familiar to her ears from infancy, was now
+absolute torture to the poor girl. On the Friday following the
+Wednesday of Melbury’s departure, and the day after the discovery of
+Fitzpiers’s hat, the cuckoo began at two o’clock in the morning with a
+sudden cry from one of Melbury’s apple-trees, not three yards from the
+window of Grace’s room.
+
+“Oh, he is coming!” she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from the
+bed out upon the floor.
+
+These starts and frights continued till noon; and when the doctor had
+arrived and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he sat down
+and meditated. That ever-present terror it was indispensable to remove
+from her mind at all hazards; and he thought how this might be done.
+
+Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the disquieted
+Winterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went home and wrote to
+Mr. Melbury at the London address he had obtained from his wife. The
+gist of his communication was that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as
+soon as possible that steps were being taken to sever the bond which
+was becoming a torture to her; that she would soon be free, and was
+even then virtually so. “If you can say it _at once_ it may be the
+means of averting much harm,” he said. “Write to herself; not to me.”
+
+On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with mysterious
+pacifications that in a day or two she might expect to receive some
+assuring news. So it turned out. When Sunday morning came there was a
+letter for Grace from her father. It arrived at seven o’clock, the
+usual time at which the toddling postman passed by Hintock; at eight
+Grace awoke, having slept an hour or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melbury
+brought up the letter.
+
+“Can you open it yourself?” said she.
+
+“Oh yes, yes!” said Grace, with feeble impatience. She tore the
+envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush tinctured
+her white neck and cheek.
+
+Her father had exercised a bold discretion. He informed her that she
+need have no further concern about Fitzpiers’s return; that she would
+shortly be a free woman; and therefore, if she should desire to wed her
+old lover—which he trusted was the case, since it was his own deep
+wish—she would be in a position to do so. In this Melbury had not
+written beyond his belief. But he very much stretched the facts in
+adding that the legal formalities for dissolving her union were
+practically settled. The truth was that on the arrival of the doctor’s
+letter poor Melbury had been much agitated, and could with difficulty
+be prevented by Beaucock from returning to her bedside. What was the
+use of his rushing back to Hintock? Beaucock had asked him. The only
+thing that could do her any good was a breaking of the bond. Though he
+had not as yet had an interview with the eminent solicitor they were
+about to consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case was
+clear enough. Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm at
+her danger by the representations of his companion, and by the doctor’s
+letter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly that she was
+virtually free.
+
+“And you’d better write also to the gentleman,” suggested Beaucock,
+who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice in the case,
+wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to effect which he knew
+that nothing would be so potent as awakening the passion of Grace for
+Winterborne, so that her father might not have the heart to withdraw
+from his attempt to make her love legitimate when he discovered that
+there were difficulties in the way.
+
+The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of
+“starting them at once,” as he called it. To put his long-delayed
+reparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now. He added
+to the letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting that she
+ought to begin to encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose him
+altogether; and he wrote to Giles that the path was virtually open for
+him at last. Life was short, he declared; there were slips betwixt the
+cup and the lip; her interest in him should be reawakened at once, that
+all might be ready when the good time came for uniting them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in
+heart. The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it
+inapprehensible by him in its entirety.
+
+Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this
+family—beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with
+the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the then
+popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his social
+boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded were hardly
+faded yet—he was now asked by that jealously guarding father of hers to
+take courage—to get himself ready for the day when he should be able to
+claim her.
+
+The old times came back to him in dim procession. How he had been
+snubbed; how Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that sweet,
+coy Grace herself had looked down upon him and his household
+arrangements, and poor Creedle’s contrivances!
+
+Well, he could not believe it. Surely the adamantine barrier of
+marriage with another could not be pierced like this! It did violence
+to custom. Yet a new law might do anything. But was it at all within
+the bounds of probability that a woman who, over and above her own
+attainments, had been accustomed to those of a cultivated professional
+man, could ever be the wife of such as he?
+
+Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the
+reasonableness of that treatment. He had said to himself again and
+again that her father was right; that the poor ceorl, Giles
+Winterborne, would never have been able to make such a dainty girl
+happy. Yet, now that she had stood in a position farther removed from
+his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her. He was full
+of doubt.
+
+Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness. To act so
+promptly as Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely wise,
+because of the uncertainty of events. Giles knew nothing of legal
+procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace as a lover
+before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved was simply an
+extravagant dream of her father’s overstrained mind. He pitied Melbury
+for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that the aging man must
+have suffered acutely to be weakened to this unreasoning desire.
+
+Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical conjecture
+that the timber-merchant, in his intense affection for Grace, was
+courting him now because that young lady, when disunited, would be left
+in an anomalous position, to escape which a bad husband was better than
+none. He felt quite sure that his old friend was simply on tenterhooks
+of anxiety to repair the almost irreparable error of dividing two whom
+Nature had striven to join together in earlier days, and that in his
+ardor to do this he was oblivious of formalities. The cautious
+supervision of his past years had overleaped itself at last. Hence,
+Winterborne perceived that, in this new beginning, the necessary care
+not to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised by
+himself.
+
+Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore. There is no
+such thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more or loving
+less. But Giles himself recognized no decline in his sense of her
+dearness. If the flame did indeed burn lower now than when he had
+fetched her from Sherton at her last return from school, the marvel was
+small. He had been laboring ever since his rejection and her marriage
+to reduce his former passion to a docile friendship, out of pure regard
+to its expediency; and their separation may have helped him to a
+partial success.
+
+A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury. But
+the effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon the
+elastic-nerved daughter of the woods had been much what the old surgeon
+Jones had surmised. It had soothed her perturbed spirit better than all
+the opiates in the pharmacopoeia. She had slept unbrokenly a whole
+night and a day. The “new law” was to her a mysterious, beneficent,
+godlike entity, lately descended upon earth, that would make her as she
+once had been without trouble or annoyance. Her position fretted her,
+its abstract features rousing an aversion which was even greater than
+her aversion to the personality of him who had caused it. It was
+mortifying, productive of slights, undignified. Him she could forget;
+her circumstances she had always with her.
+
+She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery; and
+perhaps on that account her fancy wove about him a more romantic tissue
+than it could have done if he had stood before her with all the specks
+and flaws inseparable from corporeity. He rose upon her memory as the
+fruit-god and the wood-god in alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared
+with green lichen, as she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the
+plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair
+of his arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in
+White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him. In her secret
+heart she almost approximated to her father’s enthusiasm in wishing to
+show Giles once for all how she still regarded him. The question
+whether the future would indeed bring them together for life was a
+standing wonder with her. She knew that it could not with any propriety
+do so just yet. But reverently believing in her father’s sound judgment
+and knowledge, as good girls are wont to do, she remembered what he had
+written about her giving a hint to Winterborne lest there should be
+risk in delay, and her feelings were not averse to such a step, so far
+as it could be done without danger at this early stage of the
+proceedings.
+
+From being a frail phantom of her former equable self she returned in
+bounds to a condition of passable philosophy. She bloomed again in the
+face in the course of a few days, and was well enough to go about as
+usual. One day Mrs. Melbury proposed that for a change she should be
+driven in the gig to Sherton market, whither Melbury’s man was going on
+other errands. Grace had no business whatever in Sherton; but it
+crossed her mind that Winterborne would probably be there, and this
+made the thought of such a drive interesting.
+
+On the way she saw nothing of him; but when the horse was walking
+slowly through the obstructions of Sheep Street, she discerned the
+young man on the pavement. She thought of that time when he had been
+standing under his apple-tree on her return from school, and of the
+tender opportunity then missed through her fastidiousness. Her heart
+rose in her throat. She abjured all such fastidiousness now. Nor did
+she forget the last occasion on which she had beheld him in that town,
+making cider in the court-yard of the Earl of Wessex Hotel, while she
+was figuring as a fine lady in the balcony above.
+
+Grace directed the man to set her down there in the midst, and
+immediately went up to her lover. Giles had not before observed her,
+and his eyes now suppressedly looked his pleasure, without the
+embarrassment that had formerly marked him at such meetings.
+
+When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly, “I have nothing to
+do. Perhaps you are deeply engaged?”
+
+“I? Not a bit. My business now at the best of times is small, I am
+sorry to say.”
+
+“Well, then, I am going into the Abbey. Come along with me.”
+
+The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape from publicity,
+for many eyes were regarding her. She had hoped that sufficient time
+had elapsed for the extinction of curiosity; but it was quite
+otherwise. The people looked at her with tender interest as the
+deserted girl-wife—without obtrusiveness, and without vulgarity; but
+she was ill prepared for scrutiny in any shape.
+
+They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down. Not a soul
+was in the building save themselves. She regarded a stained window,
+with her head sideways, and tentatively asked him if he remembered the
+last time they were in that town alone.
+
+He remembered it perfectly, and remarked, “You were a proud miss then,
+and as dainty as you were high. Perhaps you are now?”
+
+Grace slowly shook her head. “Affliction has taken all that out of me,”
+she answered, impressively. “Perhaps I am too far the other way now.”
+As there was something lurking in this that she could not explain, she
+added, so quickly as not to allow him time to think of it, “Has my
+father written to you at all?”
+
+“Yes,” said Winterborne.
+
+She glanced ponderingly up at him. “Not about me?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had been
+bidden to take the hint as to the future which she had been bidden to
+give. The unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation through Grace
+for the moment. However, it was only Giles who stood there, of whom she
+had no fear; and her self-possession returned.
+
+“He said I was to sound you with a view to—what you will understand, if
+you care to,” continued Winterborne, in a low voice. Having been put on
+this track by herself, he was not disposed to abandon it in a hurry.
+
+They had been children together, and there was between them that
+familiarity as to personal affairs which only such acquaintanceship can
+give. “You know, Giles,” she answered, speaking in a very practical
+tone, “that that is all very well; but I am in a very anomalous
+position at present, and I cannot say anything to the point about such
+things as those.”
+
+“No?” he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject. He was looking
+at her with a curious consciousness of discovery. He had not been
+imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her to him thus.
+For the first time he realized an unexpectedness in her, which, after
+all, should not have been unexpected. She before him was not the girl
+Grace Melbury whom he used to know. Of course, he might easily have
+prefigured as much; but it had never occurred to him. She was a woman
+who had been married; she had moved on; and without having lost her
+girlish modesty, she had lost her girlish shyness. The inevitable
+change, though known to him, had not been heeded; and it struck him
+into a momentary fixity. The truth was that he had never come into
+close comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the
+brief exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met
+him with his cider apparatus; and that interview had been of too
+cursory a kind for insight.
+
+Winterborne had advanced, too. He could criticise her. Times had been
+when to criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have lain as
+far beyond his powers as to criticise a deity. This thing was sure: it
+was a new woman in many ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of
+more ideas, more dignity, and, above all, more assurance, than the
+original Grace had been capable of. He could not at first decide
+whether he were pleased or displeased at this. But upon the whole the
+novelty attracted him.
+
+She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence betokened
+something in his brain of the nature of an enemy to her. “What are you
+thinking of that makes those lines come in your forehead?” she asked.
+“I did not mean to offend you by speaking of the time being premature
+as yet.”
+
+Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the foundation
+of these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his face aside, as
+he took her by the hand. He was grieved that he had criticised her.
+
+“You are very good, dear Grace,” he said, in a low voice. “You are
+better, much better, than you used to be.”
+
+“How?”
+
+He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an evasive smile,
+“You are prettier;” which was not what he really had meant. He then
+remained still holding her right hand in his own right, so that they
+faced in opposite ways; and as he did not let go, she ventured upon a
+tender remonstrance.
+
+“I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present—and far
+enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the same as ever. You see,
+Giles, my case is not settled yet, and if—Oh, suppose I _never_ get
+free!—there should be any hitch or informality!”
+
+She drew a catching breath, and turned pale. The dialogue had been
+affectionate comedy up to this point. The gloomy atmosphere of the
+past, and the still gloomy horizon of the present, had been for the
+interval forgotten. Now the whole environment came back, the due
+balance of shade among the light was restored.
+
+“It is sure to be all right, I trust?” she resumed, in uneasy accents.
+“What did my father say the solicitor had told him?”
+
+“Oh—that all is sure enough. The case is so clear—nothing could be
+clearer. But the legal part is not yet quite done and finished, as is
+natural.”
+
+“Oh no—of course not,” she said, sunk in meek thought. “But father said
+it was _almost_—did he not? Do you know anything about the new law that
+makes these things so easy?”
+
+“Nothing—except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted husbands
+and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do without an Act of
+Parliament.”
+
+“Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like
+that?”
+
+“Yes, I believe so.”
+
+“How long has it been introduced?”
+
+“About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think.”
+
+To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law would
+have made a humane person weep who should have known what a dangerous
+structure they were building up on their supposed knowledge. They
+remained in thought, like children in the presence of the
+incomprehensible.
+
+“Giles,” she said, at last, “it makes me quite weary when I think how
+serious my situation is, or has been. Shall we not go out from here
+now, as it may seem rather fast of me—our being so long together, I
+mean—if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure,” she added,
+uncertainly, “that I ought not to let you hold my hand yet, knowing
+that the documents—or whatever it may be—have not been signed; so that
+I—am still as married as ever—or almost. My dear father has forgotten
+himself. Not that I feel morally bound to any one else, after what has
+taken place—no woman of spirit could—now, too, that several months have
+passed. But I wish to keep the proprieties as well as I can.”
+
+“Yes, yes. Still, your father reminds us that life is short. I myself
+feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in this that we
+have begun. At times, dear Grace, since receiving your father’s letter,
+I am as uneasy and fearful as a child at what he said. If one of us
+were to die before the formal signing and sealing that is to release
+you have been done—if we should drop out of the world and never have
+made the most of this little, short, but real opportunity, I should
+think to myself as I sunk down dying, ‘Would to my God that I had
+spoken out my whole heart—given her one poor little kiss when I had the
+chance to give it! But I never did, although she had promised to be
+mine some day; and now I never can.’ That’s what I should think.”
+
+She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful
+regard, as though their passage were visible; but as he went on she
+dropped her glance. “Yes,” she said, “I have thought that, too. And,
+because I have thought it, I by no means meant, in speaking of the
+proprieties, to be reserved and cold to you who loved me so long ago,
+or to hurt your heart as I used to do at that thoughtless time. Oh, not
+at all, indeed! But—ought I to allow you?—oh, it is too quick—surely!”
+Her eyes filled with tears of bewildered, alarmed emotion.
+
+Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further against
+her better judgment. “Yes—I suppose it is,” he said, repentantly. “I’ll
+wait till all is settled. What did your father say in that last
+letter?”
+
+He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking him,
+frankly spoke of the personal part. “He said—what I have implied.
+Should I tell more plainly?”
+
+“Oh no—don’t, if it is a secret.”
+
+“Not at all. I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you wish.
+He said I was to encourage you. There. But I cannot obey him further
+to-day. Come, let us go now.” She gently slid her hand from his, and
+went in front of him out of the Abbey.
+
+“I was thinking of getting some dinner,” said Winterborne, changing to
+the prosaic, as they walked. “And you, too, must require something. Do
+let me take you to a place I know.”
+
+Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her father’s
+house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no society; had
+sometimes, indeed, brought her deeper solitude and inconsideration than
+any she had ever known before. Hence it was a treat to her to find
+herself again the object of thoughtful care. But she questioned if to
+go publicly to dine with Giles Winterborne were not a proposal, due
+rather to his unsophistication than to his discretion. She said gently
+that she would much prefer his ordering her lunch at some place and
+then coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in the Abbey
+porch. Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly blind to
+propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she wished.
+
+He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he had
+left her. “It will be quite ready by the time you get there,” he said,
+and told her the name of the inn at which the meal had been ordered,
+which was one that she had never heard of.
+
+“I’ll find it by inquiry,” said Grace, setting out.
+
+“And shall I see you again?”
+
+“Oh yes—come to me there. It will not be like going together. I shall
+want you to find my father’s man and the gig for me.”
+
+He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he thought
+her lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage of her
+invitation to start her on her way home. He went straight to The Three
+Tuns—a little tavern in a side street, scrupulously clean, but humble
+and inexpensive. On his way he had an occasional misgiving as to
+whether the place had been elegant enough for her; and as soon as he
+entered it, and saw her ensconced there, he perceived that he had
+blundered.
+
+Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old hostelry
+could boast of, which was also a general parlor on market-days; a long,
+low apartment, with a sanded floor herring-boned with a broom; a wide,
+red-curtained window to the street, and another to the garden. Grace
+had retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the latter, the
+front part being full of a mixed company which had dropped in since he
+was there.
+
+She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and seeing
+what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; but having
+gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and sat down on the
+well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table with its knives and
+steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-cellars, and posters
+advertising the sale of bullocks against the wall. The last time that
+she had taken any meal in a public place it had been with Fitzpiers at
+the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel in that town, after a two months’
+roaming and sojourning at the gigantic hotels of the Continent. How
+could she have expected any other kind of accommodation in present
+circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared
+she was for this change! The tastes that she had acquired from
+Fitzpiers had been imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed
+them till confronted by this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact,
+at that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for
+the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever they
+drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment, that she had been quite
+comfortable under those debt-impending conditions, while she felt
+humiliated by her present situation, which Winterborne had paid for
+honestly on the nail.
+
+He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and all
+his pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over again which
+had spoiled his Christmas party long ago.
+
+But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual result
+of Grace’s apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite
+of it—a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront
+everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her
+lunch, which he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought
+her out of the house as soon as he could.
+
+“Now,” he said, with great sad eyes, “you have not finished at all
+well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I’ll order a tea there.
+I did not remember that what was good enough for me was not good enough
+for you.”
+
+Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what had
+happened. “Oh no, Giles,” she said, with extreme pathos; “certainly
+not. Why do you—say that when you know better? You _ever_ will
+misunderstand me.”
+
+“Indeed, that’s not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers. Can you deny that you felt out
+of place at The Three Tuns?”
+
+“I don’t know. Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny it.”
+
+“And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. Your husband
+used always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he not?”
+
+“Yes,” she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain in the street of
+a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory taste which
+had been offended, and not her nature or her affection? Fortunately, or
+unfortunately, at that moment they saw Melbury’s man driving vacantly
+along the street in search of her, the hour having passed at which he
+had been told to take her up. Winterborne hailed him, and she was
+powerless then to prolong the discourse. She entered the vehicle sadly,
+and the horse trotted away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of a
+pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared anew that
+they could never be happy together, even should she be free to choose
+him. She was accomplished; he was unrefined. It was the original
+difficulty, which he was too sensitive to recklessly ignore, as some
+men would have done in his place.
+
+He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little from
+others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that very
+account scrutinize those others’ behavior too closely. He was not
+versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had once had its
+rise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly recurred, as in the
+breasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once worshipped her, laid out
+his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her. Though it was with
+almost the same zest, it was with not quite the same hope, that he had
+begun to tread the old tracks again, and allowed himself to be so
+charmed with her that day.
+
+Move another step towards her he would not. He would even repulse
+her—as a tribute to conscience. It would be sheer sin to let her
+prepare a pitfall for her happiness not much smaller than the first by
+inveigling her into a union with such as he. Her poor father was now
+blind to these subtleties, which he had formerly beheld as in noontide
+light. It was his own duty to declare them—for her dear sake.
+
+Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous
+embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another letter
+from her father was put into her hands. Its tenor was an intenser
+strain of the one that had preceded it. After stating how extremely
+glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to get out-of-doors,
+he went on:
+
+“This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see being
+out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great anxiety in
+this delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannot
+rest at night for thinking that while our business is hanging fire he
+may become estranged, or go away from the neighborhood. I have set my
+heart upon seeing him your husband, if you ever have another. Do, then,
+Grace, give him some temporary encouragement, even though it is
+over-early. For when I consider the past I do think God will forgive me
+and you for being a little forward. I have another reason for this, my
+dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have still
+further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I cannot rest
+in peace.”
+
+
+He added a postscript:
+
+“I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow.
+Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this.”
+
+
+The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in
+forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence.
+While craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested;
+to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss—or rather madam—completely,
+her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpected vitality of that
+fastidiousness. Her father on returning and seeing the trifling
+coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the same perversity which
+had led her to make difficulties about marrying Fitzpiers was now
+prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor Winterborne.
+
+If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of
+her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her
+drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging
+education, he could not have acted more seductively than he did that
+day. He chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a field
+opposite her windows. She could not discover what he was doing, but she
+read his mood keenly and truly: she could see in his coming and going
+an air of determined abandonment of the whole landscape that lay in her
+direction.
+
+Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the
+evening—which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in
+train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won
+again—how could she look him in the face if he should see them
+estranged thus?
+
+It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the garden, in
+the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes—made of peeled
+oak-branches that came to Melbury’s premises as refuse after
+barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around her
+was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which, even
+in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All day she had
+expected Giles to call—to inquire how she had got home, or something or
+other; but he had not come. And he still tantalized her by going
+athwart and across that orchard opposite. She could see him as she sat.
+
+A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a
+letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton, and
+had called as usual at the post-office for anything that had arrived by
+the afternoon post, of which there was no delivery at Hintock. She
+pondered on what the letter might contain—particularly whether it were
+a second refresher for Winterborne from her father, like her own of the
+morning.
+
+But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles read
+its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedge
+of the orchard—if that could be called a hedge which, owing to the
+drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon it
+here and there. He entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that
+way homeward to the mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of the
+woodland.
+
+The sad sands were running swiftly through Time’s glass; she had often
+felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it doubly now
+after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father’s communication.
+Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might
+suddenly end—might end that very hour. Men were so strange. The thought
+took away from her all her former reticence, and made her action bold.
+She started from her seat. If the little breach, quarrel, or whatever
+it might be called, of yesterday, was to be healed up it must be done
+by her on the instant. She crossed into the orchard, and clambered
+through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a faun-like
+figure under the green canopy and over the brown floor.
+
+Grace had been wrong—very far wrong—in assuming that the letter had no
+reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood after
+its perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much
+reference to herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that his
+grieved discomfiture might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock,
+written a few hours later than Melbury’s to his daughter. It announced
+failure.
+
+Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the
+moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During
+his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer’s clerk had naturally
+heard a great deal of the timber-merchant’s family scheme of justice to
+Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest
+possible moment that their attempt had failed, in order that the young
+man should not place himself in a false position towards Grace in the
+belief of its coming success. The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers’s
+conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap
+the bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the
+chapter.
+
+Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl
+under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the
+almost tragical information engendered.
+
+To renounce her forever—that was then the end of it for him, after all.
+There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for tiffs
+on petty tastes. The curtain had fallen again between them. She could
+not be his. The cruelty of their late revived hope was now terrible.
+How could they all have been so simple as to suppose this thing could
+be done?
+
+It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he
+turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets. He perceived in
+an instant that she did not know the blighting news.
+
+“Giles, why didn’t you come across to me?” she asked, with arch
+reproach. “Didn’t you see me sitting there ever so long?”
+
+“Oh yes,” he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her
+unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior
+in the conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been too
+chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she
+resolved to soften it.
+
+“I have had another letter from my father,” she hastened to continue.
+“He thinks he may come home this evening. And—in view of his hopes—it
+will grieve him if there is any little difference between us, Giles.”
+
+“There is none,” he said, sadly regarding her from the face downward as
+he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.
+
+“Still—I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being
+uncomfortable at the inn.”
+
+“I have, Grace, I’m sure.”
+
+“But you speak in quite an unhappy way,” she returned, coming up close
+to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained
+to her. “Don’t you think you will ever be happy, Giles?”
+
+He did not reply for some instants. “When the sun shines on the north
+front of Sherton Abbey—that’s when my happiness will come to me!” said
+he, staring as it were into the earth.
+
+“But—then that means that there is something more than my offending you
+in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I—did not like to let
+you kiss me in the Abbey—well, you know, Giles, that it was not on
+account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then,
+think it was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That was the
+true reason—the sole one. But I do not want to be hard—God knows I do
+not,” she said, her voice fluctuating. “And perhaps—as I am on the
+verge of freedom—I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any
+harm in your kissing me.”
+
+“Oh God!” said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned askance
+as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last several
+minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regular
+siege; and now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now taking
+advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of one
+whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, as
+Giles’s, which can hardly be explained.
+
+“Did you say anything?” she asked, timidly.
+
+“Oh no—only that—”
+
+“You mean that it must _be already_ settled, since my father is coming
+home?” she said, gladly.
+
+Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this
+while—though he would have protected Grace’s good repute as the apple
+of his eye—was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods. In face
+of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened
+school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed a
+man’s weakness. Since it was so—since it had come to this, that Grace,
+deeming herself free to do it, was virtually asking him to demonstrate
+that he loved her—since he could demonstrate it only too truly—since
+life was short and love was strong—he gave way to the temptation,
+notwithstanding that he perfectly well knew her to be wedded
+irrevocably to Fitzpiers. Indeed, he cared for nothing past or future,
+simply accepting the present and what it brought, desiring once in his
+life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved so long.
+
+She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort of
+inspiration. “Oh, I suppose,” she stammered, “that I am really
+free?—that this is right? Is there _really_ a new law? Father cannot
+have been too sanguine in saying—”
+
+He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears in
+spite of herself. “Oh, why does not my father come home and explain,”
+she sobbed, “and let me know clearly what I am? It is too trying, this,
+to ask me to—and then to leave me so long in so vague a state that I do
+not know what to do, and perhaps do wrong!”
+
+Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous sorrow.
+How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he knew. He
+turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher. How
+could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could hardly refrain from
+tears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever been known than the
+condition of this poor young thing, now as heretofore the victim of her
+father’s well-meant but blundering policy.
+
+Even in the hour of Melbury’s greatest assurance Winterborne had
+harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace’s
+marriage without her appearance in public; though he was not
+sufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by his own
+words her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on her father’s
+testimony, was going to be sufficient. But he had never suspected the
+sad fact that the position was irremediable.
+
+Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much fluster
+for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he was.
+
+“I am glad we are friends again anyhow,” she said, smiling through her
+tears. “Giles, if you had only shown half the boldness before I married
+that you show now, you would have carried me off for your own first
+instead of second. If we do marry, I hope you will never think badly of
+me for encouraging you a little, but my father is _so_ impatient, you
+know, as his years and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see
+us a little advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse.”
+
+To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could she so
+trust her father’s conjectures? He did not know how to tell her the
+truth and shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be done. “We may
+have been wrong,” he began, almost fearfully, “in supposing that it can
+all be carried out while we stay here at Hintock. I am not sure but
+that people may have to appear in a public court even under the new
+Act; and if there should be any difficulty, and we cannot marry after
+all—”
+
+Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. “Oh, Giles,” she said, grasping his
+arm, “you have heard something! What—cannot my father conclude it there
+and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don’t deceive me.
+What terrible position am I in?”
+
+He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit trust
+in his honor absolutely disabled him. “I cannot inform you,” he
+murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot. “Your
+father will soon be here. Then we shall know. I will take you home.”
+
+Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with the
+most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, “I will take you, at any
+rate, into the drive.”
+
+Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness and
+misgiving. It was only a few minutes’ walk to where the drive ran, and
+they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice behind them
+cry, “Take out that arm!”
+
+For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more loudly and
+hoarsely,
+
+“Take out that arm!”
+
+It was Melbury’s. He had returned sooner than they expected, and now
+came up to them. Grace’s hand had been withdrawn like lightning on her
+hearing the second command. “I don’t blame you—I don’t blame you,” he
+said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourgings. “But you
+two must walk together no more—I have been surprised—I have been
+cruelly deceived—Giles, don’t say anything to me; but go away!”
+
+He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth before
+he brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then.
+When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to the
+room he used as his office. There he sat down, and bent over the slope
+of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed upon him.
+
+When Melbury had recovered a little he said, “You are now, as ever,
+Fitzpiers’s wife. I was deluded. He has not done you _enough_ harm. You
+are still subject to his beck and call.”
+
+“Then let it be, and never mind, father,” she said, with dignified
+sorrow. “I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me most.” She
+stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressed
+Melbury still more. “I don’t mind at all what comes to me,” Grace
+continued; “whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; I
+cannot help that; and I have gone further with him than I should have
+done if I had known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach
+you.”
+
+“Then Giles did not tell you?” said Melbury.
+
+“No,” said she. “He could not have known it. His behavior to me proved
+that he did not know.”
+
+Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude of
+her chamber.
+
+Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside the
+dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles. His
+love-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflection
+contemn her for forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to
+suppose she was in a position to behave as she had done! Thus she
+mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in the centre of her heart she
+blessed it a little for what it had momentarily brought her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed
+and hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside the
+house, never outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter
+Giles Winterborne; and that she could not bear.
+
+This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared
+likely to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that there
+was one possibility in which her formerly imagined position might
+become real, and only one; that her husband’s absence should continue
+long enough to amount to positive desertion. But she never allowed her
+mind to dwell much upon the thought; still less did she deliberately
+hope for such a result. Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied by
+the shock which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that had
+little to do with living and doing.
+
+As for Giles, he was lying—or rather sitting—ill at his hut. A feverish
+indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time, the
+result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire
+virulence with the prostration of his hopes. But not a soul knew of his
+languor, and he did not think the case serious enough to send for a
+medical man. After a few days he was better again, and crept about his
+home in a great coat, attending to his simple wants as usual with his
+own hands. So matters stood when the limpid inertion of Grace’s
+pool-like existence was disturbed as by a geyser. She received a letter
+from Fitzpiers.
+
+Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the
+gentlest language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him with
+toleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she had
+almost forgotten how trying his presence would be. He wrote briefly and
+unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her that he was living
+quite alone, and had been led to think that they ought to be together,
+if she would make up her mind to forgive him. He therefore purported to
+cross the Channel to Budmouth by the steamer on a day he named, which
+she found to be three days after the time of her present reading.
+
+He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, which
+her father would understand even better than herself. As the only
+alternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer when it
+arrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an hour before
+midnight, bringing with her any luggage she might require; join him
+there, and pass with him into the twin vessel, which left immediately
+the other entered the harbor; returning thus with him to his
+continental dwelling-place, which he did not name. He had no intention
+of showing himself on land at all.
+
+The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now continued for
+long hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as if he thought it
+were winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside him, mostly untasted,
+and coated with a film of dust. After reading it he looked up.
+
+“You sha’n’t go,” said he.
+
+“I had felt I would not,” she answered. “But I did not know what you
+would say.”
+
+“If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a
+respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I’ll
+oppose him in wishing it,” muttered Melbury. “I’d stint myself to keep
+you both in a genteel and seemly style. But go abroad you never shall
+with my consent.”
+
+There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to her
+husband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and the next
+day, and the evening on which he had requested her to meet him.
+Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four walls of her
+room.
+
+The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be impending,
+hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury household. They spoke
+almost in whispers, and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next. It was
+the hope of every one that, finding she did not arrive, he would return
+again to France; and as for Grace, she was willing to write to him on
+the most kindly terms if he would only keep away.
+
+The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her relatives,
+in great part, likewise. When they met the next morning they were pale
+and anxious, though neither speaking of the subject which occupied all
+their thoughts. The day passed as quietly as the previous ones, and she
+began to think that in the rank caprice of his moods he had abandoned
+the idea of getting her to join him as quickly as it was formed. All on
+a sudden, some person who had just come from Sherton entered the house
+with the news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home to Hintock. He had
+been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex Hotel.
+
+Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was
+announced.
+
+“Now,” said Melbury, “we must make the best of what has been a very bad
+matter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, I hear, is gone
+away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of his life is probably
+over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I think you should not say
+him nay, Grace. Certainly he cannot very well live at Hintock without a
+blow to his pride; but if he can bear that, and likes Hintock best,
+why, there’s the empty wing of the house as it was before.”
+
+“Oh, father!” said Grace, turning white with dismay.
+
+“Why not?” said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. He
+was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husband
+just now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he had
+treated him over-roughly in his anger. “Surely it is the most
+respectable thing to do?” he continued. “I don’t like this state that
+you are in—neither married nor single. It hurts me, and it hurts you,
+and it will always be remembered against us in Hintock. There has never
+been any scandal like it in the family before.”
+
+“He will be here in less than an hour,” murmured Grace. The twilight of
+the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of her face.
+The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated above
+all others, was that of Fitzpiers’s reinstatement there. “Oh, I won’t,
+I won’t see him,” she said, sinking down. She was almost hysterical.
+
+“Try if you cannot,” he returned, moodily.
+
+“Oh yes, I will, I will,” she went on, inconsequently. “I’ll try;” and
+jumping up suddenly, she left the room.
+
+In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have
+been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick
+breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who combined
+modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by such
+coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take her
+scourgings to their exquisite extremity.
+
+The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever sound
+arose in so secluded a district—the chirp of a bird, a call from a
+voice, the turning of a wheel—extended over bush and tree to unwonted
+distances. Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly breathed
+in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise of light
+wheels came in to her, accompanied by the trot of a horse on the
+turnpike-road. There seemed to be a sudden hitch or pause in the
+progress of the vehicle, which was what first drew her attention to it.
+She knew the point whence the sound proceeded—the hill-top over which
+travellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas—the place
+at which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond. Grace slid
+along the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening with
+open lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use
+exclamatory words. Then another said, “What the devil is the matter
+with the horse?” She recognized the voice as her husband’s.
+
+The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the carriage
+could be heard descending the hill on the Hintock side, soon to turn
+into the lane leading out of the highway, and then into the “drong”
+which led out of the lane to the house where she was.
+
+A spasm passed through Grace. The Daphnean instinct, exceptionally
+strong in her as a girl, had been revived by her widowed seclusion; and
+it was not lessened by her affronted sentiments towards the comer, and
+her regard for another man. She opened some little ivory tablets that
+lay on the dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, “I am
+gone to visit one of my school-friends,” gathered a few toilet
+necessaries into a hand-bag, and not three minutes after that voice had
+been heard, her slim form, hastily wrapped up from observation, might
+have been seen passing out of the back door of Melbury’s house. Thence
+she skimmed up the garden-path, through the gap in the hedge, and into
+the mossy cart-track under the trees which led into the depth of the
+woods.
+
+The leaves overhead were now in their latter green—so opaque, that it
+was darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-time, scarce a
+crevice existing by which a ray could get down to the ground. But in
+open places she could see well enough. Summer was ending: in the
+daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavy
+nightly with globes of dew; and after showers creeping damps and
+twilight chills came up from the hollows. The plantations were always
+weird at this hour of eve—more spectral far than in the leafless
+season, when there were fewer masses and more minute lineality. The
+smooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes;
+there were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had
+somehow wandered into the canopied obscurity; while now and then low
+peeps of the sky between the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on
+the tips of boughs sat faint cloven tongues.
+
+But Grace’s fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she
+heeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently as she
+could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and
+stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused breathlessly
+once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her
+strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning in at the
+gate of her father’s premises. She hastened on again.
+
+The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left behind,
+and those into which she next plunged were divided from the latter by a
+bank, from whose top the hedge had long ago perished—starved for want
+of sun. It was with some caution that Grace now walked, though she was
+quite free from any of the commonplace timidities of her ordinary
+pilgrimages to such spots. She feared no lurking harms, but that her
+effort would be all in vain, and her return to the house rendered
+imperative.
+
+She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptive
+comfort and relief to wanderers in woods—a distant light—broke at last
+upon her searching eyes. It was so very small as to be almost sinister
+to a stranger, but to her it was what she sought. She pushed forward,
+and the dim outline of a dwelling was disclosed.
+
+The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all sides
+to a chimney in the midst. It had formerly been the home of a
+charcoal-burner, in times when that fuel was still used in the county
+houses. Its only appurtenance was a paled enclosure, there being no
+garden, the shade of the trees preventing the growth of vegetables. She
+advanced to the window whence the rays of light proceeded, and the
+shutters being as yet unclosed, she could survey the whole interior
+through the panes.
+
+The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; the
+natural sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long treading,
+so that none of the furniture stood level, and the table slanted like a
+desk. A fire burned on the hearth, in front of which revolved the
+skinned carcass of a rabbit, suspended by a string from a nail. Leaning
+with one arm on the mantle-shelf stood Winterborne, his eyes on the
+roasting animal, his face so rapt that speculation could build nothing
+on it concerning his thoughts, more than that they were not with the
+scene before him. She thought his features had changed a little since
+she saw them last. The fire-light did not enable her to perceive that
+they were positively haggard.
+
+Grace’s throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so nearly
+as she had hoped. She went to the door and tapped lightly.
+
+He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers, squirrels, and
+such small creatures, for he took no notice of her tiny signal, and she
+knocked again. This time he came and opened the door. When the light of
+the room fell upon her face he started, and, hardly knowing what he
+did, crossed the threshold to her, placing his hands upon her two arms,
+while surprise, joy, alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns. With
+Grace it was the same: even in this stress there was the fond fact that
+they had met again. Thus they stood,
+
+“Long tears upon their faces, waxen white
+With extreme sad delight.”
+
+
+He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, “Come in.”
+
+“No, no, Giles!” she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther back
+from the door. “I am passing by—and I have called on you—I won’t enter.
+Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a roundabout way to
+Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there—but I cannot
+get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany me a little way!
+Don’t condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged to come to you
+because—I have no other help here. Three months ago you were my lover;
+now you are only my friend. The law has stepped in, and forbidden what
+we thought of. It must not be. But we can act honestly, and yet you can
+be my friend for one little hour? I have no other—”
+
+She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one hand, by an effort
+of repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or sob.
+Winterborne took her other hand. “What has happened?” he said.
+
+“He has come.”
+
+There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, “You mean
+this, Grace—that I am to help you to get away?”
+
+“Yes,” said she. “Appearance is no matter, when the reality is right. I
+have said to myself I can trust you.”
+
+Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery—if it could
+be called such—earlier in the summer, when they met for the last time
+as lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for that tender
+wrong, he determined to deserve her faith now at least, and so wipe out
+that reproach from his conscience. “I’ll come at once,” he said. “I’ll
+light a lantern.”
+
+He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did not
+notice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that in
+making this offer he was taxing a convalescence which could ill afford
+such self-sacrifice. The lantern was lit, and they started.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees,
+whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the
+time that they emerged upon a glade it rained heavily.
+
+“This is awkward,” said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern.
+
+Winterborne stopped. “Grace,” he said, preserving a strictly business
+manner which belied him, “you cannot go to Sherton to-night.”
+
+“But I must!”
+
+“Why? It is nine miles from here. It is almost an impossibility in this
+rain.”
+
+“True—_why?_” she replied, mournfully, at the end of a silence. “What
+is reputation to me?”
+
+“Now hearken,” said Giles. “You won’t—go back to your—”
+
+“No, no, no! Don’t make me!” she cried, piteously.
+
+“Then let us turn.” They slowly retraced their steps, and again stood
+before his door. “Now, this house from this moment is yours, and not
+mine,” he said, deliberately. “I have a place near by where I can stay
+very well.”
+
+Her face had drooped. “Oh!” she murmured, as she saw the dilemma. “What
+have I done!”
+
+There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked through
+the window. The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a weak appetite
+was beginning to char. “Please go in and attend to it,” he said. “Do
+what you like. Now I leave. You will find everything about the hut that
+is necessary.”
+
+“But, Giles—your supper,” she exclaimed. “An out-house would do for
+me—anything—till to-morrow at day-break!”
+
+He signified a negative. “I tell you to go in—you may catch agues out
+here in your delicate state. You can give me my supper through the
+window, if you feel well enough. I’ll wait a while.”
+
+He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he saw
+her within the room sitting down. Without so much as crossing the
+threshold himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the key in
+the lock. Tapping at the window, he signified that she should open the
+casement, and when she had done this he handed in the key to her.
+
+“You are locked in,” he said; “and your own mistress.”
+
+Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at his
+scrupulousness, as she took the door-key.
+
+“Do you feel better?” he went on. “If so, and you wish to give me some
+of your supper, please do. If not, it is of no importance. I can get
+some elsewhere.”
+
+The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though she
+only knew half what that kindness really was. At the end of some ten
+minutes she again came to the window, pushed it open, and said in a
+whisper, “Giles!” He at once emerged from the shade, and saw that she
+was preparing to hand him his share of the meal upon a plate.
+
+“I don’t like to treat you so hardly,” she murmured, with deep regret
+in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. “But—I
+suppose it is best to arrange like this?”
+
+“Oh yes,” he said, quickly.
+
+“I feel that I could never have reached Sherton.”
+
+“It was impossible.”
+
+“Are you sure you have a snug place out there?” (With renewed
+misgiving.)
+
+“Quite. Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is rather
+rough accommodation.”
+
+“Can I notice defects? I have long passed that stage, and you know it,
+Giles, or you ought to.”
+
+His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness
+modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly
+to what a pitch she was strung. If ever Winterborne’s heart fretted his
+bosom it was at this sight of a perfectly defenceless creature
+conditioned by such circumstances. He forgot his own agony in the
+satisfaction of having at least found her a shelter. He took his plate
+and cup from her hands, saying, “Now I’ll push the shutter to, and you
+will find an iron pin on the inside, which you must fix into the bolt.
+Do not stir in the morning till I come and call you.”
+
+She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away.
+
+“Oh no—I shall be quite within hail,” said Winterborne.
+
+She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. His snug place
+proved to be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind, formed of
+four hurdles thatched with brake-fern. Underneath were dry sticks, hay,
+and other litter of the sort, upon which he sat down; and there in the
+dark tried to eat his meal. But his appetite was quite gone. He pushed
+the plate aside, and shook up the hay and sacks, so as to form a rude
+couch, on which he flung himself down to sleep, for it was getting
+late.
+
+But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least was
+thought of his charge. He sat up, and looked towards the cot through
+the damp obscurity. With all its external features the same as usual,
+he could scarcely believe that it contained the dear friend—he would
+not use a warmer name—who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, he
+could not help admitting, so rashly.
+
+He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position was
+pretty clear without them. Though social law had negatived forever
+their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical
+pride that he accepted the present trying conjuncture. There was one
+man on earth in whom she believed absolutely, and he was that man. That
+this crisis could end in nothing but sorrow was a view for a moment
+effaced by this triumphant thought of her trust in him; and the purity
+of the affection with which he responded to that trust rendered him
+more than proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation to
+her.
+
+The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by beginning
+to drop through the meagre screen that covered him. He rose to attempt
+some remedy for this discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the
+throbbing of his pulse told him that in his weakness he was unable to
+fence against the storm, and he lay down to bear it as best he might.
+He was angry with himself for his feebleness—he who had been so strong.
+It was imperative that she should know nothing of his present state,
+and to do that she must not see his face by daylight, for its color
+would inevitably betray him.
+
+The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and
+dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her
+everything she could require for getting breakfast within. On the bench
+outside the window-sill he placed water, wood, and other necessaries,
+writing with a piece of chalk beside them, “It is best that I should
+not see you. Put my breakfast on the bench.”
+
+At seven o’clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised,
+retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But from his
+shelter under the boughs he could see her very well, when, in response
+to his signal, she opened the window and the light fell upon her face.
+The languid largeness of her eyes showed that her sleep had been little
+more than his own, and the pinkness of their lids, that her waking
+hours had not been free from tears.
+
+She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took up the
+materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off. Giles
+waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what
+country life was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of
+their food.
+
+Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had
+slept much longer than he. After the loneliness of the night, she would
+have been glad to see him; but appreciating his feeling when she read
+the writing, she made no attempt to recall him. She found abundance of
+provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his buttery weekly, and
+this being the day after the victualling van had called from Sherton.
+When the meal was ready, she put what he required outside, as she had
+done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her longing to see him,
+withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to himself.
+
+It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall.
+As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone
+away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany
+her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by
+force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she was. The
+morning wore on; and in her doubt when to start, and how to travel, she
+lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, lest an intruder
+should discover her. Locked in this place, she was comparatively safe,
+at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere.
+
+The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and
+drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains.
+Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the
+living-room, she could see various small members of the animal
+community that lived unmolested there—creatures of hair, fluff, and
+scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures,
+jointed and ringed—circumambulating the hut, under the impression that,
+Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it inquisitively
+with a view to winter-quarters. Watching these neighbors, who knew
+neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from her trouble; and she
+managed to while away some portion of the afternoon by putting Giles’s
+home in order and making little improvements which she deemed that he
+would value when she was gone.
+
+Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees,
+resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that
+it was a squirrel or a bird.
+
+At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the
+evenings were chilly. As soon as it was too dark—which was
+comparatively early—to discern the human countenance in this place of
+shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which
+she knew from its method to be Giles’s.
+
+She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though
+she could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and
+she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness.
+
+“He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly,” she thought.
+How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the
+shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness?
+
+“My dear, good Giles!” she burst out, impulsively.
+
+“Anybody would have done it for you,” replied Winterborne, with as much
+matter-of-fact as he could summon.
+
+“About my getting to Exbury?” she said.
+
+“I have been thinking,” responded Giles, with tender deference, “that
+you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not to
+be caught. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you
+like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away.
+At any rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist—such as
+make inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for
+the cider season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to the
+Vale to see how the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But
+for a day or two I am busy here.” He was hoping that by the time
+mentioned he would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her
+behalf. “I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a
+prisoner?”
+
+She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed.
+
+From long acquaintance they could read each other’s heart-symptoms like
+books of large type. “I fear you are sorry you came,” said Giles, “and
+that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not to
+stay.”
+
+“Oh no, dear, dear friend,” answered Grace, with a heaving bosom.
+“Don’t think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my enforced
+treatment of you—dislodging you, excluding you from your own house. Why
+should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you—what I have felt
+for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again! But
+as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be
+released, I must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not
+bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done; but I have
+promised, and I will pay.”
+
+The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as
+she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an
+occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views
+of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. The only
+infringement—if infringement it could be called—of his predetermined
+bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips
+when she put it through the casement to bid him good-night. He knew she
+was weeping, though he could not see her tears.
+
+She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the
+cottage. But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought, since
+go she must.
+
+He replied, yearningly, “I—I don’t like you to go away.”
+
+“Oh, Giles,” said she, “I know—I know! But—I am a woman, and you are a
+man. I cannot speak more plainly. ‘Whatsoever things are pure,
+whatsoever things are of good report’—you know what is in my mind,
+because you know me so well.”
+
+“Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question between us has
+not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out hopelessly
+unalterable. I merely meant—well, a feeling no more.”
+
+“In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed here:
+and I think that by law he could compel me to return to him.”
+
+“Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace.”
+
+His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might be
+well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life,
+if he found that his presence cost her so much pain. Then the window
+was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died
+away.
+
+No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to
+rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. The
+wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult to
+believe that no opaque body, but only an invisible colorless thing, was
+trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, springing
+out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the flue, and
+shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls. As in the old
+story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen.
+She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night
+in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit as
+she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself—a vacuous
+duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and clear
+intentions was not there.
+
+Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to smite
+the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an
+adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the
+wound. To all this weather Giles must be more or less exposed; how
+much, she did not know.
+
+At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in
+relation to him. Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had caused
+it; he vacated his house on account of her. She was not worth such
+self-sacrifice; she should not have accepted it of him. And then, as
+her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there returned upon her
+mind some incidents of her late intercourse with him, which she had
+heeded but little at the time. The look of his face—what had there been
+about his face which seemed different from its appearance as of yore?
+Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of ripe autumn’s
+brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his voice; she had
+distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait; surely it had been
+feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That slight
+occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to squirrels,
+it might have been his cough after all.
+
+Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne was
+ill, or had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his condition
+from her that she might have no scruples about accepting a hospitality
+which by the nature of the case expelled her entertainer.
+
+“My own, own, true l——, my dear kind friend!” she cried to herself.
+“Oh, it shall not be—it shall not be!”
+
+She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which she
+entered the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. Setting
+down the candle on the table here, she went to the door with the key in
+her hand, and placed it in the lock. Before turning it she paused, her
+fingers still clutching it; and pressing her other hand to her
+forehead, she fell into agitating thought.
+
+A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing against
+it, brought her indecision to a close. She turned the key and opened
+the door.
+
+The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a substance.
+She only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had been and was; the
+dripping of the eaves splashed like a fountain. She stood listening
+with parted lips, and holding the door in one hand, till her eyes,
+growing accustomed to the obscurity, discerned the wild brandishing of
+their boughs by the adjoining trees. At last she cried loudly with an
+effort, “Giles! you may come in!”
+
+There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her own
+temerity, Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood looking on
+the floor. But it was not for long. She again lifted the latch, and
+with far more determination than at first.
+
+“Giles, Giles!” she cried, with the full strength of her voice, and
+without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her first cry.
+“Oh, come in—come in! Where are you? I have been wicked. I have thought
+too much of myself! Do you hear? I don’t want to keep you out any
+longer. I cannot bear that you should suffer so. Gi-i-iles!”
+
+A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice reached
+her, floating upon the weather as though a part of it.
+
+“Here I am—all right. Don’t trouble about me.”
+
+“Don’t you want to come in? Are you not wet? _Come to me! I don’t mind
+what they say, or what they think any more._”
+
+“I am all right,” he repeated. “It is not necessary for me to come.
+Good-night! good-night!”
+
+Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly. Could she have been
+mistaken about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had perceived a
+change in him because she had not seen him for so long. Time sometimes
+did his ageing work in jerks, as she knew. Well, she had done all she
+could. He would not come in. She retired to rest again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+The next morning Grace was at the window early. She felt determined to
+see him somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast eagerly. Eight
+o’clock struck, and she had remembered that he had not come to arouse
+her by a knocking, as usual, her own anxiety having caused her to stir.
+
+The breakfast was set in its place without. But he did not arrive to
+take it; and she waited on. Nine o’clock arrived, and the breakfast was
+cold; and still there was no Giles. A thrush, that had been repeating
+itself a good deal on an opposite bush for some time, came and took a
+morsel from the plate and bolted it, waited, looked around, and took
+another. At ten o’clock she drew in the tray, and sat down to her own
+solitary meal. He must have been called away on business early, the
+rain having cleared off.
+
+Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly exploring the
+precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its vicinity; but as the
+day was comparatively fine, the dread lest some stray passenger or
+woodman should encounter her in such a reconnoitre paralyzed her wish.
+The solitude was further accentuated to-day by the stopping of the
+clock for want of winding, and the fall into the chimney-corner of
+flakes of soot loosened by the rains. At noon she heard a slight
+rustling outside the window, and found that it was caused by an eft
+which had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun-rays that
+would be worth having till the following May.
+
+She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see little.
+In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them some
+yellowish-green ones of this season that had been prematurely blown
+down by the gale. Above stretched an old beech, with vast armpits, and
+great pocket-holes in its sides where branches had been amputated in
+past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. Dead boughs were
+scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, and beyond them were
+perishing woodbine stems resembling old ropes.
+
+From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with
+lichen and stockinged with moss. At their roots were stemless yellow
+fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than
+stool. Next were more trees close together, wrestling for existence,
+their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their mutual
+rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between these neighbors that
+she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting stumps of
+those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from their
+mossy setting like decayed teeth from green gums. Farther on were other
+tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves—variety upon
+variety, dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like
+plush, like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss.
+
+The strain upon Grace’s mind in various ways was so great on this the
+most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would be
+well-nigh impossible to spend another in such circumstances. The
+evening came at last; the sun, when its chin was on the earth, found an
+opening through which to pierce the shade, and stretched irradiated
+gauzes across the damp atmosphere, making the wet trunks shine, and
+throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the leaves beneath the beech
+that they were turned to gory hues. When night at last arrived, and
+with it the time for his return, she was nearly broken down with
+suspense.
+
+The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace had
+prepared, stood waiting upon the hearth; and yet Giles did not come. It
+was now nearly twenty-four hours since she had seen him. As the room
+grew darker, and only the firelight broke against the gloom of the
+walls, she was convinced that it would be beyond her staying power to
+pass the night without hearing from him or from somebody. Yet eight
+o’clock drew on, and his form at the window did not appear.
+
+The meal remained untasted. Suddenly rising from before the hearth of
+smouldering embers, where she had been crouching with her hands clasped
+over her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked the door, and listened.
+Every breath of wind had ceased with the decline of day, but the rain
+had resumed the steady dripping of the night before. Grace might have
+stood there five minutes when she fancied she heard that old sound, a
+cough, at no great distance; and it was presently repeated. If it were
+Winterborne’s, he must be near her; why, then, had he not visited her?
+
+A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of
+Grace, and she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was hanging
+above her head. To light it and go in the direction of the sound would
+be the obvious way to solve the dread problem; but the conditions made
+her hesitate, and in a moment a cold sweat pervaded her at further
+sounds from the same quarter.
+
+They were low mutterings; at first like persons in conversation, but
+gradually resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. It was an
+endless monologue, like that we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in
+deep secret places where water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against
+stones; but by degrees she was convinced that the voice was
+Winterborne’s. Yet who could be his listener, so mute and patient; for
+though he argued so rapidly and persistently, nobody replied.
+
+A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace. “Oh,” she
+cried, in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go out, “how
+selfishly correct I am always—too, too correct! Cruel propriety is
+killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to her own.”
+
+While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and hastening
+out without further thought, took the direction whence the mutterings
+had proceeded. The course was marked by a little path, which ended at a
+distance of about forty yards in a small erection of hurdles, not much
+larger than a shock of corn, such as were frequent in the woods and
+copses when the cutting season was going on. It was too slight even to
+be called a hovel, and was not high enough to stand upright in;
+appearing, in short, to be erected for the temporary shelter of fuel.
+The side towards Grace was open, and turning the light upon the
+interior, she beheld what her prescient fear had pictured in snatches
+all the way thither.
+
+Upon the straw within, Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she had
+seen him during the whole of her stay here, except that his hat was
+off, and his hair matted and wild.
+
+Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain. His arms were
+flung over his head; his face was flushed to an unnatural crimson. His
+eyes had a burning brightness, and though they met her own, she
+perceived that he did not recognize her.
+
+“Oh, my Giles,” she cried, “what have I done to you!”
+
+But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself. She saw that the
+first thing to be thought of was to get him indoors.
+
+How Grace performed that labor she never could have exactly explained.
+But by dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing him into a sitting
+posture, and straining her strength to the uttermost, she put him on
+one of the hurdles that was loose alongside, and taking the end of it
+in both her hands, dragged him along the path to the entrance of the
+hut, and, after a pause for breath, in at the door-way.
+
+It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state
+acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did. But he never for a moment
+recognized her—continuing his rapid conversation to himself, and
+seeming to look upon her as some angel, or other supernatural creature
+of the visionary world in which he was mentally living. The undertaking
+occupied her more than ten minutes; but by that time, to her great
+thankfulness, he was in the inner room, lying on the bed, his damp
+outer clothing removed.
+
+Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There
+was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his
+thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to
+be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet—erratic,
+inapprehensible, untraceable.
+
+Grace’s distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments she
+firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her impulse, she
+knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair,
+exclaiming, in a low voice, “How could I? How could I?”
+
+Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now,
+though she knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his freedom from
+the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been fully
+understood by Grace till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely
+juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. The perception of it
+added something that was little short of reverence to the deep
+affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of Artemis than of
+Aphrodite in her constitution.
+
+All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to express
+her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought
+her mournful satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, wiped his
+perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged
+his heated skin, and administered whatever she could find in the house
+that the imagination could conceive as likely to be in any way
+alleviating. That she might have been the cause, or partially the
+cause, of all this, interfused misery with her sorrow.
+
+Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its mechanical
+parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. It was between a pair of
+persons most intimately connected in their lives with these. Outwardly
+like as it had been, it was yet infinite in spiritual difference,
+though a woman’s devotion had been common to both.
+
+Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her energies,
+saw that something practical must immediately be done. Much as she
+would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to
+herself, medical assistance was necessary while there remained a
+possibility of preserving him alive. Such assistance was fatal to her
+own concealment; but even had the chance of benefiting him been less
+than it was, she would have run the hazard for his sake. The question
+was, where should she get a medical man, competent and near?
+
+There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; a man
+who, if it were possible to save Winterborne’s life, had the brain most
+likely to do it. If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to
+be brought to the sick Giles’s side. The attempt should be made.
+
+Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and
+yet she postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven
+o’clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford
+her an opportunity.
+
+She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her things,
+cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, and having set
+it up, and placed it so that the light did not fall upon his eyes, she
+closed the door and started.
+
+The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish all
+sense of darkness from her mind. The rains had imparted a
+phosphorescence to the pieces of touchwood and rotting leaves that lay
+about her path, which, as scattered by her feet, spread abroad like
+spilt milk. She would not run the hazard of losing her way by plunging
+into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts of the
+woodland, but followed a more open course, which eventually brought her
+to the highway. Once here, she ran along with great speed, animated by
+a devoted purpose which had much about it that was stoical; and it was
+with scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour’s progress,
+she passed over Rubdown Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and
+that same house, out of which she had fled a few days before in
+irresistible alarm. But that had happened which, above all other things
+of chance and change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of
+flight and sink all regard of personal consequences.
+
+One speciality of Fitzpiers’s was respected by Grace as much as
+ever—his professional skill. In this she was right. Had his persistence
+equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic and fitful thing
+it was, fame and fortune need never have remained a wish with him. His
+freedom from conventional errors and crusted prejudices had, indeed,
+been such as to retard rather than accelerate his advance in Hintock
+and its neighborhood, where people could not believe that nature
+herself effected cures, and that the doctor’s business was only to
+smooth the way.
+
+It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father’s house,
+now again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he had already
+gone away. Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about
+Winterborne’s residence a pervasive lightness had hung in the damp
+autumn sky, in spite of the vault of cloud, signifying that a moon of
+some age was shining above its arch. The two white gates were distinct,
+and the white balls on the pillars, and the puddles and damp ruts left
+by the recent rain, had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness. She entered
+by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing wherein the
+apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate, till she
+stood under a window which, if her husband were in the house, gave
+light to his bedchamber.
+
+She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of
+herself. Could she call to her presence the very cause of all her
+foregoing troubles? Alas!—old Jones was seven miles off; Giles was
+possibly dying—what else could she do?
+
+It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than by
+exercise, that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the panes, and
+waited to see the result. The night-bell which had been fixed when
+Fitzpiers first took up his residence there still remained; but as it
+had fallen into disuse with the collapse of his practice, and his
+elopement, she did not venture to pull it now.
+
+Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. In
+half a minute the window was opened, and a voice said “Yes?”
+inquiringly. Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. Her
+effort was now to disguise her own accents.
+
+“Doctor,” she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command, “a man
+is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough, and you
+must go to him at once—in all mercy!”
+
+“I will, readily.”
+
+The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed her
+for a moment. But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief of a man
+who, having got back in a mood of contrition, from erratic abandonment
+to fearful joys, found the soothing routine of professional practice
+unexpectedly opening anew to him. The highest desire of his soul just
+now was for a respectable life of painstaking. If this, his first
+summons since his return, had been to attend upon a cat or dog, he
+would scarcely have refused it in the circumstances.
+
+“Do you know the way?” she asked.
+
+“Yes,” said he.
+
+“One-chimney Hut,” she repeated. “And—immediately!”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Fitzpiers.
+
+Grace remained no longer. She passed out of the white gate without
+slamming it, and hastened on her way back. Her husband, then, had
+re-entered her father’s house. How he had been able to effect a
+reconciliation with the old man, what were the terms of the treaty
+between them, she could not so much as conjecture. Some sort of truce
+must have been entered into, that was all she could say. But close as
+the question lay to her own life, there was a more urgent one which
+banished it; and she traced her steps quickly along the meandering
+track-ways.
+
+Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. The state of his
+mind, over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. At Grace’s
+first remark he had not recognized or suspected her presence; but as
+she went on, he was awakened to the great resemblance of the speaker’s
+voice to his wife’s. He had taken in such good faith the statement of
+the household on his arrival, that she had gone on a visit for a time
+because she could not at once bring her mind to be reconciled to him,
+that he could not quite actually believe this comer to be she. It was
+one of the features of Fitzpiers’s repentant humor at this date that,
+on receiving the explanation of her absence, he had made no attempt to
+outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody had informed him
+how very shortly her departure had preceded his entry, and of all that
+might have been inferred from her precipitancy.
+
+Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to follow
+her either. He sympathized with her flight, much as he deplored it;
+moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events that he had been a
+great means of creating checked his instinct to interfere. He prayed
+and trusted that she had got into no danger on her way (as he supposed)
+to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if that were the place she had gone
+to, forbearing all inquiry which the strangeness of her departure would
+have made natural. A few months before this time a performance by Grace
+of one-tenth the magnitude of this would have aroused him to unwonted
+investigation.
+
+It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to Fitzpiers’s
+domicilation there. The two men had not met face to face, but Mrs.
+Melbury had proposed herself as an intermediary, who made the surgeon’s
+re-entrance comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and
+nobody asked questions. Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a plan
+of penitence, which had originated in circumstances hereafter to be
+explained; his self-humiliation to the very bass-string was deliberate;
+and as soon as a call reached him from the bedside of a dying man his
+desire was to set to work and do as much good as he could with the
+least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained from calling up a
+stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for One-chimney
+Hut on foot, as Grace had done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached
+the sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his
+hands were cold. As soon as she saw him there returned to her that
+agony of mind which the stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a
+time.
+
+Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things
+but the fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more
+than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her
+comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she had thought of
+caring. This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps
+without; she knew whose footsteps they were.
+
+Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles’s
+hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself
+and him. He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he
+dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely
+enough, though Grace’s distaste for her husband’s company had amounted
+almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her
+last and least feeling was personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed
+by self-effacing purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was
+forgotten. The first look that possessed her face was relief;
+satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated thought of
+the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that
+did not interfere with her words.
+
+“Is he dying—is there any hope?” she cried.
+
+“Grace!” said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper—more than
+invocating, if not quite deprecatory.
+
+He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic
+character—though that was striking enough to a man who called himself
+the husband of the sufferer’s friend and nurse—but in its character as
+the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which
+he had figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond.
+
+“Is he in great danger—can you save him?” she cried again.
+
+Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined
+Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere glance.
+Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to the effect of
+his coming words.
+
+“He is dying,” he said, with dry precision.
+
+“What?” said she.
+
+“Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all over.
+The extremities are dead already.” His eyes still remained fixed on
+her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end his interest,
+professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever.
+
+“But it cannot be! He was well three days ago.”
+
+“Not well, I suspect. This seems like a secondary attack, which has
+followed some previous illness—possibly typhoid—it may have been months
+ago, or recently.”
+
+“Ah—he was not well—you are right. He was ill—he was ill when I came.”
+
+There was nothing more to do or say. She crouched down at the side of
+the bed, and Fitzpiers took a seat. Thus they remained in silence, and
+long as it lasted she never turned her eyes, or apparently her
+thoughts, at all to her husband. He occasionally murmured, with
+automatic authority, some slight directions for alleviating the pain of
+the dying man, which she mechanically obeyed, bending over him during
+the intervals in silent tears.
+
+Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing; and that
+he was going became soon perceptible also to her. In less than an hour
+the delirium ceased; then there was an interval of somnolent
+painlessness and soft breathing, at the end of which Winterborne passed
+quietly away.
+
+Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. “Have you lived here long?” said he.
+
+Grace was wild with sorrow—with all that had befallen her—with the
+cruelties that had attacked her—with life—with Heaven. She answered at
+random. “Yes. By what right do you ask?”
+
+“Don’t think I claim any right,” said Fitzpiers, sadly. “It is for you
+to do and say what you choose. I admit, quite as much as you feel, that
+I am a vagabond—a brute—not worthy to possess the smallest fragment of
+you. But here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient interest in
+you to make that inquiry.”
+
+“He is everything to me!” said Grace, hardly heeding her husband, and
+laying her hand reverently on the dead man’s eyelids, where she kept it
+a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle touches, as if she
+were stroking a little bird.
+
+He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where his
+eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that she had brought.
+
+“Grace—if I may call you so,” he said, “I have been already humiliated
+almost to the depths. I have come back since you refused to join me
+elsewhere—I have entered your father’s house, and borne all that that
+cost me without flinching, because I have felt that I deserved
+humiliation. But is there a yet greater humiliation in store for me?
+You say you have been living here—that he is everything to you. Am I to
+draw from that the obvious, the extremest inference?”
+
+Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women—especially the latter.
+It was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for the cruel
+contumely which she had borne at his hands so docilely.
+
+“Yes,” she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded nature
+which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so.
+
+Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she half
+repented. Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him. It
+seemed as if all that remained to him of life and spirit had been
+abstracted at a stroke. Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at
+self-control closed his mouth together as a vice. His determination was
+fairly successful, though she saw how very much greater than she had
+expected her triumph had been. Presently he looked across at
+Winterborne.
+
+“Would it startle you to hear,” he said, as if he hardly had breath to
+utter the words, “that she who was to me what he was to you is dead
+also?”
+
+“Dead—_she_ dead?” exclaimed Grace.
+
+“Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is.”
+
+“Never!” said Grace, vehemently.
+
+He went on without heeding the insinuation: “And I came back to try to
+make it up with you—but—”
+
+Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking downward
+with the droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not
+despair. In going round the door his eye fell upon her once more. She
+was still bending over the body of Winterborne, her face close to the
+young man’s.
+
+“Have you been kissing him during his illness?” asked her husband.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Since his fevered state set in?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“On his lips?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as soon as
+possible.” He drew a small phial from his pocket and returned to offer
+it to her.
+
+Grace shook her head.
+
+“If you don’t do as I tell you you may soon be like him.”
+
+“I don’t care. I wish to die.”
+
+“I’ll put it here,” said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a ledge
+beside him. “The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my head
+at any rate, among my other sins. I am now going, and I will send
+somebody to you. Your father does not know that you are here, so I
+suppose I shall be bound to tell him?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon immersed in
+the silence that pervaded the spot. Grace remained kneeling and
+weeping, she hardly knew how long, and then she sat up, covered poor
+Giles’s features, and went towards the door where her husband had
+stood. No sign of any other comer greeted her ear, the only perceptible
+sounds being the tiny cracklings of the dead leaves, which, like a
+feather-bed, had not yet done rising to their normal level where
+indented by the pressure of her husband’s receding footsteps. It
+reminded her that she had been struck with the change in his aspect;
+the extremely intellectual look that had always been in his face was
+wrought to a finer phase by thinness, and a care-worn dignity had been
+superadded. She returned to Winterborne’s side, and during her
+meditations another tread drew near the door, entered the outer room,
+and halted at the entrance of the chamber where Grace was.
+
+“What—Marty!” said Grace.
+
+“Yes. I have heard,” said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its
+girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have
+bruised her.
+
+“He died for me!” murmured Grace, heavily.
+
+Marty did not fully comprehend; and she answered, “He belongs to
+neither of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him than my
+plainness. I have come to help you, ma’am. He never cared for me, and
+he cared much for you; but he cares for us both alike now.”
+
+“Oh don’t, don’t, Marty!”
+
+Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from the other side.
+
+“Did you meet my hus—Mr. Fitzpiers?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Then what brought you here?”
+
+“I come this way sometimes. I have got to go to the farther side of the
+wood this time of the year, and am obliged to get there before four
+o’clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for the early baking.
+I have passed by here often at this time.”
+
+Grace looked at her quickly. “Then did you know I was here?”
+
+“Yes, ma’am.”
+
+“Did you tell anybody?”
+
+“No. I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up to ye, and
+lodged out himself.”
+
+“Did you know where he lodged?”
+
+“No. That I couldn’t find out. Was it at Delborough?”
+
+“No. It was not there, Marty. Would it had been! It would have
+saved—saved—” To check her tears she turned, and seeing a book on the
+window-bench, took it up. “Look, Marty, this is a Psalter. He was not
+an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect in his heart.
+Shall we read a psalm over him?”
+
+“Oh yes—we will—with all my heart!”
+
+Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at hand
+mainly for the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its leather
+covers. She began to read in that rich, devotional voice peculiar to
+women only on such occasions. When it was over, Marty said, “I should
+like to pray for his soul.”
+
+“So should I,” said her companion. “But we must not.”
+
+“Why? Nobody would know.”
+
+Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense
+of making amends for having neglected him in the body; and their tender
+voices united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that
+a Calvinist might have envied. They had hardly ended when now and more
+numerous foot-falls were audible, also persons in conversation, one of
+whom Grace recognized as her father.
+
+She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only such
+light as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were
+standing there.
+
+“I don’t reproach you, Grace,” said her father, with an estranged
+manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. “What has come
+upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing.
+Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am
+astonished. In the face of this there is nothing to be said.”
+
+Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber.
+“Marty,” she said, quickly, “I cannot look my father in the face until
+he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell him—what
+you have told me—what you saw—that he gave up his house to me.”
+
+She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a
+short absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her father
+if he had met her husband.
+
+“Yes,” said Melbury.
+
+“And you know all that has happened?”
+
+“I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than rashness—I
+ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to what was once your
+home?”
+
+“No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more.”
+
+The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had stood to
+Winterborne quite lately—brought about by Melbury’s own
+contrivance—could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at
+her more recent doings. “My daughter, things are bad,” he rejoined.
+“But why do you persevere to make ’em worse? What good can you do to
+Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. I don’t
+inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your
+course would have been if he had not died, though I know there’s no
+deliberate harm in ye. As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and I
+make no complaint. But I do say that by coming back with me now you
+will show no less kindness to him, and escape any sound of shame.
+
+“But I don’t wish to escape it.”
+
+“If you don’t on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and hers?
+Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. Then why
+should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my gray hairs with
+sorrow to the grave?”
+
+“If it were not for my husband—” she began, moved by his words. “But
+how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere man’s
+creature join him after what has taken place?”
+
+“He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house.”
+
+“How do you know that, father?”
+
+“We met him on our way here, and he told us so,” said Mrs. Melbury. “He
+had said something like it before. He seems very much upset
+altogether.”
+
+“He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait for
+time and devotion to bring about his forgiveness,” said her husband.
+“That was it, wasn’t it, Lucy?”
+
+“Yes. That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave him
+absolute permission,” Mrs. Melbury added.
+
+This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to Grace as
+it was unexpected; and though she did not desire his presence, she was
+sorry that by her retaliatory fiction she had given him a different
+reason for avoiding her. She made no further objections to accompanying
+her parents, taking them into the inner room to give Winterborne a last
+look, and gathering up the two or three things that belonged to her.
+While she was doing this the two women came who had been called by
+Melbury, and at their heels poor Creedle.
+
+“Forgive me, but I can’t rule my mourning nohow as a man should, Mr.
+Melbury,” he said. “I ha’n’t seen him since Thursday se’night, and have
+wondered for days and days where he’s been keeping. There was I
+expecting him to come and tell me to wash out the cider-barrels against
+the making, and here was he— Well, I’ve knowed him from table-high; I
+knowed his father—used to bide about upon two sticks in the sun afore
+he died!—and now I’ve seen the end of the family, which we can ill
+afford to lose, wi’ such a scanty lot of good folk in Hintock as we’ve
+got. And now Robert Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards ’a
+b’lieve; and noboby will glutch down a sigh for he!”
+
+They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind. For a time
+Grace and her father walked side by side without speaking. It was just
+in the blue of the dawn, and the chilling tone of the sky was reflected
+in her cold, wet face. The whole wood seemed to be a house of death,
+pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and breadth. Winterborne was
+gone, and the copses seemed to show the want of him; those young trees,
+so many of which he had planted, and of which he had spoken so truly
+when he said that he should fall before they fell, were at that very
+moment sending out their roots in the direction that he had given them
+with his subtle hand.
+
+“One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come back
+to the house,” said Melbury at last—“the death of Mrs. Charmond.”
+
+“Ah, yes,” said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection, “he told
+me so.”
+
+“Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as Giles’s. She was
+shot—by a disappointed lover. It occurred in Germany. The unfortunate
+man shot himself afterwards. He was that South Carolina gentleman of
+very passionate nature who used to haunt this place to force her to an
+interview, and followed her about everywhere. So ends the brilliant
+Felice Charmond—once a good friend to me—but no friend to you.”
+
+“I can forgive her,” said Grace, absently. “Did Edgar tell you of
+this?”
+
+“No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account of it, on the
+hall table, folded in such a way that we should see it. It will be in
+the Sherton paper this week, no doubt. To make the event more solemn
+still to him, he had just before had sharp words with her, and left
+her. He told Lucy this, as nothing about him appears in the newspaper.
+And the cause of the quarrel was, of all people, she we’ve left behind
+us.”
+
+“Do you mean Marty?” Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily. For,
+pertinent and pointed as Melbury’s story was, she had no heart for it
+now.
+
+“Yes. Marty South.” Melbury persisted in his narrative, to divert her
+from her present grief, if possible. “Before he went away she wrote him
+a letter, which he kept in his, pocket a long while before reading. He
+chanced to pull it out in Mrs. Charmond’s, presence, and read it out
+loud. It contained something which teased her very much, and that led
+to the rupture. She was following him to make it up when she met with
+her terrible death.”
+
+Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident, which was
+that Marty South’s letter had been concerning a certain personal
+adornment common to herself and Mrs. Charmond. Her bullet reached its
+billet at last. The scene between Fitzpiers and Felice had been sharp,
+as only a scene can be which arises out of the mortification of one
+woman by another in the presence of a lover. True, Marty had not
+effected it by word of mouth; the charge about the locks of hair was
+made simply by Fitzpiers reading her letter to him aloud to Felice in
+the playfully ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of
+his situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George
+Herbert, a “flat delight.” He had stroked those false tresses with his
+hand many a time without knowing them to be transplanted, and it was
+impossible when the discovery was so abruptly made to avoid being
+finely satirical, despite her generous disposition.
+
+That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end. On his abrupt
+departure she had followed him to the station but the train was gone;
+and in travelling to Baden in search of him she had met his rival,
+whose reproaches led to an altercation, and the death of both. Of that
+precipitate scene of passion and crime Fitzpiers had known nothing till
+he saw an account of it in the papers, where, fortunately for himself,
+no mention was made of his prior acquaintance with the unhappy lady;
+nor was there any allusion to him in the subsequent inquiry, the double
+death being attributed to some gambling losses, though, in point of
+fact, neither one of them had visited the tables.
+
+Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but one
+living thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up its tree,
+but, dropping the sweet chestnut which it carried, cried
+chut-chut-chut, and stamped with its hind legs on the ground. When the
+roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to emerge from the screen of
+boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her abstracted advance.
+
+“You clearly understand,” she said to her step-mother some of her old
+misgiving returning, “that I am coming back only on condition of his
+leaving as he promised? Will you let him know this, that there may be
+no mistake?”
+
+Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers, assured
+Grace that she need have no doubts on that point, and that he would
+probably be gone by the evening. Grace then entered with them into
+Melbury’s wing of the house, and sat down listlessly in the parlor,
+while her step-mother went to Fitzpiers.
+
+The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon showed did honor
+to him, if anything could. Before Mrs. Melbury had returned to the room
+Grace, who was sitting on the parlor window-bench, saw her husband go
+from the door under the increasing light of morning, with a bag in his
+hand. While passing through the gate he turned his head. The firelight
+of the room she sat in threw her figure into dark relief against the
+window as she looked through the panes, and he must have seen her
+distinctly. In a moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he
+disappeared. At the hut she had declared that another had displaced
+him; and now she had banished him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The
+next day she kept her room. Old Jones was called in; he murmured some
+statements in which the words “feverish symptoms” occurred. Grace heard
+them, and guessed the means by which she had brought this visitation
+upon herself.
+
+One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing, wondering
+if she were really going to join him who had gone before, Grammer
+Oliver came to her bedside. “I don’t know whe’r this is meant for you
+to take, ma’am,” she said, “but I have found it on the table. It was
+left by Marty, I think, when she came this morning.”
+
+Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up. It was the phial
+left at the hut by her husband when he had begged her to take some
+drops of its contents if she wished to preserve herself from falling a
+victim to the malady which had pulled down Winterborne. She examined it
+as well as she could. The liquid was of an opaline hue, and bore a
+label with an inscription in Italian. He had probably got it in his
+wanderings abroad. She knew but little Italian, but could understand
+that the cordial was a febrifuge of some sort. Her father, her mother,
+and all the household were anxious for her recovery, and she resolved
+to obey her husband’s directions. Whatever the risk, if any, she was
+prepared to run it. A glass of water was brought, and the drops dropped
+in.
+
+The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable. In less than an hour
+she felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect—less inclined to fret
+and chafe and wear herself away. She took a few drops more. From that
+time the fever retreated, and went out like a damped conflagration.
+
+“How clever he is!” she said, regretfully. “Why could he not have had
+more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good account?
+Perhaps he has saved my useless life. But he doesn’t know it, and
+doesn’t care whether he has saved it or not; and on that account will
+never be told by me! Probably he only gave it to me in the arrogance of
+his skill, to show the greatness of his resources beside mine, as
+Elijah drew down fire from heaven.”
+
+As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon her
+life, Grace went to Marty South’s cottage. The current of her being had
+again set towards the lost Giles Winterborne.
+
+“Marty,” she said, “we both loved him. We will go to his grave
+together.”
+
+Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the village, and could
+be reached without passing through the street. In the dusk of the late
+September day they went thither by secret ways, walking mostly in
+silence side by side, each busied with her own thoughts. Grace had a
+trouble exceeding Marty’s—that haunting sense of having put out the
+light of his life by her own hasty doings. She had tried to persuade
+herself that he might have died of his illness, even if she had not
+taken possession of his house. Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt;
+sometimes she did not.
+
+They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone down,
+they could see over the woodland for miles, and down to the vale in
+which he had been accustomed to descend every year, with his portable
+mill and press, to make cider about this time.
+
+Perhaps Grace’s first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he
+could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the
+second. On Marty’s part there was the same consideration; never would
+she have been his. As no anticipation of gratified affection had been
+in existence while he was with them, there was none to be disappointed
+now that he had gone.
+
+Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she had never
+understood Giles as Marty had done. Marty South alone, of all the women
+in Hintock and the world, had approximated to Winterborne’s level of
+intelligent intercourse with nature. In that respect she had formed the
+complement to him in the other sex, had lived as his counterpart, had
+subjoined her thought to his as a corollary.
+
+The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that
+wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been with
+these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of
+its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had been able to read
+its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the sights and sounds of
+night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, which had to Grace
+a touch of the uncanny, and even the supernatural, were simple
+occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they foreknew. They had
+planted together, and together they had felled; together they had, with
+the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and
+symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together
+made an alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces,
+when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the
+species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the
+wind’s murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its sort
+afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or
+tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its upper twigs, the
+stratum that had been reached by its roots. The artifices of the
+seasons were seen by them from the conjuror’s own point of view, and
+not from that of the spectator’s.
+
+“He ought to have married _you_, Marty, and nobody else in the world!”
+said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above
+strain.
+
+Marty shook her head. “In all our out-door days and years together,
+ma’am,” she replied, “the one thing he never spoke of to me was love;
+nor I to him.”
+
+“Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew—not even
+my father, though he came nearest knowing—the tongue of the trees and
+fruits and flowers themselves.”
+
+She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the hard
+core to her grief—which Marty’s had not—remained. Had she been sure
+that Giles’s death resulted entirely from his exposure, it would have
+driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was always that bare
+possibility that his exposure had only precipitated what was
+inevitable. She longed to believe that it had not done even this.
+
+There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she would be
+at all disposed to trust. Her husband was that man. Yet to ask him it
+would be necessary to detail the true conditions in which she and
+Winterborne had lived during these three or four critical days that
+followed her flight; and in withdrawing her original defiant
+announcement on that point, there seemed a weakness she did not care to
+show. She never doubted that Fitzpiers would believe her if she made a
+clean confession of the actual situation; but to volunteer the
+correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in her
+present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of.
+
+It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has been
+already declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace’s fidelity could
+not keep faithful was stung into passionate throbs of interest
+concerning her by her avowal of the contrary.
+
+He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously full
+compass if she were capable of such a reprisal; and, melancholy as it
+may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a
+smouldering admiration of her.
+
+He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to which
+he had retired—quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could she have
+known of it, would have been inclined to inflict upon any living
+creature, how much soever he might have wronged her. Then a sudden hope
+dawned upon him; he wondered if her affirmation were true. He asked
+himself whether it were not the act of a woman whose natural purity and
+innocence had blinded her to the contingencies of such an announcement.
+His wide experience of the sex had taught him that, in many cases,
+women who ventured on hazardous matters did so because they lacked an
+imagination sensuous enough to feel their full force. In this light
+Grace’s bold avowal might merely have denoted the desperation of one
+who was a child to the realities of obliquity.
+
+Fitzpiers’s mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take a
+melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock; and here he
+hovered for hours around the scene of the purest emotional experiences
+that he had ever known in his life. He walked about the woods that
+surrounded Melbury’s house, keeping out of sight like a criminal. It
+was a fine evening, and on his way homeward he passed near Marty
+South’s cottage. As usual she had lighted her candle without closing
+her shutters; he saw her within as he had seen her many times before.
+
+She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show himself,
+he could not resist speaking in to her through the half-open door.
+“What are you doing that for, Marty?”
+
+“Because I want to clean them. They are not mine.” He could see,
+indeed, that they were not hers, for one was a spade, large and heavy,
+and another was a bill-hook which she could only have used with both
+hands. The spade, though not a new one, had been so completely
+burnished that it was bright as silver.
+
+Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborne’s, and he
+put the question to her.
+
+She replied in the affirmative. “I am going to keep ’em,” she said,
+“but I can’t get his apple-mill and press. I wish could; it is going to
+be sold, they say.”
+
+“Then I will buy it for you,” said Fitzpiers. “That will be making you
+a return for a kindness you did me.” His glance fell upon the girl’s
+rare-colored hair, which had grown again. “Oh, Marty, those locks of
+yours—and that letter! But it was a kindness to send it, nevertheless,”
+he added, musingly.
+
+After this there was confidence between them—such confidence as there
+had never been before. Marty was shy, indeed, of speaking about the
+letter, and her motives in writing it; but she thanked him warmly for
+his promise of the cider-press. She would travel with it in the autumn
+season, as he had done, she said. She would be quite strong enough,
+with old Creedle as an assistant.
+
+“Ah! there was one nearer to him than you,” said Fitzpiers, referring
+to Winterborne. “One who lived where he lived, and was with him when he
+died.”
+
+Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true circumstances,
+from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were living apart, told
+him of Giles’s generosity to Grace in giving up his house to her at the
+risk, and possibly the sacrifice, of his own life. When the surgeon
+heard it he almost envied Giles his chivalrous character. He expressed
+a wish to Marty that his visit to her should be kept secret, and went
+home thoughtful, feeling that in more that one sense his journey to
+Hintock had not been in vain.
+
+He would have given much to win Grace’s forgiveness then. But whatever
+he dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was nothing to be
+done yet, while Giles Winterborne’s memory was green. To wait was
+imperative. A little time might melt her frozen thoughts, and lead her
+to look on him with toleration, if not with love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+
+Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace
+in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had
+devoted themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great
+Hintock, and, like the two mourners in _Cymbeline_, sweetened his sad
+grave with their flowers and their tears. Sometimes Grace thought that
+it was a pity neither one of them had been his wife for a little while,
+and given the world a copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes.
+Nothing ever had brought home to her with such force as this death how
+little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal
+character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with
+the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at having
+had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement.
+
+Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of
+the leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs.
+Charmond abroad had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvellous
+escape from being dragged into the inquiry which followed it, through
+the accident of their having parted just before under the influence of
+Marty South’s letter—the tiny instrument of a cause deep in nature.
+
+Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the fitful
+fever of that impassioned woman’s life that she should not have found a
+native grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in the estate, which,
+after her death, passed to a relative of her husband’s—one who knew not
+Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to blot out every vestige of
+her.
+
+On a certain day in February—the cheerful day of St. Valentine, in
+fact—a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally promised
+her for that particular day a long time before.
+
+It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where he
+had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local medical
+man, whose curative principles were all wrong, though he dared not set
+them right. He had thought fit to communicate with her on that day of
+tender traditions to inquire if, in the event of his obtaining a
+substantial practice that he had in view elsewhere, she could forget
+the past and bring herself to join him.
+
+There the practical part ended; he then went on—
+
+“My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear Grace
+and dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued. You may be
+absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have never
+loved any woman alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor you at this
+present moment. What you told me in the pride and haughtiness of your
+heart I never believed [this, by the way, was not strictly true]; but
+even if I had believed it, it could never have estranged me from you.
+Is there any use in telling you—no, there is not—that I dream of your
+ripe lips more frequently than I say my prayers; that the old familiar
+rustle of your dress often returns upon my mind till it distracts me?
+If you could condescend even only to see me again you would be
+breathing life into a corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as a
+turtledove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being
+present in your mind on this lovers’ day, I think I would almost rather
+have you hate me a little than not think of me at all. You may call my
+fancies whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that ‘nature is one
+in love, and where ’tis fine it sends some instance of itself.’ I will
+not intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy by sending
+back one line to say that you will consent, at any rate, to a short
+interview. I will meet you and leave you as a mere acquaintance, if you
+will only afford me this slight means of making a few explanations, and
+of putting my position before you. Believe me, in spite of all you may
+do or feel,
+
+
+Your lover always (once your husband),
+
+“E.F.”
+
+
+It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which
+Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having
+taken place under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary.
+Its perusal, therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought
+that, upon the whole, he wrote love-letters very well. But the chief
+rational interest of the letter to the reflective Grace lay in the
+chance that such a meeting as he proposed would afford her of setting
+her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual share in
+Winterborne’s death. The relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one
+professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As
+for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which
+at the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to
+admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself
+as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was a far more
+serious thing, wronged Winterborne’s memory.
+
+Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it,
+Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two
+conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting should be
+the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not object to Marty
+South accompanying her.
+
+Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers’s
+so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting
+of spring when her brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures
+that he had experienced of late years at all resembling those of his
+early youth. He promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and
+named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot she mentioned.
+
+A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the
+well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements
+in their lives during his residence at Hintock.
+
+The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret
+that seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to his future,
+the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a
+permanent dwelling-place.
+
+He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her
+slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was
+complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him. The least
+reparation that he could make, in a case where he would gladly have
+made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely free to choose
+between living with him and without him.
+
+Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses
+strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just
+at present. To show any forwardness in suggesting a _modus vivendi_ to
+Grace would be to put an end to these exotics. To be the vassal of her
+sweet will for a time, he demanded no more, and found solace in the
+contemplation of the soft miseries she caused him.
+
+Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers
+discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not
+long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party.
+
+Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the
+flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern.
+Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as
+to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of
+gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no other than Suke
+Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess; the small husband
+beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs.
+
+Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all the
+beauties of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was the chief.
+But he put the best face on the matter that he could and came on, the
+approaching company evidently discussing him and his separation from
+Mrs. Fitzpiers. As the couples closed upon him he expressed his
+congratulations.
+
+“We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit,” said
+Tim. “First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to here, and from
+here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round by the cross-roads
+home. Home says I, but it won’t be that long! We be off next month.”
+
+“Indeed. Where to?”
+
+Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand. Not but that he
+would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and
+wanted to leave, so he had given way.
+
+“Then good-by,” said Fitzpiers; “I may not see you again.” He shook
+hands with Tim and turned to the bride. “Good-by, Suke,” he said,
+taking her hand also. “I wish you and your husband prosperity in the
+country you have chosen.” With this he left them, and hastened on to
+his appointment.
+
+The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise. But in
+restoring his arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming
+countenance had undergone a change. “Holloa! me dear—what’s the
+matter?” said Tim.
+
+“Nothing to speak o’,” said she. But to give the lie to her assertion
+she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon produced a dribbling
+face.
+
+“How—what the devil’s this about!” exclaimed the bridegroom.
+
+“She’s a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!” said the first
+bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke’s eyes.
+
+“I never did like parting from people!” said Suke, as soon as she could
+speak.
+
+“Why him in particular?”
+
+“Well—he’s such a clever doctor, that ’tis a thousand pities we sha’n’t
+see him any more! There’ll be no such clever doctor as he in New
+Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought o’t got the better of
+my feelings!”
+
+They walked on, but Tim’s face had grown rigid and pale, for he
+recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their
+occurrence. The former boisterous laughter of the wedding-party at the
+groomsman’s jokes was heard ringing through the woods no more.
+
+By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill,
+where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand.
+These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently
+come there by a short and secret path through the wood. Grace was
+muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had never
+looked so seductive as at this moment, in the noontide bright but
+heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish-gray masses of
+brushwood around.
+
+Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their
+glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent
+and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, while with
+courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in a large arc.
+Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out his hand, Grace
+touched it with her fingers.
+
+“I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you something
+important,” said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation modulating in a
+direction that she had not quite wished it to take.
+
+“I am most attentive,” said her husband. “Shall we take to the wood for
+privacy?”
+
+Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public road.
+
+At any rate she would take his arm? This also was gravely negatived,
+the refusal being audible to Marty.
+
+“Why not?” he inquired.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers—how can you ask?”
+
+“Right, right,” said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up.
+
+As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. “It is about a matter
+that may perhaps be unpleasant to you. But I think I need not consider
+that too carefully.”
+
+“Not at all,” said Fitzpiers, heroically.
+
+She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne’s death, and
+related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come
+upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had
+betaken himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was
+undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her
+in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears
+as she asked him if he thought that the sin of having driven him to his
+death was upon her.
+
+Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her
+narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade
+with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, looked so
+grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that harmlessness had
+been the result of aim or of accident. With regard to her question, he
+declared that in his judgment no human being could answer it. He
+thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities turned in her
+favor. Winterborne’s apparent strength, during the last months of his
+life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a first
+attack of that insidious disease a person’s apparent recovery was a
+physiological mendacity.
+
+The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her
+knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the
+assurances Fitzpiers gave her. “Well, then, to put this case before
+you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented
+to come here to-day,” said she, when he had reached the aforesaid
+conclusion.
+
+“For no other reason at all?” he asked, ruefully.
+
+“It was nearly the whole.”
+
+They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding
+in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice,
+“And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my life.”
+
+Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate
+lips as if to keep them in subjection.
+
+“It is a different kind of love altogether,” said he. “Less passionate;
+more profound. It has nothing to do with the material conditions of the
+object at all; much to do with her character and goodness, as revealed
+by closer observation. ‘Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge
+with dearer love.’”
+
+“That’s out of _Measure for Measure_,” said she, slyly.
+
+“Oh yes—I meant it as a citation,” blandly replied Fitzpiers. “Well,
+then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart again?”
+
+The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled
+the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of
+Winterborne. “Don’t ask it! My heart is in the grave with Giles,” she
+replied, stanchly.
+
+“Mine is with you—in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to that.”
+
+“I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped.”
+
+“How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the grave?”
+
+“Oh no—that’s not so,” returned Grace, quickly, and moved to go away
+from him.
+
+“But, dearest Grace,” said he, “you have condescended to come; and I
+thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long state of
+probation you would be generous. But if there can be no hope of our
+getting completely reconciled, treat me gently—wretch though I am.”
+
+“I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so.”
+
+“But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear you
+think so.”
+
+Grace’s heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the fear
+that she might mislead him. “I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel
+contempt,” she said, evasively. “And all I feel is lovelessness.”
+
+“I have been very bad, I know,” he returned. “But unless you can really
+love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you forever. I don’t
+want you to receive me again for duty’s sake, or anything of that sort.
+If I had not cared more for your affection and forgiveness than my own
+personal comfort, I should never have come back here. I could have
+obtained a practice at a distance, and have lived my own life without
+coldness or reproach. But I have chosen to return to the one spot on
+earth where my name is tarnished—to enter the house of a man from whom
+I have had worse treatment than from any other man alive—all for you!”
+
+This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who began
+to look as if she thought she had been shockingly severe.
+
+“Before you go,” he continued, “I want to know your pleasure about
+me—what you wish me to do, or not to do.”
+
+“You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. Far be
+it from me to advise. But I will think it over. I rather need advice
+myself than stand in a position to give it.”
+
+“_You_ don’t need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever lived. If you
+did—”
+
+“Would you give it to me?”
+
+“Would you act upon what I gave?”
+
+“That’s not a fair inquiry,” said she, smiling despite her gravity. “I
+don’t mind hearing it—what you do really think the most correct and
+proper course for me.”
+
+“It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be
+provoking you to remonstrances.”
+
+Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press him
+further, and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, when he
+interrupted her with, “Oh, one moment, dear Grace—you will meet me
+again?”
+
+She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight. Fitzpiers
+expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness with
+which she entreated him not to come sooner made him say hastily that he
+submitted to her will—that he would regard her as a friend only,
+anxious for his reform and well-being, till such time as she might
+allow him to exceed that privilege.
+
+All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not won
+her confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all his
+deductions from previous experience, to find that this girl, though she
+had been married to him, could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain
+fascination that it carried with it, his reflections were sombre as he
+went homeward; he saw how deep had been his offence to produce so great
+a wariness in a gentle and once unsuspicious soul.
+
+He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her. To be an object of
+misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was what he could
+not endure the thought of. Life as it stood was more tolerable.
+
+When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would fain have
+consulted Marty on the question of Platonic relations with her former
+husband, as she preferred to regard him. But Marty showed no great
+interest in their affairs, so Grace said nothing. They came onward, and
+saw Melbury standing at the scene of the felling which had been audible
+to them, when, telling Marty that she wished her meeting with Mr.
+Fitzpiers to be kept private, she left the girl to join her father. At
+any rate, she would consult him on the expediency of occasionally
+seeing her husband.
+
+Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in
+earlier days. “I was thinking of you when you came up,” he said. “I
+have considered that what has happened is for the best. Since your
+husband is gone away, and seems not to wish to trouble you, why, let
+him go, and drop out of your life. Many women are worse off. You can
+live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate, or do what he likes
+for his good. I wouldn’t mind sending him the further sum of money he
+might naturally expect to come to him, so that you may not be bothered
+with him any more. He could hardly have gone on living here without
+speaking to me, or meeting me; and that would have been very unpleasant
+on both sides.”
+
+These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense of weakness in
+following them by saying that she had just met her husband by
+appointment. “Then you would advise me not to communicate with him?”
+she observed.
+
+“I shall never advise ye again. You are your own mistress—do as you
+like. But my opinion is that if you don’t live with him, you had better
+live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playing bopeep. You
+sent him away; and now he’s gone. Very well; trouble him no more.”
+
+Grace felt a guiltiness—she hardly knew why—and made no confession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal.
+She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her
+marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit
+to Winterborne’s grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious
+strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops, primroses, and other
+vernal flowers thereon as they came.
+
+One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father’s
+garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted into
+the wood. A slight foot-path led along here, forming a secret way to
+either of the houses by getting through its boundary hedge. Grace was
+just about to adopt this mode of entry when a figure approached along
+the path, and held up his hand to detain her. It was her husband.
+
+“I am delighted,” he said, coming up out of breath; and there seemed no
+reason to doubt his words. “I saw you some way off—I was afraid you
+would go in before I could reach you.”
+
+“It is a week before the time,” said she, reproachfully. “I said a
+fortnight from the last meeting.”
+
+“My dear, you don’t suppose I could wait a fortnight without trying to
+get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to meet me! Would it
+make you angry to know that I have been along this path at dusk three
+or four times since our last meeting? Well, how are you?”
+
+She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain it a
+moment longer than mere formality required, she made it smaller, so
+that it slipped away from him, with again that same alarmed look which
+always followed his attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not
+yet out of the elusive mood; not yet to be treated presumingly; and he
+was correspondingly careful to tranquillize her.
+
+His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. “I had no idea you
+came so often,” she said. “How far do you come from?”
+
+“From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire, people
+will know that I come; and my success with you so far has not been
+great enough to justify such overtness. Now, my dear one—as I _must_
+call you—I put it to you: will you see me a little oftener as the
+spring advances?”
+
+Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question, said,
+“I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give up those
+strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am sure you would
+get on.”
+
+“It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask you to burn—or, at
+least, get rid of—all my philosophical literature. It is in the
+bookcases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much for abstruse
+studies.”
+
+“I am so glad to hear you say that. And those other books—those piles
+of old plays—what good are they to a medical man?”
+
+“None whatever!” he replied, cheerfully. “Sell them at Sherton for what
+they will fetch.”
+
+“And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid spellings of
+‘filz’ and ‘ung’ and ‘ilz’ and ‘mary’ and ‘ma foy?’”
+
+“You haven’t been reading them, Grace?”
+
+“Oh no—I just looked into them, that was all.”
+
+“Make a bonfire of ’em directly you get home. I meant to do it myself.
+I can’t think what possessed me ever to collect them. I have only a few
+professional hand-books now, and am quite a practical man. I am in
+hopes of having some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think
+you could—come to me again?”
+
+“I would rather you did not press me on that just now,” she replied,
+with some feeling. “You have said you mean to lead a new, useful,
+effectual life; but I should like to see you put it in practice for a
+little while before you address that query to me. Besides—I could not
+live with you.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+Grace was silent a few instants. “I go with Marty to Giles’s grave. We
+swore we would show him that devotion. And I mean to keep it up.”
+
+“Well, I wouldn’t mind that at all. I have no right to expect anything
+else, and I will not wish you to keep away. I liked the man as well as
+any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you a part of the way to
+the place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while I waited till you came
+back.”
+
+“Then you haven’t given up smoking?”
+
+“Well—ahem—no. I have thought of doing so, but—”
+
+His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question
+about smoking had been to effect a diversion. Presently she said,
+firmly, and with a moisture in her eye that he could not see, as her
+mind returned to poor Giles’s “frustrate ghost,” “I don’t like you—to
+speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak lightly. To be frank
+with you—quite frank—I think of him as my betrothed lover still. I
+cannot help it. So that it would be wrong for me to join you.”
+
+Fitzpiers was now uneasy. “You say your betrothed lover still,” he
+rejoined. “When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we
+common people say?”
+
+“When you were away.”
+
+“How could that be?”
+
+Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. “It
+was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about
+to be annulled, and that he could then marry me. So I encouraged him to
+love me.”
+
+Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right in
+telling it. Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute
+sincerity kept up his affectionate admiration for her under the pain of
+the rebuff. Time had been when the avowal that Grace had deliberately
+taken steps to replace him would have brought him no sorrow. But she so
+far dominated him now that he could not bear to hear her words,
+although the object of her high regard was no more.
+
+“It is rough upon me—that!” he said, bitterly. “Oh, Grace—I did not
+know you—tried to get rid of me! I suppose it is of no use, but I ask,
+cannot you hope to—find a little love in your heart for me again?”
+
+“If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!” she replied, with
+illogical ruefulness. “And I don’t see why you should mind my having
+had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have had so many.”
+
+“But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of them
+put together, and that’s what you will not tell me!”
+
+“I am sorry; but I fear I cannot,” she said, sighing again.
+
+“I wonder if you ever will?” He looked musingly into her indistinct
+face, as if he would read the future there. “Now have pity, and tell
+me: will you try?”
+
+“To love you again?”
+
+“Yes; if you can.”
+
+“I don’t know how to reply,” she answered, her embarrassment proving
+her truth. “Will you promise to leave me quite free as to seeing you or
+not seeing you?”
+
+“Certainly. Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first promise
+in that respect?”
+
+She was obliged to admit that he had not.
+
+“Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave,” said
+he, with playful sadness. “It has been there a long time.”
+
+She faintly shook her head, but said, “I’ll try to think of you more—if
+I can.”
+
+With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked her
+when she would meet him again.
+
+“As we arranged—in a fortnight.”
+
+“If it must be a fortnight it must!”
+
+“This time at least. I’ll consider by the day I see you again if I can
+shorten the interval.”
+
+“Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to look at
+your window.”
+
+“You must do as you like about that. Good-night.”
+
+“Say ‘husband.’”
+
+She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but exclaiming, “No,
+no; I cannot,” slipped through the garden-hedge and disappeared.
+
+Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt the
+precincts of the dwelling. But his persistence in this course did not
+result in his seeing her much oftener than at the fortnightly interval
+which she had herself marked out as proper. At these times, however,
+she punctually appeared, and as the spring wore on the meetings were
+kept up, though their character changed but little with the increase in
+their number.
+
+The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs family—father,
+son, and now son’s wife—aligned with the larger one of the
+timber-dealer at its upper end; and when young Tim, after leaving work
+at Melbury’s, stood at dusk in the little bower at the corner of his
+enclosure to smoke a pipe, he frequently observed the surgeon pass
+along the outside track before-mentioned. Fitzpiers always walked
+loiteringly, pensively, looking with a sharp eye into the gardens one
+after another as he proceeded; for Fitzpiers did not wish to leave the
+now absorbing spot too quickly, after travelling so far to reach it;
+hoping always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately desired to take
+to his arms anew.
+
+Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along the
+garden boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they boded. It
+was, naturally, quite out of his power to divine the singular,
+sentimental revival in Fitzpiers’s heart; the fineness of tissue which
+could take a deep, emotional—almost also an artistic—pleasure in being
+the yearning _innamorato_ of a woman he once had deserted, would have
+seemed an absurdity to the young sawyer. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers were
+separated; therefore the question of affection as between them was
+settled. But his Suke had, since that meeting on their marriage-day,
+repentantly admitted, to the urgency of his questioning, a good deal
+concerning her past levities. Putting all things together, he could
+hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers’s mysterious visits to this spot with
+Suke’s residence under his roof. But he made himself fairly easy: the
+vessel in which they were about to emigrate sailed that month; and then
+Suke would be out of Fitzpiers’s way forever.
+
+The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure arrived.
+They were pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to them by Tim’s
+father, after a busy day of preparation, which left them weary. In a
+corner stood their boxes, crammed and corded, their large case for the
+hold having already been sent away. The firelight shone upon Suke’s
+fine face and form as she stood looking into it, and upon the face of
+Tim seated in a corner, and upon the walls of his father’s house, which
+he was beholding that night almost for the last time.
+
+Tim Tangs was not happy. This scheme of emigration was dividing him
+from his father—for old Tangs would on no account leave Hintock—and had
+it not been for Suke’s reputation and his own dignity, Tim would at the
+last moment have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back part of
+the room he regarded her moodily, and the fire and the boxes. One thing
+he had particularly noticed this evening—she was very restless; fitful
+in her actions, unable to remain seated, and in a marked degree
+depressed.
+
+“Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?” he said.
+
+She sighed involuntarily. “I don’t know but that I be,” she answered.
+“’Tis natural, isn’t it, when one is going away?”
+
+“But you wasn’t born here as I was.”
+
+“No.”
+
+“There’s folk left behind that you’d fain have with ’ee, I reckon?”
+
+“Why do you think that?”
+
+“I’ve seen things and I’ve heard things; and, Suke, I say ’twill be a
+good move for me to get ’ee away. I don’t mind his leavings abroad, but
+I do mind ’em at home.”
+
+Suke’s face was not changed from its aspect of listless indifference by
+the words. She answered nothing; and shortly after he went out for his
+customary pipe of tobacco at the top of the garden.
+
+The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to the gentleman
+of Tim’s suspicions, but in a different—and it must be added in justice
+to her—more innocent sense than he supposed, judging from former
+doings. She had accidentally discovered that Fitzpiers was in the habit
+of coming secretly once or twice a week to Hintock, and knew that this
+evening was a favorite one of the seven for his journey. As she was
+going next day to leave the country, Suke thought there could be no
+great harm in giving way to a little sentimentality by obtaining a
+glimpse of him quite unknown to himself or to anybody, and thus taking
+a silent last farewell. Aware that Fitzpiers’s time for passing was at
+hand she thus betrayed her feeling. No sooner, therefore, had Tim left
+the room than she let herself noiselessly out of the house, and
+hastened to the corner of the garden, whence she could witness the
+surgeon’s transit across the scene—if he had not already gone by.
+
+Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim lounging in the arbor of the
+opposite corner, though he was hidden from her. He saw her stealthily
+climb into the hedge, and so ensconce herself there that nobody could
+have the least doubt her purpose was to watch unseen for a passer-by.
+
+He went across to the spot and stood behind her. Suke started, having
+in her blundering way forgotten that he might be near. She at once
+descended from the hedge.
+
+“So he’s coming to-night,” said Tim, laconically. “And we be always
+anxious to see our dears.”
+
+“He _is_ coming to-night,” she replied, with defiance. “And we _be_
+anxious for our dears.”
+
+“Then will you step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine ’ee? We’ve
+to mouster by half-past three to-morrow, and if we don’t get to bed by
+eight at latest our faces will be as long as clock-cases all day.”
+
+She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly down
+the garden to the house, where he heard the door-latch click behind
+her.
+
+Tim was incensed beyond measure. His marriage had so far been a total
+failure, a source of bitter regret; and the only course for improving
+his case, that of leaving the country, was a sorry, and possibly might
+not be a very effectual one. Do what he would, his domestic sky was
+likely to be overcast to the end of the day. Thus he brooded, and his
+resentment gathered force. He craved a means of striking one blow back
+at the cause of his cheerless plight, while he was still on the scene
+of his discomfiture. For some minutes no method suggested itself, and
+then he had an idea.
+
+Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and
+entered the one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly been
+the dwelling of a game-keeper. Tim descended the path to the back of
+the house, where only an old woman lived at present, and reaching the
+wall he stopped. Owing to the slope of the ground the roof-eaves of the
+linhay were here within touch, and he thrust his arm up under them,
+feeling about in the space on the top of the wall-plate.
+
+“Ah, I thought my memory didn’t deceive me!” he lipped silently.
+
+With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object curiously framed in
+iron, which clanked as he moved it. It was about three feet in length
+and half as wide. Tim contemplated it as well as he could in the dying
+light of day, and raked off the cobwebs with his hand.
+
+“That will spoil his pretty shins for’n, I reckon!” he said.
+
+It was a man-trap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+
+Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to the
+excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic torture, the
+creator of the man-trap would occupy a very respectable if not a very
+high place.
+
+It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular form
+of man-trap of which this found in the keeper’s out-house was a
+specimen. For there were other shapes and other sizes, instruments
+which, if placed in a row beside one of the type disinterred by Tim,
+would have worn the subordinate aspect of the bears, wild boars, or
+wolves in a travelling menagerie, as compared with the leading lion or
+tiger. In short, though many varieties had been in use during those
+centuries which we are accustomed to look back upon as the true and
+only period of merry England—in the rural districts more especially—and
+onward down to the third decade of the nineteenth century, this model
+had borne the palm, and had been most usually followed when the
+orchards and estates required new ones.
+
+There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted
+landlords—quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these
+resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but
+gums. There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts, probably
+devised by the middle-natured squires, or those under the influence of
+their wives: two inches of mercy, two inches of cruelty, two inches of
+mere nip, two inches of probe, and so on, through the whole extent of
+the jaws. There were also, as a class apart, the bruisers, which did
+not lacerate the flesh, but only crushed the bone.
+
+The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid impression
+that it was endowed with life. It exhibited the combined aspects of a
+shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion. Each tooth was in the form of a
+tapering spine, two and a quarter inches long, which, when the jaws
+were closed, stood in alternation from this side and from that. When
+they were open, the two halves formed a complete circle between two and
+three feet in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being
+about a foot square, while from beneath extended in opposite directions
+the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, each one being of a
+stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight of the body
+when forcing it down.
+
+There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered when
+the gin and others like it were in use. Tim Tangs’s great-uncle had
+endured a night of six hours in this very trap, which lamed him for
+life. Once a keeper of Hintock woods set it on the track of a poacher,
+and afterwards, coming back that way, forgetful of what he had done,
+walked into it himself. The wound brought on lockjaw, of which he died.
+This event occurred during the thirties, and by the year 1840 the use
+of such implements was well-nigh discontinued in the neighborhood. But
+being made entirely of iron, they by no means disappeared, and in
+almost every village one could be found in some nook or corner as
+readily as this was found by Tim. It had, indeed, been a fearful
+amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads—especially those who had a dim
+sense of becoming renowned poachers when they reached their prime—to
+drag out this trap from its hiding, set it, and throw it with billets
+of wood, which were penetrated by the teeth to the depth of near an
+inch.
+
+As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the hinges and
+springs were still perfect, he shouldered it without more ado, and
+returned with his burden to his own garden, passing on through the
+hedge to the path immediately outside the boundary. Here, by the help
+of a stout stake, he set the trap, and laid it carefully behind a bush
+while he went forward to reconnoitre. As has been stated, nobody passed
+this way for days together sometimes; but there was just a possibility
+that some other pedestrian than the one in request might arrive, and it
+behooved Tim to be careful as to the identity of his victim.
+
+Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to the right, he
+reached a ridge whereon a large and thick holly grew. Beyond this for
+some distance the wood was more open, and the course which Fitzpiers
+must pursue to reach the point, if he came to-night, was visible a long
+way forward.
+
+For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody. Then there shaped
+itself a spot out of the dim mid-distance, between the masses of
+brushwood on either hand. And it enlarged, and Tim could hear the
+brushing of feet over the tufts of sour-grass. The airy gait revealed
+Fitzpiers even before his exact outline could be seen.
+
+Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side of the hill,
+till he was again at the head of his own garden. It was the work of a
+few moments to drag out the man-trap, very gently—that the plate might
+not be disturbed sufficiently to throw it—to a space between a pair of
+young oaks which, rooted in contiguity, grew apart upward, forming a
+V-shaped opening between; and, being backed up by bushes, left this as
+the only course for a foot-passenger. In it he laid the trap with the
+same gentleness of handling, locked the chain round one of the trees,
+and finally slid back the guard which was placed to keep the gin from
+accidentally catching the arms of him who set it, or, to use the local
+and better word, “toiled” it.
+
+Having completed these arrangements, Tim sprang through the adjoining
+hedge of his father’s garden, ran down the path, and softly entered the
+house.
+
+Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon as he had
+bolted the door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his boots at the foot of
+the stairs, and retired likewise, without lighting a candle. His object
+seemed to be to undress as soon as possible. Before, however, he had
+completed the operation, a long cry resounded without—penetrating, but
+indescribable.
+
+“What’s that?” said Suke, starting up in bed.
+
+“Sounds as if somebody had caught a hare in his gin.”
+
+“Oh no,” said she. “It was not a hare, ’twas louder. Hark!”
+
+“Do ’ee get to sleep,” said Tim. “How be you going to wake at half-past
+three else?”
+
+She lay down and was silent. Tim stealthily opened the window and
+listened. Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation of
+the various species of trees around the premises he could hear the
+twitching of a chain from the spot whereon he had set the man-trap. But
+further human sound there was none.
+
+Tim was puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not calculated upon
+a cry; but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to essay an answer, for
+Hintock was dead to him already. In half a dozen hours he would be out
+of its precincts for life, on his way to the antipodes. He closed the
+window and lay down.
+
+The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had been
+operating actively elsewhere. Awaiting in her father’s house the minute
+of her appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers deliberated on
+many things. Should she inform her father before going out that the
+estrangement of herself and Edgar was not so complete as he had
+imagined, and deemed desirable for her happiness? If she did so she
+must in some measure become the apologist of her husband, and she was
+not prepared to go so far.
+
+As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity. He certainly
+had changed. He had at his worst times always been gentle in his manner
+towards her. Could it be that she might make of him a true and worthy
+husband yet? She had married him; there was no getting over that; and
+ought she any longer to keep him at a distance? His suave deference to
+her lightest whim on the question of his comings and goings, when as
+her lawful husband he might show a little independence, was a trait in
+his character as unexpected as it was engaging. If she had been his
+empress, and he her thrall, he could not have exhibited a more
+sensitive care to avoid intruding upon her against her will.
+
+Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned to the
+marriage-service. Reading it slowly through, she became quite appalled
+at her recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered what awfully solemn
+promises she had made him at those chancel steps not so very long ago.
+
+She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person’s conscience
+might be bound by vows made without at the time a full recognition of
+their force. That particular sentence, beginning “Whom God hath joined
+together,” was a staggerer for a gentlewoman of strong devotional
+sentiment. She wondered whether God really did join them together.
+Before she had done deliberating the time of her engagement drew near,
+and she went out of the house almost at the moment that Tim Tangs
+retired to his own.
+
+The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as
+follows.
+
+Two hundred yards to the right of the upper end of Tangs’s garden
+Fitzpiers was still advancing, having now nearly reached the summit of
+the wood-clothed ridge, the path being the actual one which further on
+passed between the two young oaks. Thus far it was according to Tim’s
+conjecture. But about two hundred yards to the left, or rather less,
+was arising a condition which he had not divined, the emergence of
+Grace as aforesaid from the upper corner of her father’s garden, with
+the view of meeting Tim’s intended victim. Midway between husband and
+wife was the diabolical trap, silent, open, ready.
+
+Fitzpiers’s walk that night had been cheerful, for he was convinced
+that the slow and gentle method he had adopted was promising success.
+The very restraint that he was obliged to exercise upon himself, so as
+not to kill the delicate bud of returning confidence, fed his flame. He
+walked so much more rapidly than Grace that, if they continued
+advancing as they had begun, he would reach the trap a good half-minute
+before she could reach the same spot.
+
+But here a new circumstance came in; to escape the unpleasantness of
+being watched or listened to by lurkers—naturally curious by reason of
+their strained relations—they had arranged that their meeting for
+to-night should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above named. So soon,
+accordingly, as Fitzpiers reached the tree he stood still to await her.
+
+He had not paused under the prickly foliage more than two minutes when
+he thought he heard a scream from the other side of the ridge.
+Fitzpiers wondered what it could mean; but such wind as there was just
+now blew in an adverse direction, and his mood was light. He set down
+the origin of the sound to one of the superstitious freaks or
+frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts that still survived in
+Hintock from old-English times; and waited on where he stood till ten
+minutes had passed. Feeling then a little uneasy, his mind reverted to
+the scream; and he went forward over the summit and down the embowered
+incline, till he reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow
+opening between them.
+
+Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell. Stretching down his hand to
+ascertain the obstruction, it came in contact with a confused mass of
+silken drapery and iron-work that conveyed absolutely no explanatory
+idea to his mind at all. It was but the work of a moment to strike a
+match; and then he saw a sight which congealed his blood.
+
+The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part of a woman’s
+clothing—a patterned silk skirt—gripped with such violence that the
+iron teeth had passed through it, skewering its tissue in a score of
+places. He immediately recognized the skirt as that of one of his
+wife’s gowns—the gown that she had worn when she met him on the very
+last occasion.
+
+Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when
+examining the collection at Hintock House, and the conception instantly
+flashed through him that Grace had been caught, taken out mangled by
+some chance passer, and carried home, some of her clothes being left
+behind in the difficulty of getting her free. The shock of this
+conviction, striking into the very current of high hope, was so great
+that he cried out like one in corporal agony, and in his misery bowed
+himself down to the ground.
+
+Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had
+undergone since his sins against Grace first began, not any even
+approximated in intensity to this.
+
+“Oh, my own—my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven—it is too much, this!” he
+cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessories of her
+he deplored.
+
+The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to any
+one who might have been there to hear it; and one there was. Right and
+left of the narrow pass between the oaks were dense bushes; and now
+from behind these a female figure glided, whose appearance even in the
+gloom was, though graceful in outline, noticeably strange.
+
+She was in white up to the waist, and figured above. She was, in short,
+Grace, his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the gin
+retained.
+
+“Don’t be grieved about me—don’t, dear Edgar!” she exclaimed, rushing
+up and bending over him. “I am not hurt a bit! I was coming on to find
+you after I had released myself, but I heard footsteps; and I hid away,
+because I was without some of my clothing, and I did not know who the
+person might be.”
+
+Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less
+unpremeditated by him than it was irresistible by her, and would have
+been so by any woman not of Amazonian strength. He clasped his arms
+completely round, pressed her to his breast, and kissed her
+passionately.
+
+“You are not dead!—you are not hurt! Thank God—thank God!” he said,
+almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror of his
+apprehension. “Grace, my wife, my love, how is this—what has happened?”
+
+“I was coming on to you,” she said as distinctly as she could in the
+half-smothered state of her face against his. “I was trying to be as
+punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late I ran along
+the path very swiftly—fortunately for myself. Just when I had passed
+between these trees I felt something clutch at my dress from behind
+with a noise, and the next moment I was pulled backward by it, and fell
+to the ground. I screamed with terror, thinking it was a man lying down
+there to murder me, but the next moment I discovered it was iron, and
+that my clothes were caught in a trap. I pulled this way and that, but
+the thing would not let go, drag it as I would, and I did not know what
+to do. I did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as I wished nobody
+to know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no other plan
+than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a
+strange accident had happened to me. But when I had just freed myself
+by leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being sure it was
+you, I did not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I hid away.”
+
+“It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs would
+have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace.”
+
+“Or yours, if you had got here first,” said she, beginning to realize
+the whole ghastliness of the possibility. “Oh, Edgar, there has been an
+Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be thankful indeed!”
+
+He continued to press his face to hers. “You are mine—mine again now.”
+
+She gently owned that she supposed she was. “I heard what you said when
+you thought I was injured,” she went on, shyly, “and I know that a man
+who could suffer as you were suffering must have a tender regard for
+me. But how does this awful thing come here?”
+
+“I suppose it has something to do with poachers.” Fitzpiers was still
+so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to sit awhile,
+and it was not until Grace said, “If I could only get my skirt out
+nobody would know anything about it,” that he bestirred himself.
+
+By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of the
+trap, they pressed them down sufficiently to insert across the jaws a
+billet which they dragged from a faggot near at hand; and it was then
+possible to extract the silk mouthful from the monster’s bite, creased
+and pierced with many holes, but not torn. Fitzpiers assisted her to
+put it on again; and when her customary contours were thus restored
+they walked on together, Grace taking his arm, till he effected an
+improvement by clasping it round her waist.
+
+The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no
+further attempt at reserve. “I would ask you to come into the house,”
+she said, “but my meetings with you have been kept secret from my
+father, and I should like to prepare him.”
+
+“Never mind, dearest. I could not very well have accepted the
+invitation. I shall never live here again—as much for your sake as for
+mine. I have news to tell you on this very point, but my alarm had put
+it out of my head. I have bought a practice, or rather a partnership,
+in the Midlands, and I must go there in a week to take up permanent
+residence. My poor old great-aunt died about eight months ago, and left
+me enough to do this. I have taken a little furnished house for a time,
+till we can get one of our own.”
+
+He described the place, and the surroundings, and the view from the
+windows, and Grace became much interested. “But why are you not there
+now?” she said.
+
+“Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have your promise.
+Now, darling, you will accompany me there—will you not? To-night has
+settled that.”
+
+Grace’s tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay. They went on
+together.
+
+The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the reunion which that
+event had forced on, combined to render Grace oblivious of the
+direction of their desultory ramble, till she noticed they were in an
+encircled glade in the densest part of the wood, whereon the moon, that
+had imperceptibly added its rays to the scene, shone almost vertically.
+It was an exceptionally soft, balmy evening for the time of year, which
+was just that transient period in the May month when beech-trees have
+suddenly unfolded large limp young leaves of the softness of
+butterflies’ wings. Boughs bearing such leaves hung low around, and
+completely enclosed them, so that it was as if they were in a great
+green vase, which had moss for its bottom and leaf sides.
+
+The clouds having been packed in the west that evening so as to retain
+the departing glare a long while, the hour had seemed much earlier than
+it was. But suddenly the question of time occurred to her.
+
+“I must go back,” she said; and without further delay they set their
+faces towards Hintock. As they walked he examined his watch by the aid
+of the now strong moonlight.
+
+“By the gods, I think I have lost my train!” said Fitzpiers.
+
+“Dear me—whereabouts are we?” said she.
+
+“Two miles in the direction of Sherton.”
+
+“Then do you hasten on, Edgar. I am not in the least afraid. I
+recognize now the part of the wood we are in and I can find my way back
+quite easily. I’ll tell my father that we have made it up. I wish I had
+not kept our meetings so private, for it may vex him a little to know I
+have been seeing you. He is getting old and irritable, that was why I
+did not. Good-by.”
+
+“But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I cannot
+possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let me
+take care of you.”
+
+“But what will my father think has become of me? He does not know in
+the least where I am—he thinks I only went into the garden for a few
+minutes.”
+
+“He will surely guess—somebody has seen me for certain. I’ll go all the
+way back with you to-morrow.”
+
+“But that newly done-up place—the Earl of Wessex!”
+
+“If you are so very particular about the publicity I will stay at the
+Three Tuns.”
+
+“Oh no—it is not that I am particular—but I haven’t a brush or comb or
+anything!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, “I wonder
+where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I know
+her bide out like this! She surely said she was going into the garden
+to get some parsley.”
+
+Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but
+could find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the cottages
+of such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs’s because
+he knew the young people were to rise early to leave. In these
+inquiries one of the men’s wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact
+that she had heard a scream in the wood, though from which direction
+she could not say.
+
+This set Melbury’s fears on end. He told the men to light lanterns, and
+headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the last moment
+with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not be
+persuaded to leave behind, and the company being joined by the
+hollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house as they went along.
+
+They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lighted
+upon the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of fact without
+helping their conjectures; but Melbury’s indefinite alarm was greatly
+increased when, holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of
+the instrument some frayings from Grace’s clothing. No intelligence of
+any kind was gained till they met a woodman of Delborough, who said
+that he had seen a lady answering to the description her father gave of
+Grace, walking through the wood on a gentleman’s arm in the direction
+of Sherton.
+
+“Was he clutching her tight?” said Melbury.
+
+“Well—rather,” said the man.
+
+“Did she walk lame?”
+
+“Well, ’tis true her head hung over towards him a bit.”
+
+Creedle groaned tragically.
+
+Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this account
+with the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it all
+meant; but the sinister event of the trap made him follow on.
+Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting as they went,
+and in due course emerged upon the highway.
+
+Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by other
+strollers, though the gentleman’s supporting arm had disappeared from
+these later accounts. At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury
+informed his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag them
+farther at so late an hour, since he could go on alone and inquire if
+the woman who had been seen were really Grace. But they would not leave
+him alone in his anxiety, and trudged onward till the lamplight from
+the town began to illuminate their fronts. At the entrance to the High
+Street they got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with the new
+condition that the lady in the costume described had been going up the
+street alone.
+
+“Faith!—I believe she’s mesmerized, or walking in her sleep,” said
+Melbury.
+
+However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain;
+but they plodded along the street. Percombe, the hair-dresser, who had
+despoiled Marty of her tresses, was standing at his door, and they duly
+put inquiries to him.
+
+“Ah—how’s Little Hintock folk by now?” he said, before replying. “Never
+have I been over there since one winter night some three year ago—and
+then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in such a one-eyed
+place? Great Hintock is bad enough—hut Little Hintock—the bats and owls
+would drive me melancholy-mad! It took two days to raise my sperrits to
+their true pitch again after that night I went there. Mr. Melbury, sir,
+as a man’s that put by money, why not retire and live here, and see
+something of the world?”
+
+The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to the
+building that offered the best accommodation in Sherton—having been
+enlarged contemporaneously with the construction of the railway—namely,
+the Earl of Wessex Hotel.
+
+Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here. His alarm
+was lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he received a
+brief reply that such a lady was in the house.
+
+“Do you know if it is my daughter?” asked Melbury.
+
+The waiter did not.
+
+“Do you know the lady’s name?”
+
+Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been taken
+by brand-new people from a distance. They knew the gentleman very well
+by sight, and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his
+name.
+
+“Oh, the gentleman appears again now,” said Melbury to himself. “Well,
+I want to see the lady,” he declared.
+
+A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace
+appeared descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if she
+lived there, but in other respects rather guilty and frightened.
+
+“Why—what the name—” began her father. “I thought you went out to get
+parsley!”
+
+“Oh, yes—I did—but it is all right,” said Grace, in a flurried whisper.
+“I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is entirely owing to an
+accident, father.”
+
+“Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was two
+hundred mile off.”
+
+“Yes, so he is—I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred miles
+off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him. But he
+travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, and that’s how
+it is I am here. We were just thinking of sending a messenger to let
+you know.”
+
+Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this
+explanation.
+
+“You were caught in a man-trap?”
+
+“Yes; my dress was. That’s how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in his own
+sitting-room,” she went on. “He would not mind seeing you, I am sure.”
+
+“Oh, faith, I don’t want to see him! I have seen him too often a’ready.
+I’ll see him another time, perhaps, if ’tis to oblige ’ee.”
+
+“He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large
+partnership I speak of, as it is very promising.”
+
+“Oh, I am glad to hear it,” said Melbury, dryly.
+
+A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown
+clothes of Melbury’s companions appeared in the door-way.
+
+“Then bain’t you coming home with us?” he asked.
+
+“I—I think not,” said Grace, blushing.
+
+“H’m—very well—you are your own mistress,” he returned, in tones which
+seemed to assert otherwise. “Good-night;” and Melbury retreated towards
+the door.
+
+“Don’t be angry, father,” she said, following him a few steps. “I have
+done it for the best.”
+
+“I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this.
+However, good-night. I must get home along.”
+
+He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of
+strangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed him
+much. His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed to
+the task of investigation—some in their shirt sleeves, others in their
+leather aprons, and all much stained—just as they had come from their
+work of barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while
+Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, had
+added melancholy to gawkiness.
+
+“Now, neighbors,” said Melbury, on joining them, “as it is getting
+late, we’ll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell you
+that there has been some mistake—some arrangement entered into between
+Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn’t quite understand—an important
+practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it
+necessary for her to join him to-night—so she says. That’s all it
+was—and I’m sorry I dragged you out.”
+
+“Well,” said the hollow-turner, “here be we six mile from home, and
+night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name. I
+say, we’ll have a mossel and a drop o’ summat to strengthen our nerves
+afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat’s as dry as a kex. What
+d’ye say so’s?”
+
+They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the
+antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three
+Tuns was the only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down
+into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made
+themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs
+upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless as
+usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and
+down the street.
+
+“I’d gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out
+in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to
+get up at five o’clock to morrow,” said a bark-ripper; who, not working
+regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.
+
+“I don’t speak so warm as that,” said the hollow-turner, “but if ’tis
+right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and
+excite the neighbors, and then make fools of ’em like this, why, I
+haven’t stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year.”
+
+All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these
+enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed
+in with, “Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn’t she
+ha’ bode with her father, and been faithful?” Poor Creedle was thinking
+of his old employer.
+
+“But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony,” said
+Farmer Bawtree. “I knowed a man and wife—faith, I don’t mind owning, as
+there’s no strangers here, that the pair were my own relations—they’d
+be at it that hot one hour that you’d hear the poker and the tongs and
+the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house with the
+movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you’d hear ’em singing
+‘The Spotted Cow’ together as peaceable as two holy twins; yes—and very
+good voices they had, and would strike in like professional
+ballet-singers to one another’s support in the high notes.”
+
+“And I knowed a woman, and the husband o’ her went away for
+four-and-twenty year,” said the bark-ripper. “And one night he came
+home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down
+himself on the other side of the chimney-corner. ‘Well,’ says she,
+‘have ye got any news?’ ‘Don’t know as I have,’ says he; ‘have you?’
+‘No,’ says she, ‘except that my daughter by my second husband was
+married last month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.’
+‘Oh! Anything else?’ he says. ‘No,’ says she. And there they sat, one
+on each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors
+sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at
+all.”
+
+“Well, I don’t care who the man is,” said Creedle, “they required a
+good deal to talk about, and that’s true. It won’t be the same with
+these.”
+
+“No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholar
+too!”
+
+“What women do know nowadays!” observed the hollow-turner. “You can’t
+deceive ’em as you could in my time.”
+
+“What they knowed then was not small,” said John Upjohn. “Always a good
+deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is now,
+the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty side as
+she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you’ve noticed that she’s got
+a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?”
+
+“I can’t say I’ve noticed it particular much,” said the hollow-turner,
+blandly.
+
+“Well,” continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, “she has. All women under
+the sun be prettier one side than t’other. And, as I was saying, the
+pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending!
+I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun,
+uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always
+towards the hedge, and that dimple towards me. There was I, too simple
+to see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two years
+younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram;
+for that was in the third climate of our courtship. No; I don’t think
+the women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise.”
+
+“How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?” inquired a
+youth—the same who had assisted at Winterborne’s Christmas party.
+
+“Five—from the coolest to the hottest—leastwise there was five in
+mine.”
+
+“Can ye give us the chronicle of ’em, Mr. Upjohn?”
+
+“Yes—I could. I could certainly. But ’tis quite unnecessary. They’ll
+come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good.”
+
+“At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis’ess could
+lead you,” the hollow-turner remarked. “She’s got him quite tame. But
+how long ’twill last I can’t say. I happened to be setting a wire on
+the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other side of the
+hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor
+feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood. I should never
+have supposed it of such a girl.”
+
+Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared
+themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which
+was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to
+walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather shorter than
+the highway, though difficult except to those who knew the country
+well. This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing the
+church-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standing
+by the gate.
+
+“I think it was Marty South,” said the hollow-turner, parenthetically.
+
+“I think ’twas; ’a was always a lonely maid,” said Upjohn. And they
+passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more.
+
+It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the
+particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been
+accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles’s grave, and this was
+the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on which
+Grace had failed to keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the road
+just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont to
+join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that Grace had
+missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to Great Hintock,
+but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty continued her
+walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace. Yet her
+sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone,
+and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood there with
+her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her feet chilled
+by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed.
+
+She then heard the footsteps of Melbury’s men, who presently passed on
+their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could
+not help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she
+acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers
+then was.
+
+Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard,
+going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the unadorned
+stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary
+and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim figure,
+clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped
+as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and toil effaced by
+the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and looked almost like
+a being who had rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the
+loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away
+the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the previous
+week, and put her fresh ones in their place.
+
+“Now, my own, own love,” she whispered, “you are mine, and on’y mine;
+for she has forgot ’ee at last, although for her you died. But
+I—whenever I get up I’ll think of ’ee, and whenever I lie down I’ll
+think of ’ee. Whenever I plant the young larches I’ll think that none
+can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever I
+turn the cider-wring, I’ll say none could do it like you. If ever I
+forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!—But no, no, my love, I
+never can forget ’ee; for you was a _good_ man, and did good things!”
+
+
+
+
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy</title>
+
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Woodlanders</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Thomas Hardy</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April, 1996 [eBook #482]<br />
+[Most recently updated: February 4, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS ***</div>
+
+<h1>The Woodlanders</h1>
+
+<h2 class="no-break">by Thomas Hardy</h2>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap01">CHAPTER I.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap02">CHAPTER II.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap03">CHAPTER III.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap04">CHAPTER IV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap05">CHAPTER V.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap06">CHAPTER VI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap07">CHAPTER VII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap09">CHAPTER IX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap10">CHAPTER X.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap11">CHAPTER XI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap12">CHAPTER XII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap15">CHAPTER XV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap20">CHAPTER XX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap21">CHAPTER XXI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap25">CHAPTER XXV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap26">CHAPTER XXVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap27">CHAPTER XXVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap28">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap29">CHAPTER XXIX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap30">CHAPTER XXX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap31">CHAPTER XXXI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap32">CHAPTER XXXII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap33">CHAPTER XXXIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap34">CHAPTER XXXIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap35">CHAPTER XXXV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap36">CHAPTER XXXVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap37">CHAPTER XXXVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap38">CHAPTER XXXVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap39">CHAPTER XXXIX.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap40">CHAPTER XL.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap41">CHAPTER XLI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap42">CHAPTER XLII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap43">CHAPTER XLIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap44">CHAPTER XLIV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap45">CHAPTER XLV.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap46">CHAPTER XLVI.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap47">CHAPTER XLVII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#chap48">CHAPTER XLVIII.</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap01"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the
+forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to the
+south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half of his
+journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with
+apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearing, as the case may be,
+make the wayside hedges ragged by their drip and shade, stretching over the
+road with easeful horizontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an
+adequate support for their limbs. At one place, where a hill is crossed, the
+largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head of
+thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting. The spot is lonely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is
+not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more
+emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might
+be probably accounts for this. To step, for instance, at the place under
+notice, from the hedge of the plantation into the adjoining pale thoroughfare,
+and pause amid its emptiness for a moment, was to exchange by the act of a
+single stride the simple absence of human companionship for an incubus of the
+forlorn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter&rsquo;s day, there
+stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the aforesaid manner.
+Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no means a
+&ldquo;chosen vessel&rdquo; for impressions, was temporarily influenced by some
+such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before he had emerged upon the
+highway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that he did
+not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a while, that though
+there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan
+procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he
+was mainly puzzled about the way. The dead men&rsquo;s work that had been
+expended in climbing that hill, the blistered soles that had trodden it, and
+the tears that had wetted it, were not his concern; for fate had given him no
+time for any but practical things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his
+walking-stick. A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony of his
+clothes. It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent ground for such
+complacence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the magician in character, if
+not to the ordinary observer, the expression enthroned there was absolute
+submission to and belief in a little assortment of forms and habitudes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or seemed
+likely to appear that night. But presently a slight noise of laboring wheels
+and the steady dig of a horse&rsquo;s shoe-tips became audible; and there
+loomed in the notch of the hill and plantation that the road formed here at the
+summit a carrier&rsquo;s van drawn by a single horse. When it got nearer, he
+said, with some relief to himself, &ldquo;&rsquo;Tis Mrs.
+Dollery&rsquo;s&mdash;this will help me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women. He held up his stick at
+its approach, and the woman who was driving drew rein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last
+half-hour, Mrs. Dollery,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But though I&rsquo;ve been to
+Great Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about the
+small village. You can help me, I dare say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She assured him that she could&mdash;that as she went to Great Hintock her van
+passed near it&mdash;that it was only up the lane that branched out of the lane
+into which she was about to turn&mdash;just ahead. &ldquo;Though,&rdquo;
+continued Mrs. Dollery, &ldquo;&rsquo;tis such a little small place that, as a
+town gentleman, you&rsquo;d need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye
+don&rsquo;t know where &rsquo;tis. Bedad! I wouldn&rsquo;t live there if
+they&rsquo;d pay me to. Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they were ever and
+anon brushed over by the horse&rsquo;s tail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable attachment of
+the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew it well. The old
+horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of heather, whose leg-joints,
+shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by harness and drudgery from
+colthood&mdash;though if all had their rights, he ought, symmetrical in
+outline, to have been picking the herbage of some Eastern plain instead of
+tugging here&mdash;had trodden this road almost daily for twenty years. Even
+his subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the harness being too
+short, his tail was not drawn through the crupper, so that the breeching
+slipped awkwardly to one side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or
+eight miles of ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas&mdash;the market-town
+to which he journeyed&mdash;as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it
+by a Dumpy level.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion of the wheels,
+and at a point in it over the driver&rsquo;s head was a hook to which the reins
+were hitched at times, when they formed a catenary curve from the horse&rsquo;s
+shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain, whose only known
+purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. Dollery, having to hop up and down many
+times in the service of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather,
+short leggings under her gown for modesty&rsquo;s sake, and instead of a bonnet
+a felt hat tied down with a handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which
+she was frequently subject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which
+she cleaned with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting.
+Looking at the van from the back, the spectator could thus see through its
+interior a square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw without, but
+intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, as they rumbled
+onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in animated private converse,
+remained in happy unconsciousness that their mannerisms and facial
+peculiarities were sharply defined to the public eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the happiest, of
+the week for them. Snugly ensconced under the tilt, they could forget the
+sorrows of the world without, and survey life and recapitulate the incidents of
+the day with placid smiles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and while the
+new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a confidential chat about
+him as about other people, which the noise of the van rendered inaudible to
+himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis Barber Percombe&mdash;he that&rsquo;s got the waxen woman in
+his window at the top of Abbey Street,&rdquo; said one. &ldquo;What business
+can bring him from his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman
+hair-cutter, but a master-barber that&rsquo;s left off his pole because
+&rsquo;tis not genteel!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had nodded and
+spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify the curiosity which he had
+aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas which had animated the inside of
+the van before his arrival was checked thenceforward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little lane, whence,
+as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be discerned in the dusk, about
+half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it
+were, snipped out of the woodland. From this self-contained place rose in
+stealthy silence tall stems of smoke, which the eye of imagination could trace
+downward to their root on quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and
+flitches. It was one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world
+where may usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than
+meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in
+inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in
+other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are enacted in
+the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and closely knit
+interdependence of the lives therein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber&rsquo;s search. The
+coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but the position of
+the sequestered little world could still be distinguished by a few faint
+lights, winking more or less ineffectually through the leafless boughs, and the
+undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form of balls of feathers, at roost
+among them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane, at the corner
+of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery&rsquo;s van going on to the larger
+village, whose superiority to the despised smaller one as an exemplar of the
+world&rsquo;s movements was not particularly apparent in its means of approach.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in league with
+the devil, lives in the place you be going to&mdash;not because there&rsquo;s
+anybody for&rsquo;n to cure there, but because &rsquo;tis the middle of his
+district.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at parting, as a
+last attempt to get at his errand that way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian plunged towards
+the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the dead leaves which nearly
+buried the road or street of the hamlet. As very few people except themselves
+passed this way after dark, a majority of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed
+window-curtains unnecessary; and on this account Mr. Percombe made it his
+business to stop opposite the casements of each cottage that he came to, with a
+demeanor which showed that he was endeavoring to conjecture, from the persons
+and things he observed within, the whereabouts of somebody or other who resided
+here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses, whose size,
+antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that notwithstanding their
+remoteness they must formerly have been, if they were not still, inhabited by
+people of a certain social standing, being neglected by him entirely. Smells of
+pomace, and the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back
+quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the
+inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves
+underfoot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The next, which stood
+opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance, the flickering
+brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and making a luminous mist of
+the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen through the window, caused him to
+draw up with a terminative air and watch. The house was rather large for a
+cottage, and the door, which opened immediately into the living-room, stood
+ajar, so that a ribbon of light fell through the opening into the dark
+atmosphere without. Every now and then a moth, decrepit from the late season,
+would flit for a moment across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the
+night.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap02"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<p>
+In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl seated
+on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire, which was
+ample and of wood. With a bill-hook in one hand and a leather glove, much too
+large for her, on the other, she was making spars, such as are used by
+thatchers, with great rapidity. She wore a leather apron for this purpose,
+which was also much too large for her figure. On her left hand lay a bundle of
+the straight, smooth sticks called spar-gads&mdash;the raw material of her
+manufacture; on her right, a heap of chips and ends&mdash;the refuse&mdash;with
+which the fire was maintained; in front, a pile of the finished articles. To
+produce them she took up each gad, looked critically at it from end to end, cut
+it to length, split it into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with
+dexterous blows, which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling
+that of a bayonet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass candlestick stood on
+a little round table, curiously formed of an old coffin-stool, with a deal top
+nailed on, the white surface of the latter contrasting oddly with the black
+carved oak of the substructure. The social position of the household in the
+past was almost as definitively shown by the presence of this article as that
+of an esquire or nobleman by his old helmets or shields. It had been customary
+for every well-to-do villager, whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in
+any way more permanent than that of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these
+stools for the use of his own dead; but for the last generation or two a
+feeling of cui bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and the stools
+were frequently made use of in the manner described.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined the palm of
+her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, and showed little
+hardness or roughness about it. The palm was red and blistering, as if this
+present occupation were not frequent enough with her to subdue it to what it
+worked in. As with so many right hands born to manual labor, there was nothing
+in its fundamental shape to bear out the physiological conventionalism that
+gradations of birth, gentle or mean, show themselves primarily in the form of
+this member. Nothing but a cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl
+should handle the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might
+have skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they only been set to
+do it in good time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a life of
+solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves upon a countenance they
+seem to wear away its individuality; but in the still water of privacy every
+tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in visible luxuriance, to be
+interpreted as readily as a child&rsquo;s look by an intruder. In years she was
+no more than nineteen or twenty, but the necessity of taking thought at a too
+early period of life had forced the provisional curves of her childhood&rsquo;s
+face to a premature finality. Thus she had but little pretension to beauty,
+save in one prominent particular&mdash;her hair. Its abundance made it almost
+unmanageable; its color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight,
+brown, but careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that
+its true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now before us
+the new-comer&rsquo;s eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his right hand
+mechanically played over something sticking up from his
+waistcoat-pocket&mdash;the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made them
+feebly responsive to the light within. In her present beholder&rsquo;s mind the
+scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a post-Raffaelite
+picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl&rsquo;s hair alone, as the focus
+of observation, was depicted with intensity and distinctness, and her face,
+shoulders, hands, and figure in general, being a blurred mass of unimportant
+detail lost in haze and obscurity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered. The young woman
+turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and exclaiming,
+&ldquo;Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!&rdquo; quite lost her color for
+a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He replied, &ldquo;You should shut your door&mdash;then you&rsquo;d hear folk
+open it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she said; &ldquo;the chimney smokes so. Mr.
+Percombe, you look as unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge.
+Surely you have not come out here on my account&mdash;for&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;to have your answer about this.&rdquo; He touched her head
+with his cane, and she winced. &ldquo;Do you agree?&rdquo; he continued.
+&ldquo;It is necessary that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going
+away, and it takes time to make up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t press me&mdash;it worries me. I was in hopes you had thought
+no more of it. I can <i>not</i> part with it&mdash;so there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, look here, Marty,&rdquo; said the barber, sitting down on the
+coffin-stool table. &ldquo;How much do you get for making these spars?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hush&mdash;father&rsquo;s up-stairs awake, and he don&rsquo;t know that
+I am doing his work.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, now tell me,&rdquo; said the man, more softly. &ldquo;How much do
+you get?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Eighteenpence a thousand,&rdquo; she said, reluctantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who are you making them for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And how many can you make in a day?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a day and half the night, three bundles&mdash;that&rsquo;s a thousand
+and a half.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two and threepence.&rdquo; The barber paused. &ldquo;Well, look
+here,&rdquo; he continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which
+calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary
+magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present purse and
+the woman&rsquo;s love of comeliness, &ldquo;here&rsquo;s a sovereign&mdash;a
+gold sovereign, almost new.&rdquo; He held it out between his finger and thumb.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s as much as you&rsquo;d earn in a week and a half at that
+rough man&rsquo;s work, and it&rsquo;s yours for just letting me snip off what
+you&rsquo;ve got too much of.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl&rsquo;s bosom moved a very little. &ldquo;Why can&rsquo;t the lady
+send to some other girl who don&rsquo;t value her hair&mdash;not to me?&rdquo;
+she exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and
+&rsquo;tis a shade you can&rsquo;t match by dyeing. But you are not going to
+refuse me now I&rsquo;ve come all the way from Sherton o&rsquo; purpose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I say I won&rsquo;t sell it&mdash;to you or anybody.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now listen,&rdquo; and he drew up a little closer beside her. &ldquo;The
+lady is very rich, and won&rsquo;t be particular to a few shillings; so I will
+advance to this on my own responsibility&mdash;I&rsquo;ll make the one
+sovereign two, rather than go back empty-handed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, no!&rdquo; she cried, beginning to be much agitated. &ldquo;You
+are a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe. You go on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus in the
+penny book. But I don&rsquo;t want your money, and won&rsquo;t agree. Why did
+you come? I said when you got me into your shop and urged me so much, that I
+didn&rsquo;t mean to sell my hair!&rdquo; The speaker was hot and stern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Marty, now hearken. The lady that wants it wants it badly. And, between
+you and me, you&rsquo;d better let her have it. &rsquo;Twill be bad for you if
+you don&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bad for me? Who is she, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not at liberty to tell you. And as she is going abroad soon it
+makes no difference who she is at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She wants it to go abroad wi&rsquo;?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Percombe assented by a nod. The girl regarded him reflectively. &ldquo;Barber
+Percombe,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I know who &rsquo;tis. &rsquo;Tis she at the
+House&mdash;Mrs. Charmond!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s my secret. However, if you agree to let me have it,
+I&rsquo;ll tell you in confidence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth.
+It is Mrs. Charmond.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The barber dropped his voice. &ldquo;Well&mdash;it is. You sat in front of her
+in church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair matched her own.
+Ever since then she&rsquo;s been hankering for it, and at last decided to get
+it. As she won&rsquo;t wear it till she goes off abroad, she knows nobody will
+recognize the change. I&rsquo;m commissioned to get it for her, and then it is
+to be made up. I shouldn&rsquo;t have vamped all these miles for any less
+important employer. Now, mind&mdash;&rsquo;tis as much as my business with her
+is worth if it should be known that I&rsquo;ve let out her name; but honor
+between us two, Marty, and you&rsquo;ll say nothing that would injure
+me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t wish to tell upon her,&rdquo; said Marty, coolly.
+&ldquo;But my hair is my own, and I&rsquo;m going to keep it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, that&rsquo;s not fair, after what I&rsquo;ve told you,&rdquo; said
+the nettled barber. &ldquo;You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and
+in one of her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn&rsquo;t like to turn
+out, it would be as well to oblige her. I say that as a friend. But I
+won&rsquo;t press you to make up your mind to-night. You&rsquo;ll be coming to
+market to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call then. If you think it over
+you&rsquo;ll be inclined to bring what I want, I know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve nothing more to say,&rdquo; she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her further by
+speech. &ldquo;As you are a trusty young woman,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see
+how handsome they are. Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the
+sovereigns.&rdquo; He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small mantle
+looking-glass. &ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll bring it, for your sake and mine. I
+should have thought she could have suited herself elsewhere; but as it&rsquo;s
+her fancy it must be indulged if possible. If you cut it off yourself, mind how
+you do it so as to keep all the locks one way.&rdquo; He showed her how this
+was to be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I sha&rsquo;nt,&rdquo; she replied, with laconic indifference.
+&ldquo;I value my looks too much to spoil &rsquo;em. She wants my hair to get
+another lover with; though if stories are true she&rsquo;s broke the heart of
+many a noble gentleman already.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord, it&rsquo;s wonderful how you guess things, Marty,&rdquo; said the
+barber. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve had it from them that know that there certainly is
+some foreign gentleman in her eye. However, mind what I ask.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s not going to get him through me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his cane on the
+coffin-stool, and looked her in the face. &ldquo;Marty South,&rdquo; he said,
+with deliberate emphasis, &ldquo;<i>you&rsquo;ve got a lover yourself</i>, and
+that&rsquo;s why you won&rsquo;t let it go!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices to heighten
+beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, took up the hook with the
+other, and sat down doggedly to her work without turning her face to him again.
+He regarded her head for a moment, went to the door, and with one look back at
+her, departed on his way homeward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying down the
+bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room, where she opened a
+door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed that the grain of the wood
+was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing. At the top she gently approached a
+bedroom, and without entering, said, &ldquo;Father, do you want
+anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, &ldquo;I should be all
+right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The tree again&mdash;always the tree! Oh, father, don&rsquo;t worry so
+about that. You know it can do you no harm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A Sherton man called&mdash;nothing to trouble about,&rdquo; she said,
+soothingly. &ldquo;Father,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;can Mrs. Charmond turn us
+out of our house if she&rsquo;s minded to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Turn us out? No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned out
+of my body. &rsquo;Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne&rsquo;s. But when my
+life drops &rsquo;twill be hers&mdash;not till then.&rdquo; His words on this
+subject so far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his
+moaning strain: &ldquo;And the tree will do it&mdash;that tree will soon be the
+death of me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?&rdquo; She refrained from
+further speech, and descended to the ground-floor again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thank Heaven, then,&rdquo; she said to herself, &ldquo;what belongs to
+me I keep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap03"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only remained
+two in the darkness. One of these came from a residence on the hill-side, of
+which there is nothing to say at present; the other shone from the window of
+Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect was produced here, however, by
+her rising when the clock struck ten and hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The
+door it was necessary to keep ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the
+smoke; but she obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by
+hanging a cloth over that also. She was one of those people who, if they have
+to work harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a secret as
+far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of wood-splintering which came
+from within, no wayfarer would have perceived that here the cottager did not
+sleep as elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eleven, twelve, one o&rsquo;clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, and
+the pile of chips and ends more bulky. Even the light on the hill had now been
+extinguished; but still she worked on. When the temperature of the night
+without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she opened a large blue
+umbrella to ward off the draught from the door. The two sovereigns confronted
+her from the looking-glass in such a manner as to suggest a pair of jaundiced
+eyes on the watch for an opportunity. Whenever she sighed for weariness she
+lifted her gaze towards them, but withdrew it quickly, stroking her tresses
+with her fingers for a moment, as if to assure herself that they were still
+secure. When the clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars she had
+last made in a bundle resembling those that lay against the wall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the door. The night
+in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the very brink of an
+absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed in by her Teuton
+forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze, and here there was no
+street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly transition between the inner glare and
+the outer dark. A lingering wind brought to her ear the creaking sound of two
+over-crowded branches in the neighboring wood which were rubbing each other
+into wounds, and other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the
+screech of owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon
+ill-balanced on its roosting-bough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see well enough
+for her purpose. Taking a bundle of spars under each arm, and guided by the
+serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, she went some hundred yards or more
+down the lane till she reached a long open shed, carpeted around with the dead
+leaves that lay about everywhere. Night, that strange personality, which within
+walls brings ominous introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open
+sky banishes such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired
+Marty South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars on
+the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro till her
+whole manufactured stock were deposited here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business hereabout, Mr.
+George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware merchant for whom
+Marty&rsquo;s father did work of this sort by the piece. It formed one of the
+many rambling out-houses which surrounded his dwelling, an equally irregular
+block of building, whose immense chimneys could just be discerned even now. The
+four huge wagons under the shed were built on those ancient lines whose
+proportions have been ousted by modern patterns, their shapes bulging and
+curving at the base and ends like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which
+venerable hulks, indeed, these vehicles evidenced a constructed spirit
+curiously in harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles,
+another with ash poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had placed her
+thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment which
+follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the doing, when she heard a
+woman&rsquo;s voice on the other side of the hedge say, anxiously,
+&ldquo;George!&rdquo; In a moment the name was repeated, with &ldquo;Do come
+indoors! What are you doing there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she saw enter
+the latter from the timber-merchant&rsquo;s back door an elderly woman
+sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from which cast a moving
+thorn-pattern of shade on Marty&rsquo;s face. Its rays soon fell upon a man
+whose clothes were roughly thrown on, standing in advance of the speaker. He
+was a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous mouth and a face
+cleanly shaven; and he walked along the path with his eyes bent on the ground.
+In the pair Marty South recognized her employer Melbury and his wife. She was
+the second Mrs. Melbury, the first having died shortly after the birth of the
+timber-merchant&rsquo;s only child.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis no use to stay in bed,&rdquo; he said, as soon as she came up
+to where he was pacing restlessly about. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t sleep&mdash;I
+keep thinking of things, and worrying about the girl, till I&rsquo;m quite in a
+fever of anxiety.&rdquo; He went on to say that he could not think why
+&ldquo;she (Marty knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not answer his
+letter. She must be ill&mdash;she must, certainly,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no. &rsquo;Tis all right, George,&rdquo; said his wife; and she
+assured him that such things always did appear so gloomy in the night-time, if
+people allowed their minds to run on them; that when morning came it was seen
+that such fears were nothing but shadows. &ldquo;Grace is as well as you or
+I,&rdquo; she declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he persisted that she did not see all&mdash;that she did not see as much as
+he. His daughter&rsquo;s not writing was only one part of his worry. On account
+of her he was anxious concerning money affairs, which he would never alarm his
+mind about otherwise. The reason he gave was that, as she had nobody to depend
+upon for a provision but himself, he wished her, when he was gone, to be
+securely out of risk of poverty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure to marry well, and that
+hence a hundred pounds more or less from him would not make much difference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, naturally thought; but
+there she was wrong, and in that lay the source of his trouble. &ldquo;I have a
+plan in my head about her,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;and according to my plan she
+won&rsquo;t marry a rich man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A plan for her not to marry well?&rdquo; said his wife, surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, in one sense it is that,&rdquo; replied Melbury. &ldquo;It is a
+plan for her to marry a particular person, and as he has not so much money as
+she might expect, it might be called as you call it. I may not be able to carry
+it out; and even if I do, it may not be a good thing for her. I want her to
+marry Giles Winterborne.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion repeated the name. &ldquo;Well, it is all right,&rdquo; she said,
+presently. &ldquo;He adores the very ground she walks on; only he&rsquo;s
+close, and won&rsquo;t show it much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well enough. Winterborne had
+been interested in his daughter for years; that was what had led him into the
+notion of their union. And he knew that she used to have no objection to him.
+But it was not any difficulty about that which embarrassed him. It was that,
+since he had educated her so well, and so long, and so far above the level of
+daughters thereabout, it was <i>wasting her</i> to give her to a man of no
+higher standing than the young man in question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I have been thinking,&rdquo; said Mrs. Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, Lucy, now you&rsquo;ve hit it,&rdquo; answered the
+timber-merchant, with feeling. &ldquo;There lies my trouble. I vowed to let her
+marry him, and to make her as valuable as I could to him by schooling her as
+many years and as thoroughly as possible. I mean to keep my vow. I made it
+because I did his father a terrible wrong; and it was a weight on my conscience
+ever since that time till this scheme of making amends occurred to me through
+seeing that Giles liked her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Wronged his father?&rdquo; asked Mrs. Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, grievously wronged him,&rdquo; said her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t think of it to-night,&rdquo; she urged. &ldquo;Come
+indoors.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, the air cools my head. I shall not stay long.&rdquo; He was
+silent a while; then he told her, as nearly as Marty could gather, that his
+first wife, his daughter Grace&rsquo;s mother, was first the sweetheart of
+Winterborne&rsquo;s father, who loved her tenderly, till he, the speaker, won
+her away from him by a trick, because he wanted to marry her himself. He sadly
+went on to say that the other man&rsquo;s happiness was ruined by it; that
+though he married Winterborne&rsquo;s mother, it was but a half-hearted
+business with him. Melbury added that he was afterwards very miserable at what
+he had done; but that as time went on, and the children grew up, and seemed to
+be attached to each other, he determined to do all he could to right the wrong
+by letting his daughter marry the lad; not only that, but to give her the best
+education he could afford, so as to make the gift as valuable a one as it lay
+in his power to bestow. &ldquo;I still mean to do it,&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then do,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But all these things trouble me,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;for I feel I am
+sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and often come down here
+and look at this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Look at what?&rdquo; asked his wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, and removed a tile
+which lay in the garden-path. &ldquo;&rsquo;Tis the track of her shoe that she
+made when she ran down here the day before she went away all those months ago.
+I covered it up when she was gone; and when I come here and look at it, I ask
+myself again, why should she be sacrificed to a poor man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is not altogether a sacrifice,&rdquo; said the woman. &ldquo;He is in
+love with her, and he&rsquo;s honest and upright. If she encourages him, what
+can you wish for more?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish for nothing definite. But there&rsquo;s a lot of things possible
+for her. Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined young lady, I hear, to go
+abroad with her&mdash;as companion or something of the kind. She&rsquo;d jump
+at Grace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all uncertain. Better stick to what&rsquo;s sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True, true,&rdquo; said Melbury; &ldquo;and I hope it will be for the
+best. Yes, let me get &rsquo;em married up as soon as I can, so as to have it
+over and done with.&rdquo; He continued looking at the imprint, while he added,
+&ldquo;Suppose she should be dying, and never make a track on this path any
+more?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;ll write soon, depend upon&rsquo;t. Come, &rsquo;tis wrong to
+stay here and brood so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He admitted it, but said he could not help it. &ldquo;Whether she write or no,
+I shall fetch her in a few days.&rdquo; And thus speaking, he covered the
+track, and preceded his wife indoors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury, perhaps, was an unlucky man in having within him the sentiment which
+could indulge in this foolish fondness about the imprint of a daughter&rsquo;s
+footstep. Nature does not carry on her government with a view to such feelings,
+and when advancing years render the open hearts of those who possess them less
+dexterous than formerly in shutting against the blast, they must suffer
+&ldquo;buffeting at will by rain and storm&rdquo; no less than Little
+Celandines.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s, was the centre of
+Marty&rsquo;s consciousness, and it was in relation to this that the matter
+struck her as she slowly withdrew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That, then, is the secret of it all,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And Giles
+Winterborne is not for me, and the less I think of him the better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She returned to her cottage. The sovereigns were staring at her from the
+looking-glass as she had left them. With a preoccupied countenance, and with
+tears in her eyes, she got a pair of scissors, and began mercilessly cutting
+off the long locks of her hair, arranging and tying them with their points all
+one way, as the barber had directed. Upon the pale scrubbed deal of the
+coffin-stool table they stretched like waving and ropy weeds over the washed
+gravel-bed of a clear stream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She would not turn again to the little looking-glass, out of humanity to
+herself, knowing what a deflowered visage would look back at her, and almost
+break her heart; she dreaded it as much as did her own ancestral goddess Sif
+the reflection in the pool after the rape of her locks by Loke the malicious.
+She steadily stuck to business, wrapped the hair in a parcel, and sealed it up,
+after which she raked out the fire and went to bed, having first set up an
+alarum made of a candle and piece of thread, with a stone attached.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night. Having tossed till about five
+o&rsquo;clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their long holes in the
+thatch above her sloping ceiling to their orifice at the eaves; whereupon she
+also arose, and descended to the ground-floor again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those automatic
+initiatory acts and touches which represent among housewives the installation
+of another day. While thus engaged she heard the rumbling of Mr.
+Melbury&rsquo;s wagons, and knew that there, too, the day&rsquo;s toil had
+begun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to blaze up
+cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden prominence as a
+shadow. At this a step approached the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are folk astir here yet?&rdquo; inquired a voice she knew well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Mr. Winterborne,&rdquo; said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet,
+which completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors. &ldquo;Come in!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man not
+particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of
+affairs. There was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his mouth. He
+carried a horn lantern which hung upon a swivel, and wheeling as it dangled
+marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of the walls.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they did not
+expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well. Mr. Melbury would
+give him another week, and they would go their journey with a short load that
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are done,&rdquo; said Marty, &ldquo;and lying in the
+cart-house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Done!&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;Your father has not been too ill to
+work after all, then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made some evasive reply. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll show you where they be, if you
+are going down,&rdquo; she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in the top of
+the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where they appeared of giant
+size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had no remarks to make to each
+other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything could be more isolated or more
+self-contained than the lives of these two walking here in the lonely antelucan
+hour, when gray shades, material and mental, are so very gray. And yet, looked
+at in a certain way, their lonely courses formed no detached design at all, but
+were part of the pattern in the great web of human doings then weaving in both
+hemispheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars. Winterborne regarded them
+silently, then looked at her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, Marty, I believe&mdash;&rdquo; he said, and shook his head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That you&rsquo;ve done the work yourself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?&rdquo; she
+pleaded, by way of answer. &ldquo;Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury may refuse my
+work if he knows it is mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how could you learn to do it? &rsquo;Tis a trade.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Trade!&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d be bound to learn it in two
+hours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, you wouldn&rsquo;t, Mrs. Marty.&rdquo; Winterborne held down his
+lantern, and examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay.
+&ldquo;Marty,&rdquo; he said, with dry admiration, &ldquo;your father with his
+forty years of practice never made a spar better than that. They are too good
+for the thatching of houses&mdash;they are good enough for the furniture. But I
+won&rsquo;t tell. Let me look at your hands&mdash;your poor hands!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and when she seemed reluctant
+to show her hands, he took hold of one and examined it as if it were his own.
+Her fingers were blistered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll get harder in time,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;For if father
+continues ill, I shall have to go on wi&rsquo; it. Now I&rsquo;ll help put
+&rsquo;em up in wagon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, lifted her as she was about
+to stoop over the bundles, placed her behind him, and began throwing up the
+bundles himself. &ldquo;Rather than you should do it I will,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;But the men will be here directly. Why, Marty!&mdash;whatever has
+happened to your head? Lord, it has shrunk to nothing&mdash;it looks an apple
+upon a gate-post!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heart swelled, and she could not speak. At length she managed to groan,
+looking on the ground, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve made myself ugly&mdash;and
+hateful&mdash;that&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;ve done!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ve only cut your
+hair&mdash;I see now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why must you needs say that about apples and gate-posts?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; She ran off into the gloom of the sluggish dawn. He did
+not attempt to follow her. When she reached her father&rsquo;s door she stood
+on the step and looked back. Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s men had arrived, and were
+loading up the spars, and their lanterns appeared from the distance at which
+she stood to have wan circles round them, like eyes weary with watching. She
+observed them for a few seconds as they set about harnessing the horses, and
+then went indoors.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and presently the
+bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like a dead-born child.
+The villagers everywhere had already bestirred themselves, rising at this time
+of the year at the far less dreary hour of absolute darkness. It had been above
+an hour earlier, before a single bird had untucked his head, that twenty lights
+were struck in as many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty
+pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast the weather for the day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that had been
+eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that had been sucking the
+blood of the rabbits, discerning that their human neighbors were on the move,
+discreetly withdrew from publicity, and were seen and heard no more that day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s homestead, of which the
+wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection. It formed three sides of an open
+quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the largest and central
+one being the dwelling itself. The fourth side of the quadrangle was the public
+road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified aspect; which,
+taken with the fact that there were the remains of other such buildings
+thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had at some time or other been of
+greater importance than now, as its old name of Hintock St. Osmond also
+testified. The house was of no marked antiquity, yet of well-advanced age;
+older than a stale novelty, but no canonized antique; faded, not hoary; looking
+at you from the still distinct middle-distance of the early Georgian time, and
+awakening on that account the instincts of reminiscence more decidedly than the
+remoter and far grander memorials which have to speak from the misty reaches of
+mediaevalism. The faces, dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of the
+great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to gaze from
+those rectangular windows, and had stood under that key-stoned doorway, could
+be divined and measured by homely standards of to-day. It was a house in whose
+reverberations queer old personal tales were yet audible if properly listened
+for; and not, as with those of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the
+possibility of echo.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there was a porch and
+entrance that way. But the principal house-door opened on the square yard or
+quadrangle towards the road, formerly a regular carriage entrance, though the
+middle of the area was now made use of for stacking timber, fagots, bundles,
+and other products of the wood. It was divided from the lane by a lichen-coated
+wall, in which hung a pair of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpendicular,
+with a round white ball on the top of each.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed erection, now used
+for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and copse-ware manufacture in general.
+Opposite were the wagon-sheds where Marty had deposited her spars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Winterborne had remained after the girl&rsquo;s abrupt departure, to see
+that the wagon-loads were properly made up. Winterborne was connected with the
+Melbury family in various ways. In addition to the sentimental relationship
+which arose from his father having been the first Mrs. Melbury&rsquo;s lover,
+Winterborne&rsquo;s aunt had married and emigrated with the brother of the
+timber-merchant many years before&mdash;an alliance that was sufficient to
+place Winterborne, though the poorer, on a footing of social intimacy with the
+Melburys. As in most villages so secluded as this, intermarriages were of
+Hapsburgian frequency among the inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses
+in Little Hintock unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between Melbury and the
+younger man&mdash;a partnership based upon an unwritten code, by which each
+acted in the way he thought fair towards the other, on a give-and-take
+principle. Melbury, with his timber and copse-ware business, found that the
+weight of his labor came in winter and spring. Winterborne was in the apple and
+cider trade, and his requirements in cartage and other work came in the autumn
+of each year. Hence horses, wagons, and in some degree men, were handed over to
+him when the apples began to fall; he, in return, lending his assistance to
+Melbury in the busiest wood-cutting season, as now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him to remain till
+Mr. Melbury had seen him. Winterborne thereupon crossed over to the spar-house
+where two or three men were already at work, two of them being travelling
+spar-makers from White-hart Lane, who, when this kind of work began, made their
+appearance regularly, and when it was over disappeared in silence till the
+season came again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze of gad-cuds
+made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with that of the day as yet.
+In the hollow shades of the roof could be seen dangling etiolated arms of ivy
+which had crept through the joints of the tiles and were groping in vain for
+some support, their leaves being dwarfed and sickly for want of sunlight;
+others were pushing in with such force at the eaves as to lift from their
+supports the shelves that were fixed there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John Upjohn,
+engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by; old Timothy Tangs and
+young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers, at work in Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s pit
+outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the cider-house, and Robert Creedle, an old
+man who worked for Winterborne, and stood warming his hands; these latter being
+enticed in by the ruddy blaze, though they had no particular business there.
+None of them call for any remark except, perhaps, Creedle. To have completely
+described him it would have been necessary to write a military memoir, for he
+wore under his smock-frock a cast-off soldier&rsquo;s jacket that had seen hot
+service, its collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a hunting
+memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by chance; also
+chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife had been given him
+by a weather-beaten sailor. But Creedle carried about with him on his
+uneventful rounds these silent testimonies of war, sport, and adventure, and
+thought nothing of their associations or their stories.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the secondary
+intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on without requiring the
+sovereign attention of the head, the minds of its professors wandered
+considerably from the objects before them; hence the tales, chronicles, and
+ramifications of family history which were recounted here were of a very
+exhaustive kind, and sometimes so interminable as to defy description.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back again outside
+the door; and the conversation interrupted by his momentary presence flowed
+anew, reaching his ears as an accompaniment to the regular dripping of the fog
+from the plantation boughs around.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent one&mdash;the
+personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the surrounding woods and
+groves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it,&rdquo; said
+Creedle, &ldquo;that she&rsquo;d sit down to her dinner with a frock hardly
+higher than her elbows. &lsquo;Oh, you wicked woman!&rsquo; he said to himself
+when he first see her, &lsquo;you go to your church, and sit, and kneel, as if
+your knee-jints were greased with very saint&rsquo;s anointment, and tell off
+your Hear-us-good-Lords like a business man counting money; and yet you can eat
+your victuals such a figure as that!&rsquo; Whether she&rsquo;s a reformed
+character by this time I can&rsquo;t say; but I don&rsquo;t care who the man
+is, that&rsquo;s how she went on when my brother-in-law lived there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did she do it in her husband&rsquo;s time?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That I don&rsquo;t know&mdash;hardly, I should think, considering his
+temper. Ah!&rdquo; Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical form by
+slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his eyes water. &ldquo;That
+man! &lsquo;Not if the angels of heaven come down, Creedle,&rsquo; he said,
+&lsquo;shall you do another day&rsquo;s work for me!&rsquo;
+Yes&mdash;he&rsquo;d say anything&mdash;anything; and would as soon take a
+winged creature&rsquo;s name in vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get
+these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God, I must see about using
+&rsquo;em.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s servant,
+and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard between the house-door
+and the spar-shed, whither she had come now for fuel. She had two facial
+aspects&mdash;one, of a soft and flexible kind, she used indoors when assisting
+about the parlor or upstairs; the other, with stiff lines and corners, when she
+was bustling among the men in the spar-house or out-of-doors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, Grammer Oliver,&rdquo; said John Upjohn, &ldquo;it do do my heart
+good to see a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in mind
+that after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your smoke didn&rsquo;t
+rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and that&rsquo;s
+late, Grammer Oliver.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of your
+scornful meanings. But your growing up was such a scrimped and scanty business
+that really a woman couldn&rsquo;t feel hurt if you were to spit fire and
+brimstone itself at her. Here,&rdquo; she added, holding out a spar-gad to one
+of the workmen, from which dangled a long
+black-pudding&mdash;&ldquo;here&rsquo;s something for thy breakfast, and if you
+want tea you must fetch it from in-doors.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Melbury is late this morning,&rdquo; said the bottom-sawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. &rsquo;Twas a dark dawn,&rdquo; said Mrs. Oliver. &ldquo;Even when
+I opened the door, so late as I was, you couldn&rsquo;t have told poor men from
+gentlemen, or John from a reasonable-sized object. And I don&rsquo;t think
+maister&rsquo;s slept at all well to-night. He&rsquo;s anxious about his
+daughter; and I know what that is, for I&rsquo;ve cried bucketfuls for my
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the old woman had gone Creedle said,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;ll fret his gizzard green if he don&rsquo;t soon hear from that
+maid of his. Well, learning is better than houses and lands. But to keep a maid
+at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in
+&rsquo;em&mdash;&rsquo;tis tempting Providence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl,&rdquo; said
+young Timothy Tangs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can mind her mother,&rdquo; said the hollow-turner. &ldquo;Always a
+teuny, delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind.
+She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just about
+the time that I was out of my apprenticeship&mdash;ay, and a long
+apprenticeship &rsquo;twas. I served that master of mine six years and three
+hundred and fourteen days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering their
+number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Winterborne&rsquo;s father walked with her at one time,&rdquo; said
+old Timothy Tangs. &ldquo;But Mr. Melbury won her. She was a child of a woman,
+and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her. Whenever she and her husband
+came to a puddle in their walks together he&rsquo;d take her up like a
+half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if he keeps
+the daughter so long at boarding-school, he&rsquo;ll make her as nesh as her
+mother was. But here he comes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court from
+his door. He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came straight to
+Winterborne. His gloom of the preceding night had quite gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace
+didn&rsquo;t come or write than I get a letter from her&mdash;&lsquo;Clifton:
+Wednesday. My dear father,&rsquo; says she, &lsquo;I&rsquo;m coming home
+to-morrow&rsquo; (that&rsquo;s to-day), &lsquo;but I didn&rsquo;t think it
+worth while to write long beforehand.&rsquo; The little rascal, and
+didn&rsquo;t she! Now, Giles, as you are going to Sherton market to-day with
+your apple-trees, why not join me and Grace there, and we&rsquo;ll drive home
+all together?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same man as the
+man of the small dark hours. Ever it happens that even among the moodiest the
+tendency to be cheered is stronger than the tendency to be cast down; and a
+soul&rsquo;s specific gravity stands permanently less than that of the sea of
+troubles into which it is thrown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion with
+something like alacrity. There was not much doubt that Marty&rsquo;s grounds
+for cutting off her hair were substantial enough, if Ambrose&rsquo;s eyes had
+been a reason for keeping it on. As for the timber-merchant, it was plain that
+his invitation had been given solely in pursuance of his scheme for uniting the
+pair. He had made up his mind to the course as a duty, and was strenuously bent
+upon following it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the spar-house,
+when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, John, and Lot,&rdquo; he said, nodding as he entered. &ldquo;A
+rimy morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis, sir!&rdquo; said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as
+yet been able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he felt the
+necessity of throwing some into his speech. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care who the
+man is, &rsquo;tis the rimiest morning we&rsquo;ve had this fall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard you wondering why I&rsquo;ve kept my daughter so long at
+boarding-school,&rdquo; resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter which
+he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with the suddenness that
+was a trait in him. &ldquo;Hey?&rdquo; he asked, with affected shrewdness.
+&ldquo;But you did, you know. Well, now, though it is my own business more than
+anybody else&rsquo;s, I&rsquo;ll tell ye. When I was a boy, another
+boy&mdash;the pa&rsquo;son&rsquo;s son&mdash;along with a lot of others, asked
+me &lsquo;Who dragged Whom round the walls of What?&rsquo; and I said,
+&lsquo;Sam Barrett, who dragged his wife in a chair round the tower corner when
+she went to be churched.&rsquo; They laughed at me with such torrents of scorn
+that I went home ashamed, and couldn&rsquo;t sleep for shame; and I cried that
+night till my pillow was wet: till at last I thought to myself there and
+then&mdash;&lsquo;They may laugh at me for my ignorance, but that was
+father&rsquo;s fault, and none o&rsquo; my making, and I must bear it. But they
+shall never laugh at my children, if I have any: I&rsquo;ll starve
+first!&rsquo; Thank God, I&rsquo;ve been able to keep her at school without
+sacrifice; and her scholarship is such that she stayed on as governess for a
+time. Let &rsquo;em laugh now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better
+informed than my girl Grace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something between high indifference and humble emotion in his
+delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. Winterborne&rsquo;s
+interest was of a kind which did not show itself in words; listening, he stood
+by the fire, mechanically stirring the embers with a spar-gad.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll be, then, ready, Giles?&rdquo; Melbury continued, awaking
+from a reverie. &ldquo;Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday,
+Mr. Bawtree?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still&mdash;you can&rsquo;t victual your
+carcass there unless you&rsquo;ve got money; and you can&rsquo;t buy a cup of
+genuine there, whether or no....But as the saying is, &lsquo;Go abroad and
+you&rsquo;ll hear news of home.&rsquo; It seems that our new neighbor, this
+young Dr. What&rsquo;s-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman; and
+there&rsquo;s good reason for supposing he has sold his soul to the wicked
+one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Od name it all,&rdquo; murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed
+by the news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it;
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve got to meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I&rsquo;ve
+planned to go to Sherton Abbas for the maid.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t praise the doctor&rsquo;s wisdom till I hear what sort of
+bargain he&rsquo;s made,&rdquo; said the top-sawyer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis only an old woman&rsquo;s tale,&rdquo; said Bawtree.
+&ldquo;But it seems that he wanted certain books on some mysterious science or
+black-art, and in order that the people hereabout should not know anything
+about his dark readings, he ordered &rsquo;em direct from London, and not from
+the Sherton book-seller. The parcel was delivered by mistake at the
+pa&rsquo;son&rsquo;s, and he wasn&rsquo;t at home; so his wife opened it, and
+went into hysterics when she read &rsquo;em, thinking her husband had turned
+heathen, and &rsquo;twould be the ruin of the children. But when he came he
+said he knew no more about &rsquo;em than she; and found they were this Mr.
+Fitzpier&rsquo;s property. So he wrote &lsquo;Beware!&rsquo; outside, and sent
+&rsquo;em on by the sexton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must be a curious young man,&rdquo; mused the hollow-turner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He must,&rdquo; said Timothy Tangs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, &ldquo;he&rsquo;s
+only a gentleman fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every
+kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such
+matters his hobby.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said old Timothy, &ldquo;&rsquo;tis a strange thing about
+doctors that the worse they be the better they be. I mean that if you hear
+anything of this sort about &rsquo;em, ten to one they can cure ye as nobody
+else can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True,&rdquo; said Bawtree, emphatically. &ldquo;And for my part I shall
+take my custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I&rsquo;ve anything
+the matter with me. That last medicine old Jones gave me had no taste in it at
+all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to these recitals,
+being moreover preoccupied with the business appointment which had come into
+his head. He walked up and down, looking on the floor&mdash;his usual custom
+when undecided. That stiffness about the arm, hip, and knee-joint which was
+apparent when he walked was the net product of the divers sprains and
+over-exertions that had been required of him in handling trees and timber when
+a young man, for he was of the sort called self-made, and had worked hard. He
+knew the origin of every one of these cramps: that in his left shoulder had
+come of carrying a pollard, unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one
+leg was caused by the crash of an elm against it when they were felling; that
+in the other was from lifting a bole. On many a morrow after wearying himself
+by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had risen from his bed fresh as usual;
+his lassitude had departed, apparently forever; and confident in the
+recuperative power of his youth, he had repeated the strains anew. But
+treacherous Time had been only hiding ill results when they could be guarded
+against, for greater accumulation when they could not. In his declining years
+the store had been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in
+every one of which Melbury recognized some act which, had its consequence been
+contemporaneously made known, he would wisely have abstained from repeating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed. Reaching the
+kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to save house-labor, he sat
+down by the fire, and looked a long time at the pair of dancing shadows cast by
+each fire-iron and dog-knob on the whitewashed chimney-corner&mdash;a yellow
+one from the window, and a blue one from the fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite know what to do to-day,&rdquo; he said to his wife
+at last. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve recollected that I promised to meet Mrs.
+Charmond&rsquo;s steward in Round Wood at twelve o&rsquo;clock, and yet I want
+to go for Grace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? &rsquo;Twill bring &rsquo;em
+together all the quicker.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could do that&mdash;but I should like to go myself. I always have
+gone, without fail, every time hitherto. It has been a great pleasure to drive
+into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and perhaps she&rsquo;ll be
+disappointed if I stay away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may be disappointed, but I don&rsquo;t think she will, if you send
+Giles,&rdquo; said Mrs. Melbury, dryly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well&mdash;I&rsquo;ll send him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife&rsquo;s words when
+strenuous argument would have had no effect. This second Mrs. Melbury was a
+placid woman, who had been nurse to his child Grace before her mother&rsquo;s
+death. After that melancholy event little Grace had clung to the nurse with
+much affection; and ultimately Melbury, in dread lest the only woman who cared
+for the girl should be induced to leave her, persuaded the mild Lucy to marry
+him. The arrangement&mdash;for it was little more&mdash;had worked
+satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and Melbury had not repented.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to whom he
+explained the change of plan. &ldquo;As she won&rsquo;t arrive till five
+o&rsquo;clock, you can get your business very well over in time to receive
+her,&rdquo; said Melbury. &ldquo;The green gig will do for her; you&rsquo;ll
+spin along quicker with that, and won&rsquo;t be late upon the road. Her boxes
+can be called for by one of the wagons.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant&rsquo;s restitutory aims,
+quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance. Wishing even more than her
+father to despatch his apple-tree business in the market before Grace&rsquo;s
+arrival, he prepared to start at once.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly. The gig-wheels, for
+instance, were not always washed during winter-time before a journey, the muddy
+roads rendering that labor useless; but they were washed to-day. The harness
+was blacked, and when the rather elderly white horse had been put in, and
+Winterborne was in his seat ready to start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a
+blacking-brush, and with his own hands touched over the yellow hoofs of the
+animal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see, Giles,&rdquo; he said, as he blacked, &ldquo;coming from a
+fashionable school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of home; and
+&rsquo;tis these little things that catch a dainty woman&rsquo;s eye if they
+are neglected. We, living here alone, don&rsquo;t notice how the whitey-brown
+creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh from a city&mdash;why,
+she&rsquo;ll notice everything!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That she will,&rdquo; said Giles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And scorn us if we don&rsquo;t mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not scorn us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, no&mdash;that&rsquo;s only words. She&rsquo;s too good a girl to
+do that. But when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since she
+last saw us, &rsquo;tis as well to meet her views as nearly as possible. Why,
+&rsquo;tis a year since she was in this old place, owing to her going abroad in
+the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it best for her; and naturally we shall
+look small, just at first&mdash;I only say just at first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense of that
+inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and refined being, was
+she not his own all the time? Not so Giles; he felt doubtful&mdash;perhaps a
+trifle cynical&mdash;for that strand was wound into him with the rest. He
+looked at his clothes with misgiving, then with indifference.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen apple-tree to
+market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt in. This had been tied
+across the gig; and as it would be left behind in the town, it would cause no
+inconvenience to Miss Grace Melbury coming home.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and Melbury went
+in-doors. Before the gig had passed out of sight, Mr. Melbury reappeared and
+shouted after&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here, Giles,&rdquo; he said, breathlessly following with some wraps,
+&ldquo;it may be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra about
+her. And, Giles,&rdquo; he added, when the young man, having taken the
+articles, put the horse in motion once more, &ldquo;tell her that I should have
+come myself, but I had particular business with Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s agent,
+which prevented me. Don&rsquo;t forget.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk&mdash;a shape into
+which emotion with him often resolved itself&mdash;&ldquo;There, now, I hope
+the two will bring it to a point and have done with it! &rsquo;Tis a pity to
+let such a girl throw herself away upon him&mdash;a thousand pities!...And yet
+&rsquo;tis my duty for his father&rsquo;s sake.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and without
+discomposure. Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as lovers are now
+daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the discernment of a
+somewhat rare power in him&mdash;that of keeping not only judgment but emotion
+suspended in difficult cases. But he noted it not. Neither did he observe what
+was also the fact, that though he cherished a true and warm feeling towards
+Grace Melbury, he was not altogether her fool just now. It must be remembered
+that he had not seen her for a year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had taken the spirit out of
+many a pedestrian in times when, with the majority, to travel meant to walk, he
+saw before him the trim figure of a young woman in pattens, journeying with
+that steadfast concentration which means purpose and not pleasure. He was soon
+near enough to see that she was Marty South. Click, click, click went the
+pattens; and she did not turn her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the approaching
+gig was Giles. She had shrunk from being overtaken by him thus; but as it was
+inevitable, she had braced herself up for his inspection by closing her lips so
+as to make her mouth quite unemotional, and by throwing an additional firmness
+into her tread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough, although
+the lanes are muddy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They save my boots.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But twelve miles in pattens&mdash;&rsquo;twill twist your feet off.
+Come, get up and ride with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them against the
+wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen apple-tree. She had so
+arranged her bonnet with a full border and trimmings that her lack of long hair
+did not much injure her appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was
+gone, and may have guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though
+infrequent, being not unheard of in that locality.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But nature&rsquo;s adornment was still hard by&mdash;in fact, within two feet
+of him, though he did not know it. In Marty&rsquo;s basket was a brown paper
+packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by reason of the
+barber&rsquo;s request for secrecy, she had not ventured to intrust to other
+hands.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two; he would be
+quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know why I don&rsquo;t ask for him so often as I might, I
+suppose?&rdquo; said Winterborne. &ldquo;Or don&rsquo;t you know?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think I do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because of the houses?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about those houses,
+which I should lose by his death, more than about him. Marty, I do feel anxious
+about the houses, since half my income depends upon them; but I do likewise
+care for him; and it almost seems wrong that houses should be leased for lives,
+so as to lead to such mixed feelings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After father&rsquo;s death they will be Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll be hers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are going to keep company with my hair,&rdquo; she thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus talking, they reached the town. By no pressure would she ride up the
+street with him. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the right of another woman,&rdquo; she
+said, with playful malice, as she put on her pattens. &ldquo;I wonder what you
+are thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that handsome gig. Good-by.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on ahead into the
+streets&mdash;the churches, the abbey, and other buildings on this clear bright
+morning having the liny distinctness of architectural drawings, as if the
+original dream and vision of the conceiving master-mason, some mediaeval Vilars
+or other unknown to fame, were for a few minutes flashed down through the
+centuries to an unappreciative age. Giles saw their eloquent look on this day
+of transparency, but could not construe it. He turned into the inn-yard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the hair-dresser&rsquo;s,
+Mr. Percombe&rsquo;s. Percombe was the chief of his trade in Sherton Abbas. He
+had the patronage of such county offshoots as had been obliged to seek the
+shelter of small houses in that ancient town, of the local clergy, and so on,
+for some of whom he had made wigs, while others among them had compensated for
+neglecting him in their lifetime by patronizing him when they were dead, and
+letting him shave their corpses. On the strength of all this he had taken down
+his pole, and called himself &ldquo;Perruquier to the aristocracy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his children&rsquo;s
+mouths, and they had to be filled. So, behind his house there was a little
+yard, reached by a passage from the back street, and in that yard was a pole,
+and under the pole a shop of quite another description than the ornamental one
+in the front street. Here on Saturday nights from seven till ten he took an
+almost innumerable succession of twopences from the farm laborers who flocked
+thither in crowds from the country. And thus he lived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed her packet to him
+silently. &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said the barber, quite joyfully. &ldquo;I
+hardly expected it after what you said last night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in each eye at this
+reminder.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing of what I told you,&rdquo; he whispered, there being others in
+the shop. &ldquo;But I can trust you, I see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went listlessly
+along the street to attend to other errands. These occupied her till four
+o&rsquo;clock, at which time she recrossed the market-place. It was impossible
+to avoid rediscovering Winterborne every time she passed that way, for
+standing, as he always did at this season of the year, with his specimen
+apple-tree in the midst, the boughs rose above the heads of the crowd, and
+brought a delightful suggestion of orchards among the crowded buildings there.
+When her eye fell upon him for the last time he was standing somewhat apart,
+holding the tree like an ensign, and looking on the ground instead of pushing
+his produce as he ought to have been doing. He was, in fact, not a very
+successful seller either of his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking
+his mind, when he spoke at all, militating against this branch of his business.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction away from
+Marty, his face simultaneously kindling with recognition and surprise. She
+followed his gaze, and saw walking across to him a flexible young creature in
+whom she perceived the features of her she had known as Miss Grace Melbury, but
+now looking glorified and refined above her former level. Winterborne, being
+fixed to the spot by his apple-tree, could not advance to meet her; he held out
+his spare hand with his hat in it, and with some embarrassment beheld her
+coming on tiptoe through the mud to the middle of the square where he stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Melbury&rsquo;s arrival so early was, as Marty could see, unexpected by
+Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to receive her. Indeed, her
+father had named five o&rsquo;clock as her probable time, for which reason that
+hour had been looming out all the day in his forward perspective, like an
+important edifice on a plain. Now here she was come, he knew not how, and his
+arranged welcome stultified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the road, and more
+still at the little look of embarrassment which appeared on hers at having to
+perform the meeting with him under an apple-tree ten feet high in the middle of
+the market-place. Having had occasion to take off the new gloves she had bought
+to come home in, she held out to him a hand graduating from pink at the tips of
+the fingers to white at the palm; and the reception formed a scene, with the
+tree over their heads, which was not by any means an ordinary one in Sherton
+Abbas streets.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a restrained type,
+which perhaps was not unnatural. For true it was that Giles Winterborne,
+well-attired and well-mannered as he was for a yeoman, looked rough beside her.
+It had sometimes dimly occurred to him, in his ruminating silence at Little
+Hintock, that external phenomena&mdash;such as the lowness or height or color
+of a hat, the fold of a coat, the make of a boot, or the chance attitude or
+occupation of a limb at the instant of view&mdash;may have a great influence
+upon feminine opinion of a man&rsquo;s worth&mdash;so frequently founded on
+non-essentials; but a certain causticity of mental tone towards himself and the
+world in general had prevented to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on
+the strength of that reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first
+sight of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find one who would
+accept the cumbersome gift, and the twain moved on towards the inn at which he
+had put up. Marty made as if to step forward for the pleasure of being
+recognized by Miss Melbury; but abruptly checking herself, she glided behind a
+carrier&rsquo;s van, saying, dryly, &ldquo;No; I baint wanted there,&rdquo; and
+critically regarded Winterborne&rsquo;s companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with precision,
+either now or at any time. Nay, from the highest point of view, to precisely
+describe a human being, the focus of a universe&mdash;how impossible! But,
+apart from transcendentalism, there never probably lived a person who was in
+herself more completely a <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of attempts to appraise a
+woman, even externally, by items of face and figure. Speaking generally, it may
+be said that she was sometimes beautiful, at other times not beautiful,
+according to the state of her health and spirits.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear complexion, rather
+pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in movement. Her look expressed a
+tendency to wait for others&rsquo; thoughts before uttering her own; possibly
+also to wait for others&rsquo; deeds before her own doing. In her small,
+delicate mouth, which had perhaps hardly settled down to its matured curves,
+there was a gentleness that might hinder sufficient self-assertion for her own
+good. She had well-formed eyebrows which, had her portrait been painted, would
+probably have been done in Prout&rsquo;s or Vandyke brown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a natural fitness
+and a style that was recent for the streets of Sherton. But, indeed, had it
+been the reverse, and quite striking, it would have meant just as little. For
+there can be hardly anything less connected with a woman&rsquo;s personality
+than drapery which she has neither designed, manufactured, cut, sewed, or even
+seen, except by a glance of approval when told that such and such a shape and
+color must be had because it has been decided by others as imperative at that
+particular time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very little; in truth,
+mainly something that was not she. The woman herself was a shadowy, conjectural
+creature who had little to do with the outlines presented to Sherton eyes; a
+shape in the gloom, whose true description could only be approximated by
+putting together a movement now and a glance then, in that patient and
+long-continued attentiveness which nothing but watchful loving-kindness ever
+troubles to give.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, and Marty South
+took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view of escaping them on the
+way, lest they should feel compelled to spoil their <i>tête-à-tête</i> by
+asking her to ride. She walked fast, and one-third of the journey was done, and
+the evening rapidly darkening, before she perceived any sign of them behind
+her. Then, while ascending a hill, she dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the
+lowest part of the incline, their heads slightly bent towards each other; drawn
+together, no doubt, by their souls, as the heads of a pair of horses well in
+hand are drawn in by the rein. She walked still faster.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But between these and herself there was a carriage, apparently a brougham,
+coming in the same direction, with lighted lamps. When it overtook
+her&mdash;which was not soon, on account of her pace&mdash;the scene was much
+darker, and the lights glared in her eyes sufficiently to hide the details of
+the equipage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind this carriage and so keep
+along with it, to save herself the mortification of being overtaken and picked
+up for pity&rsquo;s sake by the coming pair. Accordingly, as the carriage drew
+abreast of her in climbing the long ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the
+rays of the nearest lamp penetrating her very pores. She had only just dropped
+behind when the carriage stopped, and to her surprise the coachman asked her,
+over his shoulder, if she would ride. What made the question more surprising
+was that it came in obedience to an order from the interior of the vehicle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, after working all night
+and keeping afoot all day. She mounted beside the coachman, wondering why this
+good-fortune had happened to her. He was rather a great man in aspect, and she
+did not like to inquire of him for some time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last she said, &ldquo;Who has been so kind as to ask me to ride?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Charmond,&rdquo; replied her statuesque companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with her last night&rsquo;s
+experiences. &ldquo;Is this her carriage?&rdquo; she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; she&rsquo;s inside.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have recognized her
+plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp; recognized, probably, her
+stubbly poll (since she had kept away her face), and thought that those
+stubbles were the result of her own desire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty South was not so very far wrong. Inside the carriage a pair of bright
+eyes looked from a ripely handsome face, and though behind those bright eyes
+was a mind of unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there beat a heart capable of
+quick extempore warmth&mdash;a heart which could, indeed, be passionately and
+imprudently warm on certain occasions. At present, after recognizing the girl,
+she had acted on a mere impulse, possibly feeling gratified at the denuded
+appearance which signified the success of her agent in obtaining what she had
+required.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis wonderful that she should ask ye,&rdquo; observed the
+magisterial coachman, presently. &ldquo;I have never known her do it before,
+for as a rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to see if she could get a
+glimpse of the Olympian creature who as the coachman had truly observed, hardly
+ever descended from her clouds into the Tempe of the parishioners. But she
+could discern nothing of the lady. She also looked for Miss Melbury and
+Winterborne. The nose of their horse sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs.
+Charmond&rsquo;s carriage. But they never attempted to pass it till the latter
+conveyance turned towards the park gate, when they sped by. Here the carriage
+drew up that the gate might be opened, and in the momentary silence Marty heard
+a gentle oral sound, soft as a breeze.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; she whispered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mis&rsquo;ess yawning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why should she yawn?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, because she&rsquo;s been used to such wonderfully good life, and
+finds it dull here. She&rsquo;ll soon be off again on account of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!&rdquo; the girl murmured.
+&ldquo;Then things don&rsquo;t fay with she any more than with we!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty now alighted; the lamp again shone upon her, and as the carriage rolled
+on, a soft voice said to her from the interior, &ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-night, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; said Marty. But she had not been able to
+see the woman who began so greatly to interest her&mdash;the second person of
+her own sex who had operated strongly on her mind that day.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their little
+experiences of the same homeward journey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people fell upon them,
+the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a pleasant place, and
+wondering in what relation he stood towards her. Winterborne himself was
+unconscious of this. Occupied solely with the idea of having her in charge, he
+did not notice much with outward eye, neither observing how she was dressed,
+nor the effect of the picture they together composed in the landscape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace being somewhat
+disconcerted, through not having understood till they were about to start that
+Giles was to be her sole conductor in place of her father. When they were in
+the open country he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t Brownley&rsquo;s farm-buildings look strange to you, now
+they have been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to the top
+of the hill?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any difference in
+them if he had not pointed it out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn&rsquo;t grind them
+all&rdquo; (nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had been left
+lying ever since the ingathering).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; but looking at another orchard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know
+bitter-sweets&mdash;you used to well enough!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to
+distinguish.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowledge and interest which
+had formerly moved Grace&rsquo;s mind had quite died away from her. He wondered
+whether the special attributes of his image in the past had evaporated like
+these other things.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that where he was
+seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was beholding a far remoter
+scene&mdash;a scene no less innocent and simple, indeed, but much
+contrasting&mdash;a broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a fast city, the
+evergreen leaves shining in the evening sun, amid which bounding girls,
+gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, and white,
+were playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the pride of life, the
+notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from the open windows adjoining.
+Moreover, they were girls&mdash;and this was a fact which Grace Melbury&rsquo;s
+delicate femininity could not lose sight of&mdash;whose parents Giles would
+have addressed with a deferential Sir or Madam. Beside this visioned scene the
+homely farmsteads did not quite hold their own from her present twenty-year
+point of survey. For all his woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive
+simplicity of the subject he had started, and now sounded a deeper note.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often think
+of it. I mean our saying that if we still liked each other when you were twenty
+and I twenty-five, we&rsquo;d&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was child&rsquo;s tattle.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;H&rsquo;m!&rdquo; said Giles, suddenly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I mean we were young,&rdquo; said she, more considerately. That gruff
+manner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was unaltered in much.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father <i>sent</i> me to
+meet you to-day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it, and I am glad of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: &ldquo;At that time you were
+sitting beside me at the back of your father&rsquo;s covered car, when we were
+coming home from gypsying, all the party being squeezed in together as tight as
+sheep in an auction-pen. It got darker and darker, and I said&mdash;I forget
+the exact words&mdash;but I put my arm round your waist and there you let it
+stay till your father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to
+Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car, and showed us
+all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist like lightning; yet not so
+quickly but that some of &rsquo;em had seen, and laughed at us. Yet your
+father, to our amazement, instead of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed
+quite pleased. Have you forgot all that, or haven&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned the
+circumstances. &ldquo;But, goodness! I must have been in short frocks,&rdquo;
+she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come now, Miss Melbury, that won&rsquo;t do! Short frocks, indeed! You
+know better, as well as I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old friend she valued
+so highly as she valued him, saying the words with the easy elusiveness that
+will be polite at all costs. It might possibly be true, she added, that she was
+getting on in girlhood when that event took place; but if it were so, then she
+was virtually no less than an old woman now, so far did the time seem removed
+from her present. &ldquo;Do you ever look at things philosophically instead of
+personally?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say that I do,&rdquo; answered Giles, his eyes lingering
+far ahead upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think you may, sometimes, with advantage,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Look
+at yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, and
+consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks in general,
+and not only for saving your poor one. Shall I tell you all about Bath or
+Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visited last summer?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;With all my heart.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She then described places and persons in such terms as might have been used for
+that purpose by any woman to any man within the four seas, so entirely absent
+from that description was everything specially appertaining to her own
+existence. When she had done she said, gayly, &ldquo;Now do you tell me in
+return what has happened in Hintock since I have been away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me,&rdquo; said
+Giles within him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss Melbury&rsquo;s
+mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that she knew well, and
+had the greatest interest in developing&mdash;that is to say, herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when they drew near
+the carriage that had been preceding them for some time. Miss Melbury inquired
+if he knew whose carriage it was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into account. On
+examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel more nearly
+akin to it than to the one she was in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to
+that,&rdquo; said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation at
+what it bespoke, he whipped on the horse. This it was which had brought the
+nose of Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s
+much-eclipsing vehicle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s Marty South sitting up with the coachman,&rdquo; said he,
+discerning her by her dress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very evening. How
+does she happen to be riding there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. It is very singular.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road together, till
+Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, turned into Little Hintock,
+where almost the first house was the timber-merchant&rsquo;s. Pencils of
+dancing light streamed out of the windows sufficiently to show the white
+laurestinus flowers, and glance over the polished leaves of laurel. The
+interior of the rooms could be seen distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames,
+which in the parlor were reflected from the glass of the pictures and bookcase,
+and in the kitchen from the utensils and ware.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them,&rdquo;
+she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at one
+o&rsquo;clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for Grace. A
+rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog, and the
+whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys along the ceiling to
+a large stone suspended in a corner of the room. Old Grammer Oliver came and
+wound it up with a rattle like that of a mill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury&rsquo;s head fell on the wall and
+ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their presence
+was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to welcome her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some shyness
+in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in rural
+households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to most of the
+peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of towns. Thus hiding
+their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all round, Grace&rsquo;s reception
+produced no extraordinary demonstrations. But that more was felt than was
+enacted appeared from the fact that her father, in taking her in-doors, quite
+forgot the presence of Giles without, as did also Grace herself. He said
+nothing, but took the gig round to the yard and called out from the spar-house
+the man who particularly attended to these matters when there was no
+conversation to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then
+returned to the door with the intention of entering the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in themselves. The
+fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated Grace&rsquo;s face and
+hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the
+two elders; shining also through the loose hair about her temples as sunlight
+through a brake. Her father was surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much
+had she developed and progressed in manner and stature since he last had set
+eyes on her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door, mechanically
+tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved in the
+jambs&mdash;initials of by-gone generations of householders who had lived and
+died there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family; they had
+forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had brought her home.
+Still, he was a little surprised that her father&rsquo;s eagerness to send him
+for Grace should have resulted in such an anticlimax as this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back when he
+reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of the
+timber-merchant&rsquo;s roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was saying
+just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision, &ldquo;nothing
+about me!&rdquo; He looked also in the other direction, and saw against the sky
+the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty&rsquo;s cottage, and thought of
+her too, struggling bravely along under that humble shelter, among her
+spar-gads and pots and skimmers.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+At the timber-merchant&rsquo;s, in the mean time, the conversation flowed; and,
+as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on subjects in which he had no
+share. Among the excluding matters there was, for one, the effect upon Mr.
+Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of his daughter, which took him so much
+unawares that, though it did not make him absolutely forget the existence of
+her conductor homeward, thrust Giles&rsquo;s image back into quite the
+obscurest cellarage of his brain. Another was his interview with Mrs.
+Charmond&rsquo;s agent that morning, at which the lady herself had been present
+for a few minutes. Melbury had purchased some standing timber from her a long
+time before, and now that the date had come for felling it he was left to
+pursue almost his own course. This was what the household were actually talking
+of during Giles&rsquo;s cogitation without; and Melbury&rsquo;s satisfaction
+with the clear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity of the
+groves which enclosed his residence was the cause of a counterbalancing
+mistiness on the side towards Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So thoroughly does she trust me,&rdquo; said Melbury, &ldquo;that I
+might fell, top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o&rsquo; timber whatever
+in her wood, and fix the price o&rsquo;t, and settle the matter. But, name it
+all! I wouldn&rsquo;t do such a thing. However, it may be useful to have this
+good understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in the place, and
+stayed here all the year round.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid &rsquo;tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of
+Hintock, that makes her so easy about the trees,&rdquo; said Mrs. Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble pleasurably
+through the rooms of her old home, from which she had latterly become wellnigh
+an alien. Each nook and each object revived a memory, and simultaneously
+modified it. The chambers seemed lower than they had appeared on any previous
+occasion of her return, the surfaces of both walls and ceilings standing in
+such relations to the eye that it could not avoid taking microscopic note of
+their irregularities and old fashion. Her own bedroom wore at once a look more
+familiar than when she had left it, and yet a face estranged. The world of
+little things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they
+had tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence. Over the
+place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she had used to read
+in bed till the midnight hour, there was still the brown spot of smoke. She did
+not know that her father had taken especial care to keep it from being cleaned
+off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodious edifice,
+Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since the morning; and
+when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife, to see that her room
+was comfortable and the fire burning, she prepared to retire for the night. No
+sooner, however, was she in bed than her momentary sleepiness took itself off,
+and she wished she had stayed up longer. She amused herself by listening to the
+old familiar noises that she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and
+by looking towards the window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she
+used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops
+against the sky on the neighboring hill. Beneath this meeting-line of light and
+shade nothing was visible save one solitary point of light, which blinked as
+the tree-twigs waved to and fro before its beams. From its position it seemed
+to radiate from the window of a house on the hill-side. The house had been
+empty when she was last at home, and she wondered who inhabited the place now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she was watching
+the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at length shone blue
+as sapphire. Thus it remained several minutes, and then it passed through
+violet to red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up in bed,
+and stared steadily at the shine. An appearance of this sort, sufficient to
+excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had
+known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland
+place had hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll which
+produced the season&rsquo;s changes; but here was something dissociated from
+these normal sequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparing to
+retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her father
+bolting the doors. Then the stairs creaked, and her father and mother passed
+her chamber. The last to come was Grammer Oliver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch, said,
+&ldquo;I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and talk to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the bedclothes. Grammer
+set down her candlestick, and seated herself on the edge of Miss
+Melbury&rsquo;s coverlet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side,&rdquo;
+said Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Oliver looked across. &ldquo;Oh, that,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;is from the
+doctor&rsquo;s. He&rsquo;s often doing things of that sort. Perhaps you
+don&rsquo;t know that we&rsquo;ve a doctor living here now&mdash;Mr. Fitzpiers
+by name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace admitted that she had not heard of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, miss, he&rsquo;s come here to get up a practice. I know him
+very well, through going there to help &rsquo;em scrub sometimes, which your
+father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare time. Being a bachelor-man,
+he&rsquo;ve only a lad in the house. Oh yes, I know him very well. Sometimes
+he&rsquo;ll talk to me as if I were his own mother.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. &lsquo;Grammer,&rsquo; he said one day, when I asked him why he
+came here where there&rsquo;s hardly anybody living, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you
+why I came here. I took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones&rsquo;s
+practice ends to the north of this district, and where Mr. Taylor&rsquo;s ends
+on the south, and little Jimmy Green&rsquo;s on the east, and somebody
+else&rsquo;s to the west. Then I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact
+middle of the country that was left between these bounds, and that middle was
+Little Hintock; so here I am....&rsquo; But, Lord, there: poor young
+man!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said, &lsquo;Grammer Oliver, I&rsquo;ve been here three months, and
+although there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the villages round,
+and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don&rsquo;t seem to get
+many patients. And there&rsquo;s no society at all; and I&rsquo;m pretty near
+melancholy mad,&rsquo; he said, with a great yawn. &lsquo;I should be quite if
+it were not for my books, and my lab&mdash;laboratory, and what not. Grammer, I
+was made for higher things.&rsquo; And then he&rsquo;d yawn and yawn
+again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he
+clever?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a broken man
+or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an ache if you tell him
+nearly where &rsquo;tis; but these young men&mdash;they should live to my time
+of life, and then they&rsquo;d see how clever they were at five-and-twenty! And
+yet he&rsquo;s a projick, a real projick, and says the oddest of rozums.
+&lsquo;Ah, Grammer,&rsquo; he said, at another time, &lsquo;let me tell you
+that Everything is Nothing. There&rsquo;s only Me and not Me in the whole
+world.&rsquo; And he told me that no man&rsquo;s hands could help what they
+did, any more than the hands of a clock....Yes, he&rsquo;s a man of strange
+meditations, and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will soon go away, no doubt.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so.&rdquo; Grace did not say &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; and
+Grammer hesitated. At last she went on: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell your father or
+mother, miss, if I let you know a secret.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace gave the required promise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, he talks of buying me; so he won&rsquo;t go away just yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Buying you!&mdash;how?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not my soul&mdash;my body, when I&rsquo;m dead. One day when I was there
+cleaning, he said, &lsquo;Grammer, you&rsquo;ve a large brain&mdash;a very
+large organ of brain,&rsquo; he said. &lsquo;A woman&rsquo;s is usually four
+ounces less than a man&rsquo;s; but yours is man&rsquo;s size.&rsquo; Well,
+then&mdash;hee, hee!&mdash;after he&rsquo;d flattered me a bit like that, he
+said he&rsquo;d give me ten pounds to have me as a natomy after my death. Well,
+knowing I&rsquo;d no chick nor chiel left, and nobody with any interest in me,
+I thought, faith, if I can be of any use to my fellow-creatures after I&rsquo;m
+gone they are welcome to my services; so I said I&rsquo;d think it over, and
+would most likely agree and take the ten pounds. Now this is a secret, miss,
+between us two. The money would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course there&rsquo;s no harm. But oh, Grammer, how can you think to
+do it? I wish you hadn&rsquo;t told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish I hadn&rsquo;t&mdash;if you don&rsquo;t like to know it, miss.
+But you needn&rsquo;t mind. Lord&mdash;hee, hee!&mdash;I shall keep him waiting
+many a year yet, bless ye!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope you will, I am sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversation languished,
+and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melbury good-night. The
+latter&rsquo;s eyes rested on the distant glimmer, around which she allowed her
+reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that shaped the doings of the
+philosopher behind that light on the lines of intelligence just received. It
+was strange to her to come back from the world to Little Hintock and find in
+one of its nooks, like a tropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced
+ideas and practices which had nothing in common with the life around. Chemical
+experiments, anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had found a
+strange home here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man behind the light
+intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, till her eyes fell
+together with their own heaviness, and she slept.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer Oliver&rsquo;s
+skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought Grace Melbury to the
+morning of the next day. It was fine. A north wind was blowing&mdash;that not
+unacceptable compromise between the atmospheric cutlery of the eastern blast
+and the spongy gales of the west quarter. She looked from her window in the
+direction of the light of the previous evening, and could just discern through
+the trees the shape of the surgeon&rsquo;s house. Somehow, in the broad,
+practical daylight, that unknown and lonely gentleman seemed to be shorn of
+much of the interest which had invested his personality and pursuits in the
+hours of darkness, and as Grace&rsquo;s dressing proceeded he faded from her
+mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father&rsquo;s favor, was
+rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury&rsquo;s behavior. Despite his dry
+self-control, he could not help looking continually from his own door towards
+the timber-merchant&rsquo;s, in the probability of somebody&rsquo;s emergence
+therefrom. His attention was at length justified by the appearance of two
+figures, that of Mr. Melbury himself, and Grace beside him. They stepped out in
+a direction towards the densest quarter of the wood, and Winterborne walked
+contemplatively behind them, till all three were soon under the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there were sheltered hollows
+amid the Hintock plantations and copses in which a more tardy leave-taking than
+on windy summits was the rule with the foliage. This caused here and there an
+apparent mixture of the seasons; so that in some of the dells that they passed
+by holly-berries in full red were found growing beside oak and hazel whose
+leaves were as yet not far removed from green, and brambles whose verdure was
+rich and deep as in the month of August. To Grace these well-known
+peculiarities were as an old painting restored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to the curious which the
+features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter months. Angles were
+taking the place of curves, and reticulations of surfaces&mdash;a change
+constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate to the primitive on Nature&rsquo;s
+canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step from the art of an advanced
+school of painting to that of the Pacific Islander.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as they threaded
+their way through these sylvan phenomena. Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s long legs, and
+gaiters drawn in to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop, his habit of
+getting lost in thought and arousing himself with an exclamation of
+&ldquo;Hah!&rdquo; accompanied with an upward jerk of the head, composed a
+personage recognizable by his neighbors as far as he could be seen. It seemed
+as if the squirrels and birds knew him. One of the former would occasionally
+run from the path to hide behind the arm of some tree, which the little animal
+carefully edged round <i>pari passu</i> with Melbury and his daughters movement
+onward, assuming a mock manner, as though he were saying, &ldquo;Ho, ho; you
+are only a timber-merchant, and carry no gun!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through interspersed
+tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots, whose mossed rinds made
+them like hands wearing green gloves; elbowed old elms and ashes with great
+forks, in which stood pools of water that overflowed on rainy days, and ran
+down their stems in green cascades. On older trees still than these, huge lobes
+of fungi grew like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which
+makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds
+of a city slum. The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was
+interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly
+strangled to death the promising sapling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the younger boughs still
+retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in the breeze with a sound almost
+metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled Jarnvid wood. Some flecks
+of white in Grace&rsquo;s drapery had enabled Giles to keep her and her father
+in view till this time; but now he lost sight of them, and was obliged to
+follow by ear&mdash;no difficult matter, for on the line of their course every
+wood-pigeon rose from its perch with a continued clash, dashing its wings
+against the branches with wellnigh force enough to break every quill. By taking
+the track of this noise he soon came to a stile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Was it worth while to go farther? He examined the doughy soil at the foot of
+the stile, and saw among the large sole-and-heel tracks an impression of a
+slighter kind from a boot that was obviously not local, for Winterborne knew
+all the cobblers&rsquo; patterns in that district, because they were very few
+to know. The mud-picture was enough to make him swing himself over and proceed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The character of the woodland now changed. The bases of the smaller trees were
+nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers points heaps of fresh-made chips, and
+the newly-cut stool of a tree, stared white through the undergrowth. There had
+been a large fall of timber this year, which explained the meaning of some
+sounds that soon reached him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human bark, which reminded
+Giles that there was a sale of trees and fagots that very day. Melbury would
+naturally be present. Thereupon Winterborne remembered that he himself wanted a
+few fagots, and entered upon the scene.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or followed him when,
+between his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of plantation produce to
+another, like some philosopher of the Peripatetic school delivering his
+lectures in the shady groves of the Lyceum. His companions were timber-dealers,
+yeomen, farmers, villagers, and others; mostly woodland men, who on that
+account could afford to be curious in their walking-sticks, which consequently
+exhibited various monstrosities of vegetation, the chief being cork-screw
+shapes in black and white thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow torture of
+an encircling woodbine during their growth, as the Chinese have been said to
+mould human beings into grotesque toys by continued compression in infancy. Two
+women, wearing men&rsquo;s jackets on their gowns, conducted in the rear of the
+halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped barrel of beer, from which
+they drew and replenished horns that were handed round, with bread-and-cheese
+from a basket.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his walking-stick as
+a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any convenient object that took his
+fancy, such as the crown of a little boy&rsquo;s head, or the shoulders of a
+by-stander who had no business there except to taste the brew; a proceeding
+which would have been deemed humorous but for the air of stern rigidity which
+that auctioneer&rsquo;s face preserved, tending to show that the eccentricity
+was a result of that absence of mind which is engendered by the press of
+affairs, and no freak of fancy at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the Peripatetics, and Grace
+beside him, clinging closely to his arm, her modern attire looking almost odd
+where everything else was old-fashioned, and throwing over the familiar
+garniture of the trees a homeliness that seemed to demand improvement by the
+addition of a few contemporary novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the
+selling with the interest which attaches to memories revived after an interval
+of obliviousness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant spoke, and
+continued his buying; Grace merely smiled. To justify his presence there
+Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots that he did not want, pursuing
+the occupation in an abstracted mood, in which the auctioneer&rsquo;s voice
+seemed to become one of the natural sounds of the woodland. A few flakes of
+snow descended, at the sight of which a robin, alarmed at these signs of
+imminent winter, and seeing that no offence was meant by the human invasion,
+came and perched on the tip of the fagots that were being sold, and looked into
+the auctioneer&rsquo;s face, while waiting for some chance crumb from the
+bread-basket. Standing a little behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one
+flake would sail downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another
+would choose her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which took up so
+much of his attention that his biddings proceeded incoherently; and when the
+auctioneer said, every now and then, with a nod towards him, &ldquo;Yours, Mr.
+Winterborne,&rdquo; he had no idea whether he had bought fagots, poles, or
+logwood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her father should show such
+inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace tightly on his arm to-day, when he
+had quite lately seemed anxious to recognize their betrothal as a fact. And
+thus musing, and joining in no conversation with other buyers except when
+directly addressed, he followed the assemblage hither and thither till the end
+of the auction, when Giles for the first time realized what his purchases had
+been. Hundreds of fagots, and divers lots of timber, had been set down to him,
+when all he had required had been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert
+Creedle&rsquo;s use in baking and lighting fires.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber merchant. But
+Melbury&rsquo;s manner was short and distant; and Grace, too, looked vexed and
+reproachful. Winterborne then discovered that he had been unwittingly bidding
+against her father, and picking up his favorite lots in spite of him. With a
+very few words they left the spot and pursued their way homeward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and remained standing under the
+trees, all the other men having strayed silently away. He saw Melbury and his
+daughter pass down a glade without looking back. While they moved slowly
+through it a lady appeared on horseback in the middle distance, the line of her
+progress converging upon that of Melbury&rsquo;s. They met, Melbury took off
+his hat, and she reined in her horse. A conversation was evidently in progress
+between Grace and her father and this equestrian, in whom he was almost sure
+that he recognized Mrs. Charmond, less by her outline than by the livery of the
+groom who had halted some yards off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause, during which much
+seemed to be said. When Melbury and Grace resumed their walk it was with
+something of a lighter tread than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward. He was unwilling to let
+coldness grow up between himself and the Melburys for any trivial reason, and
+in the evening he went to their house. On drawing near the gate his attention
+was attracted by the sight of one of the bedrooms blinking into a state of
+illumination. In it stood Grace lighting several candles, her right hand
+elevating the taper, her left hand on her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed on
+each wick as it kindled, as if she saw in every flame&rsquo;s growth the rise
+of a life to maturity. He wondered what such unusual brilliancy could mean
+to-night. On getting in-doors he found her father and step-mother in a state of
+suppressed excitement, which at first he could not comprehend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry about my biddings to-day,&rdquo; said Giles. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t know what I was doing. I have come to say that any of the lots you
+may require are yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, never mind&mdash;never mind,&rdquo; replied the timber-merchant,
+with a slight wave of his hand, &ldquo;I have so much else to think of that I
+nearly had forgot it. Just now, too, there are matters of a different kind from
+trade to attend to, so don&rsquo;t let it concern ye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, down to him from a higher moral plane
+than his own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grace is going to the House to-morrow,&rdquo; she said, quietly.
+&ldquo;She is looking out her things now. I dare say she is wanting me this
+minute to assist her.&rdquo; Thereupon Mrs. Melbury left the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing is more remarkable than the independent personality of the tongue now
+and then. Mr. Melbury knew that his words had been a sort of boast. He decried
+boasting, particularly to Giles; yet whenever the subject was Grace, his
+judgment resigned the ministry of speech in spite of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little apprehension at the
+news. He repeated Mrs. Melbury&rsquo;s words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged out of him
+what he could not in any circumstances have kept in. &ldquo;Coming home from
+the woods this afternoon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. She spoke to me
+on a little matter of business, and then got acquainted with Grace. &rsquo;Twas
+wonderful how she took to Grace in a few minutes; that freemasonry of education
+made &rsquo;em close at once. Naturally enough she was amazed that such an
+article&mdash;ha, ha!&mdash;could come out of my house. At last it led on to
+Mis&rsquo;ess Grace being asked to the House. So she&rsquo;s busy hunting up
+her frills and furbelows to go in.&rdquo; As Giles remained in thought without
+responding, Melbury continued: &ldquo;But I&rsquo;ll call her
+down-stairs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no; don&rsquo;t do that, since she&rsquo;s busy,&rdquo; said
+Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury, feeling from the young man&rsquo;s manner that his own talk had been
+too much at Giles and too little to him, repented at once. His face changed,
+and he said, in lower tones, with an effort, &ldquo;She&rsquo;s yours, Giles,
+as far as I am concerned.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thanks&mdash;my best thanks....But I think, since it is all right
+between us about the biddings, that I&rsquo;ll not interrupt her now.
+I&rsquo;ll step homeward, and call another time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again. Grace, surrounded by a
+sufficient number of candles to answer all purposes of self-criticism, was
+standing before a cheval-glass that her father had lately bought expressly for
+her use; she was bonneted, cloaked, and gloved, and glanced over her shoulder
+into the mirror, estimating her aspect. Her face was lit with the natural
+elation of a young girl hoping to inaugurate on the morrow an intimate
+acquaintance with a new, interesting, and powerful friend.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge in a
+six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire, carried her over the
+ground the next morning with a springy tread. Her sense of being properly
+appreciated on her own native soil seemed to brighten the atmosphere and
+herbage around her, as the glowworm&rsquo;s lamp irradiates the grass. Thus she
+moved along, a vessel of emotion going to empty itself on she knew not what.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Twenty minutes&rsquo; walking through copses, over a stile, and along an upland
+lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom of which Hintock
+House appeared immediately beneath her eye. To describe it as standing in a
+hollow would not express the situation of the manor-house; it stood in a hole,
+notwithstanding that the hole was full of beauty. From the spot which Grace had
+reached a stone could easily have been thrown over or into, the
+birds&rsquo;-nested chimneys of the mansion. Its walls were surmounted by a
+battlemented parapet; but the gray lead roofs were quite visible behind it,
+with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights, together with incised
+letterings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers thereon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation of
+Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich snuff-colored
+freestone from local quarries. The ashlar of the walls, where not overgrown
+with ivy and other creepers, was coated with lichen of every shade,
+intensifying its luxuriance with its nearness to the ground, till, below the
+plinth, it merged in moss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of whose trees
+were above the level of the chimneys. The corresponding high ground on which
+Grace stood was richly grassed, with only an old tree here and there. A few
+sheep lay about, which, as they ruminated, looked quietly into the bedroom
+windows. The situation of the house, prejudicial to humanity, was a stimulus to
+vegetation, on which account an endless shearing of the heavy-armed ivy was
+necessary, and a continual lopping of trees and shrubs. It was an edifice built
+in times when human constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the
+boisterous was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, the
+insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an ocular
+reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the fragility to which these
+have declined. The highest architectural cunning could have done nothing to
+make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and ruthless ignorance could have done
+little to make it unpicturesque. It was vegetable nature&rsquo;s own home; a
+spot to inspire the painter and poet of still life&mdash;if they did not suffer
+too much from the relaxing atmosphere&mdash;and to draw groans from the
+gregariously disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path
+into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope. The exterior of the house
+had been familiar to her from her childhood, but she had never been inside, and
+the approach to knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively experience. It
+was with a little flutter that she was shown in; but she recollected that Mrs.
+Charmond would probably be alone. Up to a few days before this time that lady
+had been accompanied in her comings, stayings, and goings by a relative
+believed to be her aunt; latterly, however, these two ladies had separated,
+owing, it was supposed, to a quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate.
+Being presumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this deprivation might
+possibly account for her sudden interest in Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall when Miss
+Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass doors between them. She
+came forward with a smile on her face, and told the young girl it was good of
+her to come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! you have noticed those,&rdquo; she said, seeing that Grace&rsquo;s
+eyes were attracted by some curious objects against the walls. &ldquo;They are
+man-traps. My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns and such
+articles, collecting them from all his neighbors. He knew the histories of all
+these&mdash;which gin had broken a man&rsquo;s leg, which gun had killed a man.
+That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of
+a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had done, went that way
+himself, received the charge in the lower part of his body, and died of the
+wound. I don&rsquo;t like them here, but I&rsquo;ve never yet given directions
+for them to be taken away.&rdquo; She added, playfully, &ldquo;Man-traps are of
+rather ominous significance where a person of our sex lives, are they
+not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one which her
+inexperience had no great zest in contemplating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time happily
+past,&rdquo; she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of these
+instruments of torture&mdash;some with semi-circular jaws, some with
+rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth, but a few with none, so that
+their jaws looked like the blank gums of old age.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, we must not take them too seriously,&rdquo; said Mrs. Charmond,
+with an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward. When she had shown
+her visitor different articles in cabinets that she deemed likely to interest
+her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, ivories, miniatures, and so
+on&mdash;always with a mien of listlessness which might either have been
+constitutional, or partly owing to the situation of the place&mdash;they sat
+down to an early cup of tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will you pour it out, please? Do,&rdquo; she said, leaning back in her
+chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond
+eyes&mdash;those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early Italian
+art&mdash;became longer, and her voice more languishing. She showed that
+oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most frequent in women of darker
+complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s was; who
+lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak them, who inveigle
+rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents rather than steer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am the most inactive woman when I am here,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+think sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float
+about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be really my
+destiny, and I must struggle against such fancies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion&mdash;it is quite sad! I wish I
+could tend you and make you very happy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound of
+Grace&rsquo;s voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their customary
+reservations in talking to her. &ldquo;It is tender and kind of you to feel
+that,&rdquo; said Mrs. Charmond. &ldquo;Perhaps I have given you the notion
+that my languor is more than it really is. But this place oppresses me, and I
+have a plan of going abroad a good deal. I used to go with a relative, but that
+arrangement has dropped through.&rdquo; Regarding Grace with a final glance of
+criticism, she seemed to make up her mind to consider the young girl
+satisfactory, and continued: &ldquo;Now I am often impelled to record my
+impressions of times and places. I have often thought of writing a &lsquo;New
+<i>Sentimental Journey</i>.&rsquo; But I cannot find energy enough to do it
+alone. When I am at different places in the south of Europe I feel a crowd of
+ideas and fancies thronging upon me continually, but to unfold
+writing-materials, take up a cold steel pen, and put these impressions down
+systematically on cold, smooth paper&mdash;that I cannot do. So I have thought
+that if I always could have somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I
+might dictate any ideas that come into my head. And directly I had made your
+acquaintance the other day it struck me that you would suit me so well. Would
+you like to undertake it? You might read to me, too, if desirable. Will you
+think it over, and ask your parents if they are willing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Grace. &ldquo;I am almost sure they would be very
+glad.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite honored by such
+intellectual company.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no. Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they are not
+carried on by me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&mdash;another student in that retreat?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a great
+deal&mdash;I see his light sometimes through the trees late at night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;a doctor&mdash;I believe I was told of him. It is a strange
+place for him to settle in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say. But he does not
+confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He investigates theology and
+metaphysics and all sorts of subjects.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is his name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, the Fitzpierses
+of Buckbury-Fitzpiers&mdash;not a great many miles from here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family. I was
+never in the county till my husband brought me here.&rdquo; Mrs. Charmond did
+not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious merit might
+attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she herself could claim
+it, her adaptable, wandering <i>weltbürgerliche</i> nature had grown tired of
+caring about&mdash;a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors.
+&ldquo;It is of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than
+what his family is,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;if he is going to practise upon us
+as a surgeon. Have you seen him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace had not. &ldquo;I think he is not a very old man,&rdquo; she added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Has he a wife?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not aware that he has.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know him when I come
+back. It will be very convenient to have a medical man&mdash;if he is
+clever&mdash;in one&rsquo;s own parish. I get dreadfully nervous sometimes,
+living in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so far to send to. No doubt
+you feel Hintock to be a great change after watering-place life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its
+disadvantages.&rdquo; Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of the
+attendant circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease by her
+entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a woman not to know that
+to show a marked patronage to a sensitive young girl who would probably be very
+quick to discern it, was to demolish her dignity rather than to establish it in
+that young girl&rsquo;s eyes. So, being violently possessed with her idea of
+making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready and waiting at her own door, she
+took great pains to win her confidence at starting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Just before Grace&rsquo;s departure the two chanced to pause before a mirror
+which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so as to bring into
+prominence their resemblances and their contrasts. Both looked attractive as
+glassed back by the faithful reflector; but Grace&rsquo;s countenance had the
+effect of making Mrs. Charmond appear more than her full age. There are
+complexions which set off each other to great advantage, and there are those
+which antagonize, the one killing or damaging its neighbor unmercifully. This
+was unhappily the case here. Mrs. Charmond fell into a meditation, and replied
+abstractedly to a cursory remark of her companion&rsquo;s. However, she parted
+from her young friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her
+know as soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had suggested.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope she looked
+back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the door, meditatively
+regarding her.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys,
+Winterborne&rsquo;s thoughts ran upon Grace&rsquo;s announced visit to Hintock
+House. Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of the way?
+Something told him that she might not, on such an occasion, care for his
+company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden next day, he saw
+her go past on the journey with such a pretty pride in the event. He wondered
+if her father&rsquo;s ambition, which had purchased for her the means of
+intellectual light and culture far beyond those of any other native of the
+village, would conduce to the flight of her future interests above and away
+from the local life which was once to her the movement of the world.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, he had her father&rsquo;s permission to win her if he could; and
+to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon to a crisis, if he ever
+hoped to do so. If she should think herself too good for him, he could let her
+go and make the best of his loss; but until he had really tested her he could
+not say that she despised his suit. The question was how to quicken events
+towards an issue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as any would be
+to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her parents to come as chief
+guests.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a slight
+knocking at his front door. He descended the path and looked out, and beheld
+Marty South, dressed for out-door work.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why didn&rsquo;t you come, Mr. Winterborne?&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been waiting there hours and hours, and at last I thought I
+must try to find you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bless my soul, I&rsquo;d quite forgot,&rdquo; said Giles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-trees to be
+planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared by the wood-cutters, and
+that he had arranged to plant them with his own hands. He had a marvellous
+power of making trees grow. Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite
+carelessly, there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or
+beech that he was operating on, so that the roots took hold of the soil in a
+few days. When, on the other hand, any of the journeymen planted, although they
+seemed to go through an identically similar process, one quarter of the trees
+would die away during the ensuing August.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at present, he
+contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in which he had no personal
+interest. Marty, who turned her hand to anything, was usually the one who
+performed the part of keeping the trees in a perpendicular position while he
+threw in the mould.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further to proceed
+with the work by the knowledge that the ground was close to the way-side along
+which Grace must pass on her return from Hintock House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve a cold in the head, Marty,&rdquo; he said, as they walked.
+&ldquo;That comes of cutting off your hair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it do. Yes; I&rsquo;ve three headaches going on in my head at
+the same time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Three headaches!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my eyes, and
+a misery headache in the middle of my brain. However, I came out, for I thought
+you might be waiting and grumbling like anything if I was not there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Winterborne&rsquo;s fingers
+were endowed with a gentle conjuror&rsquo;s touch in spreading the roots of
+each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, under which the delicate
+fibres all laid themselves out in their proper directions for growth. He put
+most of these roots towards the south-west; for, he said, in forty years&rsquo;
+time, when some great gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees will require
+the strongest holdfast on that side to stand against it and not fall.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How they sigh directly we put &rsquo;em upright, though while they are
+lying down they don&rsquo;t sigh at all,&rdquo; said Marty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do they?&rdquo; said Giles. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never noticed it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her finger; the
+soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day
+till the grown tree should be felled&mdash;probably long after the two planters
+should be felled themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It seems to me,&rdquo; the girl continued, &ldquo;as if they sigh
+because they are very sorry to begin life in earnest&mdash;just as we
+be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Just as we be?&rdquo; He looked critically at her. &ldquo;You ought not
+to feel like that, Marty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they planted on
+through a great part of the day, almost without another word.
+Winterborne&rsquo;s mind ran on his contemplated evening-party, his abstraction
+being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty&rsquo;s presence beside him.
+From the nature of their employment, in which he handled the spade and she
+merely held the tree, it followed that he got good exercise and she got none.
+But she was an heroic girl, and though her out-stretched hand was chill as a
+stone, and her cheeks blue, and her cold worse than ever, she would not
+complain while he was disposed to continue work. But when he paused she said,
+&ldquo;Mr. Winterborne, can I run down the lane and back to warm my
+feet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, yes, of course,&rdquo; he said, awakening anew to her existence.
+&ldquo;Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season. Now I
+warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was. You had no business to
+chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost right. Look here, cut off home
+at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A run down the lane will be quite enough.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it won&rsquo;t. You ought not to have come out to-day at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I should like to finish the&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Marty, I tell you to go home,&rdquo; said he, peremptorily. &ldquo;I can
+manage to keep the rest of them upright with a stick or something.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went away without saying any more. When she had gone down the orchard a
+little distance she looked back. Giles suddenly went after her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know. But warm
+yourself in your own way, I don&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman&rsquo;s dress through the
+holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road. It was Grace at last, on
+her way back from the interview with Mrs. Charmond. He threw down the tree he
+was planting, and was about to break through the belt of holly when he suddenly
+became aware of the presence of another man, who was looking over the hedge on
+the opposite side of the way upon the figure of the unconscious Grace. He
+appeared as a handsome and gentlemanly personage of six or eight and twenty,
+and was quizzing her through an eye-glass. Seeing that Winterborne was noticing
+him, he let his glass drop with a click upon the rail which protected the
+hedge, and walked away in the opposite direction. Giles knew in a moment that
+this must be Mr. Fitzpiers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed through the
+hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting object of their
+contemplation.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I heard the bushes move long before I saw you,&rdquo; she began.
+&ldquo;I said first, &lsquo;it is some terrible beast;&rsquo; next, &lsquo;it
+is a poacher;&rsquo; next, &lsquo;it is a friend!&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but the question
+whether he should tell her that she had been watched. He decided in the
+negative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have been to the house?&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I need not
+ask.&rdquo; The fact was that there shone upon Miss Melbury&rsquo;s face a
+species of exaltation, which saw no environing details nor his own occupation;
+nothing more than his bare presence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why need you not ask?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the
+Mount.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She reddened a little and said, &ldquo;How can you be so profane, Giles
+Winterborne?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg pardon; I
+didn&rsquo;t mean to speak so freely. How do you like her house and her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I was a child, when
+it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s late husband
+bought the property. She is SO nice!&rdquo; And Grace fell into such an
+abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her niceness that
+it almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air before them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay much
+longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. She is going abroad.
+Only think, she would like me to go with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles&rsquo;s features stiffened a little at the news. &ldquo;Indeed; what for?
+But I won&rsquo;t keep you standing here. Hoi, Robert!&rdquo; he cried to a
+swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the figure of Creedle
+his man. &ldquo;Go on filling in there till I come back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m a-coming, sir; I&rsquo;m a-coming.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, the reason is this,&rdquo; continued she, as they went on
+together&mdash;&ldquo;Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her
+character&mdash;a desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre
+Dumas, and Méry, and Sterne, and others. But she cannot find energy enough to
+do it herself.&rdquo; And Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s
+proposal at large. &ldquo;My notion is that Méry&rsquo;s style will suit her
+best, because he writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she has,&rdquo;
+Grace said, musingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; said Winterborne, with mock awe. &ldquo;Suppose you talk
+over my head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I didn&rsquo;t mean it!&rdquo; she said, repentantly, looking into
+his eyes. &ldquo;And as for myself, I hate French books. And I love dear old
+Hintock, <i>and the people in it</i>, fifty times better than all the
+Continent. But the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don&rsquo;t you,
+Giles?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is well enough in one sense, but it will take you away,&rdquo; said
+he, mollified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only for a short time. We should return in May.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He had awaited her coming,
+mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal to have a Christmas
+party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and jovial Hintock
+style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the lofty matters of her converse
+and thought that he refrained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his planting, and
+could not help saying to himself as he walked, that this engagement of his was
+a very unpromising business. Her outing to-day had not improved it. A woman who
+could go to Hintock House and be friendly with its mistress, enter into the
+views of its mistress, talk like her, and dress not much unlike her, why, she
+would hardly be contented with him, a yeoman, now immersed in tree-planting,
+even though he planted them well. &ldquo;And yet she&rsquo;s a true-hearted
+girl,&rdquo; he said, thinking of her words about Hintock. &ldquo;I must bring
+matters to a point, and there&rsquo;s an end of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back, and
+dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl as before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suppose, Marty,&rdquo; he said, after a while, looking at her extended
+arm, upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple in the cold
+wind&mdash;&ldquo;suppose you know a person, and want to bring that person to a
+good understanding with you, do you think a Christmas party of some sort is a
+warming-up thing, and likely to be useful in hastening on the matter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there to be dancing?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There might be, certainly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Will He dance with She?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I
+won&rsquo;t be the one to say which.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It shall be done,&rdquo; said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke
+the words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly ended, he added, &ldquo;Here,
+Marty, I&rsquo;ll send up a man to plant the rest to-morrow. I&rsquo;ve other
+things to think of just now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him walking with Grace
+Melbury. She looked towards the western sky, which was now aglow like some vast
+foundery wherein new worlds were being cast. Across it the bare bough of a tree
+stretched horizontally, revealing every twig against the red, and showing in
+dark profile every beck and movement of three pheasants that were settling
+themselves down on it in a row to roost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It will be fine to-morrow,&rdquo; said Marty, observing them with the
+vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, &ldquo;for they are
+a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough. If it were going to be stormy
+they&rsquo;d squeeze close to the trunk. The weather is almost all they have to
+think of, isn&rsquo;t it, Mr. Winterborne? and so they must be lighter-hearted
+than we.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I dare say they are,&rdquo; said Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with no great
+hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant&rsquo;s to ascertain if
+Grace and her parents would honor him with their presence. Having first to set
+his nightly gins in the garden, to catch the rabbits that ate his
+winter-greens, his call was delayed till just after the rising of the moon,
+whose rays reached the Hintock houses but fitfully as yet, on account of the
+trees. Melbury was crossing his yard on his way to call on some one at the
+larger village, but he readily turned and walked up and down the path with the
+young man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller scale than the
+Melburys did, would not for the world imply that his invitation was to a
+gathering of any importance. So he put it in the mild form of &ldquo;Can you
+come in for an hour, when you have done business, the day after to-morrow; and
+Mrs. and Miss Melbury, if they have nothing more pressing to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury would give no answer at once. &ldquo;No, I can&rsquo;t tell you
+to-day,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I must talk it over with the women. As far as I
+am concerned, my dear Giles, you know I&rsquo;ll come with pleasure. But how do
+I know what Grace&rsquo;s notions may be? You see, she has been away among
+cultivated folks a good while; and now this acquaintance with Mrs.
+Charmond&mdash;Well, I&rsquo;ll ask her. I can say no more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way. He knew very
+well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either go or not go,
+according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for the moment, to suggest the
+negative. His errand took him past the church, and the way to his destination
+was either across the church-yard or along-side it, the distances being the
+same. For some reason or other he chose the former way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path, and the front
+of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, turned ill upon the grass, and
+approached a particular headstone, where he read, &ldquo;In memory of John
+Winterborne,&rdquo; with the subjoined date and age. It was the grave of
+Giles&rsquo;s father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was humanized.
+&ldquo;Jack, my wronged friend!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll be faithful
+to my plan of making amends to &rsquo;ee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs. Melbury, who were
+working at a little table by the fire,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day after
+to-morrow; and I&rsquo;m thinking, that as &rsquo;tis Giles who asks us,
+we&rsquo;ll go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant sent Giles the
+next morning an answer in the affirmative.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no particular hour
+in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and his family, expecting no
+other guests, chose their own time, which chanced to be rather early in the
+afternoon, by reason of the somewhat quicker despatch than usual of the
+timber-merchant&rsquo;s business that day. To show their sense of the
+unimportance of the occasion, they walked quite slowly to the house, as if they
+were merely out for a ramble, and going to nothing special at all; or at most
+intending to pay a casual call and take a cup of tea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of Winterborne&rsquo;s
+domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had planned an elaborate high tea for
+six o&rsquo;clock or thereabouts, and a good roaring supper to come on about
+eleven. Being a bachelor of rather retiring habits, the whole of the
+preparations devolved upon himself and his trusty man and familiar, Robert
+Creedle, who did everything that required doing, from making Giles&rsquo;s bed
+to catching moles in his field. He was a survival from the days when
+Giles&rsquo;s father held the homestead, and Giles was a playing boy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to both, were now
+in the heat of preparation in the bake-house, expecting nobody before six
+o&rsquo;clock. Winterborne was standing before the brick oven in his
+shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass
+with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, the heat shining out
+upon his streaming face and making his eyes like furnaces, the thorns crackling
+and sputtering; while Creedle, having ranged the pastry dishes in a row on the
+table till the oven should be ready, was pressing out the crust of a final
+apple-pie with a rolling-pin. A great pot boiled on the fire, and through the
+open door of the back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the
+snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter standing upside
+down on the hob to melt out the grease.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window first the
+timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury in her best silk, and
+Grace in the fashionable attire which, in part brought home with her from the
+Continent, she had worn on her visit to Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s. The eyes of the
+three had been attracted to the proceedings within by the fierce illumination
+which the oven threw out upon the operators and their utensils.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lord, Lord! if they baint come a&rsquo;ready!&rdquo; said Creedle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;hey?&rdquo; said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in
+the background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight. As there was no help
+for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time,&rdquo; said the
+timber-merchant&rsquo;s wife, her face lengthening with concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, it is not much difference. I hope you&rsquo;ll come in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But this means a regular randyvoo!&rdquo; said Mr. Melbury, accusingly,
+glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, yes,&rdquo; said Giles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And&mdash;not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I told three of &rsquo;em they might drop in if they&rsquo;d nothing
+else to do,&rdquo; Giles mildly admitted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, why the name didn&rsquo;t ye tell us &rsquo;twas going to be a
+serious kind of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they
+don&rsquo;t say? Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come back along
+in a couple of hours?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope you&rsquo;ll stay, if you&rsquo;ll be so good as not to mind, now
+you are here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little time. I ought
+not to have been so backward.&rdquo; Giles spoke quite anxiously for one of his
+undemonstrative temperament; for he feared that if the Melburys once were back
+in their own house they would not be disposed to turn out again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that&rsquo;s what
+&rsquo;tis,&rdquo; said Mr. Melbury, testily. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t keep us here
+in the sitting-room; lead on to the bakehouse, man. Now we are here we&rsquo;ll
+help ye get ready for the rest. Here, mis&rsquo;ess, take off your things, and
+help him out in his baking, or he won&rsquo;t get done to-night. I&rsquo;ll
+finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up them
+ducks.&rdquo; His eye had passed with pitiless directness of criticism into yet
+remote recesses of Winterborne&rsquo;s awkwardly built premises, where the
+aforesaid birds were hanging.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll help finish the tarts,&rdquo; said Grace, cheerfully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know about that,&rdquo; said her father.
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tisn&rsquo;t quite so much in your line as it is in your
+mother-law&rsquo;s and mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Of course I couldn&rsquo;t let you, Grace!&rdquo; said Giles, with some
+distress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do it, of course,&rdquo; said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her
+silk train, hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her sleeves,
+pinning them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his apron for her own
+use.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped on the
+preparations. A kindly pity of his household management, which Winterborne saw
+in her eyes whenever he caught them, depressed him much more than her contempt
+would have done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the others was
+absorbed in the difficulties of a <i>cuisine</i> based on utensils, cupboards,
+and provisions that were strange to them. He groaned to the young man in a
+whisper, &ldquo;This is a bruckle het, maister, I&rsquo;m much afeared!
+Who&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; thought they&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; come so soon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The bitter placidity of Winterborne&rsquo;s look adumbrated the misgivings he
+did not care to express. &ldquo;Have you got the celery ready?&rdquo; he asked,
+quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now that&rsquo;s a thing I never could mind; no, not if you&rsquo;d paid
+me in silver and gold. And I don&rsquo;t care who the man is, I says that a
+stick of celery that isn&rsquo;t scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is not
+clean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>Very</i> well, very well! I&rsquo;ll attend to it. You go and get
+&rsquo;em comfortable in-doors.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks to Creedle,
+who was still in a tragic mood. &ldquo;If ye&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; married,
+d&rsquo;ye see, maister,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this caddle couldn&rsquo;t have
+happened to us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done that could
+insure the supper turning up ready at some time or other, Giles and his friends
+entered the parlor, where the Melburys again dropped into position as guests,
+though the room was not nearly so warm and cheerful as the blazing bakehouse.
+Others now arrived, among them Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner, and tea
+went off very well.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace&rsquo;s disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at
+deficiencies in Winterborne&rsquo;s menage, was so uniform and persistent that
+he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was aware of. That
+suppressed sympathy which had showed in her face ever since her arrival told
+him as much too plainly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This muddling style of house-keeping is what you&rsquo;ve not lately
+been used to, I suppose?&rdquo; he said, when they were a little apart.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything here in
+dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The oil is&mdash;not quite nice; but
+everything else is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The oil?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one&rsquo;s dress. Still, mine
+is not a new one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright, had smeared
+the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish, and refrained from
+rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the mirror-like effect that the mixture
+produced as laid on. Giles apologized and called Creedle; but he felt that the
+Fates were against him.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked meats from the oven, laid on a
+snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as in Flemish
+&ldquo;Last Suppers.&rdquo; Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with
+amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior and make things pleasant,
+expressing his admiration of Creedle&rsquo;s cleverness when they were alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr.
+Creedle, was when you was in the militia?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and many
+ways of strange dashing life. Not but that Giles has worked hard in helping me
+to bring things to such perfection to-day. &lsquo;Giles,&rsquo; says I, though
+he&rsquo;s maister. Not that I should call&rsquo;n maister by rights, for his
+father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had twinned us and been
+our nourishing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I s&rsquo;pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr.
+Creedle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes. Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and hang-fairs
+and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday. Ah, many&rsquo;s the patriarch
+I&rsquo;ve seed come and go in this parish! There, he&rsquo;s calling for more
+plates. Lord, why can&rsquo;t &rsquo;em turn their plates bottom upward for
+pudding, as they used to do in former days?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a half-unconscious
+state. He could not get over the initial failures in his scheme for advancing
+his suit, and hence he did not know that he was eating mouthfuls of bread and
+nothing else, and continually snuffing the two candles next him till he had
+reduced them to mere glimmers drowned in their own grease. Creedle now appeared
+with a specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little
+three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into a dish,
+exclaiming, simultaneously, &ldquo;Draw back, gentlemen and ladies,
+please!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A splash followed. Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod and blink, and put her
+handkerchief to her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good heavens! what did you do that for, Creedle?&rdquo; said Giles,
+sternly, and jumping up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister,&rdquo; mildly
+expostulated Creedle, in an aside audible to all the company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, yes&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo; replied Giles. He went over to Grace,
+and hoped none of it had gone into her eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Only a sprinkle on my face. It was
+nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Kiss it and make it well,&rdquo; gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Miss Melbury blushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant said, quickly, &ldquo;Oh, it is nothing! She must bear
+these little mishaps.&rdquo; But there could be discerned in his face something
+which said &ldquo;I ought to have foreseen this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not quite liked
+to see Grace present. He wished he had not asked such people as Bawtree and the
+hollow-turner. He had done it, in dearth of other friends, that the room might
+not appear empty. In his mind&rsquo;s eye, before the event, they had been the
+mere background or padding of the scene, but somehow in reality they were the
+most prominent personages there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner monopolizing the
+new packs for an interminable game, in which a lump of chalk was incessantly
+used&mdash;a game those two always played wherever they were, taking a solitary
+candle and going to a private table in a corner with the mien of persons bent
+on weighty matters. The rest of the company on this account were obliged to put
+up with old packs for their round game, that had been lying by in a drawer ever
+since the time that Giles&rsquo;s grandmother was alive. Each card had a great
+stain in the middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp
+and excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens wore a
+decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an impecunious dethroned
+race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than real regal characters. Every now
+and then the comparatively few remarks of the players at the round game were
+harshly intruded on by the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the
+hollow-turner from the back of the room:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;And I&#x2032; will hold&#x2032; a wa&#x2032;-ger with you&#x2032;<br />
+That all&#x2032; these marks&#x2032; are thirt&#x2032;-y two!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table; then an
+exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; then the commencement of the
+rhymes anew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with a satisfied sense of
+weight in his words, and by praising the party in a patronizing tone, when
+Winterborne expressed his fear that he and his were not enjoying themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, yes; pretty much. What handsome glasses those are! I
+didn&rsquo;t know you had such glasses in the house. Now, Lucy&rdquo; (to his
+wife), &ldquo;you ought to get some like them for ourselves.&rdquo; And when
+they had abandoned cards, and Winterborne was talking to Melbury by the fire,
+it was the timber-merchant who stood with his back to the mantle in a
+proprietary attitude, from which post of vantage he critically regarded
+Giles&rsquo;s person, rather as a superficies than as a solid with ideas and
+feelings inside it, saying, &ldquo;What a splendid coat that one is you have
+on, Giles! I can&rsquo;t get such coats. You dress better than I.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great Hintock having arrived
+some time before. Grace had been away from home so long that she had forgotten
+the old figures, and hence did not join in the movement. Then Giles felt that
+all was over. As for her, she was thinking, as she watched the gyrations, of a
+very different measure that she had been accustomed to tread with a bevy of
+sylph-like creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a large house, most of
+whom were now moving in scenes widely removed from this, both as regarded place
+and character.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with the
+abandoned cards. Grace assented to the proposal, and the woman told her tale
+unskilfully, for want of practice, as she declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, &ldquo;Tell her
+fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science&mdash;what do you
+call &rsquo;em? Phrenologists. You can&rsquo;t teach her anything new.
+She&rsquo;s been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at anything she
+can hear among us folks in Hintock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family being the
+earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing their game doggedly in
+the corner, where they had completely covered Giles&rsquo;s mahogany table with
+chalk scratches. The three walked home, the distance being short and the night
+clear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Giles is a very good fellow,&rdquo; said Mr. Melbury, as they
+struck down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in which the
+stars seemed set.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly he is,&rdquo; said Grace, quickly, and in such a tone as to
+show that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard than he had stood
+before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the doctor&rsquo;s
+house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his rooms, although it was
+now about two o&rsquo;clock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The doctor is not abed yet,&rdquo; said Mrs. Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hard study, no doubt,&rdquo; said her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about here by
+day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night. &rsquo;Tis
+astonishing how little we see of him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury&rsquo;s mind seemed to turn with much relief to the contemplation of
+Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. &ldquo;It is natural
+enough,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;What can a man of that sort find to interest
+him in Hintock? I don&rsquo;t expect he&rsquo;ll stay here long.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mind reverted to Giles&rsquo;s party, and when they were nearly home he
+spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: &ldquo;It is hardly the
+line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she&rsquo;s been accustomed to.
+I didn&rsquo;t foresee that in sending her to boarding-school and letting her
+travel, and what not, to make her a good bargain for Giles, I should be really
+spoiling her for him. Ah, &rsquo;tis a thousand pities! But he ought to have
+her&mdash;he ought!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last really
+finished their play, could be heard coming along in the rear, vociferously
+singing a song to march-time, and keeping vigorous step to the same in
+far-reaching strides&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;She may go, oh!<br />
+She may go, oh!<br />
+She may go to the d&mdash;&mdash; for me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s the
+sort of society we&rsquo;ve been asked to meet,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;For us
+old folk it didn&rsquo;t matter; but for Grace&mdash;Giles should have known
+better!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just cleared out, the
+subject of their discourse was walking from room to room surveying the general
+displacement of furniture with no ecstatic feeling; rather the reverse, indeed.
+At last he entered the bakehouse, and found there Robert Creedle sitting over
+the embers, also lost in contemplation. Winterborne sat down beside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Robert, you must be tired. You&rsquo;d better get on to
+bed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, ay, Giles&mdash;what do I call ye? Maister, I would say. But
+&rsquo;tis well to think the day <i>is</i> done, when &rsquo;tis done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled forehead was
+ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth, till it was like a vast
+scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders lying about everywhere. &ldquo;Do you
+think it went off well, Creedle?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The victuals did; that I know. And the drink did; that I steadfastly
+believe, from the holler sound of the barrels. Good, honest drink &rsquo;twere,
+the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best wine that berries could rise to;
+and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves cider ever wrung down, leaving out the
+spice and sperrits I put into it, while that egg-flip would ha&rsquo; passed
+through muslin, so little curdled &rsquo;twere. &rsquo;Twas good enough to make
+any king&rsquo;s heart merry&mdash;ay, to make his whole carcass smile. Still,
+I don&rsquo;t deny I&rsquo;m afeared some things didn&rsquo;t go well with He
+and his.&rdquo; Creedle nodded in a direction which signified where the
+Melburys lived.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m afraid, too, that it was a failure there!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If so, &rsquo;twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail might as
+well have come upon anybody else&rsquo;s plate as hers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What snail?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate when I
+brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves of
+wintergreen.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How the deuce did a snail get there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That I don&rsquo;t know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman
+was.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn&rsquo;t have
+been!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, &rsquo;twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we
+expect him to be? I don&rsquo;t care who the man is, snails and caterpillars
+always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing
+way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He wasn&rsquo;t alive, I suppose?&rdquo; said Giles, with a shudder on
+Grace&rsquo;s account.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. God forbid that a
+<i>live</i> snail should be seed on any plate of victuals that&rsquo;s served
+by Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don&rsquo;t mind &rsquo;em
+myself&mdash;them small ones, for they were born on cabbage, and they&rsquo;ve
+lived on cabbage, so they must be made of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed
+little lady, she didn&rsquo;t say a word about it; though &rsquo;twould have
+made good small conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially as
+wit ran short among us sometimes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;&rsquo;tis all over!&rdquo; murmured Giles to himself,
+shaking his head over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead
+more than ever. &ldquo;Do you know, Robert,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that
+she&rsquo;s been accustomed to servants and everything superfine these many
+years? How, then, could she stand our ways?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere.
+They shouldn&rsquo;t have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor men
+shouldn&rsquo;t give randys, or if they do give &rsquo;em, only to their own
+race.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps that&rsquo;s true,&rdquo; said Winterborne, rising and yawning a
+sigh.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis a pity&mdash;a thousand pities!&rdquo; her father kept saying
+next morning at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne&rsquo;s suit at
+this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote&mdash;was, indeed,
+mechanically promoting at this moment? A crisis was approaching, mainly as a
+result of his contrivances, and it would have to be met.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what an
+immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his daughter,
+after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for several years upon
+her education, he was reluctant to let her marry Giles Winterborne,
+indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant, apple-farmer, and what not,
+even were she willing to marry him herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She will be his wife if you don&rsquo;t upset her notion that
+she&rsquo;s bound to accept him as an understood thing,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+Melbury. &ldquo;Bless ye, she&rsquo;ll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be
+content with Giles&rsquo;s way of living, which he&rsquo;ll improve with what
+money she&rsquo;ll have from you. &rsquo;Tis the strangeness after her genteel
+life that makes her feel uncomfortable at first. Why, when <i>I</i> saw Hintock
+the first time I thought I never could like it. But things gradually get
+familiar, and stone floors seem not so very cold and hard, and the hooting of
+the owls not so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very lonely, after a
+while.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I believe ye. That&rsquo;s just it. I <i>know</i> Grace will
+gradually sink down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of
+speaking, and feel a drowsy content in being Giles&rsquo;s wife. But I
+can&rsquo;t bear the thought of dragging down to that old level as promising a
+piece of maidenhood as ever lived&mdash;fit to ornament a palace
+wi&rsquo;&mdash;that I&rsquo;ve taken so much trouble to lift up. Fancy her
+white hands getting redder every day, and her tongue losing its pretty
+up-country curl in talking, and her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock
+shail and wamble!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She may shail, but she&rsquo;ll never wamble,&rdquo; replied his wife,
+decisively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late; not so
+much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence as discomposed
+by these other reflections.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. &ldquo;You used to
+complain with justice when I was a girl,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;But I am a
+woman now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is something
+else!&rdquo; Instead of sitting down she went outside the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show towards each other is in truth
+directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped the situation no
+less for the offenders than the offended, but is too elusive to be discerned
+and cornered by poor humanity in irritated mood. Melbury followed her. She had
+rambled on to the paddock, where the white frost lay, and where starlings in
+flocks of twenties and thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable
+family of sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney,
+preening themselves in the rays of the sun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come in to breakfast, my girl,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;And as to Giles,
+use your own mind. Whatever pleases you will please me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honor I
+ought to marry him, whenever I do marry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heart there
+pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles, though it had
+become overlaid with implanted tastes. But he would not distinctly express his
+views on the promise. &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But I hope I
+sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What did you think of
+the inside of Hintock House the other day?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I liked it much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Different from friend Winterborne&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by her silence
+to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again&mdash;when, did you
+say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know if it
+suited her.&rdquo; And with this subject upon their lips they entered to
+breakfast.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. Nor was there any on
+Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a sign, and it looked
+suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not going further in the direction of
+&ldquo;taking up&rdquo; Grace at present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his daughter&rsquo;s two
+indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond&mdash;the interview in the wood and a
+visit to the House&mdash;she had attended Winterborne&rsquo;s party. No doubt
+the out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in the
+neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widely spoken
+of&mdash;Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all. What, then, so
+natural as that Mrs. Charmond should have heard the village news, and become
+quite disappointed in her expectations of Grace at finding she kept such
+company?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full of this <i>post hoc</i> argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the infinite
+throng of other possible reasons and unreasons for a woman changing her mind.
+For instance, while knowing that his Grace was attractive, he quite forgot that
+Mrs. Charmond had also great pretensions to beauty. In his simple estimate, an
+attractive woman attracted all around.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the villagers at
+the unlucky Winterborne&rsquo;s was the cause of her most grievous loss, as he
+deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis a thousand pities!&rdquo; he would repeat to himself.
+&ldquo;I am ruining her for conscience&rsquo; sake!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his mind, that,
+curiously enough, something darkened the window just as they finished
+breakfast. Looking up, they saw Giles in person mounted on horseback, and
+straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for some time, to catch their
+attention through the window. Grace had been the first to see him, and
+involuntarily exclaimed, &ldquo;There he is&mdash;and a new horse!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended thoughts and
+compound feelings concerning him, could he have read them through those old
+panes. But he saw nothing: his features just now were, for a wonder, lit up
+with a red smile at some other idea. So they rose from breakfast and went to
+the door, Grace with an anxious, wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs.
+Melbury placid and inquiring. &ldquo;We have come out to look at your
+horse,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and explained that he
+had ridden a mile or two to try the animal&rsquo;s paces. &ldquo;I bought
+her,&rdquo; he added, with warmth so severely repressed as to seem
+indifference, &ldquo;because she has been used to carry a lady.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said, &ldquo;And is she
+quiet?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. &ldquo;I took care of
+that. She&rsquo;s five-and-twenty, and very clever for her age.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, get off and come in,&rdquo; said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles
+dismounted accordingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This event was the concrete result of Winterborne&rsquo;s thoughts during the
+past week or two. The want of success with his evening party he had accepted in
+as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there had been enthusiasm
+enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market to purchase this old mare,
+which had belonged to a neighboring parson with several daughters, and was
+offered him to carry either a gentleman or a lady, and to do odd jobs of
+carting and agriculture at a pinch. This obliging quadruped seemed to furnish
+Giles with a means of reinstating himself in Melbury&rsquo;s good opinion as a
+man of considerateness by throwing out future possibilities to Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning, in the mood
+which is altogether peculiar to woman&rsquo;s nature, and which, when reduced
+into plain words, seems as impossible as the penetrability of matter&mdash;that
+of entertaining a tender pity for the object of her own unnecessary coldness.
+The imperturbable poise which marked Winterborne in general was enlivened now
+by a freshness and animation that set a brightness in his eye and on his cheek.
+Mrs. Melbury asked him to have some breakfast, and he pleasurably replied that
+he would join them, with his usual lack of tactical observation, not perceiving
+that they had all finished the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, and
+that the note piped by the kettle denoted it to be nearly empty; so that fresh
+water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil, and a general
+renovation of the table carried out. Neither did he know, so full was he of his
+tender ulterior object in buying that horse, how many cups of tea he was
+gulping down one after another, nor how the morning was slipping, nor how he
+was keeping the family from dispersing about their duties.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse&rsquo;s purchase,
+looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the room, a way he always
+looked when he narrated anything that amused him. While he was still thinking
+of the scene he had described, Grace rose and said, &ldquo;I have to go and
+help my mother now, Mr. Winterborne.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;H&rsquo;m!&rdquo; he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness; whereupon Giles,
+becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, jumped up, saying, &ldquo;To be
+sure, to be sure!&rdquo; wished them quickly good-morning, and bolted out of
+the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position, with her at
+least. Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father saw with some regret)
+already the homeliness of Hintock life was fast becoming effaced from her
+observation as a singularity; just as the first strangeness of a face from
+which we have for years been separated insensibly passes off with renewed
+intercourse, and tones itself down into simple identity with the lineaments of
+the past.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to the sacrifice of
+the gem he had been at such pains in mounting. He fain could hope, in the
+secret nether chamber of his mind, that something would happen, before the
+balance of her feeling had quite turned in Winterborne&rsquo;s favor, to
+relieve his conscience and preserve her on her elevated plane.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned all interest in
+his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it, and was as firmly convinced
+as ever that the comradeship which Grace had shown with Giles and his crew by
+attending his party had been the cause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Matters lingered on thus. And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on this side and
+on that is made to travel in specific directions, the little touches of
+circumstance in the life of this young girl shaped the curves of her career.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss Melbury went out for
+a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an hour&rsquo;s leisure,
+offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and quite steady, filtering
+itself through the denuded mass of twigs without swaying them, but making the
+point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks scratch its underlying neighbor
+restlessly. Grace&rsquo;s lips sucked in this native air of hers like milk.
+They soon reached a place where the wood ran down into a corner, and went
+outside it towards comparatively open ground. Having looked round about, they
+were intending to re-enter the copse when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging
+brush, trotted past them tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some
+dead fern. They walked on, her father merely observing, after watching the
+animal, &ldquo;They are hunting somewhere near.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and thither,
+as if there were little or no scent that day. Soon divers members of the hunt
+appeared on the scene, and it was evident from their movements that the chase
+had been stultified by general puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the
+intended victim. In a minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting
+with acteonic excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed
+her, asking if she had seen the fox.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;We saw him some time ago&mdash;just out
+there.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you cry Halloo?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We said nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then why the d&mdash;&mdash; didn&rsquo;t you, or get the old buffer to
+do it for you?&rdquo; said the man, as he cantered away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her father&rsquo;s
+face, saw that it was quite red.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!&rdquo; said the old man, in
+the tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet
+applied to himself. &ldquo;And he wouldn&rsquo;t if he had been a gentleman.
+&rsquo;Twas not the language to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well
+read and cultivated&mdash;how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy
+field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from trimming
+swedes or mangolds&mdash;joking with the rough work-folk and all that&mdash;I
+could have stood it. But hasn&rsquo;t it cost me near a hundred a year to lift
+you out of all that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a
+woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? &rsquo;Twas because I
+was in your company. If a black-coated squire or pa&rsquo;son had been walking
+with you instead of me he wouldn&rsquo;t have spoken so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, father; there&rsquo;s nothing in you rough or
+ill-mannered!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you it is that! I&rsquo;ve noticed, and I&rsquo;ve noticed it
+many times, that a woman takes her color from the man she&rsquo;s walking with.
+The woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she&rsquo;s with a polished-up
+fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she&rsquo;s hobbing and
+nobbing with a homely blade. You sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t be treated like that for
+long, or at least your children sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t. You shall have somebody to
+walk with you who looks more of a dandy than I&mdash;please God you
+shall!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, my dear father,&rdquo; she said, much distressed, &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t mind at all. I don&rsquo;t wish for more honor than I already
+have!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter,&rdquo; according to
+Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so than to
+Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him. As for Grace, she began to feel
+troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to unambitiously devote her
+life to Giles Winterborne, but she was conscious of more and more uneasiness at
+the possibility of being the social hope of the family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?&rdquo; asked her
+father, in continuation of the subject.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning had not been without
+its weight upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grace,&rdquo; he said, just before they had reached the house, &ldquo;if
+it costs me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a
+young woman&rsquo;s niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry
+well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze, which
+seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked calmly at him. &ldquo;And how about Mr. Winterborne?&rdquo; she
+asked. &ldquo;I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a
+question of keeping faith.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant&rsquo;s eyes fell for a moment. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+know&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;&rsquo;Tis a trying
+strait. Well, well; there&rsquo;s no hurry. We&rsquo;ll wait and see how he
+gets on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment behind the
+large parlor. It had at one time been part of the bakehouse, with the ordinary
+oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr. Melbury, in turning it into an office, had
+built into the cavity an iron safe, which he used for holding his private
+papers. The door of the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sit down, Grace, and keep me company,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You may
+amuse yourself by looking over these.&rdquo; He threw out a heap of papers
+before her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What are they?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Securities of various sorts.&rdquo; He unfolded them one by one.
+&ldquo;Papers worth so much money each. Now here&rsquo;s a lot of turnpike
+bonds for one thing. Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is
+worth two hundred pounds?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, indeed, if you didn&rsquo;t say so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. They are for
+different sums in the three-per-cents. Now these are Port Breedy Harbor bonds.
+We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because I send off timber
+there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They&rsquo;ll interest ye.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I will, some day,&rdquo; said she, rising.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little of such matters. A
+young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs altogether.
+Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your husband&rsquo;s
+title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t say that, father&mdash;title-deeds; it sounds so
+vain!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. There, that piece
+of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but&mdash;&rdquo; She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in
+a low voice: &ldquo;If what has been arranged about me should come to anything,
+my sphere will be quite a middling one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Your sphere ought not to be middling,&rdquo; he exclaimed, not in
+passion, but in earnest conviction. &ldquo;You said you never felt more at
+home, more in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs.
+Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and made you
+stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room&mdash;surely you did!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I did say so,&rdquo; admitted Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was it true?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now,
+perhaps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! Now, though you don&rsquo;t see it, your feeling at the time was the
+right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh cultivation,
+so that going there with her was like meeting like. Since then you&rsquo;ve
+been biding with us, and have fallen back a little, and so you don&rsquo;t feel
+your place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look over these papers and
+see what you&rsquo;ll be worth some day. For they&rsquo;ll all be yours, you
+know; who have I got to leave &rsquo;em to but you? Perhaps when your education
+is backed up by what these papers represent, and that backed up by another such
+a set and their owner, men such as that fellow was this morning may think you a
+little more than a buffer&rsquo;s girl.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded representatives of hard
+cash that her father put before her. To sow in her heart cravings for social
+position was obviously his strong desire, though in direct antagonism to a
+better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with him, and had, indeed, only
+succumbed that morning during the ramble.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility of such a
+position was too great. She had made it for herself mainly by her appearance
+and attractive behavior to him since her return. &ldquo;If I had only come home
+in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this might not have
+happened,&rdquo; she thought. She deplored less the fact than the sad
+possibilities that might lie hidden therein.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and reading the
+counterfoils. This, also, she obediently did, and at last came to two or three
+which had been drawn to defray some of the late expenses of her clothes, board,
+and education.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn,&rdquo;
+she said, looking up sorrily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an
+idea of my investment transactions. But if you do cost as much as they, never
+mind. You&rsquo;ll yield a better return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think of me like that!&rdquo; she begged. &ldquo;A mere
+chattel.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that&rsquo;s in your line I
+don&rsquo;t forbid it, even if it tells against me,&rdquo; he said,
+good-humoredly. And he looked her proudly up and down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper was ready, and
+in giving the information she added, incidentally, &ldquo;So we shall soon lose
+the mistress of Hintock House for some time, I hear, Maister Melbury. Yes,
+she&rsquo;s going off to foreign parts to-morrow, for the rest of the winter
+months; and be-chok&rsquo;d if I don&rsquo;t wish I could do the same, for my
+wynd-pipe is furred like a flue.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his daughter and said,
+&ldquo;So, Grace, you&rsquo;ve lost your new friend, and your chance of keeping
+her company and writing her travels is quite gone from ye!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace said nothing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he went on, emphatically, &ldquo;&rsquo;tis
+Winterborne&rsquo;s affair has done this. Oh yes, &rsquo;tis. So let me say one
+word. Promise me that you will not meet him again without my knowledge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or with
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So much the better. I don&rsquo;t like the look of this at all. And I
+say it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of tenderness to you.
+For how could a woman, brought up delicately as you have been, bear the
+roughness of a life with him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a sense of the
+intractability of circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a conversation
+about Winterborne in progress in the village street, opposite Mr.
+Melbury&rsquo;s gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert Creedle had
+accidentally met.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over the parish, the
+skin of his face being drawn two ways on the matter&mdash;towards brightness in
+respect of it as news, and towards concern in respect of it as circumstance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to lose her
+father. He was almost well, but is much worse again. A man all skin and grief
+he ever were, and if he leave Little Hintock for a better land, won&rsquo;t it
+make some difference to your Maister Winterborne, neighbor Creedle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can I be a prophet in Israel?&rdquo; said Creedle. &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t
+it! I was only shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing way,
+and all the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know what it means? It
+is upon John South&rsquo;s life that all Mr. Winterborne&rsquo;s houses hang.
+If so be South die, and so make his decease, thereupon the law is that the
+houses fall without the least chance of absolution into HER hands at the House.
+I told him so; but the words of the faithful be only as wind!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The news was true. The life&mdash;the one fragile life&mdash;that had been used
+as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being frayed away. It was
+the last of a group of lives which had served this purpose, at the end of whose
+breathings the small homestead occupied by South himself, the larger one of
+Giles Winterborne, and half a dozen others that had been in the possession of
+various Hintock village families for the previous hundred years, and were now
+Winterborne&rsquo;s, would fall in and become part of the encompassing estate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet a short two months earlier Marty&rsquo;s father, aged fifty-five years,
+though something of a fidgety, anxious being, would have been looked on as a
+man whose existence was so far removed from hazardous as any in the parish, and
+as bidding fair to be prolonged for another quarter of a century.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day thinking of the contingency.
+The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his
+dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house, stables, and weathercock, were all
+slipping away over his head and beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a
+magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite of John South&rsquo;s late
+indisposition he had not anticipated danger. To inquire concerning his health
+had been to show less sympathy than to remain silent, considering the material
+interest he possessed in the woodman&rsquo;s life, and he had, accordingly,
+made a point of avoiding Marty&rsquo;s house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him. It was Marty
+herself, and she showed her distress by her unconsciousness of a cropped poll.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall one in front
+of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill us. Can you come and see
+if you can persuade him out of his notion? I can do nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted him upstairs. John South
+was pillowed up in a chair between the bed and the window exactly opposite the
+latter, towards which his face was turned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, neighbor Winterborne,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have
+minded if my life had only been my own to lose; I don&rsquo;t vallie it in much
+of itself, and can let it go if &rsquo;tis required of me. But to think what
+&rsquo;tis worth to you, a young man rising in life, that do trouble me! It
+seems a trick of dishonesty towards ye to go off at fifty-five! I could bear
+up, I know I could, if it were not for the tree&mdash;yes, the tree, &rsquo;tis
+that&rsquo;s killing me. There he stands, threatening my life every minute that
+the wind do blow. He&rsquo;ll come down upon us and squat us dead; and what
+will ye do when the life on your property is taken away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never you mind me&mdash;that&rsquo;s of no consequence,&rdquo; said
+Giles. &ldquo;Think of yourself alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman&rsquo;s gaze. The
+tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood, which stood at a distance
+of two-thirds its own height from the front of South&rsquo;s dwelling. Whenever
+the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked, naturally enough; and the sight
+of its motion and sound of its sighs had gradually bred the terrifying illusion
+in the woodman&rsquo;s mind that it would descend and kill him. Thus he would
+sit all day, in spite of persuasion, watching its every sway, and listening to
+the melancholy Gregorian melodies which the air wrung out of it. This fear it
+apparently was, rather than any organic disease which was eating away the
+health of John South.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man with abject
+obedience. &ldquo;Ah, when it was quite a small tree,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;and I was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it off with my
+hook to make a clothes-line prop with. But I put off doing it, and then I again
+thought that I would; but I forgot it, and didn&rsquo;t. And at last it got too
+big, and now &rsquo;tis my enemy, and will be the death o&rsquo; me. Little did
+I think, when I let that sapling stay, that a time would come when it would
+torment me, and dash me into my grave.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly. But they thought
+it possible that it might hasten him into his grave, though in another way than
+by falling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I tell you what,&rdquo; added Winterborne, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll climb up
+this afternoon and shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won&rsquo;t be so
+heavy, and the wind won&rsquo;t affect it so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She won&rsquo;t allow it&mdash;a strange woman come from nobody knows
+where&mdash;she won&rsquo;t have it done.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean Mrs. Charmond? Oh, she doesn&rsquo;t know there&rsquo;s such a
+tree on her estate. Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I&rsquo;ll risk that
+much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook from the
+woodman&rsquo;s shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower part of the
+tree, where he began lopping off&mdash;&ldquo;shrouding,&rdquo; as they called
+it at Hintock&mdash;the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered under his attack,
+bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having cut away the lowest tier, he
+stepped off the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, and attacked those at the
+next level. Thus he ascended with the progress of his work far above the top of
+the ladder, cutting away his perches as he went, and leaving nothing but a bare
+stem below him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The work was troublesome, for the tree was large. The afternoon wore on,
+turning dark and misty about four o&rsquo;clock. From time to time Giles cast
+his eyes across towards the bedroom window of South, where, by the flickering
+fire in the chamber, he could see the old man watching him, sitting motionless
+with a hand upon each arm of the chair. Beside him sat Marty, also straining
+her eyes towards the skyey field of his operations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, and he stopped his
+chopping. He was operating on another person&rsquo;s property to prolong the
+years of a lease by whose termination that person would considerably benefit.
+In that aspect of the case he doubted if he ought to go on. On the other hand
+he was working to save a man&rsquo;s life, and this seemed to empower him to
+adopt arbitrary measures.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was weighing the circumstances
+he saw coming along the road through the increasing mist a figure which,
+indistinct as it was, he knew well. It was Grace Melbury, on her way out from
+the house, probably for a short evening walk before dark. He arranged himself
+for a greeting from her, since she could hardly avoid passing immediately
+beneath the tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just at that time too full of
+the words of her father to give him any encouragement. The years-long regard
+that she had had for him was not kindled by her return into a flame of
+sufficient brilliancy to make her rebellious. Thinking that she might not see
+him, he cried, &ldquo;Miss Melbury, here I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She looked up again. She was near enough to see the expression of his face, and
+the nails in his soles, silver-bright with constant walking. But she did not
+reply; and dropping her glance again, went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne&rsquo;s face grew strange; he mused, and proceeded automatically
+with his work. Grace meanwhile had not gone far. She had reached a gate,
+whereon she had leaned sadly, and whispered to herself, &ldquo;What shall I
+do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, passing under the tree again
+on her return. Again he addressed her. &ldquo;Grace,&rdquo; he said, when she
+was close to the trunk, &ldquo;speak to me.&rdquo; She shook her head without
+stopping, and went on to a little distance, where she stood observing him from
+behind the hedge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her coldness had been kindly meant. If it was to be done, she had said to
+herself, it should be begun at once. While she stood out of observation Giles
+seemed to recognize her meaning; with a sudden start he worked on, climbing
+higher, and cutting himself off more and more from all intercourse with the
+sublunary world. At last he had worked himself so high up the elm, and the mist
+had so thickened, that he could only just be discerned as a dark-gray spot on
+the light-gray sky: he would have been altogether out of notice but for the
+stroke of his billhook and the flight of a bough downward, and its crash upon
+the hedge at intervals.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were best. She went
+back a third time; he did not see her now, and she lingeringly gazed up at his
+unconscious figure, loath to put an end to any kind of hope that might live on
+in him still. &ldquo;Giles&mdash; Mr. Winterborne,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear. &ldquo;Mr.
+Winterborne!&rdquo; she cried again, and this time he stopped, looked down, and
+replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My silence just now was not accident,&rdquo; she said, in an unequal
+voice. &ldquo;My father says it is best not to think too much of
+that&mdash;engagement, or understanding between us, that you know of. I, too,
+think that upon the whole he is right. But we are friends, you know, Giles, and
+almost relations.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he answered, as if without surprise, in a voice which
+barely reached down the tree. &ldquo;I have nothing to say in objection&mdash;I
+cannot say anything till I&rsquo;ve thought a while.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She added, with emotion in her tone, &ldquo;For myself, I would have married
+you&mdash;some day&mdash;I think. But I give way, for I see it would be
+unwise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his elbow in a fork, and
+rested his head upon his hand. Thus he remained till the fog and the night had
+completely enclosed him from her view.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved onward, her
+heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her eyes wet. Had Giles, instead
+of remaining still, immediately come down from the tree to her, would she have
+continued in that filial acquiescent frame of mind which she had announced to
+him as final? If it be true, as women themselves have declared, that one of
+their sex is never so much inclined to throw in her lot with a man for good and
+all as five minutes after she has told him such a thing cannot be, the
+probabilities are that something might have been done by the appearance of
+Winterborne on the ground beside Grace. But he continued motionless and silent
+in that gloomy Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and she proceeded on
+her way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The spot seemed now to be quite deserted. The light from South&rsquo;s window
+made rays on the fog, but did not reach the tree. A quarter of an hour passed,
+and all was blackness overhead. Giles had not yet come down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a movement was audible,
+and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly to the ground. He had thought the
+matter out, and having returned the ladder and billhook to their places,
+pursued his way homeward. He would not allow this incident to affect his outer
+conduct any more than the danger to his leaseholds had done, and went to bed as
+usual. Two simultaneous troubles do not always make a double trouble; and thus
+it came to pass that Giles&rsquo;s practical anxiety about his houses, which
+would have been enough to keep him awake half the night at any other time, was
+displaced and not reinforced by his sentimental trouble about Grace Melbury.
+This severance was in truth more like a burial of her than a rupture with her;
+but he did not realize so much at present; even when he arose in the morning he
+felt quite moody and stern: as yet the second note in the gamut of such
+emotions, a tender regret for his loss, had not made itself heard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning to a builder whose works
+were in a town many miles off. The proud trunks were taken up from the silent
+spot which had known them through the buddings and sheddings of their growth
+for the foregoing hundred years; chained down like slaves to a heavy timber
+carriage with enormous red wheels, and four of the most powerful of
+Melbury&rsquo;s horses were harnessed in front to draw them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horses wore their bells that day. There were sixteen to the team, carried
+on a frame above each animal&rsquo;s shoulders, and tuned to scale, so as to
+form two octaves, running from the highest note on the right or off-side of the
+leader to the lowest on the left or near-side of the shaft-horse. Melbury was
+among the last to retain horse-bells in that neighborhood; for, living at
+Little Hintock, where the lanes yet remained as narrow as before the days of
+turnpike roads, these sound-signals were still as useful to him and his
+neighbors as they had ever been in former times. Much backing was saved in the
+course of a year by the warning notes they cast ahead; moreover, the tones of
+all the teams in the district being known to the carters of each, they could
+tell a long way off on a dark night whether they were about to encounter
+friends or strangers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fog of the previous evening still lingered so heavily over the woods that
+the morning could not penetrate the trees till long after its time. The load
+being a ponderous one, the lane crooked, and the air so thick, Winterborne set
+out, as he often did, to accompany the team as far as the corner, where it
+would turn into a wider road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the roadside cottages by the
+weight of their progress, the sixteen bells chiming harmoniously over all, till
+they had risen out of the valley and were descending towards the more open
+route, the sparks rising from their creaking skid and nearly setting fire to
+the dead leaves alongside.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then occurred one of the very incidents against which the bells were an
+endeavor to guard. Suddenly there beamed into their eyes, quite close to them,
+the two lamps of a carriage, shorn of rays by the fog. Its approach had been
+quite unheard, by reason of their own noise. The carriage was a covered one,
+while behind it could be discerned another vehicle laden with luggage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the coachman telling the
+carter that he must turn back. The carter declared that this was impossible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses,&rdquo; said the
+coachman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is much easier for you to turn than for us,&rdquo; said Winterborne.
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve five tons of timber on these wheels if we&rsquo;ve an
+ounce.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I&rsquo;ve another carriage with luggage at my back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument. &ldquo;But even with
+that,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you can back better than we. And you ought to, for
+you could hear our bells half a mile off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you could see our lights.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We couldn&rsquo;t, because of the fog.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, our time&rsquo;s precious,&rdquo; said the coachman, haughtily.
+&ldquo;You are only going to some trumpery little village or other in the
+neighborhood, while we are going straight to Italy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Driving all the way, I suppose,&rdquo; said Winterborne, sarcastically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The argument continued in these terms till a voice from the interior of the
+carriage inquired what was the matter. It was a lady&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was briefly informed of the timber people&rsquo;s obstinacy; and then Giles
+could hear her telling the footman to direct the timber people to turn their
+horses&rsquo; heads.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to say that he
+begged the lady&rsquo;s pardon, but that he could not do as she requested; that
+though he would not assert it to be impossible, it was impossible by comparison
+with the slight difficulty to her party to back their light carriages. As fate
+would have it, the incident with Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles
+less gentle than he might otherwise have shown himself, his confidence in the
+sex being rudely shaken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled to back till
+they reached one of the sidings or turnouts constructed in the bank for the
+purpose. Then the team came on ponderously, and the clanging of its sixteen
+bells as it passed the discomfited carriages, tilted up against the bank, lent
+a particularly triumphant tone to the team&rsquo;s progress&mdash;a tone which,
+in point of fact, did not at all attach to its conductor&rsquo;s feelings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got past the yet stationary
+carriages he heard a soft voice say, &ldquo;Who is that rude man? Not
+Melbury?&rdquo; The sex of the speaker was so prominent in the voice that
+Winterborne felt a pang of regret.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, ma&rsquo;am. A younger man, in a smaller way of business in Little
+Hintock. Winterborne is his name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus they parted company. &ldquo;Why, Mr. Winterborne,&rdquo; said the wagoner,
+when they were out of hearing, &ldquo;that was She&mdash;Mrs. Charmond!
+Who&rsquo;d ha&rsquo; thought it? What in the world can a woman that does
+nothing be cock-watching out here at this time o&rsquo; day for? Oh, going to
+Italy&mdash;yes to be sure, I heard she was going abroad, she can&rsquo;t
+endure the winter here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew Mr. Melbury, in
+his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first to blame him if it became
+known. But saying no more, he accompanied the load to the end of the lane, and
+then turned back with an intention to call at South&rsquo;s to learn the result
+of the experiment of the preceding evening.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who now rose soon
+enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the unwontedness of the hour,
+had been commissioned by him to make the same inquiry at South&rsquo;s. Marty
+had been standing at the door when Miss Melbury arrived. Almost before the
+latter had spoken, Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s carriages, released from the
+obstruction up the lane, came bowling along, and the two girls turned to regard
+the spectacle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for them to
+discern her outline between the carriage windows. A noticeable feature in her
+<i>tournure</i> was a magnificent mass of braided locks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How well she looks this morning!&rdquo; said Grace, forgetting Mrs.
+Charmond&rsquo;s slight in her generous admiration. &ldquo;Her hair so becomes
+her worn that way. I have never seen any more beautiful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor have I, miss,&rdquo; said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her
+crown.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were out of sight.
+She then learned of Marty that South was no better. Before she had come away
+Winterborne approached the house, but seeing that one of the two girls standing
+on the door-step was Grace, he suddenly turned back again and sought the
+shelter of his own home till she should have gone away.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne&rsquo;s mind
+the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from her to
+the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two Hintocks, now his
+own, would fall into her possession in the event of South&rsquo;s death. He
+marvelled what people could have been thinking about in the past to invent such
+precarious tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his ancestors
+at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their old copyholds for
+life-leases. But having naturally succeeded to these properties through his
+father, he had done his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck
+with his father&rsquo;s negligence in not insuring South&rsquo;s life.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs, turned
+over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between the mattress and
+the sacking. In this he kept his leases, which had remained there unopened ever
+since his father&rsquo;s death. It was the usual hiding-place among rural
+lifeholders for such documents. Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them
+over. They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South
+family, some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the
+manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration of having
+the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come into his
+father&rsquo;s possession chiefly through his mother, who was a South.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which
+Winterborne had never seen before. It bore a remote date, the handwriting being
+that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature the landholder&rsquo;s. It
+was to the effect that at any time before the last of the stated lives should
+drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or his representative, should have the
+privilege of adding his own and his son&rsquo;s life to the life remaining on
+payment of a merely nominal sum; the concession being in consequence of the
+elder Winterborne&rsquo;s consent to demolish one of the houses and relinquish
+its site, which stood at an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The house had been pulled down years before. Why Giles&rsquo;s father had not
+taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son&rsquo;s lives it
+was impossible to say. The likelihood was that death alone had hindered him in
+the execution of his project, as it surely was, the elder Winterborne having
+been a man who took much pleasure in dealing with house property in his small
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt that Giles
+could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own life was concerned.
+This possibility cheered him much, for by those houses hung many things.
+Melbury&rsquo;s doubt of the young man&rsquo;s fitness to be the husband of
+Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness of his holdings in
+Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to the business at once, the
+fine for renewal being a sum that he could easily muster. His scheme, however,
+could not be carried out in a day; and meanwhile he would run up to
+South&rsquo;s, as he had intended to do, to learn the result of the experiment
+with the tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty met him at the door. &ldquo;Well, Marty,&rdquo; he said; and was
+surprised to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had
+imagined.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry for your labor,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It is all lost. He
+says the tree seems taller than ever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne looked round at it. Taller the tree certainly did seem, the
+gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it this
+morning,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;He declares it will come down upon us and
+cleave us, like &lsquo;the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well; can I do anything else?&rdquo; asked he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh&mdash;you&rsquo;ve had the doctor?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that
+father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be cut down. We
+mustn&rsquo;t cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went up-stairs. There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunt tree as if
+his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. Unluckily the tree waved afresh by this
+time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fog away, and his eyes turned with
+its wavings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They heard footsteps&mdash;a man&rsquo;s, but of a lighter type than usual.
+&ldquo;There is Doctor Fitzpiers again,&rdquo; she said, and descended.
+Presently his tread was heard on the naked stairs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or less wont to
+do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room is that of a humble
+cottager, looking round towards the patient with that preoccupied gaze which so
+plainly reveals that he has wellnigh forgotten all about the case and the whole
+circumstances since he dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the
+same apartment. He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was already a little
+acquainted, recalled the case to his thoughts, and went leisurely on to where
+South sat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man. His eyes were dark
+and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy or of
+susceptivity&mdash;it was difficult to say which; it might have been a little
+of both. That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the surface of things
+and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whether his apparent depth of
+vision was real, or only an artistic accident of his corporeal moulding,
+nothing but his deeds could reveal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale than flushed;
+his nose&mdash;if a sketch of his features be <i>de rigueur</i> for a person of
+his pretensions&mdash;was artistically beautiful enough to have been worth
+doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence devoid of those
+knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the double-cyma or
+classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness in its close.
+Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective
+manner, or the instinct towards profound things which was said to possess him,
+his presence bespoke the philosopher rather than the dandy or macaroni&mdash;an
+effect which was helped by the absence of trinkets or other trivialities from
+his attire, though this was more finished and up to date than is usually the
+case among rural practitioners.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little about him by
+report, might have said that he seemed likely to err rather in the possession
+of too many ideas than too few; to be a dreamy &rsquo;ist of some sort, or too
+deeply steeped in some false kind of &rsquo;ism. However this may be, it will
+be seen that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare kind of gentleman and doctor to
+have descended, as from the clouds, upon Little Hintock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is an extraordinary case,&rdquo; he said at last to Winterborne,
+after examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and learning that the
+craze about the elm was stronger than ever. &ldquo;Come down-stairs, and
+I&rsquo;ll tell you what I think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, &ldquo;The tree must be
+cut down, or I won&rsquo;t answer for his life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s tree, and I suppose we must get
+permission?&rdquo; said Giles. &ldquo;If so, as she is gone away, I must speak
+to her agent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh&mdash;never mind whose tree it is&mdash;what&rsquo;s a tree beside a
+life! Cut it down. I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet, but I
+am disposed to risk that much with her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis timber,&rdquo; rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would
+have been had not his own interests stood so closely involved.
+&ldquo;They&rsquo;ll never fell a stick about here without it being marked
+first, either by her or the agent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then we&rsquo;ll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long has he
+complained of the tree?&rdquo; asked the doctor of Marty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt him like an evil
+spirit. He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got human sense,
+and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him, and keep him as its
+slave. Others have been like it afore in Hintock.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They could hear South&rsquo;s voice up-stairs &ldquo;Oh, he&rsquo;s rocking
+this way; he must come! And then my poor life, that&rsquo;s worth houses upon
+houses, will be squashed out o&rsquo; me. Oh! oh!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s how he goes on,&rdquo; she added. &ldquo;And he&rsquo;ll
+never look anywhere else but out of the window, and scarcely have the curtains
+drawn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond,&rdquo; said Mr. Fitzpiers.
+&ldquo;The best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark, or
+early in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn&rsquo;t see it fall,
+for that would terrify him worse than ever. Keep the blind down till I come,
+and then I&rsquo;ll assure him, and show him that his trouble is over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening. When it was dusk,
+and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple of woodmen to bring a
+crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree was soon nearly off at its base.
+He would not fell it completely then, on account of the possible crash, but
+next morning, before South was awake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a
+direction away from the cottage. It was a business difficult to do quite
+silently; but it was done at last, and the elm of the same birth-year as the
+woodman&rsquo;s lay stretched upon the ground. The weakest idler that passed
+could now set foot on marks formerly made in the upper forks by the shoes of
+adventurous climbers only; once inaccessible nests could be examined
+microscopically; and on swaying extremities where birds alone had perched, the
+by-standers sat down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne entered the
+house with him. Marty said that her father was wrapped up and ready, as usual,
+to be put into his chair. They ascended the stairs, and soon seated him. He
+began at once to complain of the tree, and the danger to his life and
+Winterborne&rsquo;s house-property in consequence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed cotton
+curtains. &ldquo;&rsquo;Tis gone, see,&rdquo; said Mr. Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the branched
+column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless, his eyes rose from
+their hollows till the whites showed all round; he fell back, and a bluish
+whiteness overspread him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as he came a little out of
+his fit, he gasped, &ldquo;Oh, it is gone!&mdash;where?&mdash;where?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They were thunder-struck at the
+result of the experiment, and did all they could. Nothing seemed to avail.
+Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, but uselessly. He lingered through the day,
+and died that evening as the sun went down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;D&mdash;d if my remedy hasn&rsquo;t killed him!&rdquo; murmured the
+doctor.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and walked
+thoughtfully about the premises. On South&rsquo;s own account he was genuinely
+sorry; and on Winterborne&rsquo;s he was the more grieved in that this
+catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat harsh dismissal of Giles as
+the betrothed of his daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting on Giles a
+second trouble when the needful one inflicted by himself was all that the
+proper order of events demanded. &ldquo;I told Giles&rsquo;s father when he
+came into those houses not to spend too much money on lifehold property held
+neither for his own life nor his son&rsquo;s,&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;But
+he wouldn&rsquo;t listen to me. And now Giles has to suffer for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Poor Giles!&rdquo; murmured Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable. It is almost as
+if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your escape, though I am
+sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not dismissed him already, we could hardly
+have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now. So I say, be thankful.
+I&rsquo;ll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a pretender to the position
+of my son-in law, that can never be thought of more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor
+Winterborne&rsquo;s suit had been reduced was touching Grace&rsquo;s heart to a
+warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years concerning him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house which had
+ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal survey of affairs. The
+pendulum of the clock bumped every now and then against one side of the case in
+which it swung, as the muffled drum to his worldly march. Looking out of the
+window he could perceive that a paralysis had come over Creedle&rsquo;s
+occupation of manuring the garden, owing, obviously, to a conviction that they
+might not be living there long enough to profit by next season&rsquo;s crop.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at the leases again and the letter attached. There was no doubt that
+he had lost his houses by an accident which might easily have been circumvented
+if he had known the true conditions of his holding. The time for performance
+had now lapsed in strict law; but might not the intention be considered by the
+landholder when she became aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to
+retain the holdings for the term of his life be conceded?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the legal
+reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the upshot of the matter
+amounted to this, that it depended upon the mere caprice&mdash;good or
+ill&mdash;of the woman he had met the day before in such an unfortunate way,
+whether he was to possess his houses for life or no.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and Melbury
+appeared, looking very sorry for his position. Winterborne welcomed him by a
+word and a look, and went on with his examination of the parchments. His
+visitor sat down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Giles,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this is very awkward, and I am sorry for
+it. What are you going to do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he had missed
+availing himself of his chance of renewal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, the best thing you can
+do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw yourself upon her
+generosity.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would rather not,&rdquo; murmured Giles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you must,&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be persuaded, and
+the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to Hintock House, whence, as
+he knew, it would at once be forwarded to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as almost to
+extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home; and Giles was
+left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the divinity who shaped
+the ends of the Hintock population. By this time all the villagers knew of the
+circumstances, and being wellnigh like one family, a keen interest was the
+result all round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. Had any of them looked in
+upon her during those moonlight nights which preceded the burial of her father,
+they would have seen the girl absolutely alone in the house with the dead man.
+Her own chamber being nearest the stairs, the coffin had been placed there for
+convenience; and at a certain hour of the night, when the moon arrived opposite
+the window, its beams streamed across the still profile of South, sublimed by
+the august presence of death, and onward a few feet farther upon the face of
+his daughter, lying in her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost as
+dignified as that of her companion&mdash;the repose of a guileless soul that
+had nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she did not
+overvalue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a reply from
+Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was very sanguine as to its tenor; but Winterborne had
+not told him of the encounter with her carriage, when, if ever he had heard an
+affronted tone on a woman&rsquo;s lips, he had heard it on hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The postman&rsquo;s time for passing was just after Melbury&rsquo;s men had
+assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his own
+account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane every morning
+and meet the post-man at the end of one of the green rides through the hazel
+copse, in the straight stretch of which his laden figure could be seen a long
+way off. Grace also was very anxious; more anxious than her father; more,
+perhaps, than Winterborne himself. This anxiety led her into the spar-house on
+some pretext or other almost every morning while they were awaiting the reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much interested, and
+not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been informed by an authority of
+what he had himself conjectured, that if the tree had been allowed to stand,
+the old man would have gone on complaining, but might have lived for twenty
+years.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and looked up its
+long straight slope through the wet grays of winter dawn. But though the
+postman&rsquo;s bowed figure loomed in view pretty regularly, he brought
+nothing for Giles. On the twelfth day the man of missives, while yet in the
+extreme distance, held up his hand, and Winterborne saw a letter in it. He took
+it into the spar-house before he broke the seal, and those who were there
+gathered round him while he read, Grace looking in at the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at Sherton.
+Winterborne glanced it over and looked up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s all over,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said they altogether.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason for
+disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she contemplates
+pulling the houses down,&rdquo; he said, quietly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only think of that!&rdquo; said several.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, &ldquo;Then let
+her pull &rsquo;em down, and be d&mdash;d to her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, &ldquo;Ah,
+&rsquo;twas that sperrit that lost &rsquo;em for ye, maister!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever they were, kept
+them entirely to himself. There could be no doubt that, up to this last moment,
+he had nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace in the event of this
+negotiation turning out a success. Not being aware of the fact that her father
+could have settled upon her a fortune sufficient to enable both to live in
+comfort, he deemed it now an absurdity to dream any longer of such a vanity as
+making her his wife, and sank into silence forthwith.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it is apt to
+express more than talkativeness when he dwells among friends. The countryman
+who is obliged to judge the time of day from changes in external nature sees a
+thousand successive tints and traits in the landscape which are never discerned
+by him who hears the regular chime of a clock, because they are never in
+request. In like manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn comrade. The
+infinitesimal movement of muscle, curve, hair, and wrinkle, which when
+accompanied by a voice goes unregarded, is watched and translated in the lack
+of it, till virtually the whole surrounding circle of familiars is charged with
+the reserved one&rsquo;s moods and meanings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his neighbors after
+his stroke of ill-luck. He held his tongue; and they observed him, and knew
+that he was discomposed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than any one else,
+except his daughter. Had Winterborne been going on in the old fashion,
+Grace&rsquo;s father could have alluded to his disapproval of the alliance
+every day with the greatest frankness; but to speak any further on the subject
+he could not find it in his heart to do now. He hoped that Giles would of his
+own accord make some final announcement that he entirely withdrew his
+pretensions to Grace, and so get the thing past and done with. For though Giles
+had in a measure acquiesced in the wish of her family, he could make matters
+unpleasant if he chose to work upon Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the
+young man approaching along the road one day, he kept friendliness and
+frigidity exactly balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles&rsquo;s
+manner was presumptive or not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims. &ldquo;I am glad to meet
+ye, Mr. Melbury,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice, whose quality he endeavored to
+make as practical as possible. &ldquo;I am afraid I shall not be able to keep
+that mare I bought, and as I don&rsquo;t care to sell her, I should
+like&mdash;if you don&rsquo;t object&mdash;to give her to Miss Melbury. The
+horse is very quiet, and would be quite safe for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this. &ldquo;You sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t hurt
+your pocket like that on our account, Giles. Grace shall have the horse, but
+I&rsquo;ll pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you may have been put
+to for her keep.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged. They were now
+opposite Melbury&rsquo;s house, and the timber-merchant pressed Winterborne to
+enter, Grace being out of the way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pull round the settle, Giles,&rdquo; said the timber-merchant, as soon
+as they were within. &ldquo;I should like to have a serious talk with
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a friendly way.
+He declared that he did not like to be hard on a man when he was in difficulty;
+but he really did not see how Winterborne could marry his daughter now, without
+even a house to take her to.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation. But from a
+momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace&rsquo;s mind from her own
+lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. He accordingly departed
+somewhat abruptly, and went home to consider whether he would seek to bring
+about a meeting with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he heard a
+scraping on the wall outside his house. The boughs of a monthly rose which grew
+there made such a noise sometimes, but as no wind was stirring he knew that it
+could not be the rose-tree. He took up the candle and went out. Nobody was
+near. As he turned, the light flickered on the whitewashed rough case of the
+front, and he saw words written thereon in charcoal, which he read as follows:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;O Giles, you&rsquo;ve lost your dwelling-place,<br />
+And therefore, Giles, you&rsquo;ll lose your Grace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles went in-doors. He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of those lines,
+but he could not be sure. What suddenly filled his heart far more than
+curiosity about their authorship was a terrible belief that they were turning
+out to be true, try to see Grace as he might. They decided the question for
+him. He sat down and wrote a formal note to Melbury, in which he briefly stated
+that he was placed in such a position as to make him share to the full
+Melbury&rsquo;s view of his own and his daughter&rsquo;s promise, made some
+years before; to wish that it should be considered as cancelled, and they
+themselves quite released from any obligation on account of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to get it out
+of his hands and have done with it; to which end he went off to Melbury&rsquo;s
+at once. It was now so late that the family had all retired; he crept up to the
+house, thrust the note under the door, and stole away as silently as he had
+come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when he had read
+the letter his relief was great. &ldquo;Very honorable of Giles, very
+honorable,&rdquo; he kept saying to himself. &ldquo;I shall not forget him. Now
+to keep her up to her own true level.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning, passing
+through the door and gate while her father was in the spar-house. To go in her
+customary direction she could not avoid passing Winterborne&rsquo;s house. The
+morning sun was shining flat upon its white surface, and the words, which still
+remained, were immediately visible to her. She read them. Her face flushed to
+crimson. She could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the back; the
+charred spar-gad with which the lines had been written lay on the ground
+beneath the wall. Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne would observe her
+action, she quickly went up to the wall, rubbed out &ldquo;lose&rdquo; and
+inserted &ldquo;keep&rdquo; in its stead. Then she made the best of her way
+home without looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now if he chose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming to more
+sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than ever she had done while
+he was her promised lover; that since his misfortune those social shortcomings
+of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with her later experiences of life, had
+become obscured by the generous revival of an old romantic attachment to him.
+Though mentally trained and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared with
+her youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to
+herself, have declined Winterborne without much discontent or unhappiness. Her
+feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall had thus
+quickened her to an unusual rashness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently. When her
+step-mother had left the room she said to her father, &ldquo;I have made up my
+mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the present at
+any rate, till I can see further what I ought to do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury looked much surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; he said, sharply. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know what you
+are talking about. Look here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He handed across to her the letter received from Giles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She read it, and said no more. Could he have seen her write on the wall? She
+did not know. Fate, it seemed, would have it this way, and there was nothing to
+do but to acquiesce.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously enough, had
+<i>not</i> perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the tree from the front
+of South&rsquo;s late dwelling. He saw Marty standing in her door-way, a slim
+figure in meagre black, almost without womanly contours as yet. He went up to
+her and said, &ldquo;Marty, why did you write that on my wall last night? It
+<i>was</i> you, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because it was the truth. I didn&rsquo;t mean to let it stay, Mr.
+Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I was obliged to
+run off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your
+predictions can&rsquo;t be worth much.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not altered it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you have.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is altered. Go and see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he would
+<i>keep</i> his Grace. Marty came back surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I never,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Who can have made such nonsense
+of it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who, indeed?&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;d no business to rub it out. I didn&rsquo;t tell you to. I
+meant to let it stay a little longer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Some idle boy did it, no doubt,&rdquo; she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was unsuspected,
+Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne, though
+not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the background of human
+life and action thereabout&mdash;a feat not particularly difficult of
+performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a lost prestige.
+Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no further sign, and the
+frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly launched was stranded and
+lost.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap16"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less
+pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than the
+timber-merchant&rsquo;s. The latter had, without doubt, been once the manorial
+residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain of Little Hintock, of
+which the boundaries were now lost by its absorption with others of its kind
+into the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond. Though the Melburys themselves were
+unaware of the fact, there was every reason to believe&mdash;at least so the
+parson said&mdash;that the owners of that little manor had been Melbury&rsquo;s
+own ancestors, the family name occurring in numerous documents relating to
+transfers of land about the time of the civil wars.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Fitzpiers&rsquo;s dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-like, and
+comparatively modern. It had been occupied, and was in part occupied still, by
+a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the surgeon&rsquo;s arrival in quest of
+a home, had accommodated him by receding from their front rooms into the
+kitchen quarter, whence they administered to his wants, and emerged at regular
+intervals to receive from him a not unwelcome addition to their income.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement that they might
+have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time of William and Mary. In a
+low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, was a door over which the hedge formed an
+arch, and from the inside of the door a straight path, bordered with clipped
+box, ran up the slope of the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the
+middle of the house front, with two windows on each side. Right and left of the
+path were first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next of currant; next of raspberry;
+next of strawberry; next of old-fashioned flowers; at the corners opposite the
+porch being spheres of box resembling a pair of school globes. Over the roof of
+the house could be seen the orchard, on yet higher ground, and behind the
+orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to the crest of the hill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor window was a swing-gate
+leading into a field, across which there ran a footpath. The swing-gate had
+just been repainted, and on one fine afternoon, before the paint was dry, and
+while gnats were still dying thereon, the surgeon was standing in his
+sitting-room abstractedly looking out at the different pedestrians who passed
+and repassed along that route. Being of a philosophical stamp, he perceived
+that the character of each of these travellers exhibited itself in a somewhat
+amusing manner by his or her method of handling the gate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the gate a kick and
+passed through. The women were more contrasting. To them the sticky wood-work
+was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a treachery, as the case might be.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts tucked up and
+her hair uncombed. She grasped the gate without looking, giving it a
+supplementary push with her shoulder, when the white imprint drew from her an
+exclamation in language not too refined. She went to the green bank, sat down
+and rubbed herself in the grass, cursing the while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha! ha! ha!&rdquo; laughed the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the surgeon
+recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman South. Moreover, a
+black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning unpleasantly reminded him that he
+had ordered the felling of a tree which had caused her parent&rsquo;s death and
+Winterborne&rsquo;s losses. She walked and thought, and not recklessly; but her
+preoccupation led her to grasp unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it
+with her arm. Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled that new black
+frock, poor as it was, for it was probably her only one. She looked at her hand
+and arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off the disfigurement with an
+almost unmoved face, and as if without abandoning her original thoughts. Thus
+she went on her way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then there came over the green quite a different sort of personage. She walked
+as delicately as if she had been bred in town, and as firmly as if she had been
+bred in the country; she seemed one who dimly knew her appearance to be
+attractive, but who retained some of the charm of being ignorant of that fact
+by forgetting it in a general pensiveness. She approached the gate. To let such
+a creature touch it even with a tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like
+letting her proceed to tragical self-destruction. He jumped up and looked for
+his hat, but was unable to find the right one; glancing again out of the window
+he saw that he was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the gate,
+picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed open the obstacle
+without touching it at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight, recognizing her as
+the very young lady whom he had seen once before and been unable to identify.
+Whose could that emotional face be? All the others he had seen in Hintock as
+yet oppressed him with their crude rusticity; the contrast offered by this
+suggested that she hailed from elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of seeing her;
+but he now went a little further with them, and considered that as there had
+been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot she could not have come a
+very long distance. She must be somebody staying at Hintock House? Possibly
+Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much&mdash;at any rate an inmate, and
+this probability was sufficient to set a mild radiance in the surgeon&rsquo;s
+somewhat dull sky.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing. It happened to be that of
+a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man, except by fits,
+and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the discovery of principles
+to their application. The young lady remained in his thoughts. He might have
+followed her; but he was not constitutionally active, and preferred a
+conjectural pursuit. However, when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he
+insensibly took the direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace
+had been walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond
+that day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be
+seen, returning by another route.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the
+manor-house. The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked. The mere
+aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond had gone away
+and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers felt a vague disappointment
+that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much; and
+without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass from which the spirit had flown, he
+bent his steps homeward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient about
+two miles distant. Like the majority of young practitioners in his position he
+was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven his rounds by a servant
+in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a mirror; his way of getting about
+was by means of a gig which he drove himself, hitching the rein of the horse to
+the gate post, shutter hook, or garden paling of the domicile under visitation,
+or giving pennies to little boys to hold the animal during his
+stay&mdash;pennies which were well earned when the cases to be attended were of
+a certain cheerful kind that wore out the patience of the little boys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers had
+frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent perversity in nature
+ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a particularly inaccessible and
+lonely place, that event should occur in the night. The surgeon, having been of
+late years a town man, hated the solitary midnight woodland. He was not
+altogether skilful with the reins, and it often occurred to his mind that if in
+some remote depths of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his
+being alone might be the death of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up
+any countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of
+treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the journey, and
+his convenient assistance in opening gates.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in question
+when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of Winterborne, walking
+leisurely along, as if he had no object in life. Winterborne was a better class
+of companion than the doctor usually could get, and he at once pulled up and
+asked him if he would like a drive through the wood that fine night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor&rsquo;s friendliness, but said that
+he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network upon the stars,
+all the trees of a species alike in one respect, and no two of them alike in
+another. Looking up as they passed under a horizontal bough they sometimes saw
+objects like large tadpoles lodged diametrically across it, which Giles
+explained to be pheasants there at roost; and they sometimes heard the report
+of a gun, which reminded him that others knew what those tadpole shapes
+represented as well as he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time:
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood&mdash;a very
+attractive girl&mdash;with a little white boa round her neck, and white fur
+round her gloves?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught the
+doctor peering at, was represented by these accessories. With a wary grimness,
+partly in his character, partly induced by the circumstances, he evaded an
+answer by saying, &ldquo;I saw a young lady talking to Mrs. Charmond the other
+day; perhaps it was she.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking over
+the hedge. &ldquo;It might have been,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;She is quite a
+gentlewoman&mdash;the one I mean. She cannot be a permanent resident in Hintock
+or I should have seen her before. Nor does she look like one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is not staying at Hintock House?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; it is closed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or
+farmhouses?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;you mistake. She was a different sort of girl
+altogether.&rdquo; As Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him accordingly, and
+apostrophized the night in continuation:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,<br />
+A power, that from its objects scarcely drew<br />
+One impulse of her being&mdash;in her lightness<br />
+Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,<br />
+Which wanders through the waste air&rsquo;s pathless blue,<br />
+To nourish some far desert: she did seem<br />
+Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,<br />
+Like the bright shade of some immortal dream<br />
+Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life&rsquo;s dark
+stream.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he divined that
+they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his lost love&rsquo;s charms
+upon Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir,&rdquo; he said, with a
+sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention Grace
+by name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I do
+by the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid like a Leyden-jar
+with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to disperse it. Human love is
+a subjective thing&mdash;the essence itself of man, as that great thinker
+Spinoza the philosopher says&mdash;<i>ipsa hominis essentia</i>&mdash;it is joy
+accompanied by an idea which we project against any suitable object in the line
+of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is projected against an oak, ash, or
+elm tree indifferently. So that if any other young lady had appeared instead of
+the one who did appear, I should have felt just the same interest in her, and
+have quoted precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one
+I saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, whether or
+no,&rdquo; said Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with something in my
+own head, and no thing in itself outside it at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it part of a country doctor&rsquo;s duties to learn that view of
+things, may I ask, sir?&rdquo; said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic
+&#949;&#7984;&#961;&#969;&#957;&#949;&#8055;&#945; with such well-assumed
+simplicity that Fitzpiers answered, readily,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no. The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in places
+like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of bitter stuff for this and
+that old woman&mdash;the bitterer the better&mdash;compounded from a few simple
+stereotyped prescriptions; occasional attendance at births, where mere presence
+is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong are the people; and a lance for an
+abscess now and then. Investigation and experiment cannot be carried on without
+more appliances than one has here&mdash;though I have attempted it a
+little.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been struck with
+was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers&rsquo;s manner and
+Grace&rsquo;s, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject of
+discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it was foreign
+to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation to Grace till
+they were on their way back. They had stopped at a way-side inn for a glass of
+brandy and cider hot, and when they were again in motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a
+little warmed by the liquor, resumed the subject by saying, &ldquo;I should
+like very much to know who that young lady was.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What difference can it make, if she&rsquo;s only the tree your rainbow
+falls on?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ha! ha! True.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have no wife, sir?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have no wife, and no idea of one. I hope to do better things than
+marry and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is well for a medical man to be
+married, and sometimes, begad, &rsquo;twould be pleasant enough in this place,
+with the wind roaring round the house, and the rain and the boughs beating
+against it. I hear that you lost your life-holds by the death of South?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did. I lost in more ways than one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it could be called such
+where three-quarters of the road-side consisted of copse and orchard. One of
+the first houses to be passed was Melbury&rsquo;s. A light was shining from a
+bedroom window facing lengthwise of the lane. Winterborne glanced at it, and
+saw what was coming. He had withheld an answer to the doctor&rsquo;s inquiry to
+hinder his knowledge of Grace; but, as he thought to himself, &ldquo;who hath
+gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment?&rdquo;
+he could not hinder what was doomed to arrive, and might just as well have been
+outspoken. As they came up to the house, Grace&rsquo;s figure was distinctly
+visible, drawing the two white curtains together which were used here instead
+of blinds.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, there she is!&rdquo; said Fitzpiers. &ldquo;How does she come
+there?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In the most natural way in the world. It is her home. Mr. Melbury is her
+father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, indeed&mdash;indeed&mdash;indeed! How comes he to have a daughter of
+that stamp?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne laughed coldly. &ldquo;Won&rsquo;t money do anything,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;if you&rsquo;ve promising material to work upon? Why
+shouldn&rsquo;t a Hintock girl, taken early from home, and put under proper
+instruction, become as finished as any other young lady, if she&rsquo;s got
+brains and good looks to begin with?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No reason at all why she shouldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; murmured the surgeon,
+with reflective disappointment. &ldquo;Only I didn&rsquo;t anticipate quite
+that kind of origin for her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you think an inch or two less of her now.&rdquo; There was a little
+tremor in Winterborne&rsquo;s voice as he spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the doctor, with recovered warmth, &ldquo;I am not so
+sure that I think less of her. At first it was a sort of blow; but, dammy!
+I&rsquo;ll stick up for her. She&rsquo;s charming, every inch of her!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So she is,&rdquo; said Winterborne, &ldquo;but not to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander&rsquo;s, Dr.
+Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of some haughtiness
+in her bearing towards him, and had, on that account, withheld her name. The
+supposition did not tend to diminish his admiration for her.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap17"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Grace&rsquo;s exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the
+window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in the house
+that day&mdash;nothing less than the illness of Grammer Oliver, a woman who had
+never till now lain down for such a reason in her life. Like others to whom
+unbroken years of health has made the idea of keeping their bed almost as
+repugnant as death itself, she had continued on foot till she literally fell on
+the floor; and though she had, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty, she had
+sickened into quite a different personage from the independent Grammer of the
+yard and spar-house. Ill as she was, on one point she was firm. On no account
+would she see a doctor; in other words, Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but the old
+woman&rsquo;s. On the girl&rsquo;s way to bed she had received a message from
+Grammer, to the effect that she would much like to speak to her that night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, so that the
+profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen shadow upon the whitened
+wall, her large head being still further magnified by an enormous turban, which
+was, really, her petticoat wound in a wreath round her temples. Grace put the
+room a little in order, and approaching the sick woman, said, &ldquo;I am come,
+Grammer, as you wish. Do let us send for the doctor before it gets
+later.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will not have him,&rdquo; said Grammer Oliver, decisively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then somebody to sit up with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because
+&rsquo;ch have something on my mind. Dear Miss Grace, <i>I took that money of
+the doctor, after all!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What money?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The ten pounds.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace did not quite understand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I&rsquo;ve a large
+brain. I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling concerned about it
+at all. I have not liked to tell ye that it was really settled with him,
+because you showed such horror at the notion. Well, having thought it over more
+at length, I wish I hadn&rsquo;t done it; and it weighs upon my mind. John
+South&rsquo;s death of fear about the tree makes me think that I shall die of
+this....&rsquo;Ch have been going to ask him again to let me off, but I
+hadn&rsquo;t the face.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve spent some of the money&mdash;more&rsquo;n two pounds
+o&rsquo;t. It do wherrit me terribly; and I shall die o&rsquo; the thought of
+that paper I signed with my holy cross, as South died of his trouble.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I&rsquo;m sure, and think no
+more of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Ch have done it once already, miss. But he laughed cruel like.
+&lsquo;Yours is such a fine brain, Grammer,&rsquo; &rsquo;er said, &lsquo;that
+science couldn&rsquo;t afford to lose you. Besides, you&rsquo;ve taken my
+money.&rsquo;...Don&rsquo;t let your father know of this, please, on no account
+whatever!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no. I will let you have the money to return to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. &ldquo;Even if I should be
+well enough to take it to him, he won&rsquo;t like it. Though why he should so
+particular want to look into the works of a poor old woman&rsquo;s head-piece
+like mine when there&rsquo;s so many other folks about, I don&rsquo;t know. I
+know how he&rsquo;ll answer me: &lsquo;A lonely person like you,
+Grammer,&rsquo; er woll say. &lsquo;What difference is it to you what becomes
+of ye when the breath&rsquo;s out of your body?&rsquo; Oh, it do trouble me! If
+you only knew how he do chevy me round the chimmer in my dreams, you&rsquo;d
+pity me. How I could do it I can&rsquo;t think! But &rsquo;ch was always so
+rackless!...If I only had anybody to plead for me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay; but he wouldn&rsquo;t hearken to she! It wants a younger face than
+hers to work upon such as he.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace started with comprehension. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think he would do it
+for me?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, wouldn&rsquo;t he!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I couldn&rsquo;t go to him, Grammer, on any account. I don&rsquo;t know
+him at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, if I were a young lady,&rdquo; said the artful Grammer, &ldquo;and
+could save a poor old woman&rsquo;s skellington from a heathen doctor instead
+of a Christian grave, I would do it, and be glad to. But nobody will do
+anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out of the way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that. But you are ill, I know,
+and that&rsquo;s why you speak so. Now believe me, you are not going to die
+yet. Remember you told me yourself that you meant to keep him waiting many a
+year.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in sickness
+one&rsquo;s gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed small looks large;
+and the grim far-off seems near.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace&rsquo;s eyes had tears in them. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to go to him on
+such an errand, Grammer,&rdquo; she said, brokenly. &ldquo;But I will, to ease
+your mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next morning for the
+undertaking. She was all the more indisposed to the journey by reason of
+Grammer&rsquo;s allusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr. Fitzpiers; and
+hence she most illogically did that which, had the doctor never seen her, would
+have operated to stultify the sole motive of her journey; that is to say, she
+put on a woollen veil, which hid all her face except an occasional spark of her
+eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and grewsome
+proceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver&rsquo;s own desire, led Grace to take
+every precaution against being discovered. She went out by the garden door as
+the safest way, all the household having occupations at the other side. The
+morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthily opened it. The battle
+between frost and thaw was continuing in mid-air: the trees dripped on the
+garden-plots, where no vegetables would grow for the dripping, though they were
+planted year after year with that curious mechanical regularity of country
+people in the face of hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad
+gravel terrace was swamped; and Grace stood irresolute. Then she thought of
+poor Grammer, and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel in hand,
+and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South&rsquo;s ending in
+the same way; thereupon she stepped out into the drizzle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver&rsquo;s account of the compact she
+had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace&rsquo;s conception of Fitzpiers.
+She knew that he was a young man; but her single object in seeking an interview
+with him put all considerations of his age and social aspect from her mind.
+Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver&rsquo;s shoes, he was simply a
+remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would not have mercy, and would have
+sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, she would have preferred to avoid
+knowing. But since, in such a small village, it was improbable that any long
+time could pass without their meeting, there was not much to deplore in her
+having to meet him now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury&rsquo;s view of the doctor as a
+merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in accordance with
+fact. The real Dr. Fitzpiers was a man of too many hobbies to show likelihood
+of rising to any great eminence in the profession he had chosen, or even to
+acquire any wide practice in the rural district he had marked out as his field
+of survey for the present. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to
+pass in a grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual
+heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month he would
+be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the Twins of astrology
+and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature and metaphysics. In
+justice to him it must be stated that he took such studies as were immediately
+related to his own profession in turn with the rest, and it had been in a month
+of anatomical ardor without the possibility of a subject that he had proposed
+to Grammer Oliver the terms she had mentioned to her mistress.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with Winterborne, he had
+lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest; perhaps his keenly
+appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realm more to his taste
+than any other. Though his aims were desultory, Fitzpiers&rsquo;s mental
+constitution was not without its admirable side; a keen inquirer he honestly
+was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp, visible so far through the trees of
+Hintock, lighted rank literatures of emotion and passion as often as, or
+oftener than, the books and <i>matériel</i> of science.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the loneliness of
+Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature. Winter in a
+solitary house in the country, without society, is tolerable, nay, even
+enjoyable and delightful, given certain conditions, but these are not the
+conditions which attach to the life of a professional man who drops down into
+such a place by mere accident. They were present to the lives of Winterborne,
+Melbury, and Grace; but not to the doctor&rsquo;s. They are old
+association&mdash;an almost exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance
+with every object, animate and inanimate, within the observer&rsquo;s horizon.
+He must know all about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet
+have traversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose
+creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands planted
+the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses and hounds have
+torn through that underwood; what birds affect that particular brake; what
+domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or disappointment have been enacted
+in the cottages, the mansion, the street, or on the green. The spot may have
+beauty, grandeur, salubrity, convenience; but if it lack memories it will
+ultimately pall upon him who settles there without opportunity of intercourse
+with his kind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal friend, till he
+throws himself into the arms of any impostor who chooses to wear that title on
+his face. A young man may dream of an ideal friend likewise, but some humor of
+the blood will probably lead him to think rather of an ideal mistress, and at
+length the rustle of a woman&rsquo;s dress, the sound of her voice, or the
+transit of her form across the field of his vision, will enkindle his soul with
+a flame that blinds his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The discovery of the attractive Grace&rsquo;s name and family would have been
+enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put her personality
+out of his head, to change the character of his interest in her. Instead of
+treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at most have played with it as a
+toy. He was that kind of a man. But situated here he could not go so far as
+amative cruelty. He dismissed all reverential thought about her, but he could
+not help taking her seriously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, did he go in this futile
+direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructed dialogues and scenes
+in which Grace had turned out to be the mistress of Hintock Manor-house, the
+mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularly ready and willing to be wooed by himself
+and nobody else. &ldquo;Well, she isn&rsquo;t that,&rdquo; he said, finally.
+&ldquo;But she&rsquo;s a very sweet, nice, exceptional girl.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual. It was snowing with a
+fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray, without
+ever achieving whiteness. There was not a single letter for Fitzpiers, only a
+medical circular and a weekly newspaper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and gradually acquire
+energy till the evening came, and then, with lamp alight, and feeling full of
+vigor, to pursue some engrossing subject or other till the small hours, had
+hitherto been his practice. But to-day he could not settle into his chair. That
+self-contained position he had lately occupied, in which the only attention
+demanded was the concentration of the inner eye, all outer regard being quite
+gratuitous, seemed to have been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first
+time he had an interest outside the house. He walked from one window to
+another, and became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the
+solitude of remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in the same
+half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the inevitable relapse
+which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant for the season, such as they
+had enjoyed in the late midwinter at Hintock. To people at home there these
+changeful tricks had their interests; the strange mistakes that some of the
+more sanguine trees had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently
+glued up by frozen thawings now; the similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds
+in framing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other such incidents,
+prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the natives. But these
+were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers, and the inner visions to
+which he had almost exclusively attended having suddenly failed in their power
+to absorb him, he felt unutterably dreary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The season was
+unpropitious for accidental encounters with her out-of-doors, and except by
+accident he saw not how they were to become acquainted. One thing was
+clear&mdash;any acquaintance with her could only, with a due regard to his
+future, be casual, at most of the nature of a flirtation; for he had high aims,
+and they would some day lead him into other spheres than this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which, as in
+many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood, being in fact a
+legitimate development from the settle. He tried to read as he reclined, but
+having sat up till three o&rsquo;clock that morning, the book slipped from his
+hand and he fell asleep.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap18"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her knock, always soft in
+virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of her strange errand.
+However, it was heard by the farmer&rsquo;s wife who kept the house, and Grace
+was admitted. Opening the door of the doctor&rsquo;s room the housewife glanced
+in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few
+minutes while she should go and find him, believing him to be somewhere on the
+premises. Grace acquiesced, went in, and sat down close to the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, and started at
+perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the couch, like the recumbent
+figure within some canopied mural tomb of the fifteenth century, except that
+his hands were by no means clasped in prayer. She had no doubt that this was
+the doctor. Awaken him herself she could not, and her immediate impulse was to
+go and pull the broad ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at one side of the
+fireplace. But expecting the landlady to re-enter in a moment she abandoned
+this intention, and stood gazing in great embarrassment at the reclining
+philosopher.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The windows of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s soul being at present shuttered, he probably
+appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation; but the light
+abstracted from his material presence by sleep was more than counterbalanced by
+the mysterious influence of that state, in a stranger, upon the consciousness
+of a beholder so sensitive. So far as she could criticise at all, she became
+aware that she had encountered a specimen of creation altogether unusual in
+that locality. The occasions on which Grace had observed men of this stamp were
+when she had been far removed away from Hintock, and even then such examples as
+had met her eye were at a distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than the one
+who now confronted her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her mistake and
+returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. Approaching the chimney her
+back was to Fitzpiers, but she could see him in the glass. An indescribable
+thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes of the reflected image
+were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and under the curious unexpectedness of
+the sight she became as if spellbound, almost powerless to turn her head and
+regard the original. However, by an effort she did turn, when there he lay
+asleep the same as before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was sufficient to lead
+her to precipitately abandon her errand. She crossed quickly to the door,
+opened and closed it noiselessly, and went out of the house unobserved. By the
+time that she had gone down the path and through the garden door into the lane
+she had recovered her equanimity. Here, screened by the hedge, she stood and
+considered a while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she had come out
+on such a morning because of the seriousness of the matter in hand; yet now she
+had allowed her mission to be stultified by a momentary tremulousness
+concerning an incident which perhaps had meant nothing after all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had been, had
+roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up. In the reflection from the mirror which Grace
+had beheld there was no mystery; he had opened his eyes for a few moments, but
+had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if, indeed, he had ever been
+positively awake. That somebody had just left the room he was certain, and that
+the lovely form which seemed to have visited him in a dream was no less than
+the real presentation of the person departed he could hardly doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edged gravel-path
+which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently open, and through it
+enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace having just at this juncture
+determined to return and attempt the interview a second time. That he saw her
+coming instead of going made him ask himself if his first impression of her
+were not a dream indeed. She came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so
+low over her head that he could hardly see her face. When she reached the point
+where the raspberry bushes ended and the strawberry bed began, she made a
+little pause.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and hastily
+quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her. The nature of her errand
+he could not divine, but he was prepared to give her any amount of
+encouragement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg pardon, Miss Melbury,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I saw you from the
+window, and fancied you might imagine that I was not at home&mdash;if it is I
+you were coming for.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more,&rdquo; she replied.
+&ldquo;And I can say it here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not come into the
+house, come as far as the porch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together inside it,
+Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have merely a request or petition to make,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;My
+father&rsquo;s servant is ill&mdash;a woman you know&mdash;and her illness is
+serious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see her at once?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; I particularly wish you not to come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, indeed.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; and she wishes the same. It would make her seriously worse if you
+were to come. It would almost kill her....My errand is of a peculiar and
+awkward nature. It is concerning a subject which weighs on her mind&mdash;that
+unfortunate arrangement she made with you, that you might have her
+body&mdash;after death.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head. Seriously ill, is
+she!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And <i>so</i> disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the money
+back&mdash;will you please return to her the agreement she signed?&rdquo; Grace
+held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had kept ready tucked in
+her glove.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his thoughts to
+follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace&rsquo;s personality, and the sudden close
+relation in which he stood to her. The porch was narrow; the rain increased. It
+ran off the porch and dripped on the creepers, and from the creepers upon the
+edge of Grace&rsquo;s cloak and skirts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;It really makes my heart ache to let you stay here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting-room; he flung it
+open, and stood in a coaxing attitude. Try how she would, Grace could not
+resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and manner of this man, and
+distressful resignation sat on her as she glided past him into the
+room&mdash;brushing his coat with her elbow by reason of the narrowness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He followed her, shut the door&mdash;which she somehow had hoped he would leave
+open&mdash;and placing a chair for her, sat down. The concern which Grace felt
+at the development of these commonplace incidents was, of course, mainly owing
+to the strange effect upon her nerves of that view of him in the mirror gazing
+at her with open eyes when she had thought him sleeping, which made her fancy
+that his slumber might have been a feint based on inexplicable reasons.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at a piece of
+live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, &ldquo;Will you then
+reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer Oliver so foolishly
+gave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll cancel it without reconsideration. Though you will allow me
+to have my own opinion about her foolishness. Grammer is a very wise woman, and
+she was as wise in that as in other things. You think there was something very
+fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury? But remember that the most
+eminent of our surgeons in past times have entered into such agreements.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not fiendish&mdash;strange.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing, but
+in its relation to something extrinsic&mdash;in this case an unessential
+observer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be unfolded and
+brought to her. A thick cross appeared in ink at the bottom&mdash;evidently
+from the hand of Grammer. Grace put the paper in her pocket with a look of much
+relief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come from
+Grace&rsquo;s own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. &ldquo;No, no.
+I shall not take it from the old woman,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is more
+strange than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection
+that our acquaintance should be formed out of it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion.
+But I did not mean to be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, no.&rdquo; He looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzled
+interest. &ldquo;I cannot think, I cannot think,&rdquo; he murmured.
+&ldquo;Something bewilders me greatly.&rdquo; He still reflected and hesitated.
+&ldquo;Last night I sat up very late,&rdquo; he at last went on, &ldquo;and on
+that account I fell into a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And
+during my few minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed&mdash;what do you
+think?&mdash;that you stood in the room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Should she tell? She merely blushed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You may imagine,&rdquo; Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had,
+indeed, been a dream, &ldquo;that I should not have dreamed of you without
+considerable thinking about you first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not be acting; of that she felt assured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I fancied in my vision that you stood there,&rdquo; he said, pointing to
+where she had paused. &ldquo;I did not see you directly, but reflected in the
+glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for once carried out.
+Nature has at last recovered her lost union with the Idea! My thoughts ran in
+that direction because I had been reading the work of a transcendental
+philosopher last night; and I dare say it was the dose of Idealism that I
+received from it that made me scarcely able to distinguish between reality and
+fancy. I almost wept when I awoke, and found that you had appeared to me in
+Time, but not in Space, alas!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that it was intrinsically
+theatrical. It often happens that in situations of unrestraint, where there is
+no thought of the eye of criticism, real feeling glides into a mode of
+manifestation not easily distinguishable from rodomontade. A veneer of
+affectation overlies a bulk of truth, with the evil consequence, if perceived,
+that the substance is estimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace, however, was no specialist in men&rsquo;s manners, and she admired the
+sentiment without thinking of the form. And she was embarrassed: &ldquo;lovely
+creature&rdquo; made explanation awkward to her gentle modesty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But can it be,&rdquo; said he, suddenly, &ldquo;that you really were
+here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have to confess that I have been in the room once before,&rdquo;
+faltered she. &ldquo;The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch you; but as
+she did not return, I left.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you saw me asleep,&rdquo; he murmured, with the faintest show of
+humiliation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;<i>if</i> you were asleep, and did not deceive me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you say if?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I looked
+round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, fervently&mdash;&ldquo;never could I
+deceive you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them might have
+spoiled the effect of that pretty speech. Never deceive her! But they knew
+nothing, and the phrase had its day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the compelling
+power of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s atmosphere still held her there. She was like an
+inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up her position on the boards,
+and spoken her speeches, does not know how to move off. The thought of Grammer
+occurred to her. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go at once and tell poor Grammer of your
+generosity,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It will relieve her at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grammer&rsquo;s a nervous disease, too&mdash;how singular!&rdquo; he
+answered, accompanying her to the door. &ldquo;One moment; look at
+this&mdash;it is something which may interest you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and she saw a
+microscope on the table of the confronting room. &ldquo;Look into it, please;
+you&rsquo;ll be interested,&rdquo; he repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned all over with
+a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort. &ldquo;What do you think that
+is?&rdquo; said Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a fragment of old John South&rsquo;s brain, which I am
+investigating.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how it should have
+got there. Fitzpiers laughed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here am I,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;endeavoring to carry on simultaneously
+the study of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material world and
+the ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of contrast between them; and
+your finer sense is quite offended!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers,&rdquo; said Grace, earnestly. &ldquo;It is not so
+at all. I know from seeing your light at night how deeply you meditate and
+work. Instead of condemning you for your studies, I admire you very
+much!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and
+self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more than wished to
+annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own. Whether anything of
+the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remained no longer at the microscope,
+but quickly went her way into the rain.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap19"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Instead of resuming his investigation of South&rsquo;s brain, which perhaps was
+not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected from the
+importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers reclined and ruminated on the
+interview. Grace&rsquo;s curious susceptibility to his presence, though it was
+as if the currents of her life were disturbed rather than attracted by him,
+added a special interest to her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct
+degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate all physical
+manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He believed that behind the
+imperfect lay the perfect; that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk
+of commonplace; that results in a new and untried case might be different from
+those in other cases where the conditions had been precisely similar. Regarding
+his own personality as one of unbounded possibilities, because it was his
+own&mdash;notwithstanding that the factors of his life had worked out a sorry
+product for thousands&mdash;he saw nothing but what was regular in his
+discovery at Hintock of an altogether exceptional being of the other sex, who
+for nobody else would have had any existence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One habit of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s&mdash;commoner in dreamers of more advanced age
+than in men of his years&mdash;was that of talking to himself. He paced round
+his room with a selective tread upon the more prominent blooms of the carpet,
+and murmured, &ldquo;This phenomenal girl will be the light of my life while I
+am at Hintock; and the special beauty of the situation is that our attitude and
+relations to each other will be purely spiritual. Socially we can never be
+intimate. Anything like matrimonial intentions towards her, charming as she is,
+would be absurd. They would spoil the ethereal character of my regard. And,
+indeed, I have other aims on the practical side of my life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he was
+bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of purse much
+longer. But as an object of contemplation for the present, as objective spirit
+rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would serve to keep his soul
+alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His first notion&mdash;acquired from the mere sight of her without
+converse&mdash;that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a
+timber-merchant&rsquo;s pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that he
+had found what Grace intrinsically was. Personal intercourse with such as she
+could take no lower form than intellectual communion, and mutual explorations
+of the world of thought. Since he could not call at her father&rsquo;s, having
+no practical views, cursory encounters in the lane, in the wood, coming and
+going to and from church, or in passing her dwelling, were what the
+acquaintance would have to feed on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves in the event.
+Rencounters of not more than a minute&rsquo;s duration, frequently repeated,
+will build up mutual interest, even an intimacy, in a lonely place. Theirs grew
+as imperceptibly as the tree-twigs budded. There never was a particular moment
+at which it could be said they became friends; yet a delicate understanding now
+existed between two who in the winter had been strangers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had long
+been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night. The rush of
+sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard. The flowers of late April
+took up a position unseen, and looked as if they had been blooming a long
+while, though there had been no trace of them the day before yesterday; birds
+began not to mind getting wet. In-door people said they had heard the
+nightingale, to which out-door people replied contemptuously that they had
+heard him a fortnight before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young doctor&rsquo;s practice being scarcely so large as a London
+surgeon&rsquo;s, he frequently walked in the wood. Indeed such practice as he
+had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been necessary for
+developing it to exceptional proportions. One day, book in hand, he walked in a
+part of the wood where the trees were mainly oaks. It was a calm afternoon, and
+there was everywhere around that sign of great undertakings on the part of
+vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who are not
+undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast. He heard
+in the distance a curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which,
+though it was common enough here about this time, was not common to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the noise. The
+barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard was the tear of the
+ripping tool as it ploughed its way along the sticky parting between the trunk
+and the rind. Melbury did a large business in bark, and as he was Grace&rsquo;s
+father, and possibly might be found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the
+scene even more than he might have been by its intrinsic interest. When he got
+nearer he recognized among the workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle,
+who probably had been &ldquo;lent&rdquo; by Winterborne; Marty South also
+assisted.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by Creedle. With a
+small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from twigs and patches
+of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or two above the ground, an
+operation comparable to the &ldquo;little toilet&rdquo; of the
+executioner&rsquo;s victim. After this it was barked in its erect position to a
+point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product of vegetable nature could
+ever be said to look ridiculous it was the case now, when the oak stood
+naked-legged, and as if ashamed, till the axe-man came and cut a ring round it,
+and the two Timothys finished the work with the crosscut-saw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and in a short
+time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and larger limbs. Marty South
+was an adept at peeling the upper parts, and there she stood encaged amid the
+mass of twigs and buds like a great bird, running her tool into the smallest
+branches, beyond the farthest points to which the skill and patience of the men
+enabled them to proceed&mdash;branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed
+high above the bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and earliest rays of the
+sun and moon while the lower part of the forest was still in darkness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty,&rdquo; said
+Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, sir,&rdquo; she said, holding up the tool&mdash;a horse&rsquo;s
+leg-bone fitted into a handle and filed to an edge&mdash;&ldquo;&rsquo;tis only
+that they&rsquo;ve less patience with the twigs, because their time is worth
+more than mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched hurdles and boughs,
+and in front of it was a fire, over which a kettle sung. Fitzpiers sat down
+inside the shelter, and went on with his reading, except when he looked up to
+observe the scene and the actors. The thought that he might settle here and
+become welded in with this sylvan life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed his
+mind for a moment. Why should he go farther into the world than where he was?
+The secret of quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations; these
+men&rsquo;s thoughts were conterminous with the margin of the Hintock
+woodlands, and why should not his be likewise limited&mdash;a small practice
+among the people around him being the bound of his desires?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the quivering boughs,
+came out from the reclining oak, and prepared tea. When it was ready the men
+were called; and Fitzpiers being in a mood to join, sat down with them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself when the faint
+creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, and one of the men said,
+&ldquo;Here&rsquo;s he.&rdquo; Turning their heads they saw Melbury&rsquo;s gig
+approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding moss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at every few
+steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where and how to duck her
+head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. They stopped at the spot where
+the bark-ripping had been temporarily suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the
+heaps of bark, and drawing near to where the workmen were sitting down,
+accepted their shouted invitation to have a dish of tea, for which purpose he
+hitched the horse to a bough. Grace declined to take any of their beverage, and
+remained in her place in the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight that
+came in thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were interspersed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first time perceived
+that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+invitation to sit down on the log beside him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here,&rdquo; he
+said, obviously much pleased at the circumstance. &ldquo;I wonder now if my
+daughter knows you are so nigh at hand. I don&rsquo;t expect she do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still turned in the
+opposite direction. &ldquo;She doesn&rsquo;t see us. Well, never mind: let her
+be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s propinquity. She was
+thinking of something which had little connection with the scene before
+her&mdash;thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond; of her
+capricious conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was possibly enjoying at
+that very moment in other climes, to which Grace herself had hoped to be
+introduced by her friend&rsquo;s means. She wondered if this patronizing lady
+would return to Hintock during the summer, and whether the acquaintance which
+had been nipped on the last occasion of her residence there would develop on
+the next.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them directly to
+Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard them often before. Marty,
+who poured out tea, was just saying, &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;ll take out a cup
+to Miss Grace,&rdquo; when they heard a clashing of the gig-harness, and
+turning round Melbury saw that the horse had become restless, and was jerking
+about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its occupant, though she refrained
+from screaming. Melbury jumped up immediately, but not more quickly than
+Fitzpiers; and while her father ran to the horse&rsquo;s head and speedily
+began to control him, Fitzpiers was alongside the gig assisting Grace to
+descend. Her surprise at his appearance was so great that, far from making a
+calm and independent descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms. He
+relinquished her when she touched ground, and hoped she was not frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, not much,&rdquo; she managed to say. &ldquo;There was no
+danger&mdash;unless he had run under the trees where the boughs are low enough
+to hit my head.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount of
+alarm.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she could not
+tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but much with himself. His
+contiguity had, in fact, the same effect upon her as on those former occasions
+when he had come closer to her than usual&mdash;that of producing in her an
+unaccountable tendency to tearfulness. Melbury soon put the horse to rights,
+and seeing that Grace was safe, turned again to the work-people. His
+daughter&rsquo;s nervous distress had passed off in a few moments, and she said
+quite gayly to Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards the group,
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s destiny in it, you see. I was doomed to join in your
+picnic, although I did not intend to do so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the circle, and
+listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father and the bark-rippers sundry
+narratives of their fathers&rsquo;, their grandfathers&rsquo;, and their own
+adventures in these woods; of the mysterious sights they had seen&mdash;only to
+be accounted for by supernatural agency; of white witches and black witches;
+and the standard story of the spirits of the two brothers who had fought and
+fallen, and had haunted Hintock House till they were exorcised by the priest,
+and compelled to retreat to a swamp in this very wood, whence they were
+returning to their old quarters at the rate of a cock&rsquo;s stride every
+New-year&rsquo;s Day, old style; hence the local saying, &ldquo;On
+New-year&rsquo;s tide, a cock&rsquo;s stride.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a pleasant time. The smoke from the little fire of peeled sticks rose
+between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its blue veil stretched the
+naked arms of the prostrate trees. The smell of the uncovered sap mingled with
+the smell of the burning wood, and the sticky inner surface of the scattered
+bark glistened as it revealed its pale madder hues to the eye. Melbury was so
+highly satisfied at having Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he would have sat
+on for any length of time, but Grace, on whom Fitzpiers&rsquo;s eyes only too
+frequently alighted, seemed to think it incumbent upon her to make a show of
+going; and her father thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As the doctor had helped her out of it he appeared to think that he had
+excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the attention lingeringly
+enough.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What were you almost in tears about just now?&rdquo; he asked, softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; she said: and the words were strictly true.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove, their
+wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths, primroses,
+lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and cracking up little
+sticks that lay across the track. Their way homeward ran along the crest of a
+lofty hill, whence on the right they beheld a wide valley, differing both in
+feature and atmosphere from that of the Hintock precincts. It was the cider
+country, which met the woodland district on the axis of this hill. Over the
+vale the air was blue as sapphire&mdash;such a blue as outside that
+apple-valley was never seen. Under the blue the orchards were in a blaze of
+bloom, some of the richly flowered trees running almost up to where they drove
+along. Over a gate which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms,
+regarding this fair promise so intently that he did not observe their passing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That was Giles,&rdquo; said Melbury, when they had gone by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was it? Poor Giles,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. If no
+blight happens before the setting the apple yield will be such as we have not
+had for years.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, in the wood they had come from, the men had sat on so long that they
+were indisposed to begin work again that evening; they were paid by the ton,
+and their time for labor was as they chose. They placed the last gatherings of
+bark in rows for the curers, which led them farther and farther away from the
+shed; and thus they gradually withdrew as the sun went down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers lingered yet. He had opened his book again, though he could hardly
+see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire, scarcely knowing of the
+men&rsquo;s departure. He dreamed and mused till his consciousness seemed to
+occupy the whole space of the woodland around, so little was there of jarring
+sight or sound to hinder perfect unity with the sentiment of the place. The
+idea returned upon him of sacrificing all practical aims to live in calm
+contentment here, and instead of going on elaborating new conceptions with
+infinite pains, to accept quiet domesticity according to oldest and homeliest
+notions. These reflections detained him till the wood was embrowned with the
+coming night, and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to pour out
+all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers&rsquo;s eyes commanded as much of the ground in front as was open.
+Entering upon this he saw a figure, whose direction of movement was towards the
+spot where he sat. The surgeon was quite shrouded from observation by the
+recessed shadow of the hut, and there was no reason why he should move till the
+stranger had passed by. The shape resolved itself into a woman&rsquo;s; she was
+looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for something that
+had been lost, her course being precisely that of Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s gig.
+Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to the idea that the figure was
+Grace&rsquo;s; her nearer approach made the guess a certainty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round by the prostrate trees
+that would have been invisible but for the white nakedness which enabled her to
+avoid them easily. Thus she approached the heap of ashes, and acting upon what
+was suggested by a still shining ember or two, she took a stick and stirred the
+heap, which thereupon burst into a flame. On looking around by the light thus
+obtained she for the first time saw the illumined face of Fitzpiers, precisely
+in the spot where she had left him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace gave a start and a scream: the place had been associated with him in her
+thoughts, but she had not expected to find him there still. Fitzpiers lost not
+a moment in rising and going to her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I frightened you dreadfully, I know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I ought to
+have spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you. I have been sitting
+here ever since.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the impression
+that she was quite overcome, and in danger of falling. As soon as she could
+collect her ideas she gently withdrew from his grasp, and explained what she
+had returned for: in getting up or down from the gig, or when sitting by the
+hut fire, she had dropped her purse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now we will find it,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He threw an armful of last year&rsquo;s leaves on to the fire, which made the
+flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave themselves into a
+denser contrast, turning eve into night in a moment. By this radiance they
+groped about on their hands and knees, till Fitzpiers rested on his elbow, and
+looked at Grace. &ldquo;We must always meet in odd circumstances,&rdquo; he
+said; &ldquo;and this is one of the oddest. I wonder if it means
+anything?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, I am sure it doesn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said Grace in haste, quickly
+assuming an erect posture. &ldquo;Pray don&rsquo;t say it any more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope there was not much money in the purse,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers,
+rising to his feet more slowly, and brushing the leaves from his trousers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Scarcely any. I cared most about the purse itself, because it was given
+me. Indeed, money is of little more use at Hintock than on Crusoe&rsquo;s
+island; there&rsquo;s hardly any way of spending it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by his foot.
+&ldquo;Here it is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;so that your father, mother, friend,
+or <i>admirer</i> will not have his or her feelings hurt by a sense of your
+negligence after all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The admirer?&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, slyly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know if you would call him that,&rdquo; said Grace, with
+simplicity. &ldquo;The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, and this
+person is quite different.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has all the cardinal virtues.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps&mdash;though I don&rsquo;t know them precisely.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better.
+According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance, Wisdom, and
+Love; and his is the best list that I know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am afraid poor&mdash;&rdquo; She was going to say that she feared
+Winterborne&mdash;the giver of the purse years before&mdash;had not much
+perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she determined to go no
+further in this direction, and was silent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. His sense of
+personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed in his eyes the true aspect
+of a mistress in her lover&rsquo;s regard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Miss Melbury,&rdquo; he said, suddenly, &ldquo;I divine that this
+virtuous man you mention has been refused by you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could do no otherwise than admit it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do not inquire without good reason. God forbid that I should kneel in
+another&rsquo;s place at any shrine unfairly. But, my dear Miss Melbury, now
+that he is gone, may I draw near?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&mdash;I can&rsquo;t say anything about that!&rdquo; she cried,
+quickly. &ldquo;Because when a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and
+like him more than you did before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in the
+surgeon&rsquo;s eyes: it rendered her adorable. &ldquo;But cannot you
+say?&rdquo; he pleaded, distractedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d rather not&mdash;I think I must go home at once.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers. But as he did not move she felt it
+awkward to walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently together. A
+diversion was created by the accident of two birds, that had either been
+roosting above their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the other into
+the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a desperate quarrel that
+prevented the use of their wings. They speedily parted, however, and flew up,
+and were seen no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s the end of what is called love!&rdquo; said some one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who approached
+with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to trace the birds. Suddenly
+perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, &ldquo;Oh, Miss Melbury! I have been following
+they pigeons, and didn&rsquo;t see you. And here&rsquo;s Mr.
+Winterborne!&rdquo; she continued, shyly, as she looked towards Fitzpiers, who
+stood in the background.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Marty,&rdquo; Grace interrupted. &ldquo;I want you to walk home with
+me&mdash;will you? Come along.&rdquo; And without lingering longer she took
+hold of Marty&rsquo;s arm and led her away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they lay, and onward
+among the growing trees, by a path where there were no oaks, and no barking,
+and no Fitzpiers&mdash;nothing but copse-wood, between which the primroses
+could be discerned in pale bunches. &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t know Mr. Winterborne
+was there,&rdquo; said Marty, breaking the silence when they had nearly reached
+Grace&rsquo;s door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor was he,&rdquo; said Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Miss Melbury, I saw him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Grace. &ldquo;It was somebody else. Giles Winterborne is
+nothing to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap20"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the woodland seemed
+to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body of infinitely larger
+shape and importance. The boughs cast green shades, which hurt the complexion
+of the girls who walked there; and a fringe of them which overhung Mr.
+Melbury&rsquo;s garden dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their
+surface all over as with pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such
+a place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked all the winter left
+off creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very satisfactory
+continuation of uncanny music from that quarter. Except at mid-day the sun was
+not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous
+little stars staring through the leaves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the hour grew
+later, and nine o&rsquo;clock drew on, the irradiation of the daytime became
+broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of indistinctness. Imagination
+could trace upon the trunks and boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the
+dying lights; the surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like
+peeping eyes, while such fragments of the sky as were visible between the
+trunks assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. This was before
+the moonrise. Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper
+heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open glades as
+there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became apparent that the
+margin of the wood which approached the timber-merchant&rsquo;s premises was
+not to be left to the customary stillness of that reposeful time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden
+gate&mdash;where he now looked more frequently than into his
+books&mdash;fancying that Grace might be abroad with some friends. He was now
+irretrievably committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means
+sure that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once
+completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance&mdash;which he had
+hitherto deemed an impossibility&mdash;he was enchanted enough to fancy must be
+the case at last. It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of the
+ordinary village girls in a group&mdash;some steadily walking, some in a mood
+of wild gayety. He quietly asked his landlady, who was also in the garden, what
+these girls were intending, and she informed him that it being Old Midsummer
+Eve, they were about to attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford
+them a glimpse of their future partners for life. She declared it to be an
+ungodly performance, and one which she for her part would never countenance;
+saying which, she entered her house and retired to bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up the road.
+They had turned into the wood at an opening between Melbury&rsquo;s and Marty
+South&rsquo;s; but Fitzpiers could easily track them by their voices, low as
+they endeavored to keep their tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware of the
+nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering stealthily
+after the frisky maidens. Miss Melbury had been informed by Marty South during
+the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and, being only a girl like the
+rest, she was sufficiently interested to wish to see the issue. The moon was so
+bright and the night so calm that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs.
+Melbury to accompany her; and thus, joined by Marty, these went onward in the
+same direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Passing Winterborne&rsquo;s house, they heard a noise of hammering. Marty
+explained it. This was the last night on which his paternal roof would shelter
+him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired; and Giles was
+taking down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an early exit next
+morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him dearly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by Grammer Oliver
+(who was as young as the youngest in such matters), and Grace and Mrs. Melbury
+went on by themselves till they had arrived at the spot chosen by the village
+daughters, whose primary intention of keeping their expedition a secret had
+been quite defeated. Grace and her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and at a
+little distance stood Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, intently
+observing Grace, who was in the full rays of the moon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty and Grammer,
+who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly which sheltered Mrs. and
+Miss Melbury on its bright side. The two former conversed in low tones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they&rsquo;ll come as
+one,&rdquo; said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace. &ldquo;Instead of my
+skellington he&rsquo;ll carry home her living carcass before long. But though
+she&rsquo;s a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me
+that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and that
+Miss Grace should make the best of Winterborne.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of whom were from
+Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the incantation, it being now about
+midnight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Directly we see anything we&rsquo;ll run home as fast as we can,&rdquo;
+said one, whose courage had begun to fail her. To this the rest assented, not
+knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes around.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wish we had not thought of trying this,&rdquo; said another,
+&ldquo;but had contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve,
+and hearing our husbands&rsquo; trades. It is too much like having dealings
+with the Evil One to try to raise their forms.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march forward in
+a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper recesses of the wood.
+As far as the listeners could gather, the particular form of black-art to be
+practised on this occasion was one connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a
+handful of which was carried by each girl. At the moment of their advance they
+looked back, and discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the
+observers, stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the
+proceedings. By contrast with her life of late years they made her feel as if
+she had receded a couple of centuries in the world&rsquo;s history. She was
+rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few whispered
+words, one of the girls&mdash;a bouncing maiden, plighted to young Timothy
+Tangs&mdash;asked her if she would join in. Grace, with some excitement, said
+that she would, and moved on a little in the rear of the rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the faintest
+occasional rustle of leaves. Grammer whispered again to Marty: &ldquo;Why
+didn&rsquo;t ye go and try your luck with the rest of the maids?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe in it,&rdquo; said Marty, shortly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, half the parish is here&mdash;the silly hussies should have kept it
+quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up with Robert
+Creedle. Marty, we ought to act the part o&rsquo; Providence sometimes. Do go
+and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush at the bottom of the slope,
+Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes back, and she will most likely rush
+into his arms; for as soon as the clock strikes, they&rsquo;ll bundle back
+home&mdash;along like hares. I&rsquo;ve seen such larries before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you think I&rsquo;d better?&rdquo; said Marty, reluctantly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, he&rsquo;ll bless ye for it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want that kind of blessing.&rdquo; But after a
+moment&rsquo;s thought she went and delivered the information; and Grammer had
+the satisfaction of seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy defile
+along which Grace would have to return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and
+Winterborne, and also the move of the latter. An improvement on Grammer&rsquo;s
+idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately discerned what her
+husband had not&mdash;that Grace was rapidly fascinating the surgeon. She
+therefore drew near to Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing,&rdquo; she said to him,
+significantly. &ldquo;She will run down through that opening much faster than
+she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went across to Winterborne and
+stood beside him. Each knew the probable purpose of the other in standing
+there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to look upon Winterborne as a
+rival, and Winterborne adhering to the off-hand manner of indifference which
+had grown upon him since his dismissal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon&rsquo;s manoeuvre, and,
+still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to the
+wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and
+&ldquo;tole&rdquo; her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in
+another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to obligation,
+walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon, still and silent, for the
+retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now quite out of hearing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great Hintock
+clock striking the significant hour. About a minute later that quarter of the
+wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with the flapping of disturbed
+birds; then two or three hares and rabbits bounded down the glade from the same
+direction, and after these the rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs
+denoted the hurried approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns soon
+became visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the
+rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being contagious, she
+ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a hand-post to guide her; then,
+passing on, she flew round the fatal bush where the undergrowth narrowed to a
+gorge. Marty arrived at her heels just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had
+quickly stepped forward in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his
+position, had turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not
+have thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury&rsquo;s encouragement and the
+sentiment of an eve which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as
+the white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had
+been a bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried Grace, in her fright.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are in my arms, dearest,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, &ldquo;and I am
+going to claim you, and keep you there all our two lives!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds before
+she recovered from this helplessness. Subdued screams and struggles, audible
+from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had been other lurkers thereabout
+for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead
+of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, &ldquo;Mr. Fitzpiers, will
+you let me go?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; he said, laughing; &ldquo;as soon as you have
+recovered.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him aside, and
+glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush away. But it had been
+enough&mdash;new relations between them had begun.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The case of the other girls was different, as has been said. They wrestled and
+tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle. Fitzpiers could hear these
+enactments still going on after Grace had left him, and he remained on the spot
+where he had caught her, Winterborne having gone away. On a sudden another girl
+came bounding down the same descent that had been followed by Grace&mdash;a
+fine-framed young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she
+said, with playful effrontery, &ldquo;May&rsquo;st kiss me if &lsquo;canst
+catch me, Tim!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of the hamlet, who
+was plainly mistaking him for her lover. He was impulsively disposed to profit
+by her error, and as soon as she began racing away he started in pursuit.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over her
+shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so cunningly
+dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never allowed him to get
+dangerously near her. Thus they ran and doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the
+chase, till the sound of their companions had quite died away. He began to lose
+hope of ever overtaking her, when all at once, by way of encouragement, she
+turned to a fence in which there was a stile and leaped over it. Outside the
+scene was a changed one&mdash;a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in
+heaps, in the uninterrupted shine of the now high moon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had placed
+herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her. She flitted a
+little way down the mead, when all at once her light form disappeared as if it
+had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in one of the hay-cocks.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him thus. He
+approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one. As soon as he
+paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by an imitative kiss which
+came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest
+voice she could assume:
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;O come in from the foggy, foggy dew.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In a minute or two he uncovered her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, &rsquo;tis not Tim!&rdquo; said she, burying her face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its mildness,
+stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down on the next hay-cock,
+panting with his race.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Whom do you mean by Tim?&rdquo; he asked, presently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My young man, Tim Tangs,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did at first.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you didn&rsquo;t at last?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t at last.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you much mind that it was not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she answered, slyly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moonlight Suke looked very
+beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to her out-door occupation
+being invisible under these pale rays. While they remain silent the coarse whir
+of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically from the top of a tree at the
+nearest corner of the wood. Besides this not a sound of any kind reached their
+ears, the time of nightingales being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance
+of two miles at least. In the opposite direction the hay-field stretched away
+into remoteness till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap21"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been looking on, and
+encountering one of the girls, had asked her what caused them all to fly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something very different
+from what they had hoped to see, and that she for one would never attempt such
+unholy ceremonies again. &ldquo;We saw Satan pursuing us with his hour-glass.
+It was terrible!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards the spot
+from which the girls had retreated. After listening there a few minutes he
+heard slow footsteps rustling over the leaves, and looking through a tangled
+screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bough, he saw in the open space beyond
+a short stout man in evening-dress, carrying on one arm a light overcoat and
+also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as possibly to have suggested the
+&ldquo;hour-glass&rdquo; to his timid observers&mdash;if this were the person
+whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he silently gesticulated and the
+moonlight falling upon his bare brow showed him to have dark hair and a high
+forehead of the shape seen oftener in old prints and paintings than in real
+life. His curious and altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like those
+of one who is rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual place and hour,
+were sufficient to account for any trepidation among the Hintock daughters at
+encountering him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was; not observing
+Giles, who was of the color of his environment. The latter advanced into the
+light. The gentleman held up his hand and came towards Giles, the two meeting
+half-way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have lost my way,&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;Perhaps you can put
+me in the path again.&rdquo; He wiped his forehead with the air of one
+suffering under an agitation more than that of simple fatigue.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The turnpike-road is over there,&rdquo; said Giles
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want the turnpike-road,&rdquo; said the gentleman,
+impatiently. &ldquo;I came from that. I want Hintock House. Is there not a path
+to it across here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, yes, a sort of path. But it is hard to find from this point.
+I&rsquo;ll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Thanks, my good friend. The truth is that I decided to walk across the
+country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I am staying for a day or
+two. But I did not know it was so far.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is about a mile to the house from here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked on together. As there was no path, Giles occasionally stepped in
+front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to give his companion a
+passage, saying every now and then when the twigs, on being released, flew back
+like whips, &ldquo;Mind your eyes, sir.&rdquo; To which the stranger replied,
+&ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; in a preoccupied tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick succession over
+the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger said,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is it far?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not much farther,&rdquo; said Winterborne. &ldquo;The plantation runs up
+into a corner here, close behind the house.&rdquo; He added with hesitation,
+&ldquo;You know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not at home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mistake,&rdquo; said the other, quickly. &ldquo;Mrs. Charmond has
+been away for some time, but she&rsquo;s at home now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the gentleman was wrong.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are a native of this place?&rdquo; the stranger said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, you are happy in having a home. It is what I don&rsquo;t
+possess.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You come from far, seemingly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I come now from the south of Europe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, indeed, sir. You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French gentleman,
+perhaps?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not either.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who seemed of an
+emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at length answered the question.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth,&rdquo; he
+said. &ldquo;I left my native country on the failure of the Southern cause, and
+have never returned to it since.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the wood. Here,
+striding over the fence out upon the upland sward, they could at once see the
+chimneys of the house in the gorge immediately beneath their position, silent,
+still, and pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you tell me the time?&rdquo; the gentleman asked. &ldquo;My watch
+has stopped.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is between twelve and one,&rdquo; said Giles.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His companion expressed his astonishment. &ldquo;I thought it between nine and
+ten at latest! Dear me&mdash;dear me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which looked like a
+sovereign, for the assistance rendered. Giles declined to accept anything, to
+the surprise of the stranger, who, on putting the money back into his pocket,
+said, awkwardly, &ldquo;I offered it because I want you to utter no word about
+this meeting with me. Will you promise?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still while the other ascended
+the slope. At the bottom he looked back dubiously. Giles would no longer remain
+when he was so evidently desired to leave, and returned through the boughs to
+Hintock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and melancholy, might be
+that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs. Charmond whom he had heard so
+frequently spoken of, and whom it was said she had treated cavalierly. But he
+received no confirmation of his suspicion beyond a report which reached him a
+few days later that a gentleman had called up the servants who were taking care
+of Hintock House at an hour past midnight; and on learning that Mrs. Charmond,
+though returned from abroad, was as yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and
+gone away without leaving a card or any trace of himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times before he
+swore, but this part of the narrative was not corroborated. Anyhow, such a
+gentleman had driven away from the hotel at Sherton next day in a carriage
+hired at that inn.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap22"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of Midsummer Eve brought
+a visitor to Fitzpiers&rsquo;s door; a voice that he knew sounded in the
+passage. Mr. Melbury had called. At first he had a particular objection to
+enter the parlor, because his boots were dusty, but as the surgeon insisted he
+waived the point and came in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers himself, he
+put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied gaze at the floor, he said,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve called to ask you, doctor, quite privately, a question that
+troubles me. I&rsquo;ve a daughter, Grace, an only daughter, as you may have
+heard. Well, she&rsquo;s been out in the dew&mdash;on Midsummer Eve in
+particular she went out in thin slippers to watch some vagary of the Hintock
+maids&mdash;and she&rsquo;s got a cough, a distinct hemming and hacking, that
+makes me uneasy. Now, I have decided to send her away to some seaside place for
+a change&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Send her away!&rdquo; Fitzpiers&rsquo;s countenance had fallen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. And the question is, where would you advise me to send her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when Fitzpiers was at the
+spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a necessity of his existence. The
+sudden pressure of her form upon his breast as she came headlong round the bush
+had never ceased to linger with him, ever since he adopted the manoeuvre for
+which the hour and the moonlight and the occasion had been the only excuse. Now
+she was to be sent away. Ambition? it could be postponed. Family? culture and
+reciprocity of tastes had taken the place of family nowadays. He allowed
+himself to be carried forward on the wave of his desire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How strange, how very strange it is,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that you
+should have come to me about her just now. I have been thinking every day of
+coming to you on the very same errand.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah!&mdash;you have noticed, too, that her health&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there is
+nothing. But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several times by accident.
+I have admired her infinitely, and I was coming to ask you if I may become
+better acquainted with her&mdash;pay my addresses to her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air of
+half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers&rsquo;s face as
+he made this declaration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have&mdash;got to know her?&rdquo; said Melbury, a spell of dead
+silence having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with
+almost visible effect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with a view
+to marriage&mdash;of course that is what you mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the young man. &ldquo;I mean, get acquainted with her,
+with a view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other, what
+would naturally follow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his hand trembled
+as he laid by his walking-stick. &ldquo;This takes me unawares,&rdquo; said he,
+his voice wellnigh breaking down. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mean that there is
+anything unexpected in a gentleman being attracted by her; but it did not occur
+to me that it would be you. I always said,&rdquo; continued he, with a lump in
+his throat, &ldquo;that my Grace would make a mark at her own level some day.
+That was why I educated her. I said to myself, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll do it, cost
+what it may;&rsquo; though her mother-law was pretty frightened at my paying
+out so much money year after year. I knew it would tell in the end.
+&lsquo;Where you&rsquo;ve not good material to work on, such doings would be
+waste and vanity,&rsquo; I said. &lsquo;But where you have that material it is
+sure to be worth while.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad you don&rsquo;t object,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, almost wishing
+that Grace had not been quite so cheap for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If she is willing I don&rsquo;t object, certainly. Indeed,&rdquo; added
+the honest man, &ldquo;it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel anything
+else than highly honored personally; and it is a great credit to her to have
+drawn to her a man of such good professional station and venerable old family.
+That huntsman-fellow little thought how wrong he was about her! Take her and
+welcome, sir.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll endeavor to ascertain her mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, yes. But she will be agreeable, I should think. She ought to
+be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I hope she may. Well, now you&rsquo;ll expect to see me
+frequently.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes. But, name it all&mdash;about her cough, and her going away. I
+had quite forgot that that was what I came about.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I assure you,&rdquo; said the surgeon, &ldquo;that her cough can only be
+the result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to any
+seaside place at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+professional opinion in circumstances which naturally led him to wish to keep
+her there. The doctor saw this, and honestly dreading to lose sight of her, he
+said, eagerly, &ldquo;Between ourselves, if I am successful with her I will
+take her away myself for a month or two, as soon as we are married, which I
+hope will be before the chilly weather comes on. This will be so very much
+better than letting her go now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proposal pleased Melbury much. There could be hardly any danger in
+postponing any desirable change of air as long as the warm weather lasted, and
+for such a reason. Suddenly recollecting himself, he said, &ldquo;Your time
+must be precious, doctor. I&rsquo;ll get home-along. I am much obliged to ye.
+As you will see her often, you&rsquo;ll discover for yourself if anything
+serious is the matter.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can assure you it is nothing,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, who had seen
+Grace much oftener already than her father knew of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his sensations, like a
+man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a medium of which he knows not the
+density or temperature. But he had done it, and Grace was the sweetest girl
+alive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in Melbury&rsquo;s
+ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had said in the emotion of the
+moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and unsuited to a dialogue with an educated
+gentleman, the smallness of whose practice was more than compensated by the
+former greatness of his family. He had uttered thoughts before they were
+weighed, and almost before they were shaped. They had expressed in a certain
+sense his feeling at Fitzpiers&rsquo;s news, but yet they were not right.
+Looking on the ground, and planting his stick at each tread as if it were a
+flag-staff, he reached his own precincts, where, as he passed through the
+court, he automatically stopped to look at the men working in the shed and
+around. One of them asked him a question about wagon-spokes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hey?&rdquo; said Melbury, looking hard at him. The man repeated the
+words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he went up the
+court and entered the house. As time was no object with the journeymen, except
+as a thing to get past, they leisurely surveyed the door through which he had
+disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?&rdquo; said Tangs the
+elder. &ldquo;Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you&rsquo;ve got a maid
+of yer own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him, that will take the
+squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But you&rsquo;ll never be tall enough to
+accomplish such as she; and &rsquo;tis a lucky thing for ye, John, as things
+be. Well, he ought to have a dozen&mdash;that would bring him to reason. I see
+&rsquo;em walking together last Sunday, and when they came to a puddle he
+lifted her over like a halfpenny doll. He ought to have a dozen; he&rsquo;d let
+&rsquo;em walk through puddles for themselves then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who sees a
+vision before him. His wife was in the room. Without taking off his hat he sat
+down at random.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Luce&mdash;we&rsquo;ve done it!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;the
+thing is as I expected. The spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked.
+She&rsquo;s done it, and done it well. Where is she&mdash;Grace, I mean?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Up in her room&mdash;what has happened!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. &ldquo;I
+told you so,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;A maid like her couldn&rsquo;t stay hid
+long, even in a place like this. But where is Grace? Let&rsquo;s have her down.
+Here&mdash;Gra-a-ace!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently spoiled by
+this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry, however impatient his tones.
+&ldquo;What is it, father?&rdquo; said she, with a smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, you scamp, what&rsquo;s this you&rsquo;ve been doing? Not home here
+more than six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your father&rsquo;s
+rank, making havoc in the educated classes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her father&rsquo;s
+meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a loss now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no&mdash;of course you don&rsquo;t know what I mean, or you pretend
+you don&rsquo;t; though, for my part, I believe women can see these things
+through a double hedge. But I suppose I must tell ye. Why, you&rsquo;ve flung
+your grapnel over the doctor, and he&rsquo;s coming courting forthwith.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Only think of that, my dear! Don&rsquo;t you feel it a triumph?&rdquo;
+said Mrs. Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Coming courting! I&rsquo;ve done nothing to make him,&rdquo; Grace
+exclaimed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Twasn&rsquo;t necessary that you should, &rsquo;Tis voluntary
+that rules in these things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my
+consent. You&rsquo;ll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say. I
+needn&rsquo;t tell you to make it all smooth for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean, to lead him on to marry me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do. Haven&rsquo;t I educated you for it?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no animation in her
+face. &ldquo;Why is it settled off-hand in this way?&rdquo; said she,
+coquettishly. &ldquo;You&rsquo;ll wait till you hear what I think of him, I
+suppose?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, of course. But you see what a good thing it will be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She weighed the statement without speaking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You will be restored to the society you&rsquo;ve been taken away
+from,&rdquo; continued her father; &ldquo;for I don&rsquo;t suppose he&rsquo;ll
+stay here long.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She admitted the advantage; but it was plain that though Fitzpiers exercised a
+certain fascination over her when he was present, or even more, an almost
+psychic influence, and though his impulsive act in the wood had stirred her
+feelings indescribably, she had never regarded him in the light of a destined
+husband. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what to answer,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I
+have learned that he is very clever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s all right, and he&rsquo;s coming here to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A premonition that she could not resist him if he came strangely moved her.
+&ldquo;Of course, father, you remember that it is only lately that
+Giles&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You know that you can&rsquo;t think of him. He has given up all claim to
+you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he could state his
+opinion, even though she had skill in speech, and her father had none. That
+Fitzpiers acted upon her like a dram, exciting her, throwing her into a novel
+atmosphere which biassed her doings until the influence was over, when she felt
+something of the nature of regret for the mood she had experienced&mdash;still
+more if she reflected on the silent, almost sarcastic, criticism apparent in
+Winterborne&rsquo;s air towards her&mdash;could not be told to this worthy
+couple in words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called away from Hintock by
+an engagement to attend some medical meetings, and his visits, therefore, did
+not begin at once. A note, however, arrived from him addressed to Grace,
+deploring his enforced absence. As a material object this note was pretty and
+superfine, a note of a sort that she had been unaccustomed to see since her
+return to Hintock, except when a school friend wrote to her&mdash;a rare
+instance, for the girls were respecters of persons, and many cooled down
+towards the timber-dealer&rsquo;s daughter when she was out of sight. Thus the
+receipt of it pleased her, and she afterwards walked about with a reflective
+air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening her father, who knew that the note had come, said, &ldquo;Why be
+ye not sitting down to answer your letter? That&rsquo;s what young folks did in
+my time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She replied that it did not require an answer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, you know best,&rdquo; he said. Nevertheless, he went about his
+business doubting if she were right in not replying; possibly she might be so
+mismanaging matters as to risk the loss of an alliance which would bring her
+much happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury&rsquo;s respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his professional
+position, which was not much, than on the standing of his family in the county
+in by-gone days. That implicit faith in members of long-established families,
+as such, irrespective of their personal condition or character, which is still
+found among old-fashioned people in the rural districts reached its full
+intensity in Melbury. His daughter&rsquo;s suitor was descended from a family
+he had heard of in his grandfather&rsquo;s time as being once great, a family
+which had conferred its name upon a neighboring village; how, then, could
+anything be amiss in this betrothal?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must keep her up to this,&rdquo; he said to his wife. &ldquo;She sees
+it is for her happiness; but still she&rsquo;s young, and may want a little
+prompting from an older tongue.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap23"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when he wished to
+say anything specially impressive. Their way was over the top of that lofty
+ridge dividing their woodland from the cider district, whence they had in the
+spring beheld the miles of apple-trees in bloom. All was now deep green. The
+spot recalled to Grace&rsquo;s mind the last occasion of her presence there,
+and she said, &ldquo;The promise of an enormous apple-crop is fulfilling
+itself, is it not? I suppose Giles is getting his mills and presses
+ready.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was just what her father had not come there to talk about. Without
+replying he raised his arm, and moved his finger till he fixed it at a point.
+&ldquo;There,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you see that plantation reaching over the
+hill like a great slug, and just behind the hill a particularly green sheltered
+bottom? That&rsquo;s where Mr. Fitzpiers&rsquo;s family were lords of the manor
+for I don&rsquo;t know how many hundred years, and there stands the village of
+Buckbury Fitzpiers. A wonderful property &rsquo;twas&mdash;wonderful!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But they are not lords of the manor there now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, no. But good and great things die as well as little and foolish.
+The only ones representing the family now, I believe, are our doctor and a
+maiden lady living I don&rsquo;t know where. You can&rsquo;t help being happy,
+Grace, in allying yourself with such a romantical family. You&rsquo;ll feel as
+if you&rsquo;ve stepped into history.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve been at Hintock as long as they&rsquo;ve been at Buckbury;
+is it not so? You say our name occurs in old deeds continually.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;as yeomen, copyholders, and such like. But think how much
+better this will be for &rsquo;ee. You&rsquo;ll be living a high intellectual
+life, such as has now become natural to you; and though the doctor&rsquo;s
+practice is small here, he&rsquo;ll no doubt go to a dashing town when
+he&rsquo;s got his hand in, and keep a stylish carriage, and you&rsquo;ll be
+brought to know a good many ladies of excellent society. If you should ever
+meet me then, Grace, you can drive past me, looking the other way. I
+shouldn&rsquo;t expect you to speak to me, or wish such a thing, unless it
+happened to be in some lonely, private place where &rsquo;twouldn&rsquo;t lower
+ye at all. Don&rsquo;t think such men as neighbor Giles your equal. He and I
+shall be good friends enough, but he&rsquo;s not for the like of you.
+He&rsquo;s lived our rough and homely life here, and his wife&rsquo;s life must
+be rough and homely likewise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So much pressure could not but produce some displacement. As Grace was left
+very much to herself, she took advantage of one fine day before
+Fitzpiers&rsquo;s return to drive into the aforesaid vale where stood the
+village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. Leaving her father&rsquo;s man at the inn with
+the horse and gig, she rambled onward to the ruins of a castle, which stood in
+a field hard by. She had no doubt that it represented the ancient stronghold of
+the Fitzpiers family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants of the lower vaulting,
+supported on low stout columns surmounted by the <i>crochet</i> capital of the
+period. The two or three arches of these vaults that were still in position
+were utilized by the adjoining farmer as shelter for his calves, the floor
+being spread with straw, amid which the young creatures rustled, cooling their
+thirsty tongues by licking the quaint Norman carving, which glistened with the
+moisture. It was a degradation of even such a rude form of art as this to be
+treatad so grossly, she thought, and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers
+assumed in her imagination the hues of a melancholy romanticism.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the distance with a
+preoccupied mind. The idea of so modern a man in science and aesthetics as the
+young surgeon springing out of relics so ancient was a kind of novelty she had
+never before experienced. The combination lent him a social and intellectual
+interest which she dreaded, so much weight did it add to the strange influence
+he exercised upon her whenever he came near her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, rather a fearful
+consciousness of hazard in the air, she awaited his return.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also. In his house there was an old work
+on medicine, published towards the end of the last century, and to put himself
+in harmony with events Melbury spread this work on his knees when he had done
+his day&rsquo;s business, and read about Galen, Hippocrates, and
+Herophilus&mdash;of the dogmatic, the empiric, the hermetical, and other sects
+of practitioners that have arisen in history; and thence proceeded to the
+classification of maladies and the rules for their treatment, as laid down in
+this valuable book with absolute precision. Melbury regretted that the treatise
+was so old, fearing that he might in consequence be unable to hold as complete
+a conversation as he could wish with Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt, with more
+recent discoveries.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s return arrived, and he sent to say that he would
+call immediately. In the little time that was afforded for putting the house in
+order the sweeping of Melbury&rsquo;s parlor was as the sweeping of the parlor
+at the Interpreter&rsquo;s which wellnigh choked the Pilgrim. At the end of it
+Mrs. Melbury sat down, folded her hands and lips, and waited. Her husband
+restlessly walked in and out from the timber-yard, stared at the interior of
+the room, jerked out &ldquo;ay, ay,&rdquo; and retreated again. Between four
+and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to the hook outside the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in the room, he
+seemed to have a misgiving. Nothing less than her actual presence could long
+keep him to the level of this impassioned enterprise, and that lacking he
+appeared as one who wished to retrace his steps.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron&rsquo;s level of
+thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and Grace came in. Fitzpiers
+was for once as agitated as she. Over and above the genuine emotion which she
+raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was casting a die by impulse
+which he might not have thrown by judgment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mr. Melbury was not in the room. Having to attend to matters in the yard, he
+had delayed putting on his afternoon coat and waistcoat till the doctor&rsquo;s
+appearance, when, not wishing to be backward in receiving him, he entered the
+parlor hastily buttoning up those garments. Grace&rsquo;s fastidiousness was a
+little distressed that Fitzpiers should see by this action the strain his visit
+was putting upon her father; and to make matters worse for her just then, old
+Grammer seemed to have a passion for incessantly pumping in the back kitchen,
+leaving the doors open so that the banging and splashing were distinct above
+the parlor conversation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness Mr. Melbury
+broke in with speeches of labored precision on very remote topics, as if he
+feared to let Fitzpiers&rsquo;s mind dwell critically on the subject nearest
+the hearts of all. In truth a constrained manner was natural enough in Melbury
+just now, for the greatest interest of his life was reaching its crisis. Could
+the real have been beheld instead of the corporeal merely, the corner of the
+room in which he sat would have been filled with a form typical of anxious
+suspense, large-eyed, tight-lipped, awaiting the issue. That paternal hopes and
+fears so intense should be bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly
+circumstanced, and not have dispersed themselves over the larger field of a
+whole family, involved dangerous risks to future happiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time had apparently advanced
+his sentiments towards Grace, once and for all, from a vaguely liquescent to an
+organic shape. She would not have accompanied him to the door in response to
+his whispered &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; if her mother had not said in a
+matter-of-fact way, &ldquo;Of course, Grace; go to the door with Mr.
+Fitzpiers.&rdquo; Accordingly Grace went, both her parents remaining in the
+room. When the young pair were in the great brick-floored hall the lover took
+the girl&rsquo;s hand in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led her on to the
+door, where he stealthily kissed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She broke from him trembling, blushed and turned aside, hardly knowing how
+things had advanced to this. Fitzpiers drove off, kissing his hand to her, and
+waving it to Melbury who was visible through the window. Her father returned
+the surgeon&rsquo;s action with a great flourish of his own hand and a
+satisfied smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced in Grace&rsquo;s brain
+during the visit passed off somewhat with his withdrawal. She felt like a woman
+who did not know what she had been doing for the previous hour, but supposed
+with trepidation that the afternoon&rsquo;s proceedings, though vague, had
+amounted to an engagement between herself and the handsome, coercive,
+irresistible Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long summer days of
+that year. Grace was borne along upon a stream of reasonings, arguments, and
+persuasions, supplemented, it must be added, by inclinations of her own at
+times. No woman is without aspirations, which may be innocent enough within
+certain limits; and Grace had been so trained socially, and educated
+intellectually, as to see clearly enough a pleasure in the position of wife to
+such a man as Fitzpiers. His material standing of itself, either present or
+future, had little in it to give her ambition, but the possibilities of a
+refined and cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had
+their charm. It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying well which
+caused her to float with the current, and to yield to the immense influence
+which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever she shared his society.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not she loved him
+as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to do so in time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk together, and
+for a short cut homeward passed through the shrubberies of Hintock
+House&mdash;still deserted, and still blankly confronting with its sightless
+shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes. Grace was tired, and they
+approached the wall, and sat together on one of the stone sills&mdash;still
+warm with the sun that had been pouring its rays upon them all the afternoon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest,&rdquo; said her
+betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at the old facade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy had ever
+crossed her mind. &ldquo;She is away from home still,&rdquo; Grace added in a
+minute, rather sadly, for she could not forget that she had somehow lost the
+valuable friendship of the lady of this bower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is?&mdash;oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond. Do you know, dear, that at one
+time I thought you lived here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; said Grace. &ldquo;How was that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He explained, as far as he could do so without mentioning his disappointment at
+finding it was otherwise; and then went on: &ldquo;Well, never mind that. Now I
+want to ask you something. There is one detail of our wedding which I am sure
+you will leave to me. My inclination is not to be married at the horrid little
+church here, with all the yokels staring round at us, and a droning parson
+reading.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where, then, can it be? At a church in town?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. Not at a church at all. At a registry office. It is a quieter,
+snugger, and more convenient place in every way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said she, with real distress. &ldquo;How can I be married
+except at church, and with all my dear friends round me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yeoman Winterborne among them.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;why not? You know there was nothing serious between him and
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church has this
+objection in our case: it would be a thing of report a long way round. Now I
+would gently, as gently as possible, indicate to you how inadvisable such
+publicity would be if we leave Hintock, and I purchase the practice that I
+contemplate purchasing at Budmouth&mdash;hardly more than twenty miles off.
+Forgive my saying that it will be far better if nobody there knows where you
+come from, nor anything about your parents. Your beauty and knowledge and
+manners will carry you anywhere if you are not hampered by such retrospective
+criticism.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But could it not be a quiet ceremony, even at church?&rdquo; she
+pleaded.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see the necessity of going there!&rdquo; he said, a trifle
+impatiently. &ldquo;Marriage is a civil contract, and the shorter and simpler
+it is made the better. People don&rsquo;t go to church when they take a house,
+or even when they make a will.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Edgar&mdash;I don&rsquo;t like to hear you speak like that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, well&mdash;I didn&rsquo;t mean to. But I have mentioned as much to
+your father, who has made no objection; and why should you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ought to allow sentiment to
+give way to policy&mdash;if there were indeed policy in his plan. But she was
+indefinably depressed as they walked homeward.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap24"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+He left her at the door of her father&rsquo;s house. As he receded, and was
+clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace as a man who
+hardly appertained to her existence at all. Cleverer, greater than herself, one
+outside her mental orbit, as she considered him, he seemed to be her ruler
+rather than her equal, protector, and dear familiar friend.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the shock given to her
+girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of marriage, together with the
+sure and near approach of the day fixed for committing her future to his
+keeping, made her so restless that she could scarcely sleep at all that night.
+She rose when the sparrows began to walk out of the roof-holes, sat on the
+floor of her room in the dim light, and by-and-by peeped out behind the
+window-curtains. It was even now day out-of-doors, though the tones of morning
+were feeble and wan, and it was long before the sun would be perceptible in
+this overshadowed vale. Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet. The
+tree-trunks, the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that
+aspect of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to
+such scenes. Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be combined with
+intense consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed all things,
+oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions. Beyond the road were
+some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs and over the apple-trees
+behind, high up the slope, and backed by the plantation on the crest, was the
+house yet occupied by her future husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely
+through its creepers. The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains
+closely drawn, and not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from the rugged
+chimneys.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something broke the stillness. The front door of the house she was gazing at
+opened softly, and there came out into the porch a female figure, wrapped in a
+large shawl, beneath which was visible the white skirt of a long loose garment.
+A gray arm, stretching from within the porch, adjusted the shawl over the
+woman&rsquo;s shoulders; it was withdrawn and disappeared, the door closing
+behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The woman went quickly down the box-edged path between the raspberries and
+currants, and as she walked her well-developed form and gait betrayed her
+individuality. It was Suke Damson, the affianced one of simple young Tim Tangs.
+At the bottom of the garden she entered the shelter of the tall hedge, and only
+the top of her head could be seen hastening in the direction of her own
+dwelling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the gray arm stretching
+from the porch, the sleeve of a dressing-gown which Mr. Fitzpiers had been
+wearing on her own memorable visit to him. Her face fired red. She had just
+before thought of dressing herself and taking a lonely walk under the trees, so
+coolly green this early morning; but she now sat down on her bed and fell into
+reverie. It seemed as if hardly any time had passed when she heard the
+household moving briskly about, and breakfast preparing down-stairs; though, on
+rousing herself to robe and descend, she found that the sun was throwing his
+rays completely over the tree-tops, a progress of natural phenomena denoting
+that at least three hours had elapsed since she last looked out of the window.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When attired she searched about the house for her father; she found him at last
+in the garden, stooping to examine the potatoes for signs of disease. Hearing
+her rustle, he stood up and stretched his back and arms, saying, &ldquo;Morning
+t&rsquo;ye, Gracie. I congratulate ye. It is only a month to-day to the
+time!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded between the dewy rows
+of tall potato-green into the middle of the plot where he was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been thinking very much about my position this morning&mdash;ever
+since it was light,&rdquo; she began, excitedly, and trembling so that she
+could hardly stand. &ldquo;And I feel it is a false one. I wish not to marry
+Mr. Fitzpiers. I wish not to marry anybody; but I&rsquo;ll marry Giles
+Winterborne if you say I must as an alternative.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father&rsquo;s face settled into rigidity, he turned pale, and came
+deliberately out of the plot before he answered her. She had never seen him
+look so incensed before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, hearken to me,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a time for a
+woman to alter her mind; and there&rsquo;s a time when she can no longer alter
+it, if she has any right eye to her parents&rsquo; honor and the seemliness of
+things. That time has come. I won&rsquo;t say to ye, you <i>shall</i> marry
+him. But I will say that if you refuse, I shall forever be ashamed and a-weary
+of ye as a daughter, and shall look upon you as the hope of my life no more.
+What do you know about life and what it can bring forth, and how you ought to
+act to lead up to best ends? Oh, you are an ungrateful maid, Grace;
+you&rsquo;ve seen that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye; that&rsquo;s where
+the secret lies, I&rsquo;ll warrant me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, father, no! It is not Giles&mdash;it is something I cannot tell you
+of&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it off; have
+your own way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it disgrace
+you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the engagement to this
+acquaintance and to that, till she perceived that in his restlessness and pride
+he had published it everywhere. She went dismally away to a bower of laurel at
+the top of the garden. Her father followed her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is that Giles Winterborne!&rdquo; he said, with an upbraiding gaze at
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once,&rdquo;
+she said, troubled to the verge of despair. &ldquo;It is not Giles, it is Mr.
+Fitzpiers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve had a tiff&mdash;a lovers&rsquo; tiff&mdash;that&rsquo;s
+all, I suppose!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is some woman&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ay, ay; you are jealous. The old story. Don&rsquo;t tell me. Now do you
+bide here. I&rsquo;ll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in front of his
+house but a minute by-gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane. But she would not
+stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the garden-fence, walked away
+into the wood. Just about here the trees were large and wide apart, and there
+was no undergrowth, so that she could be seen to some distance; a sylph-like,
+greenish-white creature, as toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a
+foot-fall crushing dead leaves behind her, and found herself reconnoitered by
+Fitzpiers himself, approaching gay and fresh as the morning around them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than of rapture.
+But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her pink cheeks, her
+simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired such
+rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes kindled as he drew near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My darling, what is it? Your father says you are in the pouts, and
+jealous, and I don&rsquo;t know what. Ha! ha! ha! as if there were any rival to
+you, except vegetable nature, in this home of recluses! We know better.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Jealous; oh no, it is not so,&rdquo; said she, gravely.
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a mistake of his and yours, sir. I spoke to him so closely
+about the question of marriage with you that he did not apprehend my state of
+mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But there&rsquo;s something wrong&mdash;eh?&rdquo; he asked, eying her
+narrowly, and bending to kiss her. She shrank away, and his purposed kiss
+miscarried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What is it?&rdquo; he said, more seriously for this little defeat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She made no answer beyond, &ldquo;Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no breakfast, I
+must go in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her. &ldquo;Tell me at
+once, I say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the greater strength against the smaller; but she was mastered less by
+his manner than by her own sense of the unfairness of silence. &ldquo;I looked
+out of the window,&rdquo; she said, with hesitation. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you
+by-and-by. I must go in-doors. I have had no breakfast.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to the fact. &ldquo;Nor
+I,&rdquo; said he, lightly. &ldquo;Indeed, I rose late to-day. I have had a
+broken night, or rather morning. A girl of the village&mdash;I don&rsquo;t know
+her name&mdash;came and rang at my bell as soon as it was light&mdash;between
+four and five, I should think it was&mdash;perfectly maddened with an aching
+tooth. As no-body heard her ring, she threw some gravel at my window, till at
+last I heard her and slipped on my dressing-gown and went down. The poor thing
+begged me with tears in her eyes to take out her tormentor, if I dragged her
+head off. Down she sat and out it came&mdash;a lovely molar, not a speck upon
+it; and off she went with it in her handkerchief, much contented, though it
+would have done good work for her for fifty years to come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was all so plausible&mdash;so completely explained. Knowing nothing of the
+incident in the wood on old Midsummer-eve, Grace felt that her suspicions were
+unworthy and absurd, and with the readiness of an honest heart she jumped at
+the opportunity of honoring his word. At the moment of her mental liberation
+the bushes about the garden had moved, and her father emerged into the shady
+glade. &ldquo;Well, I hope it is made up?&rdquo; he said, cheerily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, whose eyes
+were shyly bent downward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said her father, &ldquo;tell me, the pair of ye, that you
+still mean to take one another for good and all; and on the strength o&rsquo;t
+you shall have another couple of hundred paid down. I swear it by the
+name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers took her hand. &ldquo;We declare it, do we not, my dear Grace?&rdquo;
+said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever anxious to please, she was
+disposed to settle the matter; yet, womanlike, she would not relinquish her
+opportunity of asking a concession of some sort. &ldquo;If our wedding can be
+at church, I say yes,&rdquo; she answered, in a measured voice. &ldquo;If not,
+I say no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers was generous in his turn. &ldquo;It shall be so,&rdquo; he rejoined,
+gracefully. &ldquo;To holy church we&rsquo;ll go, and much good may it do
+us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They returned through the bushes indoors, Grace walking, full of thought
+between the other two, somewhat comforted, both by Fitzpiers&rsquo;s ingenious
+explanation and by the sense that she was not to be deprived of a religious
+ceremony. &ldquo;So let it be,&rdquo; she said to herself. &ldquo;Pray God it
+is for the best.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalcitration on her part.
+Fitzpiers kept himself continually near her, dominating any rebellious impulse,
+and shaping her will into passive concurrence with all his desires. Apart from
+his lover-like anxiety to possess her, the few golden hundreds of the
+timber-dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm background to Grace&rsquo;s lovely
+face, and went some way to remove his uneasiness at the prospect of endangering
+his professional and social chances by an alliance with the family of a simple
+countryman.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. Whenever Grace had
+any doubts of her position, the sense of contracting time was like a shortening
+chamber: at other moments she was comparatively blithe. Day after day waxed and
+waned; the one or two woodmen who sawed, shaped, spokeshaved on her
+father&rsquo;s premises at this inactive season of the year, regularly came and
+unlocked the doors in the morning, locked them in the evening, supped, leaned
+over their garden-gates for a whiff of evening air, and to catch any last and
+farthest throb of news from the outer world, which entered and expired at
+Little Hintock like the exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost cavern of
+some innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news interfered with the nuptial
+purpose at their neighbor&rsquo;s house. The sappy green twig-tips of the
+season&rsquo;s growth would not, she thought, be appreciably woodier on the day
+she became a wife, so near was the time; the tints of the foliage would hardly
+have changed. Everything was so much as usual that no itinerant stranger would
+have supposed a woman&rsquo;s fate to be hanging in the balance at that
+summer&rsquo;s decline.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough by those who had special
+knowledge. In the remote and fashionable town of Sandbourne something was
+growing up under the hands of several persons who had never seen Grace Melbury,
+never would see her, or care anything about her at all, though their creation
+had such interesting relation to her life that it would enclose her very heart
+at a moment when that heart would beat, if not with more emotional ardor, at
+least with more emotional turbulence than at any previous time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Why did Mrs. Dollery&rsquo;s van, instead of passing along at the end of the
+smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn one Saturday night into Little
+Hintock Lane, and never pull up till it reached Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s gates? The
+gilding shine of evening fell upon a large, flat box not less than a yard
+square, and safely tied with cord, as it was handed out from under the tilt
+with a great deal of care. But it was not heavy for its size; Mrs. Dollery
+herself carried it into the house. Tim Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, Suke
+Damson, and others, looked knowing, and made remarks to each other as they
+watched its entrance. Melbury stood at the door of the timber-shed in the
+attitude of a man to whom such an arrival was a trifling domestic detail with
+which he did not condescend to be concerned. Yet he well divined the contents
+of that box, and was in truth all the while in a pleasant exaltation at the
+proof that thus far, at any rate, no disappointment had supervened. While Mrs.
+Dollery remained&mdash;which was rather long, from her sense of the importance
+of her errand&mdash;he went into the out-house; but as soon as she had had her
+say, been paid, and had rumbled away, he entered the dwelling, to find there
+what he knew he should find&mdash;his wife and daughter in a flutter of
+excitement over the wedding-gown, just arrived from the leading dress-maker of
+Sandbourne watering-place aforesaid.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or heard of. At the
+close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some of his furniture, packed up the
+rest&mdash;a few pieces endeared by associations, or necessary to his
+occupation&mdash;in the house of a friendly neighbor, and gone away. People
+said that a certain laxity had crept into his life; that he had never gone near
+a church latterly, and had been sometimes seen on Sundays with unblacked boots,
+lying on his elbow under a tree, with a cynical gaze at surrounding objects. He
+was likely to return to Hintock when the cider-making season came round, his
+apparatus being stored there, and travel with his mill and press from village
+to village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished yet. There was in
+Grace&rsquo;s mind sometimes a certain anticipative satisfaction, the
+satisfaction of feeling that she would be the heroine of an hour; moreover, she
+was proud, as a cultivated woman, to be the wife of a cultivated man. It was an
+opportunity denied very frequently to young women in her position, nowadays not
+a few; those in whom parental discovery of the value of education has implanted
+tastes which parental circles fail to gratify. But what an attenuation was this
+cold pride of the dream of her youth, in which she had pictured herself walking
+in state towards the altar, flushed by the purple light and bloom of her own
+passion, without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the bond, and
+fervently receiving as her due
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;The homage of a thousand hearts; the fond, deep love of one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Everything had been clear then, in imagination; now something was undefined.
+She had little carking anxieties; a curious fatefulness seemed to rule her, and
+she experienced a mournful want of some one to confide in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in fancy, catch
+the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as she came out of church,
+imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned Hintock bells. The dialogues seemed
+to grow louder, and the ding-ding-dong of those three crazed bells more
+persistent. She awoke: the morning had come.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap25"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a yawning
+arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to back premises of
+wonderful commodiousness. The windows to the street were mullioned into narrow
+lights, and only commanded a view of the opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it
+arose that the best and most luxurious private sitting-room that the inn could
+afford over-looked the nether parts of the establishment, where beyond the yard
+were to be seen gardens and orchards, now bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet
+and gold fruit, stretching to infinite distance under a luminous lavender mist.
+The time was early autumn,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;When the fair apples, red as evening sky,<br />
+Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground,<br />
+When juicy pears, and berries of black dye,<br />
+Do dance in air, and call the eyes around.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part of the
+identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton had in his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till the finger of
+fate touched her and turned her to a wife. It was two months after the wedding,
+and she was alone. Fitzpiers had walked out to see the abbey by the light of
+sunset, but she had been too fatigued to accompany him. They had reached the
+last stage of a long eight-weeks&rsquo; tour, and were going on to Hintock that
+night.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a scene natural
+to the locality at this time of the year. An apple-mill and press had been
+erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing fruit from divers points
+in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding them, and others wringing down the
+pomace, whose sweet juice gushed forth into tubs and pails. The superintendent
+of these proceedings, to whom the others spoke as master, was a young yeoman of
+prepossessing manner and aspect, whose form she recognized in a moment. He had
+hung his coat to a nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves
+rolled up beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the pomace
+into the bags of horse-hair. Fragments of apple-rind had alighted upon the brim
+of his hat&mdash;probably from the bursting of a bag&mdash;while brown pips of
+the same fruit were sticking among the down upon his fine, round arms.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She realized in a moment how he had come there. Down in the heart of the apple
+country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus and wring-house
+for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw &ldquo;cheeses,&rdquo;
+as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona&rsquo;s plain, was a
+debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively, where the apple produce
+was hardly sufficient to warrant each proprietor in keeping a mill of his own.
+This was the field of the travelling cider-maker. His press and mill were fixed
+to wheels instead of being set up in a cider-house; and with a couple of
+horses, buckets, tubs, strainers, and an assistant or two, he wandered from
+place to place, deriving very satisfactory returns for his trouble in such a
+prolific season as the present.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The back parts of the town were just now abounding with apple-gatherings. They
+stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose heaps; and the blue, stagnant
+air of autumn which hung over everything was heavy with a sweet cidery smell.
+Cakes of pomace lay against the walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying
+to be used as fuel. Yet it was not the great make of the year as yet; before
+the standard crop came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, a
+large superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the trees of later
+harvest, which would not keep long. Thus, in the baskets, and quivering in the
+hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, including the mellow
+countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, stubbards, ratheripes, and
+other well-known friends of her ravenous youth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace watched the head-man with interest. The slightest sigh escaped her.
+Perhaps she thought of the day&mdash;not so far distant&mdash;when that friend
+of her childhood had met her by her father&rsquo;s arrangement in this same
+town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise rather
+implied than given. Or she might have thought of days earlier yet&mdash;days of
+childhood&mdash;when her mouth was somewhat more ready to receive a kiss from
+his than was his to bestow one. However, all that was over. She had felt
+superior to him then, and she felt superior to him now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She wondered why he never looked towards her open window. She did not know that
+in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at the inn that afternoon
+Winterborne had caught sight of her through the archway, had turned red, and
+was continuing his work with more concentrated attention on the very account of
+his discovery. Robert Creedle, too, who travelled with Giles, had been
+incidentally informed by the hostler that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were
+in the hotel, after which news Creedle kept shaking his head and saying to
+himself, &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; very audibly, between his thrusts at the screw of
+the cider-press.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?&rdquo; asked Winterborne,
+at last.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, maister&mdash;&rsquo;tis my thoughts&mdash;&rsquo;tis my
+thoughts!...Yes, ye&rsquo;ve lost a hundred load o&rsquo; timber well seasoned;
+ye&rsquo;ve lost five hundred pound in good money; ye&rsquo;ve lost the
+stone-windered house that&rsquo;s big enough to hold a dozen families;
+ye&rsquo;ve lost your share of half a dozen good wagons and their
+horses&mdash;all lost!&mdash;through your letting slip she that was once yer
+own!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good God, Creedle, you&rsquo;ll drive me mad!&rdquo; said Giles,
+sternly. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t speak of that any more!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the subject had ended in the yard. Meanwhile, the passive cause of all
+this loss still regarded the scene. She was beautifully dressed; she was seated
+in the most comfortable room that the inn afforded; her long journey had been
+full of variety, and almost luxuriously performed&mdash;for Fitzpiers did not
+study economy where pleasure was in question. Hence it perhaps arose that Giles
+and all his belongings seemed sorry and common to her for the
+moment&mdash;moving in a plane so far removed from her own of late that she
+could scarcely believe she had ever found congruity therein. &ldquo;No&mdash;I
+could never have married him!&rdquo; she said, gently shaking her head.
+&ldquo;Dear father was right. It would have been too coarse a life for
+me.&rdquo; And she looked at the rings of sapphire and opal upon her white and
+slender fingers that had been gifts from Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of the
+above-described pride of life&mdash;easily to be understood, and possibly
+excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she had married
+well&mdash;she said at last, with a smile on her lips, &ldquo;Mr.
+Winterborne!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, &ldquo;Mr.
+Winterborne!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to him to see the
+expression of his face might have doubted it; and she said a third time, with a
+timid loudness, &ldquo;Mr. Winterborne! What, have you forgotten my
+voice?&rdquo; She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the window.
+&ldquo;Why do you call me?&rdquo; he said, with a sternness that took her
+completely unawares, his face being now pale. &ldquo;Is it not enough that you
+see me here moiling and muddling for my daily bread while you are sitting there
+in your success, that you can&rsquo;t refrain from opening old wounds by
+calling out my name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave his
+unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. &ldquo;I am sorry I
+offended you by speaking,&rdquo; she replied, meekly. &ldquo;Believe me, I did
+not intend to do that. I could hardly sit here so near you without a word of
+recognition.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne&rsquo;s heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by this
+time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice moved him. He
+assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, that he was not angry. He
+then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if she had had a
+pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights. She spoke of a few places
+that she had visited, and so the time passed till he withdrew to take his place
+at one of the levers which pulled round the screw.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as his bitterness
+showed. But though in the heat of the moment he had reproached her keenly, his
+second mood was a far more tender one&mdash;that which could regard her
+renunciation of such as he as her glory and her privilege, his own fidelity
+notwithstanding. He could have declared with a contemporary poet&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+                    &ldquo;If I forget,<br />
+The salt creek may forget the ocean;<br />
+                    If I forget<br />
+The heart whence flows my heart&rsquo;s bright motion,<br />
+May I sink meanlier than the worst<br />
+Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst,<br />
+                    If I forget.
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+                    &ldquo;Though you forget,<br />
+No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;<br />
+                    Though you forget,<br />
+You filled my barren life with treasure,<br />
+You may withdraw the gift you gave;<br />
+You still are queen, I still am slave,<br />
+                    Though you forget.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind him of what
+he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the pressure of events had
+dissipated the dreams of their early youth. Grace was thus unexpectedly worsted
+in her encounter with her old friend. She had opened the window with a faint
+sense of triumph, but he had turned it into sadness; she did not quite
+comprehend the reason why. In truth it was because she was not cruel enough in
+her cruelty. If you have to use the knife, use it, say the great surgeons; and
+for her own peace Grace should have contemned Winterborne thoroughly or not at
+all. As it was, on closing the window an indescribable, some might have said
+dangerous, pity quavered in her bosom for him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a wonderful sunset
+there was to be seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have not noticed it. But I have seen somebody out there that we
+know,&rdquo; she replied, looking into the court.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not recognize
+anybody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why, Mr. Winterborne&mdash;there he is, cider-making. He combines that
+with his other business, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh&mdash;that fellow,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming
+extinct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She, reproachfully: &ldquo;What, call Mr. Winterborne a fellow, Edgar? It is
+true I was just saying to myself that I never could have married him; but I
+have much regard for him, and always shall.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, do by all means, my dear one. I dare say I am inhuman, and
+supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle family; but I do
+honestly confess to you that I feel as if I belonged to a different species
+from the people who are working in that yard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And from me too, then. For my blood is no better than theirs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, indeed, a startling
+anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be standing there beside
+him as his wife, if his sentiments were as he had said. In their travels
+together she had ranged so unerringly at his level in ideas, tastes, and habits
+that he had almost forgotten how his heart had played havoc with his principles
+in taking her to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah YOU&mdash;you are refined and educated into something quite
+different,&rdquo; he said, self-assuringly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite like to think that,&rdquo; she murmured with soft
+regret. &ldquo;And I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne. Remember, I was
+brought up with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be radically
+different. At any rate, I don&rsquo;t feel so. That is, no doubt, my fault, and
+a great blemish in me. But I hope you will put up with it, Edgar.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now getting on
+for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of their journey, so as to
+arrive at Hintock before it grew very late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard having
+ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds audible there now
+were the trickling of the juice from the tightly screwed press, and the buzz of
+a single wasp, which had drunk itself so tipsy that it was unconscious of
+nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at the thought of being soon in her sylvan
+home, but Fitzpiers sat beside her almost silent. An indescribable
+oppressiveness had overtaken him with the near approach of the journey&rsquo;s
+end and the realities of life that lay there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t say a word, Edgar,&rdquo; she observed.
+&ldquo;Aren&rsquo;t you glad to get back? I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have friends here. I have none.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But my friends are yours.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;in that sense.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock Lane. It had
+been decided that they should, at least for a time, take up their abode in her
+father&rsquo;s roomy house, one wing of which was quite at their service, being
+almost disused by the Melburys. Workmen had been painting, papering, and
+whitewashing this set of rooms in the wedded pair&rsquo;s absence; and so
+scrupulous had been the timber-dealer that there should occur no hitch or
+disappointment on their arrival, that not the smallest detail remained undone.
+To make it all complete a ground-floor room had been fitted up as a surgery,
+with an independent outer door, to which Fitzpiers&rsquo;s brass plate was
+screwed&mdash;for mere ornament, such a sign being quite superfluous where
+everybody knew the latitude and longitude of his neighbors for miles round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, and all the house with
+deference. They went up to explore their rooms, that opened from a passage on
+the left hand of the staircase, the entrance to which could be shut off on the
+landing by a door that Melbury had hung for the purpose. A friendly fire was
+burning in the grate, although it was not cold. Fitzpiers said it was too soon
+for any sort of meal, they only having dined shortly before leaving
+Sherton-Abbas. He would walk across to his old lodging, to learn how his locum
+tenens had got on in his absence.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In leaving Melbury&rsquo;s door he looked back at the house. There was economy
+in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but in some way he was
+dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed him so deeply in son-in-lawship
+to Melbury. He went on to his former residence. His deputy was out, and
+Fitzpiers fell into conversation with his former landlady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, Mrs. Cox, what&rsquo;s the best news?&rdquo; he asked of her, with
+cheery weariness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was a little soured at losing by his marriage so profitable a tenant as the
+surgeon had proved to be during his residence under her roof; and the more so
+in there being hardly the remotest chance of her getting such another settler
+in the Hintock solitudes. &ldquo;&rsquo;Tis what I don&rsquo;t wish to repeat,
+sir; least of all to you,&rdquo; she mumbled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is what people say about your hasty marrying, Dr. Fitzpiers. Whereas
+they won&rsquo;t believe you know such clever doctrines in physic as they once
+supposed of ye, seeing as you could marry into Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s family,
+which is only Hintock-born, such as me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;They are kindly welcome to their opinion,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, not
+allowing himself to recognize that he winced. &ldquo;Anything else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; <i>she&rsquo;s</i> come home at last.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&rsquo;s she?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Charmond.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, indeed!&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never seen her.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She has seen you, sir, whether or no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; she saw you in some hotel or street for a minute or two while you
+were away travelling, and accidentally heard your name; and when she made some
+remark about you, Miss Ellis&mdash;that&rsquo;s her maid&mdash;told her you was
+on your wedding-tower with Mr. Melbury&rsquo;s daughter; and she said,
+&lsquo;He ought to have done better than that. I fear he has spoiled his
+chances,&rsquo; she says.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and walked home
+with no very brisk step. He entered the door quietly, and went straight
+up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for their use by Melbury in his and
+his bride&rsquo;s absence, expecting to find her there as he had left her. The
+fire was burning still, but there were no lights. He looked into the next
+apartment, fitted up as a little dining-room, but no supper was laid. He went
+to the top of the stairs, and heard a chorus of voices in the
+timber-merchant&rsquo;s parlor below, Grace&rsquo;s being occasionally
+intermingled.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found quite a large
+gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances, praising and congratulating
+Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among them being the dairyman, Farmer Bawtree,
+and the master-blacksmith from Great Hintock; also the cooper, the
+hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some others, with their wives, who lived hard
+by. Grace, girl that she was, had quite forgotten her new dignity and her
+husband&rsquo;s; she was in the midst of them, blushing, and receiving their
+compliments with all the pleasure of old-comradeship.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. Melbury was
+nowhere in the room, but Melbury&rsquo;s wife, perceiving the doctor, came to
+him. &ldquo;We thought, Grace and I,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;that as they have
+called, hearing you were come, we could do no less than ask them to supper; and
+then Grace proposed that we should all sup together, as it is the first night
+of your return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Grace had come round to him. &ldquo;Is it not good of them to
+welcome me so warmly?&rdquo; she exclaimed, with tears of friendship in her
+eyes. &ldquo;After so much good feeling I could not think of our shutting
+ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly not&mdash;certainly not,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers; and he entered
+the room with the heroic smile of a martyr.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to see at once
+that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such demonstrative reception.
+He thereupon privately chid his wife for her forwardness in the matter. Mrs.
+Melbury declared that it was as much Grace&rsquo;s doing as hers, after which
+there was no more to be said by that young woman&rsquo;s tender father. By this
+time Fitzpiers was making the best of his position among the wide-elbowed and
+genial company who sat eating and drinking and laughing and joking around him;
+and getting warmed himself by the good cheer, was obliged to admit that, after
+all, the supper was not the least enjoyable he had ever known.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his opportunities,
+repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted him like a handwriting on
+the wall. Then his manner would become suddenly abstracted. At one moment he
+would mentally put an indignant query why Mrs. Charmond or any other woman
+should make it her business to have opinions about his opportunities; at
+another he thought that he could hardly be angry with her for taking an
+interest in the doctor of her own parish. Then he would drink a glass of grog
+and so get rid of the misgiving. These hitches and quaffings were soon
+perceived by Grace as well as by her father; and hence both of them were much
+relieved when the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing
+late rose and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words
+Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes they were
+gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, Grace,&rdquo; said her husband as soon as he found himself alone
+with her in their private apartments, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve had a very pleasant
+evening, and everybody has been very kind. But we must come to an understanding
+about our way of living here. If we continue in these rooms there must be no
+mixing in with your people below. I can&rsquo;t stand it, and that&rsquo;s the
+truth.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for those
+old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he had professed to
+regard with so much interest. But she assented in a moment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We must be simply your father&rsquo;s tenants,&rdquo; he continued,
+&ldquo;and our goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived
+elsewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly, Edgar&mdash;I quite see that it must be so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without knowing
+whether I should approve or disapprove. When I came I couldn&rsquo;t help
+myself at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She, sighing: &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I see I ought to have waited; though they came
+unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his old rounds as
+usual. But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye as his to discern, or to
+think he discerned, that he was no longer regarded as an extrinsic, unfathomed
+gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific and social; but as Mr.
+Melbury&rsquo;s compeer, and therefore in a degree only one of themselves. The
+Hintock woodlandlers held with all the strength of inherited conviction to the
+aristocratic principle, and as soon as they had discovered that Fitzpiers was
+one of the old Buckbury Fitzpierses they had accorded to him for nothing a
+touching of hat-brims, promptness of service, and deference of approach, which
+Melbury had to do without, though he paid for it over and over. But now, having
+proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage, Fitzpiers was believed in
+no more as a superior hedged by his own divinity; while as doctor he began to
+be rated no higher than old Jones, whom they had so long despised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His few patients seemed in his two months&rsquo; absence to have dwindled
+considerably in number, and no sooner had he returned than there came to him
+from the Board of Guardians a complaint that a pauper had been neglected by his
+substitute. In a fit of pride Fitzpiers resigned his appointment as one of the
+surgeons to the union, which had been the nucleus of his practice here.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening to Grace more briskly
+than usual. &ldquo;They have written to me again about that practice in
+Budmouth that I once negotiated for,&rdquo; he said to her. &ldquo;The premium
+asked is eight hundred pounds, and I think that between your father and myself
+it ought to be raised. Then we can get away from this place forever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The question had been mooted between them before, and she was not unprepared to
+consider it. They had not proceeded far with the discussion when a knock came
+to the door, and in a minute Grammer ran up to say that a message had arrived
+from Hintock House requesting Dr. Fitzpiers to attend there at once. Mrs.
+Charmond had met with a slight accident through the overturning of her
+carriage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is something, anyhow,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, rising with an
+interest which he could not have defined. &ldquo;I have had a presentiment that
+this mysterious woman and I were to be better acquainted.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The latter words were murmured to himself alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; said Grace, as soon as he was ready. &ldquo;I shall
+be asleep, probably, when you return.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; he replied, inattentively, and went down-stairs. It
+was the first time since their marriage that he had left her without a kiss.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap26"></a>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne&rsquo;s house had been pulled down. On this account his face had
+been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably have disappeared from
+the place altogether but for his slight business connection with Melbury, on
+whose premises Giles kept his cider-making apparatus, now that he had no place
+of his own to stow it in. Coming here one evening on his way to a hut beyond
+the wood where he now slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-thatched pinion
+of his paternal roof had vanished from its site, and that the walls were
+levelled. In present circumstances he had a feeling for the spot that might
+have been called morbid, and when he had supped in the hut aforesaid he made
+use of the spare hour before bedtime to return to Little Hintock in the
+twilight and ramble over the patch of ground on which he had first seen the
+day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions. Even in the gloom he
+could trace where the different rooms had stood; could mark the shape of the
+kitchen chimney-corner, in which he had roasted apples and potatoes in his
+boyhood, cast his bullets, and burned his initials on articles that did and did
+not belong to him. The apple-trees still remained to show where the garden had
+been, the oldest of them even now retaining the crippled slant to north-east
+given them by the great November gale of 1824, which carried a brig bodily over
+the Chesil Bank. They were at present bent to still greater obliquity by the
+heaviness of their produce. Apples bobbed against his head, and in the grass
+beneath he crunched scores of them as he walked. There was nobody to gather
+them now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half leaning against one
+of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had become lost in his thoughts, as
+usual, till one little star after another had taken up a position in the piece
+of sky which now confronted him where his walls and chimneys had formerly
+raised their outlines. The house had jutted awkwardly into the road, and the
+opening caused by its absence was very distinct.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels became
+audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the blank sky, bearing down
+upon him with the bend in the lane which here occurred, and of which the house
+had been the cause. He could discern the figure of a woman high up on the
+driving-seat of a phaeton, a groom being just visible behind. Presently there
+was a slight scrape, then a scream. Winterborne went across to the spot, and
+found the phaeton half overturned, its driver sitting on the heap of rubbish
+which had once been his dwelling, and the man seizing the horses&rsquo; heads.
+The equipage was Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s, and the unseated charioteer that lady
+herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent reply to the effect
+that she did not know. The damage in other respects was little or none: the
+phaeton was righted, Mrs. Charmond placed in it, and the reins given to the
+servant. It appeared that she had been deceived by the removal of the house,
+imagining the gap caused by the demolition to be the opening of the road, so
+that she turned in upon the ruins instead of at the bend a few yards farther
+on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Drive home&mdash;drive home!&rdquo; cried the lady, impatiently; and
+they started on their way. They had not, however, gone many paces when, the air
+being still, Winterborne heard her say &ldquo;Stop; tell that man to call the
+doctor&mdash;Mr. Fitzpiers&mdash;and send him on to the House. I find I am hurt
+more seriously than I thought.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the doctor&rsquo;s
+at once. Having delivered it, he stepped back into the darkness, and waited
+till he had seen Fitzpiers leave the door. He stood for a few minutes looking
+at the window which by its light revealed the room where Grace was sitting, and
+went away under the gloomy trees.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he now saw open for the
+first time. Contrary to his expectation there was visible no sign of that
+confusion or alarm which a serious accident to the mistress of the abode would
+have occasioned. He was shown into a room at the top of the staircase, cosily
+and femininely draped, where, by the light of the shaded lamp, he saw a woman
+of full round figure reclining upon a couch in such a position as not to
+disturb a pile of magnificent hair on the crown of her head. A deep purple
+dressing-gown formed an admirable foil to the peculiarly rich brown of her
+hair-plaits; her left arm, which was naked nearly up to the shoulder, was
+thrown upward, and between the fingers of her right hand she held a cigarette,
+while she idly breathed from her plump lips a thin stream of smoke towards the
+ceiling.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The doctor&rsquo;s first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated prevision in
+having brought appliances for a serious case; the next, something more curious.
+While the scene and the moment were new to him and unanticipated, the sentiment
+and essence of the moment were indescribably familiar. What could be the cause
+of it? Probably a dream.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her eyes to him, and he came and
+stood by her. She glanced up at his face across her brows and forehead, and
+then he observed a blush creep slowly over her decidedly handsome cheeks. Her
+eyes, which had lingered upon him with an inquiring, conscious expression, were
+hastily withdrawn, and she mechanically applied the cigarette again to her
+lips.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arousing himself he addressed
+her, formally condoled with her, and made the usual professional inquiries
+about what had happened to her, and where she was hurt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s what I want you to tell me,&rdquo; she murmured, in tones
+of indefinable reserve. &ldquo;I quite believe in you, for I know you are very
+accomplished, because you study so hard.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll do my best to justify your good opinion,&rdquo; said the
+young man, bowing. &ldquo;And none the less that I am happy to find the
+accident has not been serious.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very much shaken,&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he replied; and completed his examination, which
+convinced him that there was really nothing the matter with her, and more than
+ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched, since she did not appear to be
+a timid woman. &ldquo;You must rest a while, and I&rsquo;ll send
+something,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I forgot,&rdquo; she returned. &ldquo;Look here.&rdquo; And she
+showed him a little scrape on her arm&mdash;the full round arm that was
+exposed. &ldquo;Put some court-plaster on that, please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He obeyed. &ldquo;And now,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;before you go I want to put
+a question to you. Sit round there in front of me, on that low chair, and bring
+the candles, or one, to the little table. Do you smoke? Yes? That&rsquo;s
+right&mdash;I am learning. Take one of these; and here&rsquo;s a light.&rdquo;
+She threw a matchbox across.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new position,
+which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time afforded him a full
+view of her face. &ldquo;How many years have passed since first we met!&rdquo;
+she resumed, in a voice which she mainly endeavored to maintain at its former
+pitch of composure, and eying him with daring bashfulness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>We</i> met, do you say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She nodded. &ldquo;I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you were
+passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized you as one I had
+met in my girlhood. Do you remember, when you were studying at Heidelberg, an
+English family that was staying there, who used to walk&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair&mdash;ah, I
+see it before my eyes!&mdash;who lost her gloves on the Great Terrace&mdash;who
+was going back in the dusk to find them&mdash;to whom I said, &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll
+go for them,&rsquo; and you said, &lsquo;Oh, they are not worth coming all the
+way up again for.&rsquo; I <i>do</i> remember, and how very long we stayed
+talking there! I went next morning while the dew was on the grass: there they
+lay&mdash;the little fingers sticking out damp and thin. I see them now! I
+picked them up, and then&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I kissed them,&rdquo; he rejoined, rather shamefacedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I wondered how I could
+make the most of my <i>trouvaille</i>, and decided that I would call at your
+hotel with them that afternoon. It rained, and I waited till next day. I
+called, and you were gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; answered she, with dry melancholy. &ldquo;My mother, knowing
+my disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling in
+love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden. As it is all
+over and past I&rsquo;ll tell you one thing: I should have sent you a line
+passing warm had I known your name. That name I never knew till my maid said,
+as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, &lsquo;There&rsquo;s Dr.
+Fitzpiers.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good Heaven!&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, musingly. &ldquo;How the time comes
+back to me! The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot. When I found that you
+really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my back. I went
+up to where you had stood when I last saw you&mdash;I flung myself on the
+grass, and&mdash;being not much more than a boy&mdash;my eyes were literally
+blinded with tears. Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I couldn&rsquo;t
+forget your voice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For how long?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh&mdash;ever so long. Days and days.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Days and days! <i>Only</i> days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days
+and days!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was
+not a full-blown love&mdash;it was the merest bud&mdash;red, fresh, vivid, but
+small. It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It never
+matured.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So much the better, perhaps.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will against predestination.
+We were prevented meeting; we have met. One feature of the case remains the
+same amid many changes. You are still rich, and I am still poor. Better than
+that, you have (judging by your last remark) outgrown the foolish, impulsive
+passions of your early girl-hood. I have not outgrown mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; said she, with vibrations of strong feeling in
+her words. &ldquo;I have been placed in a position which hinders such
+outgrowings. Besides, I don&rsquo;t believe that the genuine subjects of
+emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such people get the worse
+they are. Possibly at ninety or a hundred they may feel they are cured; but a
+mere threescore and ten won&rsquo;t do it&mdash;at least for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. Here was a soul of souls!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly,&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;But you
+speak sadly as well. Why is that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I always am sad when I come here,&rdquo; she said, dropping to a low
+tone with a sense of having been too demonstrative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then may I inquire why you came?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A man brought me. Women are always carried about like corks upon the
+waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you; but Hintock has
+the curious effect of bottling up the emotions till one can no longer hold
+them; I am often obliged to fly away and discharge my sentiments somewhere, or
+I should die outright.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is very good society in the county for those who have the
+privilege of entering it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Perhaps so. But the misery of remote country life is that your neighbors
+have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. My neighbors think I am
+an atheist, except those who think I am a Roman Catholic; and when I speak
+disrespectfully of the weather or the crops they think I am a
+blasphemer.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t wish me to stay any longer?&rdquo; he inquired, when he
+found that she remained musing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No&mdash;I think not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then tell me that I am to be gone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why? Cannot you go without?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you&rsquo;ll be in my
+way?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feared it might be so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then fear no more. But good-night. Come to-morrow and see if I am going
+on right. This renewal of acquaintance touches me. I have already a friendship
+for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it depends upon myself it shall last forever.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My best hopes that it may. Good-by.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to decide whether she had sent
+for him in the natural alarm which might have followed her mishap, or with the
+single view of making herself known to him as she had done, for which the
+capsize had afforded excellent opportunity. Outside the house he mused over the
+spot under the light of the stars. It seemed very strange that he should have
+come there more than once when its inhabitant was absent, and observed the
+house with a nameless interest; that he should have assumed off-hand before he
+knew Grace that it was here she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and
+seasons the individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself upon him
+as appertaining to some existence with which he was concerned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s for a day or
+two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her at the time, but it
+had been so evanescent that in the ordinary onward roll of affairs he would
+scarce ever have recalled it again. To find her here, however, in these
+somewhat romantic circumstances, magnified that by-gone and transitory
+tenderness to indescribable proportions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding it in a new
+way&mdash;from the Hintock House point of view rather than from his own and the
+Melburys&rsquo;. The household had all gone to bed, and as he went up-stairs he
+heard the snore of the timber-merchant from his quarter of the building, and
+turned into the passage communicating with his own rooms in a strange access of
+sadness. A light was burning for him in the chamber; but Grace, though in bed,
+was not asleep. In a moment her sympathetic voice came from behind the
+curtains.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient that he was
+not on the instant ready with a reply.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;There are no bones broken, but she is
+shaken. I am going again to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another inquiry or two, and Grace said,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did she ask for me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;I think she did&mdash;I don&rsquo;t quite remember; but I am
+under the impression that she spoke of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Cannot you recollect at all what she said?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot, just this minute.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At any rate she did not talk much about me?&rdquo; said Grace with
+disappointment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you did, perhaps,&rdquo; she added, innocently fishing for a
+compliment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;you may depend upon that!&rdquo; replied he, warmly, though
+scarcely thinking of what he was saying, so vividly was there present to his
+mind the personality of Mrs. Charmond.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap27"></a>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The doctor&rsquo;s professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeated
+the next day and the next. He always found Mrs. Charmond reclining on a sofa,
+and behaving generally as became a patient who was in no great hurry to lose
+that title. On each occasion he looked gravely at the little scratch on her
+arm, as if it had been a serious wound.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on her temple,
+and it was very convenient to put a piece of black plaster on this conspicuous
+part of her person in preference to gold-beater&rsquo;s skin, so that it might
+catch the eyes of the servants, and make his presence appear decidedly
+necessary, in case there should be any doubt of the fact.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh&mdash;you hurt me!&rdquo; she exclaimed one day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the scrape had
+turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to vanishing altogether.
+&ldquo;Wait a moment, then&mdash;I&rsquo;ll damp it,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers. He
+put his lips to the place and kept them there till the plaster came off easily.
+&ldquo;It was at your request I put it on,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know it,&rdquo; she replied. &ldquo;Is that blue vein still in my
+temple that used to show there? The scar must be just upon it. If the cut had
+been a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood indeed!&rdquo; Fitzpiers
+examined so closely that his breath touched her tenderly, at which their eyes
+rose to an encounter&mdash;hers showing themselves as deep and mysterious as
+interstellar space. She turned her face away suddenly. &ldquo;Ah! none of that!
+none of that&mdash;I cannot coquet with you!&rdquo; she cried.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t suppose I consent to for one moment. Our poor, brief,
+youthful hour of love-making was too long ago to bear continuing now. It is as
+well that we should understand each other on that point before we go
+further.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic gloves, so
+it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I am no trifler. I
+naturally cannot forget that little space in which I flitted across the field
+of your vision in those days of the past, and the recollection opens up all
+sorts of imaginings.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Suppose my mother had not taken me away?&rdquo; she murmured, her dreamy
+eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I should have seen you again.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And then?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would have
+immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart at
+last.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;that&rsquo;s the end of all love, according to Nature&rsquo;s
+law. I can give no other reason.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, don&rsquo;t speak like that,&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;Since we
+are only picturing the possibilities of that time, don&rsquo;t, for
+pity&rsquo;s sake, spoil the picture.&rdquo; Her voice sank almost to a whisper
+as she added, with an incipient pout upon her full lips, &ldquo;Let me think at
+least that if you had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me
+for ever and ever!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are right&mdash;think it with all your heart,&rdquo; said he.
+&ldquo;It is a pleasant thought, and costs nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She weighed that remark in silence a while. &ldquo;Did you ever hear anything
+of me from then till now?&rdquo; she inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not a word.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as well as you. I
+may tell you about it some day. But don&rsquo;t ever ask me to do it, and
+particularly do not press me to tell you now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance on the
+romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in retrospect to the length
+and importance of years; made to form a canvas for infinite fancies, idle
+dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet, alluring assertions which could
+neither be proved nor disproved. Grace was never mentioned between them, but a
+rumor of his proposed domestic changes somehow reached her ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doctor, you are going away,&rdquo; she exclaimed, confronting him with
+accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her rich cooing
+voice. &ldquo;Oh yes, you are,&rdquo; she went on, springing to her feet with
+an air which might almost have been called passionate. &ldquo;It is no use
+denying it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don&rsquo;t blame you.
+Nobody can live at Hintock&mdash;least of all a professional man who wants to
+keep abreast of recent discovery. And there is nobody here to induce such a one
+to stay for other reasons. That&rsquo;s right, that&rsquo;s right&mdash;go
+away!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am
+indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, if I continue to feel about the
+business as I feel at this moment&mdash;perhaps I may conclude never to go at
+all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you
+don&rsquo;t mean to take away with you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she lapsed
+into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no mean
+strength&mdash;strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a stifled
+conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there&mdash;the only certain
+element in their direction being its unexpectedness. If one word could have
+expressed her it would have been Inconsequence. She was a woman of
+perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts. She liked mystery, in her life,
+in her love, in her history. To be fair to her, there was nothing in the latter
+which she had any great reason to be ashamed of, and many things of which she
+might have been proud; but it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of
+Hintock, and she rarely volunteered her experiences. As for her capricious
+nature, the people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that
+marvellous subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found
+in sons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along under
+her government rather better than they would have done beneath a more equable
+rule.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now, with regard to the doctor&rsquo;s notion of leaving Hintock, he had
+advanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth
+surgeon&rsquo;s good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole
+matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours. The evening
+after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked and pondered between
+the high hedges, now greenish-white with wild clematis&mdash;here called
+&ldquo;old-man&rsquo;s beard,&rdquo; from its aspect later in the year.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his
+departure from Hintock would be irrevocable. But could he go away, remembering
+what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the grass&mdash;each
+had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he had discovered the
+person and history, and, above all, mood of their owner. There was every
+temporal reason for leaving; it would be entering again into a world which he
+had only quitted in a passion for isolation, induced by a fit of Achillean
+moodiness after an imagined slight. His wife herself saw the awkwardness of
+their position here, and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which
+every step had been taken but the last. But could he find it in his
+heart&mdash;as he found it clearly enough in his conscience&mdash;to go away?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors. Here he rapidly penned a letter,
+wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for the Budmouth practice. As
+the postman had already left Little Hintock for that night, he sent one of
+Melbury&rsquo;s men to intercept a mail-cart on another turnpike-road, and so
+got the letter off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing was done.
+Fitzpiers went back to his house musing. Why had he carried out this
+impulse&mdash;taken such wild trouble to effect a probable injury to his own
+and his young wife&rsquo;s prospects? His motive was fantastic, glowing,
+shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky. Mrs. Charmond could
+overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, and to his wife, at the
+outside, a patron. In the unattached bachelor days of his first sojourning here
+how highly proper an emotional reason for lingering on would have appeared to
+troublesome dubiousness. Matrimonial ambition is such an honorable thing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with a late
+letter to Budmouth,&rdquo; cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to meet him
+under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, the folding star.
+&ldquo;I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay the premium they ask,
+and that the tedious question had been settled. When do we go, Edgar?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have altered my mind,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;They want too
+much&mdash;seven hundred and fifty is too large a sum&mdash;and in short, I
+have declined to go further. We must wait for another opportunity. I fear I am
+not a good business-man.&rdquo; He spoke the last words with a momentary
+faltering at the great foolishness of his act; for, as he looked in her fair
+and honorable face, his heart reproached him for what he had done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. Personally she liked the
+home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. But her husband had
+seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout since their marriage
+that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. The morning had
+been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves like grain against the
+walls and window-panes of the Hintock cottages. He went on foot across the
+wilder recesses of the park, where slimy streams of green moisture, exuding
+from decayed holes caused by old amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and
+elms, the rind below being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald.
+They were stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercest
+gale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs. Wrinkled like an old
+crone&rsquo;s face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage
+of their summits, they were nevertheless still green&mdash;though yellow had
+invaded the leaves of other trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, and Fitzpiers
+was much surprised to find that the window-curtains were closed and a
+red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-of-doors it was broad daylight.
+Moreover, a large fire was burning in the grate, though it was not cold.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What does it all mean?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away. &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she
+murmured, &ldquo;it is because the world is so dreary outside. Sorrow and
+bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating against the panes.
+I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snails creeping up the
+window-glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy this morning that I could
+have wept my life away. I cannot bear you to see my face; I keep it away from
+you purposely. Oh! why were we given hungry hearts and wild desires if we have
+to live in a world like this? Why should Death only lend what Life is compelled
+to borrow&mdash;rest? Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before <i>you</i> can do it,
+Felice Charmond.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of
+fears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The terrible insistencies of
+society&mdash;how severe they are, and cold and inexorable&mdash;ghastly
+towards those who are made of wax and not of stone. Oh, I am afraid of them; a
+stab for this error, and a stab for that&mdash;correctives and regulations
+framed that society may tend to perfection&mdash;an end which I don&rsquo;t
+care for in the least. Yet for this, all I do care for has to be stunted and
+starved.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. &ldquo;What sets you in this mournful
+mood?&rdquo; he asked, gently. (In reality he knew that it was the result of a
+loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any more. They begin to
+think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There&mdash;don&rsquo;t
+be angry with me;&rdquo; and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked
+anxiously at him. &ldquo;It is necessary. It is best for both you and
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, gloomily, &ldquo;what have we done?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Done&mdash;we have done nothing. Perhaps we have thought the more.
+However, it is all vexation. I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near
+Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined to her
+bed. The engagement was made in London, and I can&rsquo;t get out of it.
+Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past. When are you
+going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock behind forever, with
+your pretty wife on your arm?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too well to
+depart.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You <i>have?</i>&rdquo; she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty.
+&ldquo;Why do you ruin yourself in that way? Great Heaven, what have I
+done!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing. Besides, you are going away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two. Yet perhaps I
+shall gain strength there&mdash;particularly strength of mind&mdash;I require
+it. And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and see me
+safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we&rsquo;ll be friends&mdash;she
+and I. Oh, how this shutting up of one&rsquo;s self does lead to indulgence in
+idle sentiments. I shall not wish you to give your attendance to me after
+to-day. But I am glad that you are not going away&mdash;if your remaining does
+not injure your prospects at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preserved in her
+tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she had conversed with him,
+equally departed from her. She became as heavy as lead&mdash;just as she had
+been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed to dissolve in a sad
+powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it made her lips tremulous and
+her closed eyes wet. His footsteps again startled her, and she turned round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be
+fine. The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out those lights.
+Shall I do it for you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please&mdash;if you don&rsquo;t mind.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lamp and the
+two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of late autumn
+sunlight that poured in. &ldquo;Shall I come round to you?&rdquo; he asked, her
+back being towards him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; she replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I am crying, and I don&rsquo;t want to see you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the rosy,
+passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in garish day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I am going,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and
+patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Shall I write a line to you at&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no.&rdquo; A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added,
+&ldquo;It must not be, you know. It won&rsquo;t do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well. Good-by.&rdquo; The next moment he was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who dressed
+her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers&rsquo;s marriage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne,&rdquo; said
+the young woman.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And why didn&rsquo;t she marry him?&rdquo; said Mrs. Charmond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because, you see, ma&rsquo;am, he lost his houses.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Lost his houses? How came he to do that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent
+wouldn&rsquo;t renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very
+good claim. That&rsquo;s as I&rsquo;ve heard it, ma&rsquo;am, and it was
+through it that the match was broke off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into a mood
+of dismal self-reproach. &ldquo;In refusing that poor man his reasonable
+request,&rdquo; she said to herself, &ldquo;I foredoomed my rejuvenated
+girlhood&rsquo;s romance. Who would have thought such a business matter could
+have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets and agonies
+and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring. Oh! I am glad I am going
+away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh. On the stairs she stood
+opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon the lawn. It was
+not yet quite dark. Half-way up the steep green slope confronting her stood old
+Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his way homeward by clambering here where
+there was no road, and in opposition to express orders that no path was to be
+made there. Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but
+observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of
+hail. His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel
+to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her constitutional
+cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung upon her eyelashes, all
+made way for the incursive mood started by the spectacle. She burst into an
+immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom of the previous hour seeming to
+render it the more uncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she reached
+the dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly
+shook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity mingled
+with the remnants of those engendered by her grief.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses of champagne, and a
+little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening with singing
+little amatory songs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however,&rdquo; she
+said.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap28"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. Middleton Abbey,
+the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by road, eighteen by
+bridle-paths and footways.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, that at
+moments he even was disposed to avoid her. The scrupulous civility of mere
+acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting at meals, he seemed
+hardly to hear her remarks. Her little doings interested him no longer, while
+towards her father his bearing was not far from supercilious. It was plain that
+his mind was entirely outside her life, whereabouts outside it she could not
+tell; in some region of science, possibly, or of psychological literature. But
+her hope that he was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before
+her marriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply on
+the slender fact that he often sat up late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down Hill, the gate
+at which Winterborne had once been standing, and which opened on the brink of a
+steep, slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or the Vale of the White
+Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to a distance of many miles. His
+attention was fixed on the landscape far away, and Grace&rsquo;s approach was
+so noiseless that he did not hear her. When she came close she could see his
+lips moving unconsciously, as to some impassioned visionary theme.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She spoke, and Fitzpiers started. &ldquo;What are you looking at?&rdquo; she
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle
+way,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that cradle and
+tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further observation, and taking
+his arm walked home beside him almost in silence. She did not know that
+Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of his gaze. &ldquo;Are you going to have
+out Darling this afternoon?&rdquo; she asked, presently. Darling being the
+light-gray mare which Winterborne had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now
+constantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining
+a perfect docility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too
+young. Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these qualities.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;but not to drive. I am riding her. I
+practise crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take
+much shorter cuts on horseback.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only since Mrs.
+Charmond&rsquo;s absence, his universal practice hitherto having been to drive.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see a
+patient in the aforesaid Vale. It was about five o&rsquo;clock in the evening
+when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home. There was nothing
+very singular in this, though she was not aware that he had any patient more
+than five or six miles distant in that direction. The clock had struck one
+before Fitzpiers entered the house, and he came to his room softly, as if
+anxious not to disturb her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the man who
+attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter was
+&ldquo;hag-rid;&rdquo; for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she
+was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding. It was true that
+the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that she was not looked
+after as she would have been if he had groomed and fed her; but that did not
+account for the appearance she presented, if Mr. Fitzpiers&rsquo;s journey had
+been only where he had stated. The phenomenal exhaustion of Darling, as thus
+related, was sufficient to develop a whole series of tales about riding witches
+and demons, the narration of which occupied a considerable time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace returned in-doors. In passing through the outer room she picked up her
+husband&rsquo;s overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a chair. A
+turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she saw that it had been
+issued at Middleton Gate. He had therefore visited Middleton the previous
+night, a distance of at least five-and-thirty miles on horseback, there and
+back.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first time that
+Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey. She could not resist an
+inference&mdash;strange as that inference was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and in the same
+direction. She knew that the state of the cottager who lived that way was a
+mere pretext; she was quite sure he was going to Mrs. Charmond. Grace was
+amazed at the mildness of the passion which the suspicion engendered in her.
+She was but little excited, and her jealousy was languid even to death. It told
+tales of the nature of her affection for him. In truth, her antenuptial regard
+for Fitzpiers had been rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being
+than of tender solicitude for a lover. It had been based upon mystery and
+strangeness&mdash;the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his
+professional skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was
+demolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely human as
+the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for an enduring
+and stanch affection&mdash;a sympathetic interdependence, wherein mutual
+weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive alliance. Fitzpiers had
+furnished none of that single-minded confidence and truth out of which alone
+such a second union could spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that
+she now watched the mare brought round.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great
+hurry,&rdquo; she said, rather loath, after all, to let him go.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do; there&rsquo;s plenty of time,&rdquo; replied her husband.
+Accordingly he led along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough
+nevertheless. Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and ascended Rub-Down
+Hill to the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days
+before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade her adieu with
+affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he looked weary-eyed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you go to-night?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;You have been called up
+two nights in succession already.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go,&rdquo; he answered, almost gloomily. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t wait
+up for me.&rdquo; With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the
+gate which Grace held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridle-track to
+the valley.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey onward. His
+way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back beaming full upon him
+as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill. Notwithstanding this untoward
+proceeding she was determined to be loyal if he proved true; and the
+determination to love one&rsquo;s best will carry a heart a long way towards
+making that best an ever-growing thing. The conspicuous coat of the active
+though blanching mare made horse and rider easy objects for the vision. Though
+Darling had been chosen with such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never
+ridden the sleek creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly
+convenient, particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying
+power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his character, while
+despising Melbury and his station, did not at all disdain to spend
+Melbury&rsquo;s money, or appropriate to his own use the horse which belonged
+to Melbury&rsquo;s daughter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous autumn
+landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards lustrous with the reds of
+apple-crops, berries, and foliage, the whole intensified by the gilding of the
+declining sun. The earth this year had been prodigally bountiful, and now was
+the supreme moment of her bounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed
+with haws and blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of
+chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious sellers
+in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels were unsound as her own
+situation, and she wondered if there were one world in the universe where the
+fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Herr Tannhäuser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him distinctly
+visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers&rsquo;s voice at that moment she
+would have found him murmuring&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;...Towards the loadstar of my one desire<br />
+I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the valley, and
+skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right, which rested
+abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy clay, the character and herbage of
+the two formations being so distinct that the calcareous upland appeared but as
+a deposit of a few years&rsquo; antiquity upon the level vale. He kept along
+the edge of this high, unenclosed country, and the sky behind him being deep
+violet, she could still see white Darling in relief upon it&mdash;a mere speck
+now&mdash;a Wouvermans eccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions. Upon
+this high ground he gradually disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in pure love of
+her, by one who had always been true, impressed to convey her husband away from
+her to the side of a new-found idol. While she was musing on the vicissitudes
+of horses and wives, she discerned shapes moving up the valley towards her,
+quite near at hand, though till now hidden by the hedges. Surely they were
+Giles Winterborne, with his two horses and cider-apparatus, conducted by Robert
+Creedle. Up, upward they crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting every now and
+then like a star on the blades of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted
+to steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gate when he
+came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the ascent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you do, Giles?&rdquo; said she, under a sudden impulse to be
+familiar with him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He replied with much more reserve. &ldquo;You are going for a walk, Mrs.
+Fitzpiers?&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;It is pleasant just now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, I am returning,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne walked by her
+side in the rear of the apple-mill.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He looked and smelt like Autumn&rsquo;s very brother, his face being sunburnt
+to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggings dyed with
+fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat
+sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere of cider which at
+its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those
+who have been born and bred among the orchards. Her heart rose from its late
+sadness like a released spring; her senses revelled in the sudden lapse back to
+nature unadorned. The consciousness of having to be genteel because of her
+husband&rsquo;s profession, the veneer of artificiality which she had acquired
+at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she became the crude, country
+girl of her latent, earliest instincts.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she been starved off by Edgar
+Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and undiluted manliness, had
+arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. This was an excursion of the
+imagination which she did not encourage, and she said suddenly, to disguise the
+confused regard which had followed her thoughts, &ldquo;Did you meet my
+husband?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne, with some hesitation, &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where did you meet him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been making there
+for the last week.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Haven&rsquo;t they a mill of their own?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, but it&rsquo;s out of repair.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think&mdash;I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I have seen her at the windows once or twice.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace waited an interval before she went on: &ldquo;Did Mr. Fitzpiers take the
+way to Middleton?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes...I met him on Darling.&rdquo; As she did not reply, he added, with
+a gentler inflection, &ldquo;You know why the mare was called that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;of course,&rdquo; she answered, quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole west sky was
+revealed. Between the broken clouds they could see far into the recesses of
+heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of golden arcades, and past fiery
+obstructions, fancied cairns, logan-stones, stalactites and stalagmite of
+topaz. Deeper than this their gaze passed thin flakes of incandescence, till it
+plunged into a bottomless medium of soft green fire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage, her revolt
+for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire for primitive life, may
+have showed in her face. Winterborne was looking at her, his eyes lingering on
+a flower that she wore in her bosom. Almost with the abstraction of a
+somnambulist he stretched out his hand and gently caressed the flower.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew back. &ldquo;What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!&rdquo; she
+exclaimed, with a look of severe surprise. The evident absence of all
+premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it was not
+necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. &ldquo;You must bear in mind,
+Giles,&rdquo; she said, kindly, &ldquo;that we are not as we were; and some
+people might have said that what you did was taking a liberty.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was more than she need have told him; his action of forgetfulness had made
+him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t
+know what I am coming to!&rdquo; he exclaimed, savagely. &ldquo;Ah&mdash;I was
+not once like this!&rdquo; Tears of vexation were in his eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, now&mdash;it was nothing. I was too reproachful.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like it
+done elsewhere&mdash;at Middleton lately,&rdquo; he said, thoughtfully, after a
+while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By whom?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She scanned him narrowly. &ldquo;I know quite well enough,&rdquo; she returned,
+indifferently. &ldquo;It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond.
+Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me....Giles&mdash;tell me all
+you know about that&mdash;please do, Giles! But no&mdash;I won&rsquo;t hear it.
+Let the subject cease. And as you are my friend, say nothing to my
+father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They reached a place where their ways divided. Winterborne continued along the
+highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gate that entered it.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap29"></a>CHAPTER XXIX.</h2>
+
+<p>
+She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by nut-bushes, just
+now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours. A little way on, the
+track she pursued was crossed by a similar one at right angles. Here Grace
+stopped; some few yards up the transverse ride the buxom Suke Damson was
+visible&mdash;her gown tucked up high through her pocket-hole, and no bonnet on
+her head&mdash;in the act of pulling down boughs from which she was gathering
+and eating nuts with great rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing near her
+engaged in the same pleasant meal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Crack, crack went Suke&rsquo;s jaws every second or two. By an automatic chain
+of thought Grace&rsquo;s mind reverted to the tooth-drawing scene described by
+her husband; and for the first time she wondered if that narrative were really
+true, Susan&rsquo;s jaws being so obviously sound and strong. Grace turned up
+towards the nut-gatherers, and conquered her reluctance to speak to the girl
+who was a little in advance of Tim. &ldquo;Good-evening, Susan,&rdquo; she
+said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Good-evening, Miss Melbury&rdquo; (crack).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Fitzpiers.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, ma&rsquo;am&mdash;Mrs. Fitzpiers,&rdquo; said Suke, with a
+peculiar smile.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace, not to be daunted, continued: &ldquo;Take care of your teeth, Suke. That
+accounts for the toothache.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank
+the Lord&rdquo; (crack).
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nor the loss of one, either?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;See for yourself, ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo; She parted her red lips, and
+exhibited the whole double row, full up and unimpaired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You have never had one drawn?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So much the better for your stomach,&rdquo; said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an
+altered voice. And turning away quickly, she went on.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As her husband&rsquo;s character thus shaped itself under the touch of time,
+Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered from that jealous
+excitement which is conventionally attributed to all wives in such
+circumstances. But though possessed by none of that feline wildness which it
+was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to know that she had made a
+frightful mistake in her marriage. Acquiescence in her father&rsquo;s wishes
+had been degradation to herself. People are not given premonitions for nothing;
+she should have obeyed her impulse on that early morning, and steadfastly
+refused her hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her about
+Suke&mdash;the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the aching
+enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story by explaining that
+it was a lovely molar without a flaw!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by the complications of
+her position. If his protestations to her before their marriage could be
+believed, her husband had felt affection of some sort for herself and this
+woman simultaneously; and was now again spreading the same emotion over Mrs.
+Charmond and herself conjointly, his manner being still kind and fond at times.
+But surely, rather than that, he must have played the hypocrite towards her in
+each case with elaborate completeness; and the thought of this sickened her,
+for it involved the conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motive
+for making her his wife must have been her little fortune. Yet here Grace made
+a mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpiers is unquestionably of such quality
+as to bear division and transference. He had indeed, once declared, though not
+to her, that on one occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five
+distinct infatuations at the same time. Therein it differed from the highest
+affection as the lower orders of the animal world differ from advanced
+organisms, partition causing, not death, but a multiplied existence. He had
+loved her sincerely, and had by no means ceased to love her now. But such
+double and treble barrelled hearts were naturally beyond her conception.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She had had her day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he does not love me I will not love him!&rdquo; said Grace, proudly.
+And though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing for
+Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in which it might be
+possible to carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy which made his
+courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he congratulated himself, meant, unknown
+to either wife or husband, more mischief than the inconvenient watchfulness of
+a jaundiced eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to her and her husband had
+never seemed so lonely. At last she got up, put on her dressing-gown, and went
+down-stairs. Her father, who slept lightly, heard her descend, and came to the
+stair-head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is that you, Grace? What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case at
+Owlscombe in White Hart Vale.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But how&rsquo;s that? I saw the woman&rsquo;s husband at Great Hintock
+just afore bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then he&rsquo;s detained somewhere else,&rdquo; said Grace. &ldquo;Never
+mind me; he will soon be home. I expect him about one.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times. One o&rsquo;clock
+had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but it passed now by a
+long way, and Fitzpiers did not come. Just before dawn she heard the men
+stirring in the yard; and the flashes of their lanterns spread every now and
+then through her window-blind. She remembered that her father had told her not
+to be disturbed if she noticed them, as they would be rising early to send off
+four loads of hurdles to a distant sheep-fair. Peeping out, she saw them
+bustling about, the hollow-turner among the rest; he was loading his
+wares&mdash;wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and so
+on&mdash;upon one of her father&rsquo;s wagons, who carried them to the fair
+for him every year out of neighborly kindness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her husband was
+still absent; though it was now five o&rsquo;clock. She could hardly suppose
+him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a later hour than ten an
+ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond at Middleton; and he could have
+ridden home in two hours and a half. What, then, had become of him? That he had
+been out the greater part of the two preceding nights added to her uneasiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of advancing
+day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men&rsquo;s faces wan.
+As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Edgar is not come,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;And I have reason to know
+that he&rsquo;s not attending anybody. He has had no rest for two nights before
+this. I was going to the top of the hill to look for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come with you,&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw a peculiar
+and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and did not like the
+look of it. Telling the men he would be with them again soon, he walked beside
+her into the turnpike-road, and partly up the hill whence she had watched
+Fitzpiers the night before across the Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley.
+They halted beneath a half-dead oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors,
+its roots spreading out like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly
+wind circled round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring
+lime-tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the
+boughs downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a dim
+atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain edged with
+pink. There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is no use standing here,&rdquo; said her father. &ldquo;He may come
+home fifty ways...why, look here!&mdash;here be Darling&rsquo;s
+tracks&mdash;turned homeward and nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come
+in hours ago without your seeing him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has not done that,&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They went back hastily. On entering their own gates they perceived that the men
+had left the wagons, and were standing round the door of the stable which had
+been appropriated to the doctor&rsquo;s use. &ldquo;Is there anything the
+matter?&rdquo; cried Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, ma&rsquo;am. All&rsquo;s well that ends well,&rdquo; said old
+Timothy Tangs. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of such things before&mdash;among
+workfolk, though not among your gentle people&mdash;that&rsquo;s true.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing in the
+middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound asleep. Darling was
+munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her month, and the reins,
+which had fallen from Fitzpiers&rsquo;s hand, hung upon her neck.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse him. He
+moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, &ldquo;Ah, Felice!...Oh,
+it&rsquo;s Grace. I could not see in the gloom. What&mdash;am I in the
+saddle?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;How do you come here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, &ldquo;I was riding
+along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having been up so much of
+late. When I came opposite Holywell spring the mare turned her head that way,
+as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in, and she drank; I thought she would
+never finish. While she was drinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck
+twelve. I distinctly remember counting the strokes. From that moment I
+positively recollect nothing till I saw you here by my side.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The name! If it had been any other horse he&rsquo;d have had a broken
+neck!&rdquo; murmured Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at
+such times!&rdquo; said John Upjohn. &ldquo;And what&rsquo;s more wonderful
+than keeping your seat in a deep, slumbering sleep? I&rsquo;ve knowed men
+drowze off walking home from randies where the mead and other liquors have gone
+round well, and keep walking for more than a mile on end without waking. Well,
+doctor, I don&rsquo;t care who the man is, &rsquo;tis a mercy you wasn&rsquo;t
+a drownded, or a splintered, or a hanged up to a tree like Absalom&mdash;also a
+handsome gentleman like yerself, as the prophets say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True,&rdquo; murmured old Timothy. &ldquo;From the soul of his foot to
+the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or leastwise you might ha&rsquo; been a-wownded into tatters
+a&rsquo;most, and no doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven
+mile!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, and taking
+Grace&rsquo;s arm walked stiffly in-doors with her. Melbury stood staring at
+the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, was spattered with mud.
+There was no mud to speak of about the Hintocks just now&mdash;only in the
+clammy hollows of the vale beyond Owlscombe, the stiff soil of which retained
+moisture for weeks after the uplands were dry. While they were rubbing down the
+mare, Melbury&rsquo;s mind coupled with the foreign quality of the mud the name
+he had heard unconsciously muttered by the surgeon when Grace took his
+hand&mdash;&ldquo;Felice.&rdquo; Who was Felice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she,
+as he knew, was staying at Middleton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+half-awakened soul&mdash;wherein there had been a picture of a recent interview
+on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged him not to come
+again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey. &ldquo;What are you
+doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you. If they were to see
+you they would seize you as a thief!&rdquo; And she had turbulently admitted to
+his wringing questions that her visit to Middleton had been undertaken less
+because of the invalid relative than in shamefaced fear of her own weakness if
+she remained near his home. A triumph then it was to Fitzpiers, poor and
+hampered as he had become, to recognize his real conquest of this beauty,
+delayed so many years. His was the selfish passion of Congreve&rsquo;s
+Millamont, to whom love&rsquo;s supreme delight lay in &ldquo;that heart which
+others bleed for, bleed for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here and there about
+his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the comfortable views which had lately
+possessed him on his domestic concerns. It is true that he had for some days
+discerned that Grace more and more sought his company, preferred supervising
+his kitchen and bakehouse with her step-mother to occupying herself with the
+lighter details of her own apartments. She seemed no longer able to find in her
+own hearth an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee
+after leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into the parent
+hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of the kind till now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense that he alone would be
+responsible for whatever unhappiness should be brought upon her for whom he
+almost solely lived, whom to retain under his roof he had faced the numerous
+inconveniences involved in giving up the best part of his house to Fitzpiers.
+There was no room for doubt that, had he allowed events to take their natural
+course, she would have accepted Winterborne, and realized his old dream of
+restitution to that young man&rsquo;s family.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature for a moment
+than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment. In the pure and simple
+life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man might
+be faithless. That he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s
+position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, would have amazed Melbury by its
+audacity if he had not suspected encouragement from that quarter. What could he
+and his simple Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two
+sophisticated beings&mdash;versed in the world&rsquo;s ways, armed with every
+apparatus for victory? In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer felt as
+inferior as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons of modern
+warfare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. The village was silent,
+most of the folk having gone to the fair. Fitzpiers had retired to bed, and was
+sleeping off his fatigue. She went to the stable and looked at poor Darling: in
+all probability Giles Winterborne, by obtaining for her a horse of such
+intelligence and docility, had been the means of saving her husband&rsquo;s
+life. She paused over the strange thought; and then there appeared her father
+behind her. She saw that he knew things were not as they ought to be, from the
+troubled dulness of his eye, and from his face, different points of which had
+independent motions, twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to himself, and
+involuntary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He was detained, I suppose, last night?&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes; a bad case in the vale,&rdquo; she replied, calmly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he couldn&rsquo;t, father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see his whilom truthful girl
+brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That night carking care sat beside Melbury&rsquo;s pillow, and his stiff limbs
+tossed at its presence. &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t lie here any longer,&rdquo; he
+muttered. Striking a light, he wandered about the room. &ldquo;What have I
+done&mdash;what have I done for her?&rdquo; he said to his wife, who had
+anxiously awakened. &ldquo;I had long planned that she should marry the son of
+the man I wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I told you all about it,
+Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! but I was not content with doing
+right, I wanted to do more!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t raft yourself without good need, George,&rdquo; she replied.
+&ldquo;I won&rsquo;t quite believe that things are so much amiss. I won&rsquo;t
+believe that Mrs. Charmond has encouraged him. Even supposing she has
+encouraged a great many, she can have no motive to do it now. What so likely as
+that she is not yet quite well, and doesn&rsquo;t care to let another doctor
+come near her?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not heed. &ldquo;Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing a
+curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no employment
+now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s past history? Perhaps that
+would throw some light upon things. Before she came here as the wife of old
+Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems to have heard aught of her.
+Why not make inquiries? And then do ye wait and see more; there&rsquo;ll be
+plenty of opportunity. Time enough to cry when you know &rsquo;tis a crying
+matter; and &rsquo;tis bad to meet troubles half-way.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. Melbury resolved to
+inquire and wait, hoping still, but oppressed between-whiles with much fear.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap30"></a>CHAPTER XXX.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing. For the present,
+therefore, he simply watched.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought almost a
+miraculous change in Melbury&rsquo;s nature. No man so furtive for the time as
+the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has been abused.
+Melbury&rsquo;s heretofore confidential candor towards his gentlemanly
+son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did injury to his every
+action, thought, and mood. He knew that a woman once given to a man for life
+took, as a rule, her lot as it came and made the best of it, without external
+interference; but for the first time he asked himself why this so generally
+should be so. Moreover, this case was not, he argued, like ordinary cases.
+Leaving out the question of Grace being anything but an ordinary woman, her
+peculiar situation, as it were in mid-air between two planes of society,
+together with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband&rsquo;s neglect a far
+more tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large circle of
+friends to fall back upon. Wisely or unwisely, and whatever other fathers did,
+he resolved to fight his daughter&rsquo;s battle still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond had returned. But Hintock House scarcely gave forth signs of
+life, so quietly had she reentered it. He went to church at Great Hintock one
+afternoon as usual, there being no service at the smaller village. A few
+minutes before his departure, he had casually heard Fitzpiers, who was no
+church-goer, tell his wife that he was going to walk in the wood. Melbury
+entered the building and sat down in his pew; the parson came in, then Mrs.
+Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite sure that a mutual
+consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between those two; he fancied that
+more than once their eyes met. At the end, Fitzpiers so timed his movement into
+the aisle that it exactly coincided with Felice Charmond&rsquo;s from the
+opposite side, and they walked out with their garments in contact, the surgeon
+being just that two or three inches in her rear which made it convenient for
+his eyes to rest upon her cheek. The cheek warmed up to a richer tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. If she had
+been playing with him in an idle freak the game might soon have wearied her;
+but the smallest germ of passion&mdash;and women of the world do not change
+color for nothing&mdash;was a threatening development. The mere presence of
+Fitzpiers in the building, after his statement, was wellnigh conclusive as far
+as he was concerned; but Melbury resolved yet to watch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had to wait long. Autumn drew shiveringly to its end. One day something
+seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves of vegetables had
+shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung like faded linen rags; then the
+forest leaves, which had been descending at leisure, descended in haste and in
+multitudes, and all the golden colors that had hung overhead were now crowded
+together in a degraded mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads got redder and
+hornier, and curled themselves up to rot. The only suspicious features in Mrs.
+Charmond&rsquo;s existence at this season were two: the first, that she lived
+with no companion or relative about her, which, considering her age and
+attractions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely
+country-house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years, start from
+Hintock to winter abroad. In Fitzpiers, the only change from his last
+autumn&rsquo;s habits lay in his abandonment of night study&mdash;his lamp
+never shone from his new dwelling as from his old.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the suspected ones met, it was by such adroit contrivances that even
+Melbury&rsquo;s vigilance could not encounter them together. A simple call at
+her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about it, and that he had paid
+two or three such calls was certain. What had passed at those interviews was
+known only to the parties themselves; but that Felice Charmond was under some
+one&rsquo;s influence Melbury soon had opportunity of perceiving.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winter had come on. Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and evenings, and
+flocks of wood-pigeons made themselves prominent again. One day in February,
+about six months after the marriage of Fitzpiers, Melbury was returning from
+Great Hintock on foot through the lane, when he saw before him the surgeon also
+walking. Melbury would have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned
+in through a gate to one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of
+the wood, which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose
+serpentine curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice almost
+simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a little
+basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, unaccompanied by a
+servant. She turned in at the same place without having seen either Melbury or
+apparently Fitzpiers. Melbury was soon at the spot, despite his aches and his
+sixty years. Mrs. Charmond had come up with the doctor, who was standing
+immediately behind the carriage. She had turned to him, her arm being thrown
+carelessly over the back of the seat. They looked in each other&rsquo;s faces
+without uttering a word, an arch yet gloomy smile wreathing her lips. Fitzpiers
+clasped her hanging hand, and, while she still remained in the same listless
+attitude, looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily unbuttoned her glove,
+and stripped her hand of it by rolling back the gauntlet over the fingers, so
+that it came off inside out. He then raised her hand to his month, she still
+reclining passively, watching him as she might have watched a fly upon her
+dress. At last she said, &ldquo;Well, sir, what excuse for this
+disobedience?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I make none.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then go your way, and let me go mine.&rdquo; She snatched away her hand,
+touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there, holding the
+reversed glove.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury&rsquo;s first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers, and
+upbraid him bitterly. But a moment&rsquo;s thought was sufficient to show him
+the futility of any such simple proceeding. There was not, after all, so much
+in what he had witnessed as in what that scene might be the surface and froth
+of&mdash;probably a state of mind on which censure operates as an aggravation
+rather than as a cure. Moreover, he said to himself that the point of attack
+should be the woman, if either. He therefore kept out of sight, and musing
+sadly, even tearfully&mdash;for he was meek as a child in matters concerning
+his daughter&mdash;continued his way towards Hintock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never more finely exemplified
+than in this instance. Through her guarded manner, her dignified speech, her
+placid countenance, he discerned the interior of Grace&rsquo;s life only too
+truly, hidden as were its incidents from every outer eye.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These incidents had become painful enough. Fitzpiers had latterly developed an
+irritable discontent which vented itself in monologues when Grace was present
+to hear them. The early morning of this day had been dull, after a night of
+wind, and on looking out of the window Fitzpiers had observed some of
+Melbury&rsquo;s men dragging away a large limb which had been snapped off a
+beech-tree. Everything was cold and colorless.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My good Heaven!&rdquo; he said, as he stood in his dressing-gown.
+&ldquo;This is life!&rdquo; He did not know whether Grace was awake or not, and
+he would not turn his head to ascertain. &ldquo;Ah, fool,&rdquo; he went on to
+himself, &ldquo;to clip your own wings when you were free to soar!...But I
+could not rest till I had done it. Why do I never recognize an opportunity till
+I have missed it, nor the good or ill of a step till it is irrevocable!...I
+fell in love....Love, indeed!&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;&lsquo;Love&rsquo;s but the frailty of the mind<br />
+When &rsquo;tis not with ambition joined;<br />
+A sickly flame which if not fed, expires,<br />
+And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!&rsquo;
+</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">
+Ah, old author of &lsquo;The Way of the World,&rsquo; you knew&mdash;you
+knew!&rdquo; Grace moved. He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy.
+He was sorry&mdash;though he had not taken any precaution to prevent her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an extreme reserve. It
+was enough, however, to make him repent that he should have done anything to
+produce discomfort; for he attributed her manner entirely to what he had said.
+But Grace&rsquo;s manner had not its cause either in his sayings or in his
+doings. She had not heard a single word of his regrets. Something even nearer
+home than her husband&rsquo;s blighted prospects&mdash;if blighted they
+were&mdash;was the origin of her mood, a mood that was the mere continuation of
+what her father had noticed when he would have preferred a passionate jealousy
+in her, as the more natural.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had made a discovery&mdash;one which to a girl of honest nature was almost
+appalling. She had looked into her heart, and found that her early interest in
+Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into luxuriant growth by her widening
+perceptions of what was great and little in life. His homeliness no longer
+offended her acquired tastes; his comparative want of so-called culture did not
+now jar on her intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior
+roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage how much that was
+humanly not great could co-exist with attainments of an exceptional order,
+there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to
+in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only
+existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one
+who had manifested them towards her from his youth up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles as a man whom
+she had wronged&mdash;a man who had been unfortunate in his worldly
+transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, he had, like Horatio,
+borne himself throughout his scathing
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband&rsquo;s
+murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When her father approached the house after witnessing the interview between
+Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking out of her sitting-room window,
+as if she had nothing to do, or think of, or care for. He stood still.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, Grace,&rdquo; he said, regarding her fixedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, father,&rdquo; she murmured.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Waiting for your dear husband?&rdquo; he inquired, speaking with the
+sarcasm of pitiful affection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;not especially. He has a great many patients to see this
+afternoon.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury came quite close. &ldquo;Grace, what&rsquo;s the use of talking like
+that, when you know&mdash;Here, come down and walk with me out in the garden,
+child.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This apparent
+indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she had rushed in all the
+fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of conventionality, confronted
+and attacked Felice Charmond <i>unguibus et rostro</i>, and accused her even in
+exaggerated shape of stealing away her husband. Such a storm might have cleared
+the air.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. &ldquo;You know
+as well as I do,&rdquo; he resumed, &ldquo;that there is something threatening
+mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I
+don&rsquo;t see the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that this
+quietude is wrong conduct in you. You should look more into matters.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to
+action.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions&mdash;did she not feel jealous? was
+she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained him. &ldquo;You are very
+tame and let-alone, I am bound to say,&rdquo; he remarked, pointedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am what I feel, father,&rdquo; she repeated.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her offering
+to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days before her marriage;
+and he asked himself if it could be the fact that she loved Winterborne, now
+that she had lost him, more than she had ever done when she was comparatively
+free to choose him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What would you have me do?&rdquo; she asked, in a low voice.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical matter before
+them. &ldquo;I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Go to Mrs. Charmond&mdash;what for?&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;if I must speak plain, dear Grace&mdash;to ask her, appeal to
+her in the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on
+things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband. It lies with her
+entirely to do one or the other&mdash;that I can see.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace&rsquo;s face had heated at her father&rsquo;s words, and the very rustle
+of her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur. &ldquo;I shall not think of
+going to her, father&mdash;of course I could not!&rdquo; she answered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why&mdash;don&rsquo;t &rsquo;ee want to be happier than you be at
+present?&rdquo; said Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything to bear I
+can bear it in silence.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, my dear maid, you are too young&mdash;you don&rsquo;t know what the
+present state of things may lead to. Just see the harm done a&rsquo;ready! Your
+husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had not
+been for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is poisoning your
+future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly bad, not bad by calculation;
+and just a word to her now might save &rsquo;ee a peck of woes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, I loved her once,&rdquo; said Grace, with a broken articulation,
+&ldquo;and she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. Let her do
+her worst: I don&rsquo;t care.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You ought to care. You have got into a very good position to start with.
+You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become the wife of a
+professional man of unusually good family. Surely you ought to make the best of
+your position.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t see that I ought. I wish I had never got into it. I wish
+you had never, never thought of educating me. I wish I worked in the woods like
+Marty South. I hate genteel life, and I want to be no better than she.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo; said her amazed father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles. I
+say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools you set
+your mind on. It all arose out of that, father. If I had stayed at home I
+should have married&mdash;&rdquo; She closed up her mouth suddenly and was
+silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury was much grieved. &ldquo;What, and would you like to have grown up as
+we be here in Hintock&mdash;knowing no more, and with no more chance of seeing
+good life than we have here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of, and
+I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away. Oh, the misery of those
+January days when I had got back to school, and left you all here in the wood
+so happy. I used to wonder why I had to bear it. And I was always a little
+despised by the other girls at school, because they knew where I came from, and
+that my parents were not in so good a station as theirs.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and
+intractability. He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he should have
+let young hearts have their way, or rather should have helped on her affection
+for Winterborne, and given her to him according to his original plan; but he
+was not prepared for her deprecation of those attainments whose completion had
+been a labor of years, and a severe tax upon his purse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; he said, with much heaviness of spirit. &ldquo;If you
+don&rsquo;t like to go to her I don&rsquo;t wish to force you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy this perilous
+state of things? For days he sat in a moody attitude over the fire, a pitcher
+of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his drinking-horn inverted upon
+the top of it. He spent a week and more thus composing a letter to the chief
+offender, which he would every now and then attempt to complete, and suddenly
+crumple up in his hand.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap31"></a>CHAPTER XXXI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of the
+woodmen&rsquo;s homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to have
+ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the timber-dealer&rsquo;s
+troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of conjecture, wherein no man
+knew the exact truth. Tantalizing phenomena, at once showing and concealing the
+real relationship of the persons concerned, caused a diffusion of excited
+surprise. Honest people as the woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected
+that they could remain immersed in the study of their trees and gardens amid
+such circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers of
+Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this case as
+in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which, with individual
+variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of Vashti, and a corpse of the
+Countess Amy. There were rencounters accidental and contrived, stealthy
+correspondence, sudden misgivings on one side, sudden self-reproaches on the
+other. The inner state of the twain was one as of confused noise that would not
+allow the accents of calmer reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this
+direction, and headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified
+collapses; not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against
+judgment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was more, for he had
+overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as it now had done.
+What should he do&mdash;appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since Grace would not?
+He bethought himself of Winterborne, and resolved to consult him, feeling the
+strong need of some friend of his own sex to whom he might unburden his mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment. That judgment on which he had
+relied for so many years seemed recently, like a false companion unmasked, to
+have disclosed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and speciousness where all had
+seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to form a conjecture on the weather, or
+the time, or the fruit-promise, so great was his self-abasement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. The woods seemed to be
+in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every bare twig; the sky had
+no color, and the trees rose before him as haggard, gray phantoms, whose days
+of substantiality were passed. Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he
+believed him to be occupying a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs.
+Charmond&rsquo;s estate, though still within the circuit of the woodland. The
+timber-merchant&rsquo;s thin legs stalked on through the pale, damp scenery,
+his eyes on the dead leaves of last year; while every now and then a hasty
+&ldquo;Ay?&rdquo; escaped his lips in reply to some bitter proposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind which arose
+sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that way, he saw Winterborne
+just in front of him. It just now happened that Giles, after being for a long
+time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of the busiest men in the
+neighborhood. It is often thus; fallen friends, lost sight of, we expect to
+find starving; we discover them going on fairly well. Without any solicitation,
+or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked to execute during that
+winter a very large order for hurdles and other copse-ware, for which purpose
+he had been obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing. He was now
+engaged in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work
+daily like an automaton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole of the copse-wood where
+the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that hue, amid which Winterborne
+himself was in the act of making a hurdle, the stakes being driven firmly into
+the ground in a row, over which he bent and wove the twigs. Beside him was a
+square, compact pile like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already
+finished, which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of their stakes. At
+a little distance the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his
+contract. Rows of copse-wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under the axe;
+and a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of which burned the
+fire whose smoke had attracted him. The air was so dank that the smoke hung
+heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without rising from the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew nearer, and briefly
+inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily engaged, with an undertone of
+slight surprise that Winterborne could seem so thriving after being deprived of
+Grace. Melbury was not without emotion at the meeting; for Grace&rsquo;s
+affairs had divided them, and ended their intimacy of old times.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes from his
+occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;&rsquo;Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared,&rdquo; said
+Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, there or thereabouts,&rdquo; said Winterborne, a chop of the
+billhook jerking the last word into two pieces.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from
+Winterborne&rsquo;s hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and legs of
+his visitor, who took no heed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, Giles&mdash;you should have been my partner. You should have been my
+son-in-law,&rdquo; the old man said at last. &ldquo;It would have been far
+better for her and for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend, and
+throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded only too
+readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. &ldquo;Is she ill?&rdquo; he said,
+hurriedly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no.&rdquo; Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and
+then, as though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and walked
+after Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;especially since we don&rsquo;t stand as we used to stand to one
+another; but I hope it is well with them all over your way?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Melbury&mdash;&ldquo;no.&rdquo; He stopped, and struck
+the smooth trunk of a young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. &ldquo;I would
+that his ear had been where that rind is!&rdquo; he exclaimed; &ldquo;I should
+have treated him to little compared wi what he deserves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Winterborne, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t be in a hurry to go
+home. I&rsquo;ve put some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and
+we&rsquo;ll sit and drink it and talk this over.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back to where
+the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodmen having gone. He
+drew out the cider-mug from the ashes and they drank together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now,&rdquo; repeated
+Melbury. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll tell you why for the first time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of how he won
+away Giles&rsquo;s father&rsquo;s chosen one&mdash;by nothing worse than a
+lover&rsquo;s cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in love, would
+certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained how he had always
+intended to make reparation to Winterborne the father by giving Grace to
+Winterborne the son, till the devil tempted him in the person of Fitzpiers, and
+he broke his virtuous vow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who&rsquo;d have supposed
+he&rsquo;d have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have had
+her, Giles, and there&rsquo;s an end on&rsquo;t.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously cruel
+tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury&rsquo;s concentration on the more
+vital subject had blinded him. The young man endeavored to make the best of the
+case for Grace&rsquo;s sake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She would hardly have been happy with me,&rdquo; he said, in the dry,
+unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings. &ldquo;I was not well
+enough educated: too rough, in short. I couldn&rsquo;t have surrounded her with
+the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nonsense&mdash;you are quite wrong there,&rdquo; said the unwise old
+man, doggedly. &ldquo;She told me only this day that she hates refinements and
+such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is thrown
+away upon her quite. She&rsquo;d fain be like Marty South&mdash;think o&rsquo;
+that! That&rsquo;s the top of her ambition! Perhaps she&rsquo;s right. Giles,
+she loved you&mdash;under the rind; and, what&rsquo;s more, she loves ye
+still&mdash;worse luck for the poor maid!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he might
+have held his peace. Winterborne was silent a long time. The darkness had
+closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog from the branches
+quickened as it turned to fine rain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, she never cared much for me,&rdquo; Giles managed to say, as he
+stirred the embers with a brand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She did, and does, I tell ye,&rdquo; said the other, obstinately.
+&ldquo;However, all that&rsquo;s vain talking now. What I come to ask you about
+is a more practical matter&mdash;how to make the best of things as they are. I
+am thinking of a desperate step&mdash;of calling on the woman Charmond. I am
+going to appeal to her, since Grace will not. &rsquo;Tis she who holds the
+balance in her hands&mdash;not he. While she&rsquo;s got the will to lead him
+astray he will follow&mdash;poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer&mdash;and
+how long she&rsquo;ll do it depends upon her whim. Did ye ever hear anything
+about her character before she came to Hintock?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe,&rdquo;
+replied Giles, with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals.
+&ldquo;One who has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not
+married. Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Hey? But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north,
+twenty or thirty years older than she. He married her and retired, and came
+down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, yes&mdash;I know all about that; but the other I did not know. I
+fear it bodes no good. For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a
+woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements her
+trade for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it makes my plan
+the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable tribe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat about the
+hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weavings a large drop of rain fell
+at intervals and spat smartly into the fire. Mrs. Charmond had been no friend
+to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it was not in his heart to let her be
+condemned without a trial.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is said to be generous,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;You might not
+appeal to her in vain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It shall be done,&rdquo; said Melbury, rising. &ldquo;For good or for
+evil, to Mrs. Charmond I&rsquo;ll go.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap32"></a>CHAPTER XXXII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+At nine o&rsquo;clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining
+broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started for
+Hintock House. He was the more impelled to go at once by the absence of his
+son-in-law in London for a few days, to attend, really or ostensibly, some
+professional meetings. He said nothing of his destination either to his wife or
+to Grace, fearing that they might entreat him to abandon so risky a project,
+and went out unobserved. He had chosen his time with a view, as he supposed, of
+conveniently catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just finished her breakfast,
+before any other business people should be about, if any came. Plodding
+thoughtfully onward, he crossed a glade lying between Little Hintock Woods and
+the plantation which abutted on the park; and the spot being open, he was
+discerned there by Winterborne from the copse on the next hill, where he and
+his men were working. Knowing his mission, the younger man hastened down from
+the copse and managed to intercept the timber-merchant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been thinking of this, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I am of
+opinion that it would be best to put off your visit for the present.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Melbury would not even stop to hear him. His mind was made up, the appeal
+was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched him sadly till he entered the
+second plantation and disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury rang at the tradesmen&rsquo;s door of the manor-house, and was at once
+informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he might have guessed had
+he been anybody but the man he was. Melbury said he would wait, whereupon the
+young man informed him in a neighborly way that, between themselves, she was in
+bed and asleep.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo; said Melbury, retreating into the court,
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll stand about here.&rdquo; Charged so fully with his mission,
+he shrank from contact with anybody.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still nobody came to
+him. At last he entered the house and sat down in a small waiting-room, from
+which he got glimpses of the kitchen corridor, and of the white-capped maids
+flitting jauntily hither and thither. They had heard of his arrival, but had
+not seen him enter, and, imagining him still in the court, discussed freely the
+possible reason of his calling. They marvelled at his temerity; for though most
+of the tongues which had been let loose attributed the chief blame-worthiness
+to Fitzpiers, these of her household preferred to regard their mistress as the
+deeper sinner.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn walking-stick,
+whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its use. The scene to him was not
+the material environment of his person, but a tragic vision that travelled with
+him like an envelope. Through this vision the incidents of the moment but
+gleamed confusedly here and there, as an outer landscape through the
+high-colored scenes of a stained window. He waited thus an hour, an hour and a
+half, two hours. He began to look pale and ill, whereupon the butler, who came
+in, asked him to have a glass of wine. Melbury roused himself and said,
+&ldquo;No, no. Is she almost ready?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is just finishing breakfast,&rdquo; said the butler. &ldquo;She will
+soon see you now. I am just going up to tell her you are here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What! haven&rsquo;t you told her before?&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said the other. &ldquo;You see you came so very
+early.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. She was not in her private
+sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he heard her coming from the
+front staircase, and she entered where he stood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and more. She
+might almost have been taken for the typical <i>femme de trente ans</i>, though
+she was really not more than seven or eight and twenty. There being no fire in
+the room, she came in with a shawl thrown loosely round her shoulders, and
+obviously without the least suspicion that Melbury had called upon any other
+errand than timber. Felice was, indeed, the only woman in the parish who had
+not heard the rumor of her own weaknesses; she was at this moment living in a
+fool&rsquo;s paradise in respect of that rumor, though not in respect of the
+weaknesses themselves, which, if the truth be told, caused her grave
+misgivings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees that were to be
+purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I believe.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just
+now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous person&rsquo;s
+affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect social
+machine. Hence her words &ldquo;very nice,&rdquo; &ldquo;so charming,&rdquo;
+were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a chair,
+and she also remained standing. Resting upon his stick, he began: &ldquo;Mrs.
+Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter&mdash;at least to
+me&mdash;than tree-throwing. And whatever mistakes I make in my manner of
+speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set &rsquo;em down to my
+want of practice, and not to my want of care.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun to guess his meaning;
+but apart from that, she had such dread of contact with anything painful,
+harsh, or even earnest, that his preliminaries alone were enough to distress
+her. &ldquo;Yes, what is it?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am an old man,&rdquo; said Melbury, &ldquo;whom, somewhat late in
+life, God thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter. Her mother
+was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the child was
+young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to me, for she was
+all I had left to love. For her sake entirely I married as second wife a
+homespun woman who had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the question
+of her education came on, and I said, &lsquo;I will educate the maid well, if I
+live upon bread to do it.&rsquo; Of her possible marriage I could not bear to
+think, for it seemed like a death that she should cleave to another man, and
+grow to think his house her home rather than mine. But I saw it was the law of
+nature that this should be, and that it was for the maid&rsquo;s happiness that
+she should have a home when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur
+to help it on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to
+make amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession, to my
+friend&rsquo;s son, seeing that they liked each other well. Things came about
+which made me doubt if it would be for my daughter&rsquo;s happiness to do
+this, inasmuch as the young man was poor, and she was delicately reared.
+Another man came and paid court to her&mdash;one her equal in breeding and
+accomplishments; in every way it seemed to me that he only could give her the
+home which her training had made a necessity almost. I urged her on, and she
+married him. But, ma&rsquo;am, a fatal mistake was at the root of my reckoning.
+I found that this well-born gentleman I had calculated on so surely was not
+stanch of heart, and that therein lay a danger of great sorrow for my daughter.
+Madam, he saw you, and you know the rest....I have come to make no
+demands&mdash;to utter no threats; I have come simply as a father in great
+grief about this only child, and I beseech you to deal kindly with my daughter,
+and to do nothing which can turn her husband&rsquo;s heart away from her
+forever. Forbid him your presence, ma&rsquo;am, and speak to him on his duty as
+one with your power over him well can do, and I am hopeful that the rent
+between them may be patched up. For it is not as if you would lose by so doing;
+your course is far higher than the courses of a simple professional man, and
+the gratitude you would win from me and mine by your kindness is more than I
+can say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indignation on comprehending
+Melbury&rsquo;s story; hot and cold by turns, she had murmured, &ldquo;Leave
+me, leave me!&rdquo; But as he seemed to take no notice of this, his words
+began to influence her, and when he ceased speaking she said, with hurried, hot
+breath, &ldquo;What has led you to think this of me? Who says I have won your
+daughter&rsquo;s husband away from her? Some monstrous calumnies are
+afloat&mdash;of which I have known nothing until now!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury started, and looked at her simply. &ldquo;But surely, ma&rsquo;am, you
+know the truth better than I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on her handsome
+face for the first time showed themselves as an extrinsic film. &ldquo;Will you
+leave me to myself?&rdquo; she said, with a faintness which suggested a guilty
+conscience. &ldquo;This is so utterly unexpected&mdash;you obtain admission to
+my presence by misrepresentation&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As God&rsquo;s in heaven, ma&rsquo;am, that&rsquo;s not true. I made no
+pretence; and I thought in reason you would know why I had come. This
+gossip&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have heard nothing of it. Tell me of it, I say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tell you, ma&rsquo;am&mdash;not I. What the gossip is, no matter. What
+really is, you know. Set facts right, and the scandal will right of itself. But
+pardon me&mdash;I speak roughly; and I came to speak gently, to coax you, beg
+you to be my daughter&rsquo;s friend. She loved you once, ma&rsquo;am; you
+began by liking her. Then you dropped her without a reason, and it hurt her
+warm heart more than I can tell ye. But you were within your right as the
+superior, no doubt. But if you would consider her position now&mdash;surely,
+surely, you would do her no harm!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly I would do her no harm&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo; Melbury&rsquo;s
+eye met hers. It was curious, but the allusion to Grace&rsquo;s former love for
+her seemed to touch her more than all Melbury&rsquo;s other arguments.
+&ldquo;Oh, Melbury,&rdquo; she burst out, &ldquo;you have made me so unhappy!
+How could you come to me like this! It is too dreadful! Now go away&mdash;go,
+go!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will,&rdquo; he said, in a husky tone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and there sat and
+writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation mingled with better
+sentiments.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods of
+stress and storm. She had never so clearly perceived till now that her soul was
+being slowly invaded by a delirium which had brought about all this; that she
+was losing judgment and dignity under it, becoming an animated impulse only, a
+passion incarnate. A fascination had led her on; it was as if she had been
+seized by a hand of velvet; and this was where she found
+herself&mdash;overshadowed with sudden night, as if a tornado had passed by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview, lunch-time came,
+and then the early afternoon, almost without her consciousness. Then &ldquo;a
+strange gentleman who says it is not necessary to give his name,&rdquo; was
+suddenly announced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot see him, whoever he may be. I am not at home to anybody.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt to recover
+some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she put on her hat and cloak
+and went out-of-doors, taking a path which led her up the slopes to the nearest
+spur of the wood. She disliked the woods, but they had the advantage of being a
+place in which she could walk comparatively unobserved.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap33"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters concerned. It
+was not till the Hintock dinner-time&mdash;one o&rsquo;clock&mdash;that Grace
+discovered her father&rsquo;s absence from the house after a departure in the
+morning under somewhat unusual conditions. By a little reasoning and inquiry
+she was able to come to a conclusion on his destination, and to divine his
+errand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her husband was absent, and her father did not return. He had, in truth, gone
+on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did not know. In an
+indefinite dread that something serious would arise out of Melbury&rsquo;s
+visit by reason of the inequalities of temper and nervous irritation to which
+he was subject, something possibly that would bring her much more misery than
+accompanied her present negative state of mind, she left the house about three
+o&rsquo;clock, and took a loitering walk in the woodland track by which she
+imagined he would come home. This track under the bare trees and over the
+cracking sticks, screened and roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud
+by a net-work of boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger
+trees behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his men
+were clearing the undergrowth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Had Giles&rsquo;s attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not have
+seen her; but ever since Melbury&rsquo;s passage across the opposite glade in
+the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace herself; and her
+advent now was the one appearance which, since her father&rsquo;s avowal, could
+arrest him more than Melbury&rsquo;s return with his tidings. Fearing that
+something might be the matter, he hastened up to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of the late
+pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. &ldquo;I am only looking
+for my father,&rdquo; she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic intonation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was looking for him too,&rdquo; said Giles. &ldquo;I think he may
+perhaps have gone on farther.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?&rdquo; she said, turning
+her large tender eyes anxiously upon him. &ldquo;Did he tell you what
+for?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her father
+had visited him the evening before, and that their old friendship was quite
+restored, on which she guessed the rest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!&rdquo; she cried.
+And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling each
+other&rsquo;s souls. Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of these
+wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them, craving, even
+to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan life of her father which
+in the best probable succession of events would shortly be denied her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was shaping
+spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings. While Winterborne
+and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at her in their mutual embarrassment at each
+other&rsquo;s presence, they beheld approaching the girl a lady in a dark fur
+mantle and a black hat, having a white veil tied picturesquely round it. She
+spoke to Marty, who turned and courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation
+with her. It was Mrs. Charmond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under the fret and
+fever of her mind with more vigor than she was accustomed to show in her normal
+moods&mdash;a fever which the solace of a cigarette did not entirely allay.
+Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed Marty at work, threw away her
+cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, chop, went Marty&rsquo;s little billhook
+with never more assiduity, till Mrs. Charmond spoke.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?&rdquo; she
+asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; said Marty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had
+not recognized Grace at that distance. &ldquo;And the man she is talking
+to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s Mr. Winterborne.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A redness stole into Marty&rsquo;s face as she mentioned Giles&rsquo;s name,
+which Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the state of the
+girl&rsquo;s heart. &ldquo;Are you engaged to him?&rdquo; she asked, softly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; said Marty. &ldquo;<i>She</i> was once; and I
+think&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her thoughts on this
+matter&mdash;which were nothing less than one of extraordinary acuteness for a
+girl so young and inexperienced&mdash;namely, that she saw danger to two hearts
+naturally honest in Grace being thrown back into Winterborne&rsquo;s society by
+the neglect of her husband. Mrs. Charmond, however, with the almost
+supersensory means to knowledge which women have on such occasions, quite
+understood what Marty had intended to convey, and the picture thus exhibited to
+her of lives drifting away, involving the wreck of poor Marty&rsquo;s hopes,
+prompted her to more generous resolves than all Melbury&rsquo;s remonstrances
+had been able to stimulate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and went on over the
+stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne were standing. They saw her
+approach, and Winterborne said, &ldquo;She is coming to you; it is a good omen.
+She dislikes me, so I&rsquo;ll go away.&rdquo; He accordingly retreated to
+where he had been working before Grace came, and Grace&rsquo;s formidable rival
+approached her, each woman taking the other&rsquo;s measure as she came near.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear&mdash;Mrs. Fitzpiers,&rdquo; said Felice Charmond, with some inward
+turmoil which stopped her speech. &ldquo;I have not seen you for a long
+time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild animal on
+first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of civilization. Was it
+really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? If it was, she could no longer form
+any guess as to what it signified.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I want to talk with you,&rdquo; said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for the
+gaze of the young woman had chilled her through. &ldquo;Can you walk on with me
+till we are quite alone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork and they moved
+evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the woods. They went farther,
+much farther than Mrs. Charmond had meant to go; but she could not begin her
+conversation, and in default of it kept walking.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have seen your father,&rdquo; she at length resumed.
+&ldquo;And&mdash;I am much troubled by what he told me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence on
+anything he may have said to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily
+divine?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True&mdash;true,&rdquo; returned Grace, mournfully. &ldquo;Why should
+you repeat what we both know to be in our minds already?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband&mdash;&rdquo; The moment that the
+speaker&rsquo;s tongue touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of
+self-consciousness flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by a
+lightning gleam, what filled it to overflowing. So transitory was the
+expression that none but a sensitive woman, and she in Grace&rsquo;s position,
+would have had the power to catch its meaning. Upon her the phase was not lost.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you <i>do</i> love him!&rdquo; she exclaimed, in a tone of much
+surprise.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What do you mean, my young friend?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why,&rdquo; cried Grace, &ldquo;I thought till now that you had only
+been cruelly flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments&mdash;a rich
+lady with a poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she despised not much
+less than her who belongs to him. But I guess from your manner that you love
+him desperately, and I don&rsquo;t hate you as I did before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, indeed,&rdquo; continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue,
+&ldquo;since it is not playing in your case at all, but <i>real</i>. Oh, I do
+pity you, more than I despise you, for <i>you</i> will s-s-suffer most!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. &ldquo;I ought not to allow
+myself to argue with you,&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;I demean myself by doing
+it. But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time I try to tell you how
+mistaken you are!&rdquo; Much of her confusion resulted from her wonder and
+alarm at finding herself in a sense dominated mentally and emotionally by this
+simple school-girl. &ldquo;I do not love him,&rdquo; she went on, with
+desperate untruth. &ldquo;It was a kindness&mdash;my making somewhat more of
+him than one usually does of one&rsquo;s doctor. I was lonely; I
+talked&mdash;well, I trifled with him. I am very sorry if such child&rsquo;s
+playing out of pure friendship has been a serious matter to you. Who could have
+expected it? But the world is so simple here.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s affectation,&rdquo; said Grace, shaking her head.
+&ldquo;It is no use&mdash;you <i>love</i> him. I can see in your face that in
+this matter of my husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings.
+During these last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet; but you
+have not been insincere, and that almost disarms me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I <i>have</i> been insincere&mdash;if you will have the word&mdash;I
+mean I <i>have</i> coquetted, and do <i>not</i> love him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. &ldquo;You may have trifled with
+others, but him you love as you never loved another man.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, well&mdash;I won&rsquo;t argue,&rdquo; said Mrs. Charmond, laughing
+faintly. &ldquo;And you come to reproach me for it, child.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Grace, magnanimously. &ldquo;You may go on loving him if
+you like&mdash;I don&rsquo;t mind at all. You&rsquo;ll find it, let me tell
+you, a bitterer business for yourself than for me in the end. He&rsquo;ll get
+tired of you soon, as tired as can be&mdash;you don&rsquo;t know him so well as
+I&mdash;and then you may wish you had never seen him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was
+extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have characterized as a
+gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her interlocutor. &ldquo;You
+exaggerate&mdash;cruel, silly young woman,&rdquo; she reiterated, writhing with
+little agonies. &ldquo;It is nothing but playful friendship&mdash;nothing! It
+will be proved by my future conduct. I shall at once refuse to see him
+more&mdash;since it will make no difference to my heart, and much to my
+name.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I question if you will refuse to see him again,&rdquo; said Grace,
+dryly, as with eyes askance she bent a sapling down. &ldquo;But I am not
+incensed against you as you are against me,&rdquo; she added, abandoning the
+tree to its natural perpendicular. &ldquo;Before I came I had been despising
+you for wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection. When Edgar
+has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours and
+unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles across the country
+at midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with mud, to get a
+glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man&mdash;the plaything of a
+finished coquette. I thought that what was getting to be a tragedy to me was a
+comedy to you. But now I see that tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no
+less than on mine, and more; that if I have felt trouble at my position, you
+have felt anguish at yours; that if I have had disappointments, you have had
+despairs. Heaven may fortify <i>me</i>&mdash;God help <i>you!</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence,&rdquo; returned the
+other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely collapsed.
+&ldquo;My acts will be my proofs. In the world which you have seen nothing of,
+friendships between men and women are not unknown, and it would have been
+better both for you and your father if you had each judged me more
+respectfully, and left me alone. As it is I wish never to see or speak to you,
+madam, any more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away. The two went apart in directly
+opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by their umbrageous
+surroundings and by the shadows of eve.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the excitement of their long argument they had walked onward and zigzagged
+about without regarding direction or distance. All sound of the woodcutters had
+long since faded into remoteness, and even had not the interval been too great
+for hearing them they would have been silent and homeward bound at this
+twilight hour. But Grace went on her course without any misgiving, though there
+was much underwood here, with only the narrowest passages for walking, across
+which brambles hung. She had not, however, traversed this the wildest part of
+the wood since her childhood, and the transformation of outlines had been
+great; old trees which once were landmarks had been felled or blown down, and
+the bushes which then had been small and scrubby were now large and
+overhanging. She soon found that her ideas as to direction were
+vague&mdash;that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all. If the evening
+had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not put on its night moan so
+distinctly, Grace would not have minded; but she was rather frightened now, and
+began to strike across hither and thither in random courses.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind-voices, and still no
+recognizable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any sound of the Hintocks
+floated near, though she had wandered probably between one and two hours, and
+began to be weary. She was vexed at her foolishness, since the ground she had
+covered, if in a straight line, must inevitably have taken her out of the wood
+to some remote village or other; but she had wasted her forces in
+countermarches; and now, in much alarm, wondered if she would have to pass the
+night here. She stood still to meditate, and fancied that between the soughing
+of the wind she heard shuffling footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of
+rabbits or hares. Though fearing at first to meet anybody on the chance of his
+being a friend, she decided that the fellow night-rambler, even if a poacher,
+would not injure her, and that he might possibly be some one sent to search for
+her. She accordingly shouted a rather timid &ldquo;Hoi!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The cry was immediately returned by the other person; and Grace running at once
+in the direction whence it came beheld an indistinct figure hastening up to her
+as rapidly. They were almost in each other&rsquo;s arms when she recognized in
+her vis-a-vis the outline and white veil of her whom she had parted from an
+hour and a half before&mdash;Mrs. Charmond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have lost my way, I have lost my way,&rdquo; cried that lady.
+&ldquo;Oh&mdash;is it indeed you? I am so glad to meet you or anybody. I have
+been wandering up and down ever since we parted, and am nearly dead with terror
+and misery and fatigue!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; said Grace. &ldquo;What <i>shall</i> we, <i>shall</i> we
+do?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t go away from me?&rdquo; asked her companion, anxiously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, indeed. Are you very tired?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the
+ankles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace reflected. &ldquo;Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the best thing for us
+to do would be to sit down for half an hour, and then start again when we have
+thoroughly rested. By walking straight we must come to a track leading
+somewhere before the morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from the wind, and
+sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp and dry, that remained from
+the previous season forming a sort of nest for them. But it was cold,
+nevertheless, on this March night, particularly for Grace, who with the
+sanguine prematureness of youth in matters of dress, had considered it
+spring-time, and hence was not so warmly clad as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore
+her winter fur. But after sitting a while the latter lady shivered no less than
+Grace as the warmth imparted by her hasty walking began to go off, and they
+felt the cold air drawing through the holly leaves which scratched their backs
+and shoulders. Moreover, they could hear some drops of rain falling on the
+trees, though none reached the nook in which they had ensconced themselves.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If we were to cling close together,&rdquo; said Mrs. Charmond, &ldquo;we
+should keep each other warm. But,&rdquo; she added, in an uneven voice,
+&ldquo;I suppose you won&rsquo;t come near me for the world!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because&mdash;well, you know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I will&mdash;I don&rsquo;t hate you at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They consequently crept up to one another, and being in the dark, lonely and
+weary, did what neither had dreamed of doing beforehand, clasped each other
+closely, Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s furs consoling Grace&rsquo;s cold face, and each
+one&rsquo;s body as she breathed alternately heaving against that of her
+companion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond said, &ldquo;I am so
+wretched!&rdquo; in a heavy, emotional whisper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are frightened,&rdquo; said Grace, kindly. &ldquo;But there is
+nothing to fear; I know these woods well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other things.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the younger woman could
+feel her neighbor&rsquo;s breathings grow deeper and more spasmodic, as though
+uncontrollable feelings were germinating.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;After I had left you,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;I regretted something I
+had said. I have to make a confession&mdash;I must make it!&rdquo; she
+whispered, brokenly, the instinct to indulge in warmth of sentiment which had
+led this woman of passions to respond to Fitzpiers in the first place leading
+her now to find luxurious comfort in opening her heart to his wife. &ldquo;I
+said to you I could give him up without pain or deprivation&mdash;that he had
+only been my pastime. That was untrue&mdash;it was said to deceive you. I could
+not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I <i>cannot</i> give
+him up&mdash;even if I would&mdash;of myself alone.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why? Because you love him, you mean.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I knew I was right!&rdquo; said Grace, exaltedly. &ldquo;But that should
+not deter you,&rdquo; she presently added, in a moral tone. &ldquo;Oh, do
+struggle against it, and you will conquer!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are so simple, so simple!&rdquo; cried Felice. &ldquo;You think,
+because you guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you know
+the extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good deal more may have
+been going on than you have fathomed with all your insight. I <i>cannot</i>
+give him up until he chooses to give up me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and the cut
+must come from you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I must! I
+shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after meeting you like this
+and finding how guileless you are.&rdquo; She thereupon whispered a few words
+in the girl&rsquo;s ear, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang to her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my God!&rdquo; she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation
+transcending her utmost suspicion. &ldquo;Can it be&mdash;can it be!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She turned as if to hasten away. But Felice Charmond&rsquo;s sobs came to her
+ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees rocked and chanted
+their diriges and placebos around her, and she did not know which way to go.
+After a moment of energy she felt mild again, and turned to the motionless
+woman at her feet.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you rested?&rdquo; she asked, in what seemed something like her own
+voice grown ten years older.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean to betray me!&rdquo; she said from the bitterest depths of her
+soul. &ldquo;Oh fool, fool I!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Grace, shortly. &ldquo;I mean no such thing. But let us
+be quick now. We have a serious undertaking before us. Think of nothing but
+going straight on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now growing wet, and
+treading down woodbine, but still keeping a pretty straight course. Grace began
+to be thoroughly worn out, and her companion too, when, on a sudden, they broke
+into the deserted highway at the hill-top on which the Sherton man had waited
+for Mrs. Dollery&rsquo;s van. Grace recognized the spot as soon as she looked
+around her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How we have got here I cannot tell,&rdquo; she said, with cold civility.
+&ldquo;We have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. The hazel copse is
+quite on the other side. Now we have only to follow the road.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the track to
+Little Hintock, and so reached the park.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here I turn back,&rdquo; said Grace, in the same passionless voice.
+&ldquo;You are quite near home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to unburden
+my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as the grave,&rdquo; she
+said. &ldquo;I cannot help it now. Is it to be a secret&mdash;or do you mean
+war?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A secret, certainly,&rdquo; said Grace, mournfully. &ldquo;How can you
+expect war from such a helpless, wretched being as I!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll do my best not to see him. I am his slave; but I&rsquo;ll
+try.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small dagger now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Pray don&rsquo;t distress yourself,&rdquo; she said, with exquisitely
+fine scorn. &ldquo;You may keep him&mdash;for me.&rdquo; Had she been wounded
+instead of mortified she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+hold upon her heart was slight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward. Passing
+Marty&rsquo;s cottage she observed through the window that the girl was writing
+instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what her correspondence could be.
+Directly afterwards she met people in search of her, and reached the house to
+find all in serious alarm. She soon explained that she had lost her way, and
+her general depression was attributed to exhaustion on that account.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been surprised.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the young girl,
+and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that Mrs. Charmond wore
+her hair. It was poor Marty&rsquo;s only card, and she played it, knowing
+nothing of fashion, and thinking her revelation a fatal one for a lover.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap34"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between Grace
+and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from London, was
+travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired carriage. In his eye there
+was a doubtful light, and the lines of his refined face showed a vague
+disquietude. He appeared now like one of those who impress the beholder as
+having suffered wrong in being born.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it seemed even
+gloomier than it was. His practice had been slowly dwindling of late, and now
+threatened to die out altogether, the irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing
+patients up to Fitzpiers&rsquo;s very door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the
+latest and greatest cause of his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man,
+the second branch of his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for
+the first&mdash;a letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her
+again. To bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she
+had decided during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the
+Continent.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The time was that dull interval in a woodlander&rsquo;s life which coincides
+with great activity in the life of the woodland itself&mdash;a period following
+the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the barking season, when
+the saps are just beginning to heave with the force of hydraulic lifts inside
+all the trunks of the forest.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne&rsquo;s contract was completed, and the plantations were deserted.
+It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales would not begin to
+sing for a fortnight; and &ldquo;the Mother of the Months&rdquo; was in her
+most attenuated phase&mdash;starved and bent to a mere bowed skeleton, which
+glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers&rsquo;s company.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he reached home he went straight up to his wife&rsquo;s sitting-room. He
+found it deserted, and without a fire. He had mentioned no day for his return;
+nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to receive him. On
+descending to the other wing of the house and inquiring of Mrs. Melbury, he
+learned with much surprise that Grace had gone on a visit to an acquaintance at
+Shottsford-Forum three days earlier; that tidings had on this morning reached
+her father of her being very unwell there, in consequence of which he had
+ridden over to see her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now lighted by a
+solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the entrance of Grammer
+Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on the hearth while she raked
+out the grate and rattled about the fire-irons, with a view to making things
+comfortable. Fitzpiers considered that Grace ought to have let him know her
+plans more accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went
+desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down, and
+looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of smoke
+rising from the top of Suke Damson&rsquo;s chimney, signifying that the young
+woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite side of the
+court. Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to the sawyers, and was
+telling them in a loud voice news in which the name of Mrs. Charmond soon
+arrested his ears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grammer, don&rsquo;t make so much noise with that grate,&rdquo; said the
+surgeon; at which Grammer reared herself upon her knees and held the fuel
+suspended in her hand, while Fitzpiers half opened the casement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She is off to foreign lands again at last&mdash;hev made up her mind
+quite sudden-like&mdash;and it is thoughted she&rsquo;ll leave in a day or two.
+She&rsquo;s been all as if her mind were low for some days past&mdash;with a
+sort of sorrow in her face, as if she reproached her own soul. She&rsquo;s the
+wrong sort of woman for Hintock&mdash;hardly knowing a beech from a
+woak&mdash;that I own. But I don&rsquo;t care who the man is, she&rsquo;s been
+a very kind friend to me.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, the day after to-morrow is the Sabbath day, and without charity we
+are but tinkling simples; but this I do say, that her going will be a blessed
+thing for a certain married couple who remain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of it, restless as the
+last leaf upon a tree. &ldquo;A sort of sorrow in her face, as if she
+reproached her own soul.&rdquo; Poor Felice. How Felice&rsquo;s frame must be
+pulsing under the conditions of which he had just heard the caricature; how her
+fair temples must ache; what a mood of wretchedness she must be in! But for the
+mixing up of his name with hers, and her determination to sunder their too
+close acquaintance on that account, she would probably have sent for him
+professionally. She was now sitting alone, suffering, perhaps wishing that she
+had not forbidden him to come again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to wait for the meal which
+was in course of preparation, he made himself ready for riding, descended to
+the yard, stood by the stable-door while Darling was being saddled, and rode
+off down the lane. He would have preferred walking, but was weary with his
+day&rsquo;s travel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As he approached the door of Marty South&rsquo;s cottage, which it was
+necessary to pass on his way, she came from the porch as if she had been
+awaiting him, and met him in the middle of the road, holding up a letter.
+Fitzpiers took it without stopping, and asked over his shoulder from whom it
+came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty hesitated. &ldquo;From me,&rdquo; she said, shyly, though with noticeable
+firmness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This letter contained, in fact, Marty&rsquo;s declaration that she was the
+original owner of Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s supplementary locks, and enclosed a
+sample from the native stock, which had grown considerably by this time. It was
+her long contemplated apple of discord, and much her hand trembled as she
+handed the document up to him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was impossible on account of the gloom for Fitzpiers to read it then,
+while he had the curiosity to do so, and he put it in his pocket. His
+imagination having already centred itself on Hintock House, in his pocket the
+letter remained unopened and forgotten, all the while that Marty was hopefully
+picturing its excellent weaning effect upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not long in reaching the precincts of the Manor House. He drew rein
+under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the front, and reflected a
+while. His entry would not be altogether unnatural in the circumstances of her
+possible indisposition; but upon the whole he thought it best to avoid riding
+up to the door. By silently approaching he could retreat unobserved in the
+event of her not being alone. Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling to a
+stray bough hanging a little below the general browsing line of the trees, and
+proceeded to the door on foot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the mean time Melbury had returned from Shottsford-Forum. The great court or
+quadrangle of the timber-merchant&rsquo;s house, divided from the shady lane by
+an ivy-covered wall, was entered by two white gates, one standing near each
+extremity of the wall. It so happened that at the moment when Fitzpiers was
+riding out at the lower gate on his way to the Manor House, Melbury was
+approaching the upper gate to enter it. Fitzpiers being in front of Melbury was
+seen by the latter, but the surgeon, never turning his head, did not observe
+his father-in-law, ambling slowly and silently along under the trees, though
+his horse too was a gray one.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How is Grace?&rdquo; said his wife, as soon as he entered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury looked gloomy. &ldquo;She is not at all well,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t like the looks of her at all. I couldn&rsquo;t bear the notion of
+her biding away in a strange place any longer, and I begged her to let me get
+her home. At last she agreed to it, but not till after much persuading. I was
+then sorry that I rode over instead of driving; but I have hired a nice
+comfortable carriage&mdash;the easiest-going I could get&mdash;and she&rsquo;ll
+be here in a couple of hours or less. I rode on ahead to tell you to get her
+room ready; but I see her husband has come back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mrs. Melbury. She expressed her concern that her
+husband had hired a carriage all the way from Shottsford. &ldquo;What it will
+cost!&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care what it costs!&rdquo; he exclaimed, testily. &ldquo;I
+was determined to get her home. Why she went away I can&rsquo;t think! She acts
+in a way that is not at all likely to mend matters as far as I can see.&rdquo;
+(Grace had not told her father of her interview with Mrs. Charmond, and the
+disclosure that had been whispered in her startled ear.) &ldquo;Since Edgar is
+come,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;he might have waited in till I got home, to
+ask me how she was, if only for a compliment. I saw him go out; where is he
+gone?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Melbury did not know positively; but she told her husband that there was
+not much doubt about the place of his first visit after an absence. She had, in
+fact, seen Fitzpiers take the direction of the Manor House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury said no more. It was exasperating to him that just at this moment, when
+there was every reason for Fitzpiers to stay indoors, or at any rate to ride
+along the Shottsford road to meet his ailing wife, he should be doing despite
+to her by going elsewhere. The old man went out-of-doors again; and his horse
+being hardly unsaddled as yet, he told Upjohn to retighten the girths, when he
+again mounted, and rode off at the heels of the surgeon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go any lengths in
+combating this rank and reckless errantry of his daughter&rsquo;s husband. He
+would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means, rough or fair: in his
+view there could come of his interference nothing worse than what existed at
+present. And yet to every bad there is a worse.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the park on this side, and
+cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s horse,
+till he reached the clump of trees under which his precursor had halted. The
+whitish object that was indistinctly visible here in the gloom of the boughs he
+found to be Darling, as left by Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;D&mdash;n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an honest
+way?&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He profited by Fitzpiers&rsquo;s example; dismounting, he tied his horse under
+an adjoining tree, and went on to the house on foot, as the other had done. He
+was no longer disposed to stick at trifles in his investigation, and did not
+hesitate to gently open the front door without ringing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and wainscot, was lighted
+by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. Not a soul was visible. He went into the
+corridor and listened at a door which he knew to be that of the drawing-room;
+there was no sound, and on turning the handle he found the room empty. A fire
+burning low in the grate was the sole light of the apartment; its beams flashed
+mockingly on the somewhat showy Versaillese furniture and gilding here, in
+style as unlike that of the structural parts of the building as it was possible
+to be, and probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English
+gloom of the place. Disappointed in his hope of confronting his son-in-law
+here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without light or fire, and
+pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified that she had not dined there
+that day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Melbury&rsquo;s mood had a little mollified. Everything here was
+so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no longer incited to
+provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with anybody. The comparative stateliness
+of the apartments influenced him to an emotion, rather than to a belief, that
+where all was outwardly so good and proper there could not be quite that
+delinquency within which he had suspected. It occurred to him, too, that even
+if his suspicion were justified, his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into
+the house might end in confounding its inhabitant at the expense of his
+daughter&rsquo;s dignity and his own. Any ill result would be pretty sure to
+hit Grace hardest in the long-run. He would, after all, adopt the more rational
+course, and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs.
+Charmond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come. Passing the door of the
+drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise within which was not the
+crackling of the fire. Melbury gently reopened the door to a distance of a few
+inches, and saw at the opposite window two figures in the act of stepping
+out&mdash;a man and a woman&mdash;in whom he recognized the lady of the house
+and his son-in-law. In a moment they had disappeared amid the gloom of the
+lawn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage-entrance door,
+coming round to the lawn front in time to see the two figures parting at the
+railing which divided the precincts of the house from the open park. Mrs.
+Charmond turned to hasten back immediately that Fitzpiers had left her side,
+and he was speedily absorbed into the duskiness of the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the drawing-room, and then
+followed after Fitzpiers, thinking that he would allow the latter to mount and
+ride ahead a little way before overtaking him and giving him a piece of his
+mind. His son-in-law might possibly see the second horse near his own; but that
+would do him no harm, and might prepare him for what he was to expect.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The event, however, was different from the plan. On plunging into the thick
+shade of the clump of oaks, he could not perceive his horse Blossom anywhere;
+but feeling his way carefully along, he by-and-by discerned Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+mare Darling still standing as before under the adjoining tree. For a moment
+Melbury thought that his own horse, being young and strong, had broken away
+from her fastening; but on listening intently he could hear her ambling
+comfortably along a little way ahead, and a creaking of the saddle which showed
+that she had a rider. Walking on as far as the small gate in the corner of the
+park, he met a laborer, who, in reply to Melbury&rsquo;s inquiry if he had seen
+any person on a gray horse, said that he had only met Dr. Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had mounted the mare
+which did not belong to him in mistake for his own&mdash;an oversight easily
+explicable, in a man ever unwitting in horse-flesh, by the darkness of the spot
+and the near similarity of the animals in appearance, though Melbury&rsquo;s
+was readily enough seen to be the grayer horse by day. He hastened back, and
+did what seemed best in the circumstances&mdash;got upon old Darling, and rode
+rapidly after Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding along the cart-way which led
+through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mould with large ruts that were formed
+by the timber-wagons in fetching the spoil of the plantations, when all at once
+he descried in front, at a point where the road took a turning round a large
+chestnut-tree, the form of his own horse Blossom, at which Melbury quickened
+Darling&rsquo;s pace, thinking to come up with Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider. At Melbury&rsquo;s approach
+it galloped friskily away under the trees in a homeward direction. Thinking
+something was wrong, the timber-merchant dismounted as soon as he reached the
+chestnut, and after feeling about for a minute or two discovered Fitzpiers
+lying on the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here&mdash;help!&rdquo; cried the latter as soon as he felt
+Melbury&rsquo;s touch; &ldquo;I have been thrown off, but there&rsquo;s not
+much harm done, I think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since Melbury could not now very well read the younger man the lecture he had
+intended, and as friendliness would be hypocrisy, his instinct was to speak not
+a single word to his son-in-law. He raised Fitzpiers into a sitting posture,
+and found that he was a little stunned and stupefied, but, as he had said, not
+otherwise hurt. How this fall had come about was readily conjecturable:
+Fitzpiers, imagining there was only old Darling under him, had been taken
+unawares by the younger horse&rsquo;s sprightliness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury was a traveller of the old-fashioned sort; having just come from
+Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket the pilgrim&rsquo;s flask of rum
+which he always carried on journeys exceeding a dozen miles, though he seldom
+drank much of it. He poured it down the surgeon&rsquo;s throat, with such
+effect that he quickly revived. Melbury got him on his legs; but the question
+was what to do with him. He could not walk more than a few steps, and the other
+horse had gone away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling, mounting
+himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist with one arm. Darling
+being broad, straight-backed, and high in the withers, was well able to carry
+double, at any rate as far as Hintock, and at a gentle pace.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap35"></a>CHAPTER XXXV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the copse where
+Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil where the oaks grew; past
+Great Willy, the largest oak in the wood, and thence towards Nellcombe Bottom,
+intensely dark now with overgrowth, and popularly supposed to be haunted by the
+spirits of the fratricides exorcised from Hintock House.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical strength. But he had
+eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast in London that morning, his
+anxiety about Felice having hurried him away from home before dining; as a
+consequence, the old rum administered by his father-in-law flew to the young
+man&rsquo;s head and loosened his tongue, without his ever having recognized
+who it was that had lent him a kindly hand. He began to speak in desultory
+sentences, Melbury still supporting him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve come all the way from London to-day,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers.
+&ldquo;Ah, that&rsquo;s the place to meet your equals. I live at
+Hintock&mdash;worse, at Little Hintock&mdash;and I am quite lost there.
+There&rsquo;s not a man within ten miles of Hintock who can comprehend me. I
+tell you, Farmer What&rsquo;s-your-name, that I&rsquo;m a man of education. I
+know several languages; the poets and I are familiar friends; I used to read
+more in metaphysics than anybody within fifty miles; and since I gave that up
+there&rsquo;s nobody can match me in the whole county of Wessex as a scientist.
+Yet I an doomed to live with tradespeople in a miserable little hole like
+Hintock!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed!&rdquo; muttered Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared himself up
+suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held, thrusting his shoulders
+so violently against Melbury&rsquo;s breast as to make it difficult for the old
+man to keep a hold on the reins. &ldquo;People don&rsquo;t appreciate me
+here!&rdquo; the surgeon exclaimed; lowering his voice, he added, softly and
+slowly, &ldquo;except one&mdash;except one!...A passionate soul, as warm as she
+is clever, as beautiful as she is warm, and as rich as she is beautiful. I say,
+old fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather tight&mdash;rather like the
+eagle&rsquo;s, you know, that ate out the liver of Pro&mdash;Pre&mdash;the man
+on Mount Caucasus. People don&rsquo;t appreciate me, I say, except <i>her!</i>
+Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man! She would have been mine, she would have taken
+my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so. I stooped to mate beneath me, and
+now I rue it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury, corporeally and
+mentally. He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with his left arm, and he began to
+hate the contact. He hardly knew what to do. It was useless to remonstrate with
+Fitzpiers, in his intellectual confusion from the rum and from the fall. He
+remained silent, his hold upon his companion, however, being stern rather than
+compassionate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You hurt me a little, farmer&mdash;though I am much obliged to you for
+your kindness. People don&rsquo;t appreciate me, I say. Between ourselves, I am
+losing my practice here; and why? Because I see matchless attraction where
+matchless attraction is, both in person and position. I mention no names, so
+nobody will be the wiser. But I have lost her, in a legitimate sense, that is.
+If I were a free man now, things have come to such a pass that she could not
+refuse me; while with her fortune (which I don&rsquo;t covet for itself) I
+should have a chance of satisfying an honorable ambition&mdash;a chance I have
+never had yet, and now never, never shall have, probably!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other&rsquo;s backbone, and his brain
+on fire with indignation, ventured to mutter huskily, &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied, &ldquo;Because I am
+tied and bound to another by law, as tightly as I am to you by your
+arm&mdash;not that I complain of your arm&mdash;I thank you for helping me.
+Well, where are we? Not nearly home yet?...Home, say I. It <i>is</i> a home!
+When I might have been at the other house over there.&rdquo; In a stupefied way
+he flung his hand in the direction of the park. &ldquo;I was just two months
+too early in committing myself. Had I only seen the other first&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here the old man&rsquo;s arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake. &ldquo;What are
+you doing?&rdquo; continued the latter. &ldquo;Keep still, please, or put me
+down. I was saying that I lost her by a mere little two months! There is no
+chance for me now in this world, and it makes me reckless&mdash;reckless!
+Unless, indeed, anything should happen to the other one. She is amiable enough;
+but if anything should happen to her&mdash;and I hear she is ill&mdash;well, if
+it <i>should</i>, I should be free&mdash;and my fame, my happiness, would be
+insured.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in front of the
+timber-merchant. Unable longer to master himself, Melbury, the skin of his face
+compressed, whipped away his spare arm from Fitzpiers&rsquo;s waist, and seized
+him by the collar.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You heartless villain&mdash;after all that we have done for ye!&rdquo;
+he cried, with a quivering lip. &ldquo;And the money of hers that you&rsquo;ve
+had, and the roof we&rsquo;ve provided to shelter ye! It is to me, George
+Melbury, that you dare to talk like that!&rdquo; The exclamation was
+accompanied by a powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung the young man
+head-long into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy thud upon the stumps of
+some undergrowth which had been cut during the winter preceding. Darling
+continued her walk for a few paces farther and stopped.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;God forgive me!&rdquo; Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done.
+&ldquo;He tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I&rsquo;ve murdered him!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which Fitzpiers
+had fallen. To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon rise to his feet with a
+bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly under the trees.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s footsteps died away.
+&ldquo;It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of Providence in providing
+leaves for his fall,&rdquo; he said to himself. And then his mind reverted to
+the words of Fitzpiers, and his indignation so mounted within him that he
+almost wished the fall had put an end to the young man there and then.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing under some
+bushes. Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward and easily caught
+the younger animal, now disheartened at its freak. He then made the pair of
+them fast to a tree, and turning back, endeavored to find some trace of
+Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully that, after all, he had gone further than he
+intended with the offender.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing layer
+after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been leaves, he could not
+find him. He stood still listening and looking round. The breeze was oozing
+through the network of boughs as through a strainer; the trunks and larger
+branches stood against the light of the sky in the forms of writhing men,
+gigantic candelabra, pikes, halberds, lances, and whatever besides the fancy
+chose to make of them. Giving up the search, Melbury came back to the horses,
+and walked slowly homeward, leading one in each hand.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been returning from Great
+to Little Hintock about the time of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s and Melbury&rsquo;s
+passage home along that route. A horse-collar that had been left at the
+harness-mender&rsquo;s to be repaired was required for use at five
+o&rsquo;clock next morning, and in consequence the boy had to fetch it
+overnight. He put his head through the collar, and accompanied his walk by
+whistling the one tune he knew, as an antidote to fear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily along the
+track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect friend or foe, prudence
+suggested that he should cease his whistling and retreat among the trees till
+the horse and his rider had gone by; a course to which he was still more
+inclined when he found how noiselessly they approached, and saw that the horse
+looked pale, and remembered what he had read about Death in the Revelation. He
+therefore deposited the collar by a tree, and hid himself behind it. The
+horseman came on, and the youth, whose eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his
+great relief recognized the doctor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken Blossom for Darling,
+and he had not discovered his mistake when he came up opposite the boy, though
+he was somewhat surprised at the liveliness of his usually placid mare. The
+only other pair of eyes on the spot whose vision was keen as the young
+carter&rsquo;s were those of the horse; and, with that strongly conservative
+objection to the unusual which animals show, Blossom, on eying the collar under
+the tree&mdash;quite invisible to Fitzpiers&mdash;exercised none of the
+patience of the older horse, but shied sufficiently to unseat so second-rate an
+equestrian as the surgeon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterwards found him. The boy ran
+away, salving his conscience for the desertion by thinking how vigorously he
+would spread the alarm of the accident when he got to Hintock&mdash;which he
+uncompromisingly did, incrusting the skeleton event with a load of dramatic
+horrors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, though not by her
+husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shottsford-Forum, had been paid for and dismissed.
+The long drive had somewhat revived her, her illness being a feverish
+intermittent nervousness which had more to do with mind than body, and she
+walked about her sitting-room in something of a hopeful mood. Mrs. Melbury had
+told her as soon as she arrived that her husband had returned from London. He
+had gone out, she said, to see a patient, as she supposed, and he must soon be
+back, since he had had no dinner or tea. Grace would not allow her mind to
+harbor any suspicion of his whereabouts, and her step-mother said nothing of
+Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s rumored sorrows and plans of departure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently. She had left Hintock in a
+turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs. Charmond, and had intended not
+to be at home when her husband returned. But she had thought the matter over,
+and had allowed her father&rsquo;s influence to prevail and bring her back; and
+now somewhat regretted that Edgar&rsquo;s arrival had preceded hers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By-and-by Mrs. Melbury came up-stairs with a slight air of flurry and
+abruptness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have something to tell&mdash;some bad news,&rdquo; she said.
+&ldquo;But you must not be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been.
+Edgar has been thrown off his horse. We don&rsquo;t think he is hurt much. It
+happened in the wood the other side of Nellcombe Bottom, where &rsquo;tis said
+the ghosts of the brothers walk.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She went on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the invented horrors
+that had been communicated by the boy. &ldquo;I thought it better to tell you
+at once,&rdquo; she added, &ldquo;in case he should not be very well able to
+walk home, and somebody should bring him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than she represented, and Grace
+knew that she thought so. She sat down dazed for a few minutes, returning a
+negative to her step-mother&rsquo;s inquiry if she could do anything for her.
+&ldquo;But please go into the bedroom,&rdquo; Grace said, on second thoughts,
+&ldquo;and see if all is ready there&mdash;in case it is serious.&rdquo; Mrs.
+Melbury thereupon called Grammer, and they did as directed, supplying the room
+with everything they could think of for the accommodation of an injured man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nobody was left in the lower part of the house. Not many minutes passed when
+Grace heard a knock at the door&mdash;a single knock, not loud enough to reach
+the ears of those in the bedroom. She went to the top of the stairs and said,
+faintly, &ldquo;Come up,&rdquo; knowing that the door stood, as usual in such
+houses, wide open.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Retreating into the gloom of the broad landing she saw rise up the stairs a
+woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice revealed her to be
+Suke Damson, in great fright and sorrow. A streak of light from the partially
+closed door of Grace&rsquo;s room fell upon her face as she came forward, and
+it was drawn and pale.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Miss Melbury&mdash;I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers,&rdquo; she said,
+wringing her hands. &ldquo;This terrible news. Is he dead? Is he hurted very
+bad? Tell me; I couldn&rsquo;t help coming; please forgive me, Miss
+Melbury&mdash;Mrs. Fitzpiers I would say!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the landing, and put her hands
+to her now flushed face and head. Could she order Suke Damson down-stairs and
+out of the house? Her husband might be brought in at any moment, and what would
+happen? But could she order this genuinely grieved woman away?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a dead silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said, &ldquo;Why
+don&rsquo;t ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can&rsquo;t I see
+him&mdash;would it be so very wrong?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Before Grace had answered somebody else came to the door below&mdash;a
+foot-fall light as a roe&rsquo;s. There was a hurried tapping upon the panel,
+as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner thought not whether a
+knocker were there or no. Without a pause, and possibly guided by the stray
+beam of light on the landing, the newcomer ascended the staircase as the first
+had done. Grace was sufficiently visible, and the lady, for a lady it was, came
+to her side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I could make nobody hear down-stairs,&rdquo; said Felice Charmond, with
+lips whose dryness could almost be heard, and panting, as she stood like one
+ready to sink on the floor with distress. &ldquo;What is&mdash;the
+matter&mdash;tell me the worst! Can he live?&rdquo; She looked at Grace
+imploringly, without perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at such a presence,
+had shrunk away into the shade.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s little feet were covered with mud; she was quite
+unconscious of her appearance now. &ldquo;I have heard such a dreadful
+report,&rdquo; she went on; &ldquo;I came to ascertain the truth of it. Is
+he&mdash;killed?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She won&rsquo;t tell us&mdash;he&rsquo;s dying&mdash;he&rsquo;s in that
+room!&rdquo; burst out Suke, regardless of consequences, as she heard the
+distant movements of Mrs. Melbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of the
+passage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Where?&rdquo; said Mrs. Charmond; and on Suke pointing out the
+direction, she made as if to go thither.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace barred the way. &ldquo;He is not there,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I have
+not seen him any more than you. I have heard a report only&mdash;not so bad as
+you think. It must have been exaggerated to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Please do not conceal anything&mdash;let me know all!&rdquo; said
+Felice, doubtingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You shall know all I know&mdash;you have a perfect right to
+know&mdash;who can have a better than either of you?&rdquo; said Grace, with a
+delicate sting which was lost upon Felice Charmond now. &ldquo;I repeat, I have
+only heard a less alarming account than you have heard; how much it means, and
+how little, I cannot say. I pray God that it means not much&mdash;in common
+humanity. You probably pray the same&mdash;<i>for other reasons</i>.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She regarded them both there in the dim light a while.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not heeding her
+mood. A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew. It was well, very well,
+conventionally, to address either one of them in the wife&rsquo;s regulation
+terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for losing their
+hearts to her husband. But life, what was it, and who was she? She had, like
+the singer of the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and chastened all the day long;
+but could she, by retributive words, in order to please herself&mdash;the
+individual&mdash;&ldquo;offend against the generation,&rdquo; as he would not?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is dying, perhaps,&rdquo; blubbered Suke Damson, putting her apron to
+her eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affection, agony of heart,
+all for a man who had wronged them&mdash;had never really behaved towards
+either of them anyhow but selfishly. Neither one but would have wellnigh
+sacrificed half her life to him, even now. The tears which his possibly
+critical situation could not bring to her eyes surged over at the contemplation
+of these fellow-women. She turned to the balustrade, bent herself upon it, and
+wept.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her handkerchief, and letting
+the tears run down silently. While these three poor women stood together thus,
+pitying another though most to be pitied themselves, the pacing of a horse or
+horses became audible in the court, and in a moment Melbury&rsquo;s voice was
+heard calling to his stableman. Grace at once started up, ran down the stairs
+and out into the quadrangle as her father crossed it towards the door.
+&ldquo;Father, what is the matter with him?&rdquo; she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Who&mdash;Edgar?&rdquo; said Melbury, abruptly. &ldquo;Matter? Nothing.
+What, my dear, and have you got home safe? Why, you are better already! But you
+ought not to be out in the air like this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But he has been thrown off his horse!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I know; I know. I saw it. He got up again, and walked off as well as
+ever. A fall on the leaves didn&rsquo;t hurt a spry fellow like him. He did not
+come this way,&rdquo; he added, significantly. &ldquo;I suppose he went to look
+for his horse. I tried to find him, but could not. But after seeing him go away
+under the trees I found the horse, and have led it home for safety. So he must
+walk. Now, don&rsquo;t you stay out here in this night air.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She returned to the house with her father. When she had again ascended to the
+landing and to her own rooms beyond it was a great relief to her to find that
+both Petticoat the First and Petticoat the Second of her <i>Bien-aimé</i> had
+silently disappeared. They had, in all probability, heard the words of her
+father, and departed with their anxieties relieved.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied themselves to see that she
+was comfortable. Perceiving soon that she would prefer to be left alone they
+went away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace waited on. The clock raised its voice now and then, but her husband did
+not return. At her father&rsquo;s usual hour for retiring he again came in to
+see her. &ldquo;Do not stay up,&rdquo; she said, as soon as he entered.
+&ldquo;I am not at all tired. I will sit up for him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it will be useless, Grace,&rdquo; said Melbury, slowly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have had a bitter quarrel with him; and on that account I hardly think
+he will return to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;A quarrel? Was that after the fall seen by the boy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury nodded an affirmative, without taking his eyes off the candle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; it was as we were coming home together,&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father was speaking.
+&ldquo;How could you want to quarrel with him?&rdquo; she cried, suddenly.
+&ldquo;Why could you not let him come home quietly if he were inclined to? He
+is my husband; and now you have married me to him surely you need not provoke
+him unnecessarily. First you induce me to accept him, and then you do things
+that divide us more than we should naturally be divided!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?&rdquo; said Melbury, with
+indignant sorrow. &ldquo;<i>I</i> divide you from your husband, indeed! You
+little think&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was inclined to say more&mdash;to tell her the whole story of the encounter,
+and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely in hearing her
+despised. But it would have greatly distressed her, and he forbore. &ldquo;You
+had better lie down. You are tired,&rdquo; he said, soothingly.
+&ldquo;Good-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, broken only by
+the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury&rsquo;s stables. Despite her
+father&rsquo;s advice Grace still waited up. But nobody came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a critical time in Grace&rsquo;s emotional life that night. She thought
+of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!&rdquo; she said to
+herself. &ldquo;How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he is
+attractive.&rdquo; The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these ideas
+might have been transformed into their corresponding emotions by a show of the
+least reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There was, in truth, a love-bird yearning to
+fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken about the
+condition of Fitzpiers. People do not fall headlong on stumps of underwood with
+impunity. Had the old man been able to watch Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he
+would have observed that on rising and walking into the thicket he dropped
+blood as he went; that he had not proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs
+of being dizzy, and, raising his hands to his head, reeled and fell down.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap36"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock that night.
+Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a customary hour; and over
+her drawing-room fire at the Manor House she sat as motionless and in as deep a
+reverie as Grace in her little apartment at the homestead.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having caught ear of Melbury&rsquo;s intelligence while she stood on the
+landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental distress, her sense
+of personal decorum returned upon her with a rush. She descended the stairs and
+left the door like a ghost, keeping close to the walls of the building till she
+got round to the gate of the quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed
+almost before Grace and her father had finished their discourse. Suke Damson
+had thought it well to imitate her superior in this respect, and, descending
+the back stairs as Felice descended the front, went out at the side door and
+home to her cottage.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once outside Melbury&rsquo;s gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed to the
+Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and splitting her thin boots
+in her haste. She entered her own dwelling, as she had emerged from it, by the
+drawing-room window. In other circumstances she would have felt some timidity
+at undertaking such an unpremeditated excursion alone; but her anxiety for
+another had cast out her fear for herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it&mdash;the candles
+still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters gently pulled to, so as to
+hide the state of the window from the cursory glance of a servant entering the
+apartment. She had been gone about three-quarters of an hour by the clock, and
+nobody seemed to have discovered her absence. Tired in body but tense in mind,
+she sat down, palpitating, round-eyed, bewildered at what she had done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now that the
+emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief that Fitzpiers was in
+no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. This was how she had set about
+doing her best to escape her passionate bondage to him! Somehow, in declaring
+to Grace and to herself the unseemliness of her infatuation, she had grown a
+convert to its irresistibility. If Heaven would only give her strength; but
+Heaven never did! One thing was indispensable; she must go away from Hintock if
+she meant to withstand further temptation. The struggle was too wearying, too
+hopeless, while she remained. It was but a continual capitulation of conscience
+to what she dared not name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By degrees, as she sat, Felice&rsquo;s mind&mdash;helped perhaps by the
+anticlimax of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her fright about
+him&mdash;grew wondrously strong in wise resolve. For the moment she was in a
+mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, &ldquo;to run mad with
+discretion;&rdquo; and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure that
+she wished to set about going that very minute. Jumping up from her seat, she
+began to gather together some small personal knick-knacks scattered about the
+room, to feel that preparations were really in train.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight noise
+out-of-doors, and stood still. Surely it was a tapping at the window. A thought
+entered her mind, and burned her cheek. He had come to that window before; yet
+was it possible that he should dare to do so now! All the servants were in bed,
+and in the ordinary course of affairs she would have retired also. Then she
+remembered that on stepping in by the casement and closing it, she had not
+fastened the window-shutter, so that a streak of light from the interior of the
+room might have revealed her vigil to an observer on the lawn. How all things
+conspired against her keeping faith with Grace!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird; her
+illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back the shutter,
+determining, however, to shake her head at him and keep the casement securely
+closed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter than a
+helpless woman&rsquo;s at midnight. In the centre of the lowest pane of the
+window, close to the glass, was a human face, which she barely recognized as
+the face of Fitzpiers. It was surrounded with the darkness of the night
+without, corpse-like in its pallor, and covered with blood. As disclosed in the
+square area of the pane it met her frightened eyes like a replica of the
+Sudarium of St. Veronica.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly. Her rapid mind pieced
+together in an instant a possible concatenation of events which might have led
+to this tragical issue. She unlatched the casement with a terrified hand, and
+bending down to where he was crouching, pressed her face to his with passionate
+solicitude. She assisted him into the room without a word, to do which it was
+almost necessary to lift him bodily. Quickly closing the window and fastening
+the shutters, she bent over him breathlessly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you hurt much&mdash;much?&rdquo; she cried, faintly. &ldquo;Oh, oh,
+how is this!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Rather much&mdash;but don&rsquo;t be frightened,&rdquo; he answered in a
+difficult whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if
+possible. &ldquo;A little water, please.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and glass, from which
+he eagerly drank. He could then speak much better, and with her help got upon
+the nearest couch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you dying, Edgar?&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Do speak to me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am half dead,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers. &ldquo;But perhaps I shall get
+over it....It is chiefly loss of blood.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I thought your fall did not hurt you,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Who
+did this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Felice&mdash;my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a mile
+on my hands and knees&mdash;God, I thought I should never have got here!...I
+have come to you&mdash;be-cause you are the only friend&mdash;I have in the
+world now....I can never go back to Hintock&mdash;never&mdash;to the roof of
+the Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever medicine this bitter
+feud!...If I were only well again&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Let me bind your head, now that you have rested.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;but wait a moment&mdash;it has stopped bleeding, fortunately,
+or I should be a dead man before now. While in the wood I managed to make a
+tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well as I could in the
+dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me till I am well? Whatever
+comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. My practice is nearly gone, you
+know&mdash;and after this I would not care to recover it if I could.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Felice&rsquo;s tears began to blind her. Where were now her
+discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To administer to him in his
+pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her single thought. The first step was to
+hide him, and she asked herself where. A place occurred to her mind.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him much. Then
+she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now keep himself upright by
+leaning upon her on one side and a walking-stick on the other, they went thus
+in slow march out of the room and up the stairs. At the top she took him along
+a gallery, pausing whenever he required rest, and thence up a smaller staircase
+to the least used part of the house, where she unlocked a door. Within was a
+lumber-room, containing abandoned furniture of all descriptions, built up in
+piles which obscured the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks
+and lairs in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye gaze in
+at the door. The articles were mainly those that had belonged to the previous
+owner of the house, and had been bought in by the late Mr. Charmond at the
+auction; but changing fashion, and the tastes of a young wife, had caused them
+to be relegated to this dungeon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had hauled out
+materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in one of the aforesaid
+nooks. She obtained water and a basin, and washed the dried blood from his face
+and hands; and when he was comfortably reclining, fetched food from the larder.
+While he ate her eyes lingered anxiously on his face, following its every
+movement with such loving-kindness as only a fond woman can show.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage any man,
+if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his presence. But I did not
+know him, and I was stupefied by what he had given me, so that I hardly was
+aware of what I said. Well&mdash;the veil of that temple is rent in twain!...As
+I am not going to be seen again in Hintock, my first efforts must be directed
+to allay any alarm that may be felt at my absence, before I am able to get
+clear away. Nobody must suspect that I have been hurt, or there will be a
+country talk about me. Felice, I must at once concoct a letter to check all
+search for me. I think if you can bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do
+it now. I could rest better if it were done. Poor thing! how I tire her with
+running up and down!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a support to
+his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal wife.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;The animosity shown towards me by your father,&rdquo; he wrote, in this
+coldest of marital epistles, &ldquo;is such that I cannot return again to a
+roof which is his, even though it shelters you. A parting is unavoidable, as
+you are sure to be on his side in this division. I am starting on a journey
+which will take me a long way from Hintock, and you must not expect to see me
+there again for some time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional engagements and
+other practical matters, concluding without a hint of his destination, or a
+notion of when she would see him again. He offered to read the note to Felice
+before he closed it up, but she would not hear or see it; that side of his
+obligations distressed her beyond endurance. She turned away from Fitzpiers,
+and sobbed bitterly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you can get this posted at a place some miles away,&rdquo; he
+whispered, exhausted by the effort of writing&mdash;&ldquo;at Shottsford or
+Port-Bredy, or still better, Budmouth&mdash;it will divert all suspicion from
+this house as the place of my refuge.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will drive to one or other of the places myself&mdash;anything to keep
+it unknown,&rdquo; she murmured, her voice weighted with vague foreboding, now
+that the excitement of helping him had passed away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to be done. &ldquo;In
+creeping over the fence on to the lawn,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I made the rail
+bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint&mdash;I could see it in the
+dark. At all hazards it should be washed off. Could you do that also,
+Felice?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was she went all
+the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-floor, then to search for a
+lantern, which she lighted and hid under her cloak; then for a wet sponge, and
+next went forth into the night. The white railing stared out in the darkness at
+her approach, and a ray from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the
+blood&mdash;just where he had told her it would be found. She shuddered. It was
+almost too much to bear in one day&mdash;but with a shaking hand she sponged
+the rail clean, and returned to the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less than two
+hours. When all was done, and she had smoothed his extemporized bed, and placed
+everything within his reach that she could think of, she took her leave of him,
+and locked him in.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap37"></a>CHAPTER XXXVII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+When her husband&rsquo;s letter reached Grace&rsquo;s hands, bearing upon it
+the postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind that Fitzpiers
+was within a mile of her still. She felt relieved that he did not write more
+bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whatever its nature might have been;
+but the general frigidity of his communication quenched in her the incipient
+spark that events had kindled so shortly before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that the doctor
+had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household was aware that he did not
+return on the night of his accident, no excitement manifested itself in the
+village.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the nocturnal birds and animals
+observed that late one evening, towards the middle of the month, a closely
+wrapped figure, with a crutch under one arm and a stick in his hand, crept out
+from Hintock House across the lawn to the shelter of the trees, taking thence a
+slow and laborious walk to the nearest point of the turnpike-road. The
+mysterious personage was so disguised that his own wife would hardly have known
+him. Felice Charmond was a practised hand at make-ups, as well she might be;
+and she had done her utmost in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old
+materials of her art in the recesses of the lumber-room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed him to
+Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the south coast, and
+immediately crossed the Channel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs. Charmond
+executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long term of travel and
+residence on the Continent. She went off one morning as unostentatiously as
+could be, and took no maid with her, having, she said, engaged one to meet her
+at a point farther on in her route. After that, Hintock House, so frequently
+deserted, was again to be let. Spring had not merged in summer when a clinching
+rumor, founded on the best of evidence, reached the parish and neighborhood.
+Mrs. Charmond and Fitzpiers had been seen together in Baden, in relations which
+set at rest the question that had agitated the little community ever since the
+winter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than Grace. His
+spirit seemed broken.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here, as he was
+passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition expressed largely by his
+gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice formerly familiar. He turned and saw
+a certain Fred Beaucock&mdash;once a promising lawyer&rsquo;s clerk and local
+dandy, who had been called the cleverest fellow in Sherton, without whose
+brains the firm of solicitors employing him would be nowhere. But later on
+Beaucock had fallen into the mire. He was invited out a good deal, sang songs
+at agricultural meetings and burgesses&rsquo; dinners; in sum, victualled
+himself with spirits more frequently than was good for the clever brains or
+body either. He lost his situation, and after an absence spent in trying his
+powers elsewhere, came back to his native town, where, at the time of the
+foregoing events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for astonishingly small
+fees&mdash;mostly carrying on his profession on public-house settles, in whose
+recesses he might often have been overheard making country-people&rsquo;s wills
+for half a crown; calling with a learned voice for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny
+sheet of paper, on which he drew up the testament while resting it in a little
+space wiped with his hand on the table amid the liquid circles formed by the
+cups and glasses. An idea implanted early in life is difficult to uproot, and
+many elderly tradespeople still clung to the notion that Fred Beaucock knew a
+great deal of law.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was he who had called Melbury by name. &ldquo;You look very down, Mr.
+Melbury&mdash;very, if I may say as much,&rdquo; he observed, when the
+timber-merchant turned. &ldquo;But I know&mdash;I know. A very sad
+case&mdash;very. I was bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally no
+stranger to such matters. Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her remedy.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How&mdash;what&mdash;a remedy?&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Under the new law, sir. A new court was established last year, and under
+the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap. eighty-five, unmarrying is as
+easy as marrying. No more Acts of Parliament necessary; no longer one law for
+the rich and another for the poor. But come inside&mdash;I was just going to
+have a nibleykin of rum hot&mdash;I&rsquo;ll explain it all to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. And though he
+was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no taste for entering a
+tavern with Fred Beaucock&mdash;nay, would have been quite uninfluenced by such
+a character on any other matter in the world&mdash;such fascination lay in the
+idea of delivering his poor girl from bondage, that it deprived him of the
+critical faculty. He could not resist the ex-lawyer&rsquo;s clerk, and entered
+the inn.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter of course,
+Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal gravity which would hardly
+allow him to be conscious of the spirits before him, though they nevertheless
+disappeared with mysterious quickness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce laws which
+Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of ignorance, and how much of
+dupery, was never ascertained. But he related such a plausible story of the
+ease with which Grace could become a free woman that her father was irradiated
+with the project; and though he scarcely wetted his lips, Melbury never knew
+how he came out of the inn, or when or where he mounted his gig to pursue his
+way homeward. But home he found himself, his brain having all the way seemed to
+ring sonorously as a gong in the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen
+Grace, he was accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if
+he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a heap of
+rendlewood&mdash;as barked oak was here called&mdash;which lay under a
+privet-hedge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Giles,&rdquo; he said, when they had sat down upon the logs,
+&ldquo;there&rsquo;s a new law in the land! Grace can be free quite easily. I
+only knew it by the merest accident. I might not have found it out for the next
+ten years. She can get rid of him&mdash;d&rsquo;ye hear?&mdash;get rid of him.
+Think of that, my friend Giles!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy. A subdued tremulousness
+about the mouth was all the response that Winterborne made; and Melbury added,
+&ldquo;My boy, you shall have her yet&mdash;if you want her.&rdquo; His
+feelings had gathered volume as he said this, and the articulate sound of the
+old idea drowned his sight in mist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you sure&mdash;about this new law?&rdquo; asked Winterborne, so
+disquieted by a gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with fearful doubt
+that he evaded the full acceptance of Melbury&rsquo;s last statement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk with Beaucock
+it had come into his mind that he had seen some time ago in the weekly paper an
+allusion to such a legal change; but, having no interest in those desperate
+remedies at the moment, he had passed it over. &ldquo;But I&rsquo;m not going
+to let the matter rest doubtful for a single day,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;I
+am going to London. Beaucock will go with me, and we shall get the best advice
+as soon as we possibly can. Beaucock is a thorough lawyer&mdash;nothing the
+matter with him but a fiery palate. I knew him as the stay and refuge of
+Sherton in knots of law at one time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne&rsquo;s replies were of the vaguest. The new possibility was almost
+unthinkable by him at the moment. He was what was called at Hintock &ldquo;a
+solid-going fellow;&rdquo; he maintained his abeyant mood, not from want of
+reciprocity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by life as he knew it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But,&rdquo; continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two of
+anxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by time and
+care, &ldquo;Grace is not at all well. Nothing constitutional, you know; but
+she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that night of fright. I
+don&rsquo;t doubt but that she will be all right soon....I wonder how she is
+this evening?&rdquo; He rose with the words, as if he had too long forgotten
+her personality in the excitement of her previsioned career.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden brown, and now
+went towards Melbury&rsquo;s house, Giles a few steps in the rear of his old
+friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm of the moment to outstep the
+ordinary walking of Winterborne. He felt shy of entering Grace&rsquo;s presence
+as her reconstituted lover&mdash;which was how her father&rsquo;s manner would
+be sure to present him&mdash;before definite information as to her future state
+was forthcoming; it seemed too nearly like the act of those who rush in where
+angels fear to tread.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was prompt enough
+in coming. No sooner had he followed the timber-merchant in at the door than he
+heard Grammer inform him that Mrs. Fitzpiers was still more unwell than she had
+been in the morning. Old Dr. Jones being in the neighborhood they had called
+him in, and he had instantly directed them to get her to bed. They were not,
+however, to consider her illness serious&mdash;a feverish, nervous attack the
+result of recent events, was what she was suffering from, and she would
+doubtless be well in a few days.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her that evening
+was disappointed. Even this aggravation of her morning condition did not
+greatly depress Melbury. He knew, he said, that his daughter&rsquo;s
+constitution was sound enough. It was only these domestic troubles that were
+pulling her down. Once free she would be blooming again. Melbury diagnosed
+rightly, as parents usually do.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another visit and
+assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness, especially on an
+errand of that sort, which would the sooner put an end to her suspense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was told in Hintock
+that Mr. Fitzpiers&rsquo;s hat had been found in the wood. Later on in the
+afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury, and, by a piece of ill-fortune, into
+Grace&rsquo;s presence. It had doubtless lain in the wood ever since his fall
+from the horse, but it looked so clean and uninjured&mdash;the summer weather
+and leafy shelter having much favored its preservation&mdash;that Grace could
+not believe it had remained so long concealed. A very little of fact was enough
+to set her fevered fancy at work at this juncture; she thought him still in the
+neighborhood; she feared his sudden appearance; and her nervous malady
+developed consequences so grave that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and the
+household was alarmed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the summer
+scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours during the night. The
+bird&rsquo;s note, so familiar to her ears from infancy, was now absolute
+torture to the poor girl. On the Friday following the Wednesday of
+Melbury&rsquo;s departure, and the day after the discovery of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+hat, the cuckoo began at two o&rsquo;clock in the morning with a sudden cry
+from one of Melbury&rsquo;s apple-trees, not three yards from the window of
+Grace&rsquo;s room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, he is coming!&rdquo; she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from
+the bed out upon the floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These starts and frights continued till noon; and when the doctor had arrived
+and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he sat down and meditated.
+That ever-present terror it was indispensable to remove from her mind at all
+hazards; and he thought how this might be done.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the disquieted Winterborne
+waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went home and wrote to Mr. Melbury at the
+London address he had obtained from his wife. The gist of his communication was
+that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as soon as possible that steps were being
+taken to sever the bond which was becoming a torture to her; that she would
+soon be free, and was even then virtually so. &ldquo;If you can say it <i>at
+once</i> it may be the means of averting much harm,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Write to herself; not to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with mysterious
+pacifications that in a day or two she might expect to receive some assuring
+news. So it turned out. When Sunday morning came there was a letter for Grace
+from her father. It arrived at seven o&rsquo;clock, the usual time at which the
+toddling postman passed by Hintock; at eight Grace awoke, having slept an hour
+or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melbury brought up the letter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can you open it yourself?&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, yes!&rdquo; said Grace, with feeble impatience. She tore the
+envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush tinctured her
+white neck and cheek.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father had exercised a bold discretion. He informed her that she need have
+no further concern about Fitzpiers&rsquo;s return; that she would shortly be a
+free woman; and therefore, if she should desire to wed her old
+lover&mdash;which he trusted was the case, since it was his own deep
+wish&mdash;she would be in a position to do so. In this Melbury had not written
+beyond his belief. But he very much stretched the facts in adding that the
+legal formalities for dissolving her union were practically settled. The truth
+was that on the arrival of the doctor&rsquo;s letter poor Melbury had been much
+agitated, and could with difficulty be prevented by Beaucock from returning to
+her bedside. What was the use of his rushing back to Hintock? Beaucock had
+asked him. The only thing that could do her any good was a breaking of the
+bond. Though he had not as yet had an interview with the eminent solicitor they
+were about to consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case was
+clear enough. Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm at her
+danger by the representations of his companion, and by the doctor&rsquo;s
+letter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly that she was virtually
+free.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you&rsquo;d better write also to the gentleman,&rdquo; suggested
+Beaucock, who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice in the case,
+wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to effect which he knew that
+nothing would be so potent as awakening the passion of Grace for Winterborne,
+so that her father might not have the heart to withdraw from his attempt to
+make her love legitimate when he discovered that there were difficulties in the
+way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of
+&ldquo;starting them at once,&rdquo; as he called it. To put his long-delayed
+reparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now. He added to the
+letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting that she ought to begin to
+encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose him altogether; and he wrote to
+Giles that the path was virtually open for him at last. Life was short, he
+declared; there were slips betwixt the cup and the lip; her interest in him
+should be reawakened at once, that all might be ready when the good time came
+for uniting them.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap38"></a>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in heart.
+The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it inapprehensible by
+him in its entirety.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this
+family&mdash;beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with the
+alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the then popular and
+fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his social boundary down to so recent
+a time that flowers then folded were hardly faded yet&mdash;he was now asked by
+that jealously guarding father of hers to take courage&mdash;to get himself
+ready for the day when he should be able to claim her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The old times came back to him in dim procession. How he had been snubbed; how
+Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that sweet, coy Grace herself had
+looked down upon him and his household arrangements, and poor Creedle&rsquo;s
+contrivances!
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Well, he could not believe it. Surely the adamantine barrier of marriage with
+another could not be pierced like this! It did violence to custom. Yet a new
+law might do anything. But was it at all within the bounds of probability that
+a woman who, over and above her own attainments, had been accustomed to those
+of a cultivated professional man, could ever be the wife of such as he?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the reasonableness
+of that treatment. He had said to himself again and again that her father was
+right; that the poor ceorl, Giles Winterborne, would never have been able to
+make such a dainty girl happy. Yet, now that she had stood in a position
+farther removed from his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her.
+He was full of doubt.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness. To act so promptly as
+Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely wise, because of the
+uncertainty of events. Giles knew nothing of legal procedure, but he did know
+that for him to step up to Grace as a lover before the bond which bound her was
+actually dissolved was simply an extravagant dream of her father&rsquo;s
+overstrained mind. He pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and
+saw that the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weakened to this
+unreasoning desire.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical conjecture that the
+timber-merchant, in his intense affection for Grace, was courting him now
+because that young lady, when disunited, would be left in an anomalous
+position, to escape which a bad husband was better than none. He felt quite
+sure that his old friend was simply on tenterhooks of anxiety to repair the
+almost irreparable error of dividing two whom Nature had striven to join
+together in earlier days, and that in his ardor to do this he was oblivious of
+formalities. The cautious supervision of his past years had overleaped itself
+at last. Hence, Winterborne perceived that, in this new beginning, the
+necessary care not to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised
+by himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore. There is no such
+thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more or loving less. But
+Giles himself recognized no decline in his sense of her dearness. If the flame
+did indeed burn lower now than when he had fetched her from Sherton at her last
+return from school, the marvel was small. He had been laboring ever since his
+rejection and her marriage to reduce his former passion to a docile friendship,
+out of pure regard to its expediency; and their separation may have helped him
+to a partial success.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury. But the
+effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon the elastic-nerved
+daughter of the woods had been much what the old surgeon Jones had surmised. It
+had soothed her perturbed spirit better than all the opiates in the
+pharmacopoeia. She had slept unbrokenly a whole night and a day. The &ldquo;new
+law&rdquo; was to her a mysterious, beneficent, godlike entity, lately
+descended upon earth, that would make her as she once had been without trouble
+or annoyance. Her position fretted her, its abstract features rousing an
+aversion which was even greater than her aversion to the personality of him who
+had caused it. It was mortifying, productive of slights, undignified. Him she
+could forget; her circumstances she had always with her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery; and perhaps on
+that account her fancy wove about him a more romantic tissue than it could have
+done if he had stood before her with all the specks and flaws inseparable from
+corporeity. He rose upon her memory as the fruit-god and the wood-god in
+alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared with green lichen, as she had seen
+him among the sappy boughs of the plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and
+with apple-pips in the hair of his arms, as she had met him on his return from
+cider-making in White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him. In her
+secret heart she almost approximated to her father&rsquo;s enthusiasm in
+wishing to show Giles once for all how she still regarded him. The question
+whether the future would indeed bring them together for life was a standing
+wonder with her. She knew that it could not with any propriety do so just yet.
+But reverently believing in her father&rsquo;s sound judgment and knowledge, as
+good girls are wont to do, she remembered what he had written about her giving
+a hint to Winterborne lest there should be risk in delay, and her feelings were
+not averse to such a step, so far as it could be done without danger at this
+early stage of the proceedings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From being a frail phantom of her former equable self she returned in bounds to
+a condition of passable philosophy. She bloomed again in the face in the course
+of a few days, and was well enough to go about as usual. One day Mrs. Melbury
+proposed that for a change she should be driven in the gig to Sherton market,
+whither Melbury&rsquo;s man was going on other errands. Grace had no business
+whatever in Sherton; but it crossed her mind that Winterborne would probably be
+there, and this made the thought of such a drive interesting.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On the way she saw nothing of him; but when the horse was walking slowly
+through the obstructions of Sheep Street, she discerned the young man on the
+pavement. She thought of that time when he had been standing under his
+apple-tree on her return from school, and of the tender opportunity then missed
+through her fastidiousness. Her heart rose in her throat. She abjured all such
+fastidiousness now. Nor did she forget the last occasion on which she had
+beheld him in that town, making cider in the court-yard of the Earl of Wessex
+Hotel, while she was figuring as a fine lady in the balcony above.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace directed the man to set her down there in the midst, and immediately went
+up to her lover. Giles had not before observed her, and his eyes now
+suppressedly looked his pleasure, without the embarrassment that had formerly
+marked him at such meetings.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly, &ldquo;I have nothing to
+do. Perhaps you are deeply engaged?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I? Not a bit. My business now at the best of times is small, I am sorry
+to say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, then, I am going into the Abbey. Come along with me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape from publicity, for many
+eyes were regarding her. She had hoped that sufficient time had elapsed for the
+extinction of curiosity; but it was quite otherwise. The people looked at her
+with tender interest as the deserted girl-wife&mdash;without obtrusiveness, and
+without vulgarity; but she was ill prepared for scrutiny in any shape.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down. Not a soul was in
+the building save themselves. She regarded a stained window, with her head
+sideways, and tentatively asked him if he remembered the last time they were in
+that town alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He remembered it perfectly, and remarked, &ldquo;You were a proud miss then,
+and as dainty as you were high. Perhaps you are now?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace slowly shook her head. &ldquo;Affliction has taken all that out of
+me,&rdquo; she answered, impressively. &ldquo;Perhaps I am too far the other
+way now.&rdquo; As there was something lurking in this that she could not
+explain, she added, so quickly as not to allow him time to think of it,
+&ldquo;Has my father written to you at all?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She glanced ponderingly up at him. &ldquo;Not about me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had been bidden to
+take the hint as to the future which she had been bidden to give. The
+unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation through Grace for the moment.
+However, it was only Giles who stood there, of whom she had no fear; and her
+self-possession returned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He said I was to sound you with a view to&mdash;what you will
+understand, if you care to,&rdquo; continued Winterborne, in a low voice.
+Having been put on this track by herself, he was not disposed to abandon it in
+a hurry.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They had been children together, and there was between them that familiarity as
+to personal affairs which only such acquaintanceship can give. &ldquo;You know,
+Giles,&rdquo; she answered, speaking in a very practical tone, &ldquo;that that
+is all very well; but I am in a very anomalous position at present, and I
+cannot say anything to the point about such things as those.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No?&rdquo; he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject. He was
+looking at her with a curious consciousness of discovery. He had not been
+imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her to him thus. For the
+first time he realized an unexpectedness in her, which, after all, should not
+have been unexpected. She before him was not the girl Grace Melbury whom he
+used to know. Of course, he might easily have prefigured as much; but it had
+never occurred to him. She was a woman who had been married; she had moved on;
+and without having lost her girlish modesty, she had lost her girlish shyness.
+The inevitable change, though known to him, had not been heeded; and it struck
+him into a momentary fixity. The truth was that he had never come into close
+comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the brief
+exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met him with his
+cider apparatus; and that interview had been of too cursory a kind for insight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne had advanced, too. He could criticise her. Times had been when to
+criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have lain as far beyond his
+powers as to criticise a deity. This thing was sure: it was a new woman in many
+ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of more ideas, more dignity, and,
+above all, more assurance, than the original Grace had been capable of. He
+could not at first decide whether he were pleased or displeased at this. But
+upon the whole the novelty attracted him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence betokened something
+in his brain of the nature of an enemy to her. &ldquo;What are you thinking of
+that makes those lines come in your forehead?&rdquo; she asked. &ldquo;I did
+not mean to offend you by speaking of the time being premature as yet.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the foundation of
+these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his face aside, as he took her
+by the hand. He was grieved that he had criticised her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are very good, dear Grace,&rdquo; he said, in a low voice.
+&ldquo;You are better, much better, than you used to be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an evasive smile,
+&ldquo;You are prettier;&rdquo; which was not what he really had meant. He then
+remained still holding her right hand in his own right, so that they faced in
+opposite ways; and as he did not let go, she ventured upon a tender
+remonstrance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present&mdash;and far
+enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the same as ever. You see, Giles,
+my case is not settled yet, and if&mdash;Oh, suppose I <i>never</i> get
+free!&mdash;there should be any hitch or informality!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She drew a catching breath, and turned pale. The dialogue had been affectionate
+comedy up to this point. The gloomy atmosphere of the past, and the still
+gloomy horizon of the present, had been for the interval forgotten. Now the
+whole environment came back, the due balance of shade among the light was
+restored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is sure to be all right, I trust?&rdquo; she resumed, in uneasy
+accents. &ldquo;What did my father say the solicitor had told him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh&mdash;that all is sure enough. The case is so clear&mdash;nothing
+could be clearer. But the legal part is not yet quite done and finished, as is
+natural.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;of course not,&rdquo; she said, sunk in meek thought.
+&ldquo;But father said it was <i>almost</i>&mdash;did he not? Do you know
+anything about the new law that makes these things so easy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing&mdash;except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted
+husbands and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do without an Act
+of Parliament.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like
+that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, I believe so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How long has it been introduced?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law would have made
+a humane person weep who should have known what a dangerous structure they were
+building up on their supposed knowledge. They remained in thought, like
+children in the presence of the incomprehensible.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Giles,&rdquo; she said, at last, &ldquo;it makes me quite weary when I
+think how serious my situation is, or has been. Shall we not go out from here
+now, as it may seem rather fast of me&mdash;our being so long together, I
+mean&mdash;if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure,&rdquo; she added,
+uncertainly, &ldquo;that I ought not to let you hold my hand yet, knowing that
+the documents&mdash;or whatever it may be&mdash;have not been signed; so that
+I&mdash;am still as married as ever&mdash;or almost. My dear father has
+forgotten himself. Not that I feel morally bound to any one else, after what
+has taken place&mdash;no woman of spirit could&mdash;now, too, that several
+months have passed. But I wish to keep the proprieties as well as I can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, yes. Still, your father reminds us that life is short. I myself
+feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in this that we have
+begun. At times, dear Grace, since receiving your father&rsquo;s letter, I am
+as uneasy and fearful as a child at what he said. If one of us were to die
+before the formal signing and sealing that is to release you have been
+done&mdash;if we should drop out of the world and never have made the most of
+this little, short, but real opportunity, I should think to myself as I sunk
+down dying, &lsquo;Would to my God that I had spoken out my whole
+heart&mdash;given her one poor little kiss when I had the chance to give it!
+But I never did, although she had promised to be mine some day; and now I never
+can.&rsquo; That&rsquo;s what I should think.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful regard, as
+though their passage were visible; but as he went on she dropped her glance.
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I have thought that, too. And, because I
+have thought it, I by no means meant, in speaking of the proprieties, to be
+reserved and cold to you who loved me so long ago, or to hurt your heart as I
+used to do at that thoughtless time. Oh, not at all, indeed! But&mdash;ought I
+to allow you?&mdash;oh, it is too quick&mdash;surely!&rdquo; Her eyes filled
+with tears of bewildered, alarmed emotion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further against her better
+judgment. &ldquo;Yes&mdash;I suppose it is,&rdquo; he said, repentantly.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll wait till all is settled. What did your father say in that
+last letter?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking him, frankly
+spoke of the personal part. &ldquo;He said&mdash;what I have implied. Should I
+tell more plainly?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;don&rsquo;t, if it is a secret.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all. I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you wish. He
+said I was to encourage you. There. But I cannot obey him further to-day. Come,
+let us go now.&rdquo; She gently slid her hand from his, and went in front of
+him out of the Abbey.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was thinking of getting some dinner,&rdquo; said Winterborne, changing
+to the prosaic, as they walked. &ldquo;And you, too, must require something. Do
+let me take you to a place I know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her father&rsquo;s
+house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no society; had sometimes,
+indeed, brought her deeper solitude and inconsideration than any she had ever
+known before. Hence it was a treat to her to find herself again the object of
+thoughtful care. But she questioned if to go publicly to dine with Giles
+Winterborne were not a proposal, due rather to his unsophistication than to his
+discretion. She said gently that she would much prefer his ordering her lunch
+at some place and then coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in
+the Abbey porch. Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly blind
+to propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she wished.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he had left her.
+&ldquo;It will be quite ready by the time you get there,&rdquo; he said, and
+told her the name of the inn at which the meal had been ordered, which was one
+that she had never heard of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll find it by inquiry,&rdquo; said Grace, setting out.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And shall I see you again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;come to me there. It will not be like going together. I
+shall want you to find my father&rsquo;s man and the gig for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he thought her
+lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage of her invitation to start
+her on her way home. He went straight to The Three Tuns&mdash;a little tavern
+in a side street, scrupulously clean, but humble and inexpensive. On his way he
+had an occasional misgiving as to whether the place had been elegant enough for
+her; and as soon as he entered it, and saw her ensconced there, he perceived
+that he had blundered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old hostelry could
+boast of, which was also a general parlor on market-days; a long, low
+apartment, with a sanded floor herring-boned with a broom; a wide,
+red-curtained window to the street, and another to the garden. Grace had
+retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the latter, the front part
+being full of a mixed company which had dropped in since he was there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On arriving, and seeing what the
+tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; but having gone too far to
+retreat, she had heroically entered and sat down on the well-scrubbed settle,
+opposite the narrow table with its knives and steel forks, tin pepper-boxes,
+blue salt-cellars, and posters advertising the sale of bullocks against the
+wall. The last time that she had taken any meal in a public place it had been
+with Fitzpiers at the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel in that town, after a two
+months&rsquo; roaming and sojourning at the gigantic hotels of the Continent.
+How could she have expected any other kind of accommodation in present
+circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared she was
+for this change! The tastes that she had acquired from Fitzpiers had been
+imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed them till confronted by
+this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact, at that very moment owed a long
+bill at the above-mentioned hotel for the luxurious style in which he used to
+put her up there whenever they drove to Sherton. But such is social sentiment,
+that she had been quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions,
+while she felt humiliated by her present situation, which Winterborne had paid
+for honestly on the nail.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and all his
+pleasure was gone. It was the same susceptibility over again which had spoiled
+his Christmas party long ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual result of
+Grace&rsquo;s apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite of
+it&mdash;a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront
+everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf. She had finished her lunch, which
+he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought her out of the house
+as soon as he could.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he said, with great sad eyes, &ldquo;you have not finished
+at all well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wessex. I&rsquo;ll order a tea
+there. I did not remember that what was good enough for me was not good enough
+for you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what had happened.
+&ldquo;Oh no, Giles,&rdquo; she said, with extreme pathos; &ldquo;certainly
+not. Why do you&mdash;say that when you know better? You <i>ever</i> will
+misunderstand me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed, that&rsquo;s not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers. Can you deny that you felt
+out of place at The Three Tuns?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know. Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny
+it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. Your husband used
+always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain in the
+street of a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory taste which
+had been offended, and not her nature or her affection? Fortunately, or
+unfortunately, at that moment they saw Melbury&rsquo;s man driving vacantly
+along the street in search of her, the hour having passed at which he had been
+told to take her up. Winterborne hailed him, and she was powerless then to
+prolong the discourse. She entered the vehicle sadly, and the horse trotted
+away.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap39"></a>CHAPTER XXXIX.</h2>
+
+<p>
+All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of a pleasant
+time, forgetting the pleasant time itself. He feared anew that they could never
+be happy together, even should she be free to choose him. She was accomplished;
+he was unrefined. It was the original difficulty, which he was too sensitive to
+recklessly ignore, as some men would have done in his place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little from others in
+the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that very account scrutinize
+those others&rsquo; behavior too closely. He was not versatile, but one in whom
+a hope or belief which had once had its rise, meridian, and decline seldom
+again exactly recurred, as in the breasts of more sanguine mortals. He had once
+worshipped her, laid out his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her. Though
+it was with almost the same zest, it was with not quite the same hope, that he
+had begun to tread the old tracks again, and allowed himself to be so charmed
+with her that day.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Move another step towards her he would not. He would even repulse her&mdash;as
+a tribute to conscience. It would be sheer sin to let her prepare a pitfall for
+her happiness not much smaller than the first by inveigling her into a union
+with such as he. Her poor father was now blind to these subtleties, which he
+had formerly beheld as in noontide light. It was his own duty to declare
+them&mdash;for her dear sake.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous embarrassment
+was not lessened the next morning when another letter from her father was put
+into her hands. Its tenor was an intenser strain of the one that had preceded
+it. After stating how extremely glad he was to hear that she was better, and
+able to get out-of-doors, he went on:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see being
+out of town. I do not know when I shall get home. My great anxiety in this
+delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannot rest at night
+for thinking that while our business is hanging fire he may become estranged,
+or go away from the neighborhood. I have set my heart upon seeing him your
+husband, if you ever have another. Do, then, Grace, give him some temporary
+encouragement, even though it is over-early. For when I consider the past I do
+think God will forgive me and you for being a little forward. I have another
+reason for this, my dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late
+affairs have still further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I
+cannot rest in peace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He added a postscript:
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow. Possibly,
+therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in
+forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence. While
+craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested; to put off the
+old Eve, the fastidious miss&mdash;or rather madam&mdash;completely, her first
+attempt had been beaten by the unexpected vitality of that fastidiousness. Her
+father on returning and seeing the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure to
+say that the same perversity which had led her to make difficulties about
+marrying Fitzpiers was now prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor
+Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of her
+delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her drift away
+from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging education, he could
+not have acted more seductively than he did that day. He chanced to be
+superintending some temporary work in a field opposite her windows. She could
+not discover what he was doing, but she read his mood keenly and truly: she
+could see in his coming and going an air of determined abandonment of the whole
+landscape that lay in her direction.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the
+evening&mdash;which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in
+train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won
+again&mdash;how could she look him in the face if he should see them estranged
+thus?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in the garden, in the
+rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes&mdash;made of peeled
+oak-branches that came to Melbury&rsquo;s premises as refuse after
+barking-time. The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around her was
+just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which, even in its
+enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All day she had expected Giles to
+call&mdash;to inquire how she had got home, or something or other; but he had
+not come. And he still tantalized her by going athwart and across that orchard
+opposite. She could see him as she sat.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a letter. She
+knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton, and had called as usual
+at the post-office for anything that had arrived by the afternoon post, of
+which there was no delivery at Hintock. She pondered on what the letter might
+contain&mdash;particularly whether it were a second refresher for Winterborne
+from her father, like her own of the morning.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. Giles read its
+contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedge of the
+orchard&mdash;if that could be called a hedge which, owing to the drippings of
+the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon it here and there. He
+entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that way homeward to the
+mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of the woodland.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sad sands were running swiftly through Time&rsquo;s glass; she had often
+felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it doubly now after the
+solemn and pathetic reminder in her father&rsquo;s communication. Her freshness
+would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might suddenly end&mdash;might
+end that very hour. Men were so strange. The thought took away from her all her
+former reticence, and made her action bold. She started from her seat. If the
+little breach, quarrel, or whatever it might be called, of yesterday, was to be
+healed up it must be done by her on the instant. She crossed into the orchard,
+and clambered through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a
+faun-like figure under the green canopy and over the brown floor.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace had been wrong&mdash;very far wrong&mdash;in assuming that the letter had
+no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood after its
+perusal. It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much reference to
+herself that he had thus turned away. He feared that his grieved discomfiture
+might be observed. The letter was from Beaucock, written a few hours later than
+Melbury&rsquo;s to his daughter. It announced failure.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the moment
+when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During his absence in
+town with Melbury, the lawyer&rsquo;s clerk had naturally heard a great deal of
+the timber-merchant&rsquo;s family scheme of justice to Giles, and his
+communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest possible moment that
+their attempt had failed, in order that the young man should not place himself
+in a false position towards Grace in the belief of its coming success. The news
+was, in sum, that Fitzpiers&rsquo;s conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to
+Grace to enable her to snap the bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife
+till the end of the chapter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl under
+the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the almost tragical
+information engendered.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To renounce her forever&mdash;that was then the end of it for him, after all.
+There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for tiffs on petty
+tastes. The curtain had fallen again between them. She could not be his. The
+cruelty of their late revived hope was now terrible. How could they all have
+been so simple as to suppose this thing could be done?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he turned and
+saw her hastening on between the thickets. He perceived in an instant that she
+did not know the blighting news.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Giles, why didn&rsquo;t you come across to me?&rdquo; she asked, with
+arch reproach. &ldquo;Didn&rsquo;t you see me sitting there ever so
+long?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her
+unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior in the
+conjuncture. His manner made her think that she had been too chiding in her
+speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she resolved to soften it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have had another letter from my father,&rdquo; she hastened to
+continue. &ldquo;He thinks he may come home this evening. And&mdash;in view of
+his hopes&mdash;it will grieve him if there is any little difference between
+us, Giles.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There is none,&rdquo; he said, sadly regarding her from the face
+downward as he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Still&mdash;I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being
+uncomfortable at the inn.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have, Grace, I&rsquo;m sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you speak in quite an unhappy way,&rdquo; she returned, coming up
+close to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained to
+her. &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think you will ever be happy, Giles?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not reply for some instants. &ldquo;When the sun shines on the north
+front of Sherton Abbey&mdash;that&rsquo;s when my happiness will come to
+me!&rdquo; said he, staring as it were into the earth.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But&mdash;then that means that there is something more than my offending
+you in not liking The Three Tuns. If it is because I&mdash;did not like to let
+you kiss me in the Abbey&mdash;well, you know, Giles, that it was not on
+account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then, think it
+was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That was the true
+reason&mdash;the sole one. But I do not want to be hard&mdash;God knows I do
+not,&rdquo; she said, her voice fluctuating. &ldquo;And perhaps&mdash;as I am
+on the verge of freedom&mdash;I am not right, after all, in thinking there is
+any harm in your kissing me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh God!&rdquo; said Winterborne within himself. His head was turned
+askance as he still resolutely regarded the ground. For the last several
+minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regular siege; and
+now it had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now taking advantage of the
+offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of one whose life had been so
+primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, as Giles&rsquo;s, which can
+hardly be explained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you say anything?&rdquo; she asked, timidly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;only that&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You mean that it must <i>be already</i> settled, since my father is
+coming home?&rdquo; she said, gladly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this
+while&mdash;though he would have protected Grace&rsquo;s good repute as the
+apple of his eye&mdash;was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods. In
+face of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened
+school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed a man&rsquo;s
+weakness. Since it was so&mdash;since it had come to this, that Grace, deeming
+herself free to do it, was virtually asking him to demonstrate that he loved
+her&mdash;since he could demonstrate it only too truly&mdash;since life was
+short and love was strong&mdash;he gave way to the temptation, notwithstanding
+that he perfectly well knew her to be wedded irrevocably to Fitzpiers. Indeed,
+he cared for nothing past or future, simply accepting the present and what it
+brought, desiring once in his life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over
+and loved so long.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort of
+inspiration. &ldquo;Oh, I suppose,&rdquo; she stammered, &ldquo;that I am
+really free?&mdash;that this is right? Is there <i>really</i> a new law? Father
+cannot have been too sanguine in saying&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears in spite of
+herself. &ldquo;Oh, why does not my father come home and explain,&rdquo; she
+sobbed, &ldquo;and let me know clearly what I am? It is too trying, this, to
+ask me to&mdash;and then to leave me so long in so vague a state that I do not
+know what to do, and perhaps do wrong!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous sorrow. How he
+had sinned against her in not telling her what he knew. He turned aside; the
+feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher. How could he have dreamed of
+kissing her? He could hardly refrain from tears. Surely nothing more pitiable
+had ever been known than the condition of this poor young thing, now as
+heretofore the victim of her father&rsquo;s well-meant but blundering policy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even in the hour of Melbury&rsquo;s greatest assurance Winterborne had harbored
+a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace&rsquo;s marriage without
+her appearance in public; though he was not sufficiently sure of what might
+have been enacted to destroy by his own words her pleasing idea that a mere
+dash of the pen, on her father&rsquo;s testimony, was going to be sufficient.
+But he had never suspected the sad fact that the position was irremediable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much fluster for a
+mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am glad we are friends again anyhow,&rdquo; she said, smiling through
+her tears. &ldquo;Giles, if you had only shown half the boldness before I
+married that you show now, you would have carried me off for your own first
+instead of second. If we do marry, I hope you will never think badly of me for
+encouraging you a little, but my father is <i>so</i> impatient, you know, as
+his years and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see us a little
+advanced when he comes. That is my only excuse.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. How could she so trust
+her father&rsquo;s conjectures? He did not know how to tell her the truth and
+shame himself. And yet he felt that it must be done. &ldquo;We may have been
+wrong,&rdquo; he began, almost fearfully, &ldquo;in supposing that it can all
+be carried out while we stay here at Hintock. I am not sure but that people may
+have to appear in a public court even under the new Act; and if there should be
+any difficulty, and we cannot marry after all&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. &ldquo;Oh, Giles,&rdquo; she said, grasping
+his arm, &ldquo;you have heard something! What&mdash;cannot my father conclude
+it there and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don&rsquo;t deceive
+me. What terrible position am I in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her implicit trust in his
+honor absolutely disabled him. &ldquo;I cannot inform you,&rdquo; he murmured,
+his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot. &ldquo;Your father will
+soon be here. Then we shall know. I will take you home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with the most
+reserved air, as he added, correctingly, &ldquo;I will take you, at any rate,
+into the drive.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus they walked on together. Grace vibrating between happiness and misgiving.
+It was only a few minutes&rsquo; walk to where the drive ran, and they had
+hardly descended into it when they heard a voice behind them cry, &ldquo;Take
+out that arm!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more loudly and
+hoarsely,
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Take out that arm!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Melbury&rsquo;s. He had returned sooner than they expected, and now came
+up to them. Grace&rsquo;s hand had been withdrawn like lightning on her hearing
+the second command. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t blame you&mdash;I don&rsquo;t blame
+you,&rdquo; he said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourgings.
+&ldquo;But you two must walk together no more&mdash;I have been
+surprised&mdash;I have been cruelly deceived&mdash;Giles, don&rsquo;t say
+anything to me; but go away!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth before he
+brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then. When the
+young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to the room he used as
+his office. There he sat down, and bent over the slope of the bureau, her
+bewildered gaze fixed upon him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When Melbury had recovered a little he said, &ldquo;You are now, as ever,
+Fitzpiers&rsquo;s wife. I was deluded. He has not done you <i>enough</i> harm.
+You are still subject to his beck and call.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then let it be, and never mind, father,&rdquo; she said, with dignified
+sorrow. &ldquo;I can bear it. It is your trouble that grieves me most.&rdquo;
+She stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressed Melbury
+still more. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind at all what comes to me,&rdquo; Grace
+continued; &ldquo;whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; I cannot
+help that; and I have gone further with him than I should have done if I had
+known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then Giles did not tell you?&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;He could not have known it. His behavior to
+me proved that he did not know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude of her
+chamber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside the
+dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles. His love-making
+had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflection contemn her for
+forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to suppose she was in a
+position to behave as she had done! Thus she mentally blamed her ignorance; and
+yet in the centre of her heart she blessed it a little for what it had
+momentarily brought her.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap40"></a>CHAPTER XL.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed and
+hide-bound for a while. Grace seldom showed herself outside the house, never
+outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter Giles Winterborne; and
+that she could not bear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared likely
+to continue for an indefinite time. She had learned that there was one
+possibility in which her formerly imagined position might become real, and only
+one; that her husband&rsquo;s absence should continue long enough to amount to
+positive desertion. But she never allowed her mind to dwell much upon the
+thought; still less did she deliberately hope for such a result. Her regard for
+Winterborne had been rarefied by the shock which followed its avowal into an
+ethereal emotion that had little to do with living and doing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for Giles, he was lying&mdash;or rather sitting&mdash;ill at his hut. A
+feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time, the
+result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire virulence with
+the prostration of his hopes. But not a soul knew of his languor, and he did
+not think the case serious enough to send for a medical man. After a few days
+he was better again, and crept about his home in a great coat, attending to his
+simple wants as usual with his own hands. So matters stood when the limpid
+inertion of Grace&rsquo;s pool-like existence was disturbed as by a geyser. She
+received a letter from Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the gentlest
+language. In his absence Grace had grown to regard him with toleration, and her
+relation to him with equanimity, till she had almost forgotten how trying his
+presence would be. He wrote briefly and unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but
+informed her that he was living quite alone, and had been led to think that
+they ought to be together, if she would make up her mind to forgive him. He
+therefore purported to cross the Channel to Budmouth by the steamer on a day he
+named, which she found to be three days after the time of her present reading.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, which her father
+would understand even better than herself. As the only alternative she was to
+be on the quay to meet the steamer when it arrived from the opposite coast,
+probably about half an hour before midnight, bringing with her any luggage she
+might require; join him there, and pass with him into the twin vessel, which
+left immediately the other entered the harbor; returning thus with him to his
+continental dwelling-place, which he did not name. He had no intention of
+showing himself on land at all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now continued for long
+hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as if he thought it were winter,
+the pitcher of cider standing beside him, mostly untasted, and coated with a
+film of dust. After reading it he looked up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t go,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I had felt I would not,&rdquo; she answered. &ldquo;But I did not know
+what you would say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a respectable
+way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I&rsquo;ll oppose him in
+wishing it,&rdquo; muttered Melbury. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d stint myself to keep you
+both in a genteel and seemly style. But go abroad you never shall with my
+consent.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There the question rested that day. Grace was unable to reply to her husband in
+the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and the next day, and the
+evening on which he had requested her to meet him. Throughout the whole of it
+she remained within the four walls of her room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be impending, hung
+like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury household. They spoke almost in
+whispers, and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next. It was the hope of every
+one that, finding she did not arrive, he would return again to France; and as
+for Grace, she was willing to write to him on the most kindly terms if he would
+only keep away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her relatives, in great
+part, likewise. When they met the next morning they were pale and anxious,
+though neither speaking of the subject which occupied all their thoughts. The
+day passed as quietly as the previous ones, and she began to think that in the
+rank caprice of his moods he had abandoned the idea of getting her to join him
+as quickly as it was formed. All on a sudden, some person who had just come
+from Sherton entered the house with the news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way
+home to Hintock. He had been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex
+Hotel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was announced.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said Melbury, &ldquo;we must make the best of what has been
+a very bad matter. The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, I hear, is
+gone away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of his life is probably
+over. If he chooses to make a home for ye I think you should not say him nay,
+Grace. Certainly he cannot very well live at Hintock without a blow to his
+pride; but if he can bear that, and likes Hintock best, why, there&rsquo;s the
+empty wing of the house as it was before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, father!&rdquo; said Grace, turning white with dismay.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. He
+was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husband just now
+than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he had treated him
+over-roughly in his anger. &ldquo;Surely it is the most respectable thing to
+do?&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like this state that you are
+in&mdash;neither married nor single. It hurts me, and it hurts you, and it will
+always be remembered against us in Hintock. There has never been any scandal
+like it in the family before.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will be here in less than an hour,&rdquo; murmured Grace. The
+twilight of the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of her
+face. The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated above all
+others, was that of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s reinstatement there. &ldquo;Oh, I
+won&rsquo;t, I won&rsquo;t see him,&rdquo; she said, sinking down. She was
+almost hysterical.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Try if you cannot,&rdquo; he returned, moodily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes, I will, I will,&rdquo; she went on, inconsequently.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll try;&rdquo; and jumping up suddenly, she left the room.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have been seen
+during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick breathing was audible from
+this impressible creature, who combined modern nerves with primitive emotions,
+and was doomed by such coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to
+take her scourgings to their exquisite extremity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The window was open. On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever sound arose
+in so secluded a district&mdash;the chirp of a bird, a call from a voice, the
+turning of a wheel&mdash;extended over bush and tree to unwonted distances.
+Very few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly breathed in the brown glooms
+of the chamber, the small remote noise of light wheels came in to her,
+accompanied by the trot of a horse on the turnpike-road. There seemed to be a
+sudden hitch or pause in the progress of the vehicle, which was what first drew
+her attention to it. She knew the point whence the sound proceeded&mdash;the
+hill-top over which travellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton
+Abbas&mdash;the place at which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs.
+Charmond. Grace slid along the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill,
+listening with open lips. The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use
+exclamatory words. Then another said, &ldquo;What the devil is the matter with
+the horse?&rdquo; She recognized the voice as her husband&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the carriage could be
+heard descending the hill on the Hintock side, soon to turn into the lane
+leading out of the highway, and then into the &ldquo;drong&rdquo; which led out
+of the lane to the house where she was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A spasm passed through Grace. The Daphnean instinct, exceptionally strong in
+her as a girl, had been revived by her widowed seclusion; and it was not
+lessened by her affronted sentiments towards the comer, and her regard for
+another man. She opened some little ivory tablets that lay on the
+dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, &ldquo;I am gone to visit
+one of my school-friends,&rdquo; gathered a few toilet necessaries into a
+hand-bag, and not three minutes after that voice had been heard, her slim form,
+hastily wrapped up from observation, might have been seen passing out of the
+back door of Melbury&rsquo;s house. Thence she skimmed up the garden-path,
+through the gap in the hedge, and into the mossy cart-track under the trees
+which led into the depth of the woods.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The leaves overhead were now in their latter green&mdash;so opaque, that it was
+darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-time, scarce a crevice
+existing by which a ray could get down to the ground. But in open places she
+could see well enough. Summer was ending: in the daytime singing insects hung
+in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavy nightly with globes of dew; and after
+showers creeping damps and twilight chills came up from the hollows. The
+plantations were always weird at this hour of eve&mdash;more spectral far than
+in the leafless season, when there were fewer masses and more minute lineality.
+The smooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes; there
+were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had somehow wandered
+into the canopied obscurity; while now and then low peeps of the sky between
+the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on the tips of boughs sat faint cloven
+tongues.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But Grace&rsquo;s fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she
+heeded these impressions but little. She went on as silently as she could,
+avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and stepping upon
+soundless moss and grass-tufts. She paused breathlessly once or twice, and
+fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her strumming pulse, the vehicle
+containing Fitzpiers turning in at the gate of her father&rsquo;s premises. She
+hastened on again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left behind, and those
+into which she next plunged were divided from the latter by a bank, from whose
+top the hedge had long ago perished&mdash;starved for want of sun. It was with
+some caution that Grace now walked, though she was quite free from any of the
+commonplace timidities of her ordinary pilgrimages to such spots. She feared no
+lurking harms, but that her effort would be all in vain, and her return to the
+house rendered imperative.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptive comfort and
+relief to wanderers in woods&mdash;a distant light&mdash;broke at last upon her
+searching eyes. It was so very small as to be almost sinister to a stranger,
+but to her it was what she sought. She pushed forward, and the dim outline of a
+dwelling was disclosed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all sides to a
+chimney in the midst. It had formerly been the home of a charcoal-burner, in
+times when that fuel was still used in the county houses. Its only appurtenance
+was a paled enclosure, there being no garden, the shade of the trees preventing
+the growth of vegetables. She advanced to the window whence the rays of light
+proceeded, and the shutters being as yet unclosed, she could survey the whole
+interior through the panes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; the natural
+sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long treading, so that none of
+the furniture stood level, and the table slanted like a desk. A fire burned on
+the hearth, in front of which revolved the skinned carcass of a rabbit,
+suspended by a string from a nail. Leaning with one arm on the mantle-shelf
+stood Winterborne, his eyes on the roasting animal, his face so rapt that
+speculation could build nothing on it concerning his thoughts, more than that
+they were not with the scene before him. She thought his features had changed a
+little since she saw them last. The fire-light did not enable her to perceive
+that they were positively haggard.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace&rsquo;s throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so nearly
+as she had hoped. She went to the door and tapped lightly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers, squirrels, and such
+small creatures, for he took no notice of her tiny signal, and she knocked
+again. This time he came and opened the door. When the light of the room fell
+upon her face he started, and, hardly knowing what he did, crossed the
+threshold to her, placing his hands upon her two arms, while surprise, joy,
+alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns. With Grace it was the same: even
+in this stress there was the fond fact that they had met again. Thus they
+stood,
+</p>
+
+<p class="poem">
+&ldquo;Long tears upon their faces, waxen white<br />
+With extreme sad delight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, &ldquo;Come in.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, Giles!&rdquo; she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther back
+from the door. &ldquo;I am passing by&mdash;and I have called on you&mdash;I
+won&rsquo;t enter. Will you help me? I am afraid. I want to get by a roundabout
+way to Sherton, and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there&mdash;but I
+cannot get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany me a little way!
+Don&rsquo;t condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged to come to you
+because&mdash;I have no other help here. Three months ago you were my lover;
+now you are only my friend. The law has stepped in, and forbidden what we
+thought of. It must not be. But we can act honestly, and yet you can be my
+friend for one little hour? I have no other&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one hand, by an effort of
+repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or sob. Winterborne took
+her other hand. &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has come.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, &ldquo;You mean
+this, Grace&mdash;that I am to help you to get away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Appearance is no matter, when the reality
+is right. I have said to myself I can trust you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery&mdash;if it could
+be called such&mdash;earlier in the summer, when they met for the last time as
+lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for that tender wrong, he
+determined to deserve her faith now at least, and so wipe out that reproach
+from his conscience. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll come at once,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll light a lantern.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did not notice
+how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that in making this offer
+he was taxing a convalescence which could ill afford such self-sacrifice. The
+lantern was lit, and they started.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap41"></a>CHAPTER XLI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, whose upper
+foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the time that they emerged
+upon a glade it rained heavily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This is awkward,&rdquo; said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne stopped. &ldquo;Grace,&rdquo; he said, preserving a strictly
+business manner which belied him, &ldquo;you cannot go to Sherton
+to-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I must!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why? It is nine miles from here. It is almost an impossibility in this
+rain.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;True&mdash;<i>why?</i>&rdquo; she replied, mournfully, at the end of a
+silence. &ldquo;What is reputation to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now hearken,&rdquo; said Giles. &ldquo;You won&rsquo;t&mdash;go back to
+your&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No, no, no! Don&rsquo;t make me!&rdquo; she cried, piteously.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then let us turn.&rdquo; They slowly retraced their steps, and again
+stood before his door. &ldquo;Now, this house from this moment is yours, and
+not mine,&rdquo; he said, deliberately. &ldquo;I have a place near by where I
+can stay very well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her face had drooped. &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; she murmured, as she saw the dilemma.
+&ldquo;What have I done!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked through the
+window. The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a weak appetite was
+beginning to char. &ldquo;Please go in and attend to it,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Do what you like. Now I leave. You will find everything about the hut
+that is necessary.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, Giles&mdash;your supper,&rdquo; she exclaimed. &ldquo;An out-house
+would do for me&mdash;anything&mdash;till to-morrow at day-break!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He signified a negative. &ldquo;I tell you to go in&mdash;you may catch agues
+out here in your delicate state. You can give me my supper through the window,
+if you feel well enough. I&rsquo;ll wait a while.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he saw her
+within the room sitting down. Without so much as crossing the threshold
+himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the key in the lock. Tapping
+at the window, he signified that she should open the casement, and when she had
+done this he handed in the key to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are locked in,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;and your own mistress.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at his
+scrupulousness, as she took the door-key.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you feel better?&rdquo; he went on. &ldquo;If so, and you wish to
+give me some of your supper, please do. If not, it is of no importance. I can
+get some elsewhere.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though she only knew
+half what that kindness really was. At the end of some ten minutes she again
+came to the window, pushed it open, and said in a whisper, &ldquo;Giles!&rdquo;
+He at once emerged from the shade, and saw that she was preparing to hand him
+his share of the meal upon a plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like to treat you so hardly,&rdquo; she murmured, with
+deep regret in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves.
+&ldquo;But&mdash;I suppose it is best to arrange like this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes,&rdquo; he said, quickly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I feel that I could never have reached Sherton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was impossible.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Are you sure you have a snug place out there?&rdquo; (With renewed
+misgiving.)
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Quite. Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is rather
+rough accommodation.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can I notice defects? I have long passed that stage, and you know it,
+Giles, or you ought to.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness modulated
+through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly to what a pitch she
+was strung. If ever Winterborne&rsquo;s heart fretted his bosom it was at this
+sight of a perfectly defenceless creature conditioned by such circumstances. He
+forgot his own agony in the satisfaction of having at least found her a
+shelter. He took his plate and cup from her hands, saying, &ldquo;Now
+I&rsquo;ll push the shutter to, and you will find an iron pin on the inside,
+which you must fix into the bolt. Do not stir in the morning till I come and
+call you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;I shall be quite within hail,&rdquo; said Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. His snug place proved to
+be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind, formed of four hurdles
+thatched with brake-fern. Underneath were dry sticks, hay, and other litter of
+the sort, upon which he sat down; and there in the dark tried to eat his meal.
+But his appetite was quite gone. He pushed the plate aside, and shook up the
+hay and sacks, so as to form a rude couch, on which he flung himself down to
+sleep, for it was getting late.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least was thought of
+his charge. He sat up, and looked towards the cot through the damp obscurity.
+With all its external features the same as usual, he could scarcely believe
+that it contained the dear friend&mdash;he would not use a warmer
+name&mdash;who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, he could not help
+admitting, so rashly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position was pretty
+clear without them. Though social law had negatived forever their opening
+paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical pride that he
+accepted the present trying conjuncture. There was one man on earth in whom she
+believed absolutely, and he was that man. That this crisis could end in nothing
+but sorrow was a view for a moment effaced by this triumphant thought of her
+trust in him; and the purity of the affection with which he responded to that
+trust rendered him more than proof against any frailty that besieged him in
+relation to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by beginning to drop
+through the meagre screen that covered him. He rose to attempt some remedy for
+this discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the throbbing of his pulse
+told him that in his weakness he was unable to fence against the storm, and he
+lay down to bear it as best he might. He was angry with himself for his
+feebleness&mdash;he who had been so strong. It was imperative that she should
+know nothing of his present state, and to do that she must not see his face by
+daylight, for its color would inevitably betray him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and dragged
+his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her everything she could
+require for getting breakfast within. On the bench outside the window-sill he
+placed water, wood, and other necessaries, writing with a piece of chalk beside
+them, &ldquo;It is best that I should not see you. Put my breakfast on the
+bench.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At seven o&rsquo;clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised, retreating
+at once, that she might not catch sight of him. But from his shelter under the
+boughs he could see her very well, when, in response to his signal, she opened
+the window and the light fell upon her face. The languid largeness of her eyes
+showed that her sleep had been little more than his own, and the pinkness of
+their lids, that her waking hours had not been free from tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took up the
+materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off. Giles waited
+on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what country life
+was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of their food.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had slept
+much longer than he. After the loneliness of the night, she would have been
+glad to see him; but appreciating his feeling when she read the writing, she
+made no attempt to recall him. She found abundance of provisions laid in, his
+plan being to replenish his buttery weekly, and this being the day after the
+victualling van had called from Sherton. When the meal was ready, she put what
+he required outside, as she had done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her
+longing to see him, withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall. As she
+heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone away to his daily
+work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany her to Sherton; an
+erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by force of his condition,
+within fifty yards of where she was. The morning wore on; and in her doubt when
+to start, and how to travel, she lingered yet, keeping the door carefully
+bolted, lest an intruder should discover her. Locked in this place, she was
+comparatively safe, at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and drip of the
+leafage. Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains. Gazing, in her enforced
+idleness, from the one window of the living-room, she could see various small
+members of the animal community that lived unmolested there&mdash;creatures of
+hair, fluff, and scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground
+creatures, jointed and ringed&mdash;circumambulating the hut, under the
+impression that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it
+inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters. Watching these neighbors, who
+knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from her trouble; and she
+managed to while away some portion of the afternoon by putting Giles&rsquo;s
+home in order and making little improvements which she deemed that he would
+value when she was gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees,
+resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that it was a
+squirrel or a bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the evenings
+were chilly. As soon as it was too dark&mdash;which was comparatively
+early&mdash;to discern the human countenance in this place of shadows, there
+came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which she knew from its
+method to be Giles&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though she
+could only just perceive his outline. He clasped her fingers, and she noticed
+the heat of his palm and its shakiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly,&rdquo; she
+thought. How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the
+shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear, good Giles!&rdquo; she burst out, impulsively.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Anybody would have done it for you,&rdquo; replied Winterborne, with as
+much matter-of-fact as he could summon.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;About my getting to Exbury?&rdquo; she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been thinking,&rdquo; responded Giles, with tender deference,
+&ldquo;that you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not
+to be caught. I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you like;
+and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away. At any rate,
+in two or three days I could do anything to assist&mdash;such as make
+inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for the cider
+season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to the Vale to see how
+the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But for a day or two I am
+busy here.&rdquo; He was hoping that by the time mentioned he would be strong
+enough to engage himself actively on her behalf. &ldquo;I hope you do not feel
+over-much melancholy in being a prisoner?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From long acquaintance they could read each other&rsquo;s heart-symptoms like
+books of large type. &ldquo;I fear you are sorry you came,&rdquo; said Giles,
+&ldquo;and that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not
+to stay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no, dear, dear friend,&rdquo; answered Grace, with a heaving bosom.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think that that is what I regret. What I regret is my
+enforced treatment of you&mdash;dislodging you, excluding you from your own
+house. Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you&mdash;what I
+have felt for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again! But
+as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be released, I
+must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not bound to him by any
+divine law, after what he has done; but I have promised, and I will pay.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as she would
+require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an occupation which
+diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views of her attitude towards
+him, and of her life in general. The only infringement&mdash;if infringement it
+could be called&mdash;of his predetermined bearing towards her was an
+involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips when she put it through the
+casement to bid him good-night. He knew she was weeping, though he could not
+see her tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the cottage.
+But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought, since go she must.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He replied, yearningly, &ldquo;I&mdash;I don&rsquo;t like you to go
+away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Giles,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I know&mdash;I know! But&mdash;I am a
+woman, and you are a man. I cannot speak more plainly. &lsquo;Whatsoever things
+are pure, whatsoever things are of good report&rsquo;&mdash;you know what is in
+my mind, because you know me so well.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question between us has
+not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out hopelessly
+unalterable. I merely meant&mdash;well, a feeling no more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed here: and
+I think that by law he could compel me to return to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear Grace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might be well with
+her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life, if he found that
+his presence cost her so much pain. Then the window was closed, the shutters
+folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died away.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to rise, and,
+after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain. The wind grew more
+violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult to believe that no opaque
+body, but only an invisible colorless thing, was trampling and climbing over
+the roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the chimney,
+popping its head into the flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner
+of the walls. As in the old story, the assailant was a spectre which could be
+felt but not seen. She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a
+gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit
+as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from herself&mdash;a vacuous
+duplicate only. The recent self of physical animation and clear intentions was
+not there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to smite the roof
+in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an adversary, to be
+followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the wound. To all this weather
+Giles must be more or less exposed; how much, she did not know.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in relation to
+him. Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had caused it; he vacated his
+house on account of her. She was not worth such self-sacrifice; she should not
+have accepted it of him. And then, as her anxiety increased with increasing
+thought, there returned upon her mind some incidents of her late intercourse
+with him, which she had heeded but little at the time. The look of his
+face&mdash;what had there been about his face which seemed different from its
+appearance as of yore? Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of
+ripe autumn&rsquo;s brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his
+voice; she had distinctly noticed a change in tone. And his gait; surely it had
+been feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man. That slight
+occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to squirrels, it
+might have been his cough after all.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne was ill, or
+had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his condition from her that
+she might have no scruples about accepting a hospitality which by the nature of
+the case expelled her entertainer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My own, own, true l&mdash;&mdash;, my dear kind friend!&rdquo; she cried
+to herself. &ldquo;Oh, it shall not be&mdash;it shall not be!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which she entered
+the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. Setting down the candle
+on the table here, she went to the door with the key in her hand, and placed it
+in the lock. Before turning it she paused, her fingers still clutching it; and
+pressing her other hand to her forehead, she fell into agitating thought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing against it,
+brought her indecision to a close. She turned the key and opened the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a substance. She
+only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had been and was; the dripping of
+the eaves splashed like a fountain. She stood listening with parted lips, and
+holding the door in one hand, till her eyes, growing accustomed to the
+obscurity, discerned the wild brandishing of their boughs by the adjoining
+trees. At last she cried loudly with an effort, &ldquo;Giles! you may come
+in!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her own temerity,
+Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood looking on the floor. But it
+was not for long. She again lifted the latch, and with far more determination
+than at first.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Giles, Giles!&rdquo; she cried, with the full strength of her voice, and
+without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her first cry.
+&ldquo;Oh, come in&mdash;come in! Where are you? I have been wicked. I have
+thought too much of myself! Do you hear? I don&rsquo;t want to keep you out any
+longer. I cannot bear that you should suffer so. Gi-i-iles!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice reached her,
+floating upon the weather as though a part of it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Here I am&mdash;all right. Don&rsquo;t trouble about me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you want to come in? Are you not wet? <i>Come to me! I
+don&rsquo;t mind what they say, or what they think any more.</i>&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am all right,&rdquo; he repeated. &ldquo;It is not necessary for me to
+come. Good-night! good-night!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly. Could she have been mistaken
+about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had perceived a change in him because
+she had not seen him for so long. Time sometimes did his ageing work in jerks,
+as she knew. Well, she had done all she could. He would not come in. She
+retired to rest again.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap42"></a>CHAPTER XLII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The next morning Grace was at the window early. She felt determined to see him
+somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast eagerly. Eight o&rsquo;clock
+struck, and she had remembered that he had not come to arouse her by a
+knocking, as usual, her own anxiety having caused her to stir.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The breakfast was set in its place without. But he did not arrive to take it;
+and she waited on. Nine o&rsquo;clock arrived, and the breakfast was cold; and
+still there was no Giles. A thrush, that had been repeating itself a good deal
+on an opposite bush for some time, came and took a morsel from the plate and
+bolted it, waited, looked around, and took another. At ten o&rsquo;clock she
+drew in the tray, and sat down to her own solitary meal. He must have been
+called away on business early, the rain having cleared off.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly exploring the
+precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its vicinity; but as the day was
+comparatively fine, the dread lest some stray passenger or woodman should
+encounter her in such a reconnoitre paralyzed her wish. The solitude was
+further accentuated to-day by the stopping of the clock for want of winding,
+and the fall into the chimney-corner of flakes of soot loosened by the rains.
+At noon she heard a slight rustling outside the window, and found that it was
+caused by an eft which had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun-rays
+that would be worth having till the following May.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see little. In front
+lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them some yellowish-green ones of
+this season that had been prematurely blown down by the gale. Above stretched
+an old beech, with vast armpits, and great pocket-holes in its sides where
+branches had been amputated in past times; a black slug was trying to climb it.
+Dead boughs were scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, and beyond them
+were perishing woodbine stems resembling old ropes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with lichen
+and stockinged with moss. At their roots were stemless yellow fungi like lemons
+and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than stool. Next were more trees
+close together, wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds
+resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between
+these neighbors that she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting
+stumps of those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from
+their mossy setting like decayed teeth from green gums. Farther on were other
+tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves&mdash;variety upon variety,
+dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like plush, like
+malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The strain upon Grace&rsquo;s mind in various ways was so great on this the
+most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would be well-nigh
+impossible to spend another in such circumstances. The evening came at last;
+the sun, when its chin was on the earth, found an opening through which to
+pierce the shade, and stretched irradiated gauzes across the damp atmosphere,
+making the wet trunks shine, and throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the
+leaves beneath the beech that they were turned to gory hues. When night at last
+arrived, and with it the time for his return, she was nearly broken down with
+suspense.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace had prepared,
+stood waiting upon the hearth; and yet Giles did not come. It was now nearly
+twenty-four hours since she had seen him. As the room grew darker, and only the
+firelight broke against the gloom of the walls, she was convinced that it would
+be beyond her staying power to pass the night without hearing from him or from
+somebody. Yet eight o&rsquo;clock drew on, and his form at the window did not
+appear.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The meal remained untasted. Suddenly rising from before the hearth of
+smouldering embers, where she had been crouching with her hands clasped over
+her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked the door, and listened. Every breath
+of wind had ceased with the decline of day, but the rain had resumed the steady
+dripping of the night before. Grace might have stood there five minutes when
+she fancied she heard that old sound, a cough, at no great distance; and it was
+presently repeated. If it were Winterborne&rsquo;s, he must be near her; why,
+then, had he not visited her?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of Grace, and
+she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was hanging above her head. To
+light it and go in the direction of the sound would be the obvious way to solve
+the dread problem; but the conditions made her hesitate, and in a moment a cold
+sweat pervaded her at further sounds from the same quarter.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They were low mutterings; at first like persons in conversation, but gradually
+resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. It was an endless monologue,
+like that we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in deep secret places where
+water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against stones; but by degrees she was
+convinced that the voice was Winterborne&rsquo;s. Yet who could be his
+listener, so mute and patient; for though he argued so rapidly and
+persistently, nobody replied.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace. &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo;
+she cried, in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go out,
+&ldquo;how selfishly correct I am always&mdash;too, too correct! Cruel
+propriety is killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to her
+own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and hastening out
+without further thought, took the direction whence the mutterings had
+proceeded. The course was marked by a little path, which ended at a distance of
+about forty yards in a small erection of hurdles, not much larger than a shock
+of corn, such as were frequent in the woods and copses when the cutting season
+was going on. It was too slight even to be called a hovel, and was not high
+enough to stand upright in; appearing, in short, to be erected for the
+temporary shelter of fuel. The side towards Grace was open, and turning the
+light upon the interior, she beheld what her prescient fear had pictured in
+snatches all the way thither.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Upon the straw within, Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she had seen him
+during the whole of her stay here, except that his hat was off, and his hair
+matted and wild.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain. His arms were flung
+over his head; his face was flushed to an unnatural crimson. His eyes had a
+burning brightness, and though they met her own, she perceived that he did not
+recognize her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my Giles,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;what have I done to you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself. She saw that the first
+thing to be thought of was to get him indoors.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+How Grace performed that labor she never could have exactly explained. But by
+dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing him into a sitting posture, and
+straining her strength to the uttermost, she put him on one of the hurdles that
+was loose alongside, and taking the end of it in both her hands, dragged him
+along the path to the entrance of the hut, and, after a pause for breath, in at
+the door-way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state acquiesced
+unresistingly in all that she did. But he never for a moment recognized
+her&mdash;continuing his rapid conversation to himself, and seeming to look
+upon her as some angel, or other supernatural creature of the visionary world
+in which he was mentally living. The undertaking occupied her more than ten
+minutes; but by that time, to her great thankfulness, he was in the inner room,
+lying on the bed, his damp outer clothing removed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There was
+something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his thoughts,
+accelerating their speed from minute to minute. He seemed to be passing through
+the universe of ideas like a comet&mdash;erratic, inapprehensible, untraceable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace&rsquo;s distraction was almost as great as his. In a few moments she
+firmly believed he was dying. Unable to withstand her impulse, she knelt down
+beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair, exclaiming, in a low
+voice, &ldquo;How could I? How could I?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now, though she
+knew him so well. The purity of his nature, his freedom from the grosser
+passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been fully understood by Grace
+till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely juxtaposition to her own person was
+revealed. The perception of it added something that was little short of
+reverence to the deep affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of
+Artemis than of Aphrodite in her constitution.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to express her
+solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought her mournful
+satisfaction. She bathed his hot head, wiped his perspiring hands, moistened
+his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged his heated skin, and administered
+whatever she could find in the house that the imagination could conceive as
+likely to be in any way alleviating. That she might have been the cause, or
+partially the cause, of all this, interfused misery with her sorrow.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its mechanical parts,
+had been enacted at Hintock House. It was between a pair of persons most
+intimately connected in their lives with these. Outwardly like as it had been,
+it was yet infinite in spiritual difference, though a woman&rsquo;s devotion
+had been common to both.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her energies, saw that
+something practical must immediately be done. Much as she would have liked, in
+the emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to herself, medical assistance
+was necessary while there remained a possibility of preserving him alive. Such
+assistance was fatal to her own concealment; but even had the chance of
+benefiting him been less than it was, she would have run the hazard for his
+sake. The question was, where should she get a medical man, competent and near?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; a man who, if
+it were possible to save Winterborne&rsquo;s life, had the brain most likely to
+do it. If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to be brought to the
+sick Giles&rsquo;s side. The attempt should be made.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and yet she
+postponed her departure. At last, when it was after eleven o&rsquo;clock,
+Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford her an
+opportunity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her things, cut a new
+candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, and having set it up, and placed
+it so that the light did not fall upon his eyes, she closed the door and
+started.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish all sense of
+darkness from her mind. The rains had imparted a phosphorescence to the pieces
+of touchwood and rotting leaves that lay about her path, which, as scattered by
+her feet, spread abroad like spilt milk. She would not run the hazard of losing
+her way by plunging into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts
+of the woodland, but followed a more open course, which eventually brought her
+to the highway. Once here, she ran along with great speed, animated by a
+devoted purpose which had much about it that was stoical; and it was with
+scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour&rsquo;s progress, she
+passed over Rubdown Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and that same
+house, out of which she had fled a few days before in irresistible alarm. But
+that had happened which, above all other things of chance and change, could
+make her deliberately frustrate her plan of flight and sink all regard of
+personal consequences.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One speciality of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s was respected by Grace as much as
+ever&mdash;his professional skill. In this she was right. Had his persistence
+equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic and fitful thing it was,
+fame and fortune need never have remained a wish with him. His freedom from
+conventional errors and crusted prejudices had, indeed, been such as to retard
+rather than accelerate his advance in Hintock and its neighborhood, where
+people could not believe that nature herself effected cures, and that the
+doctor&rsquo;s business was only to smooth the way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father&rsquo;s house, now
+again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he had already gone away.
+Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about Winterborne&rsquo;s
+residence a pervasive lightness had hung in the damp autumn sky, in spite of
+the vault of cloud, signifying that a moon of some age was shining above its
+arch. The two white gates were distinct, and the white balls on the pillars,
+and the puddles and damp ruts left by the recent rain, had a cold, corpse-eyed
+luminousness. She entered by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the
+wing wherein the apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate,
+till she stood under a window which, if her husband were in the house, gave
+light to his bedchamber.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of herself. Could
+she call to her presence the very cause of all her foregoing troubles?
+Alas!&mdash;old Jones was seven miles off; Giles was possibly dying&mdash;what
+else could she do?
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than by exercise,
+that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the panes, and waited to see the
+result. The night-bell which had been fixed when Fitzpiers first took up his
+residence there still remained; but as it had fallen into disuse with the
+collapse of his practice, and his elopement, she did not venture to pull it
+now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. In half a
+minute the window was opened, and a voice said &ldquo;Yes?&rdquo; inquiringly.
+Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. Her effort was now to
+disguise her own accents.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Doctor,&rdquo; she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command,
+&ldquo;a man is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough, and
+you must go to him at once&mdash;in all mercy!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I will, readily.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed her for a
+moment. But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief of a man who, having got
+back in a mood of contrition, from erratic abandonment to fearful joys, found
+the soothing routine of professional practice unexpectedly opening anew to him.
+The highest desire of his soul just now was for a respectable life of
+painstaking. If this, his first summons since his return, had been to attend
+upon a cat or dog, he would scarcely have refused it in the circumstances.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know the way?&rdquo; she asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One-chimney Hut,&rdquo; she repeated.
+&ldquo;And&mdash;immediately!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, yes,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace remained no longer. She passed out of the white gate without slamming it,
+and hastened on her way back. Her husband, then, had re-entered her
+father&rsquo;s house. How he had been able to effect a reconciliation with the
+old man, what were the terms of the treaty between them, she could not so much
+as conjecture. Some sort of truce must have been entered into, that was all she
+could say. But close as the question lay to her own life, there was a more
+urgent one which banished it; and she traced her steps quickly along the
+meandering track-ways.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. The state of his mind,
+over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. At Grace&rsquo;s first
+remark he had not recognized or suspected her presence; but as she went on, he
+was awakened to the great resemblance of the speaker&rsquo;s voice to his
+wife&rsquo;s. He had taken in such good faith the statement of the household on
+his arrival, that she had gone on a visit for a time because she could not at
+once bring her mind to be reconciled to him, that he could not quite actually
+believe this comer to be she. It was one of the features of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+repentant humor at this date that, on receiving the explanation of her absence,
+he had made no attempt to outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody
+had informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his entry, and of
+all that might have been inferred from her precipitancy.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to follow her
+either. He sympathized with her flight, much as he deplored it; moreover, the
+tragic color of the antecedent events that he had been a great means of
+creating checked his instinct to interfere. He prayed and trusted that she had
+got into no danger on her way (as he supposed) to Sherton, and thence to
+Exbury, if that were the place she had gone to, forbearing all inquiry which
+the strangeness of her departure would have made natural. A few months before
+this time a performance by Grace of one-tenth the magnitude of this would have
+aroused him to unwonted investigation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+domicilation there. The two men had not met face to face, but Mrs. Melbury had
+proposed herself as an intermediary, who made the surgeon&rsquo;s re-entrance
+comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and nobody asked
+questions. Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a plan of penitence, which
+had originated in circumstances hereafter to be explained; his self-humiliation
+to the very bass-string was deliberate; and as soon as a call reached him from
+the bedside of a dying man his desire was to set to work and do as much good as
+he could with the least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained from
+calling up a stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for
+One-chimney Hut on foot, as Grace had done.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap43"></a>CHAPTER XLIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached the
+sufferer. He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his hands were cold.
+As soon as she saw him there returned to her that agony of mind which the
+stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things but the
+fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more than the mere
+lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her comfort, cared more for
+her self-respect than she had thought of caring. This mood continued till she
+heard quick, smart footsteps without; she knew whose footsteps they were.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles&rsquo;s
+hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself and him.
+He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he dropped his glance
+and discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely enough, though Grace&rsquo;s
+distaste for her husband&rsquo;s company had amounted almost to dread, and
+culminated in actual flight, at this moment her last and least feeling was
+personal. Sensitive femininity was eclipsed by self-effacing purpose, and that
+it was a husband who stood there was forgotten. The first look that possessed
+her face was relief; satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated
+thought of the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that
+did not interfere with her words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he dying&mdash;is there any hope?&rdquo; she cried.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grace!&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper&mdash;more
+than invocating, if not quite deprecatory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic
+character&mdash;though that was striking enough to a man who called himself the
+husband of the sufferer&rsquo;s friend and nurse&mdash;but in its character as
+the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which he had
+figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Is he in great danger&mdash;can you save him?&rdquo; she cried again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined Winterborne as he
+stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere glance. Before he spoke he looked
+at her contemplatively as to the effect of his coming words.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is dying,&rdquo; he said, with dry precision.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What?&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will soon be all over.
+The extremities are dead already.&rdquo; His eyes still remained fixed on her;
+the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end his interest, professional
+and otherwise, in Winterborne forever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But it cannot be! He was well three days ago.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not well, I suspect. This seems like a secondary attack, which has
+followed some previous illness&mdash;possibly typhoid&mdash;it may have been
+months ago, or recently.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah&mdash;he was not well&mdash;you are right. He was ill&mdash;he was
+ill when I came.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was nothing more to do or say. She crouched down at the side of the bed,
+and Fitzpiers took a seat. Thus they remained in silence, and long as it lasted
+she never turned her eyes, or apparently her thoughts, at all to her husband.
+He occasionally murmured, with automatic authority, some slight directions for
+alleviating the pain of the dying man, which she mechanically obeyed, bending
+over him during the intervals in silent tears.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing; and that he was
+going became soon perceptible also to her. In less than an hour the delirium
+ceased; then there was an interval of somnolent painlessness and soft
+breathing, at the end of which Winterborne passed quietly away.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. &ldquo;Have you lived here long?&rdquo; said
+he.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace was wild with sorrow&mdash;with all that had befallen her&mdash;with the
+cruelties that had attacked her&mdash;with life&mdash;with Heaven. She answered
+at random. &ldquo;Yes. By what right do you ask?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think I claim any right,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, sadly.
+&ldquo;It is for you to do and say what you choose. I admit, quite as much as
+you feel, that I am a vagabond&mdash;a brute&mdash;not worthy to possess the
+smallest fragment of you. But here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient
+interest in you to make that inquiry.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He is everything to me!&rdquo; said Grace, hardly heeding her husband,
+and laying her hand reverently on the dead man&rsquo;s eyelids, where she kept
+it a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle touches, as if she were
+stroking a little bird.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where his eyes fell
+upon a few dressing necessaries that she had brought.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Grace&mdash;if I may call you so,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I have been
+already humiliated almost to the depths. I have come back since you refused to
+join me elsewhere&mdash;I have entered your father&rsquo;s house, and borne all
+that that cost me without flinching, because I have felt that I deserved
+humiliation. But is there a yet greater humiliation in store for me? You say
+you have been living here&mdash;that he is everything to you. Am I to draw from
+that the obvious, the extremest inference?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women&mdash;especially the latter. It
+was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for the cruel contumely
+which she had borne at his hands so docilely.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded
+nature which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she half
+repented. Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him. It seemed as
+if all that remained to him of life and spirit had been abstracted at a stroke.
+Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at self-control closed his mouth
+together as a vice. His determination was fairly successful, though she saw how
+very much greater than she had expected her triumph had been. Presently he
+looked across at Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would it startle you to hear,&rdquo; he said, as if he hardly had breath
+to utter the words, &ldquo;that she who was to me what he was to you is dead
+also?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dead&mdash;<i>she</i> dead?&rdquo; exclaimed Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never!&rdquo; said Grace, vehemently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went on without heeding the insinuation: &ldquo;And I came back to try to
+make it up with you&mdash;but&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking downward with the
+droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not despair. In going round
+the door his eye fell upon her once more. She was still bending over the body
+of Winterborne, her face close to the young man&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Have you been kissing him during his illness?&rdquo; asked her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Since his fevered state set in?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;On his lips?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as soon as
+possible.&rdquo; He drew a small phial from his pocket and returned to offer it
+to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace shook her head.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t do as I tell you you may soon be like him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care. I wish to die.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll put it here,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a
+ledge beside him. &ldquo;The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my
+head at any rate, among my other sins. I am now going, and I will send somebody
+to you. Your father does not know that you are here, so I suppose I shall be
+bound to tell him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon immersed in the
+silence that pervaded the spot. Grace remained kneeling and weeping, she hardly
+knew how long, and then she sat up, covered poor Giles&rsquo;s features, and
+went towards the door where her husband had stood. No sign of any other comer
+greeted her ear, the only perceptible sounds being the tiny cracklings of the
+dead leaves, which, like a feather-bed, had not yet done rising to their normal
+level where indented by the pressure of her husband&rsquo;s receding footsteps.
+It reminded her that she had been struck with the change in his aspect; the
+extremely intellectual look that had always been in his face was wrought to a
+finer phase by thinness, and a care-worn dignity had been superadded. She
+returned to Winterborne&rsquo;s side, and during her meditations another tread
+drew near the door, entered the outer room, and halted at the entrance of the
+chamber where Grace was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&mdash;Marty!&rdquo; said Grace.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. I have heard,&rdquo; said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its
+girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have bruised her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He died for me!&rdquo; murmured Grace, heavily.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty did not fully comprehend; and she answered, &ldquo;He belongs to neither
+of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him than my plainness. I
+have come to help you, ma&rsquo;am. He never cared for me, and he cared much
+for you; but he cares for us both alike now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh don&rsquo;t, don&rsquo;t, Marty!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from the other side.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you meet my hus&mdash;Mr. Fitzpiers?&rdquo;
+</p> <p>
+&ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+</p> <p>
+&ldquo;Then what brought you here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I come this way sometimes. I have got to go to the farther side of the
+wood this time of the year, and am obliged to get there before four
+o&rsquo;clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for the early baking. I
+have passed by here often at this time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace looked at her quickly. &ldquo;Then did you know I was here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, ma&rsquo;am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you tell anybody?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up to ye, and
+lodged out himself.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did you know where he lodged?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. That I couldn&rsquo;t find out. Was it at Delborough?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. It was not there, Marty. Would it had been! It would have
+saved&mdash;saved&mdash;&rdquo; To check her tears she turned, and seeing a
+book on the window-bench, took it up. &ldquo;Look, Marty, this is a Psalter. He
+was not an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect in his heart.
+Shall we read a psalm over him?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;we will&mdash;with all my heart!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at hand mainly for
+the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its leather covers. She began to
+read in that rich, devotional voice peculiar to women only on such occasions.
+When it was over, Marty said, &ldquo;I should like to pray for his soul.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So should I,&rdquo; said her companion. &ldquo;But we must not.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why? Nobody would know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense of
+making amends for having neglected him in the body; and their tender voices
+united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that a Calvinist
+might have envied. They had hardly ended when now and more numerous foot-falls
+were audible, also persons in conversation, one of whom Grace recognized as her
+father.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only such light
+as beamed from the inner one. Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were standing there.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t reproach you, Grace,&rdquo; said her father, with an
+estranged manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice. &ldquo;What has
+come upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing.
+Perhaps I drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am astonished. In
+the face of this there is nothing to be said.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber.
+&ldquo;Marty,&rdquo; she said, quickly, &ldquo;I cannot look my father in the
+face until he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell
+him&mdash;what you have told me&mdash;what you saw&mdash;that he gave up his
+house to me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a short
+absence returned. Then Grace rose, and going out asked her father if he had met
+her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And you know all that has happened?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than
+rashness&mdash;I ought to know ye better. Are you coming with me to what was
+once your home?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. I stay here with HIM. Take no account of me any more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had stood to
+Winterborne quite lately&mdash;brought about by Melbury&rsquo;s own
+contrivance&mdash;could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at her
+more recent doings. &ldquo;My daughter, things are bad,&rdquo; he rejoined.
+&ldquo;But why do you persevere to make &rsquo;em worse? What good can you do
+to Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. I don&rsquo;t
+inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your course would
+have been if he had not died, though I know there&rsquo;s no deliberate harm in
+ye. As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and I make no complaint. But I
+do say that by coming back with me now you will show no less kindness to him,
+and escape any sound of shame.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t wish to escape it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and
+hers? Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. Then why
+should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to
+the grave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it were not for my husband&mdash;&rdquo; she began, moved by his
+words. &ldquo;But how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere
+man&rsquo;s creature join him after what has taken place?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How do you know that, father?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We met him on our way here, and he told us so,&rdquo; said Mrs. Melbury.
+&ldquo;He had said something like it before. He seems very much upset
+altogether.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait for time
+and devotion to bring about his forgiveness,&rdquo; said her husband.
+&ldquo;That was it, wasn&rsquo;t it, Lucy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave him
+absolute permission,&rdquo; Mrs. Melbury added.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to Grace as it was
+unexpected; and though she did not desire his presence, she was sorry that by
+her retaliatory fiction she had given him a different reason for avoiding her.
+She made no further objections to accompanying her parents, taking them into
+the inner room to give Winterborne a last look, and gathering up the two or
+three things that belonged to her. While she was doing this the two women came
+who had been called by Melbury, and at their heels poor Creedle.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Forgive me, but I can&rsquo;t rule my mourning nohow as a man should,
+Mr. Melbury,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I ha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t seen him since
+Thursday se&rsquo;night, and have wondered for days and days where he&rsquo;s
+been keeping. There was I expecting him to come and tell me to wash out the
+cider-barrels against the making, and here was he&mdash; Well, I&rsquo;ve
+knowed him from table-high; I knowed his father&mdash;used to bide about upon
+two sticks in the sun afore he died!&mdash;and now I&rsquo;ve seen the end of
+the family, which we can ill afford to lose, wi&rsquo; such a scanty lot of
+good folk in Hintock as we&rsquo;ve got. And now Robert Creedle will be nailed
+up in parish boards &rsquo;a b&rsquo;lieve; and noboby will glutch down a sigh
+for he!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind. For a time Grace and
+her father walked side by side without speaking. It was just in the blue of the
+dawn, and the chilling tone of the sky was reflected in her cold, wet face. The
+whole wood seemed to be a house of death, pervaded by loss to its uttermost
+length and breadth. Winterborne was gone, and the copses seemed to show the
+want of him; those young trees, so many of which he had planted, and of which
+he had spoken so truly when he said that he should fall before they fell, were
+at that very moment sending out their roots in the direction that he had given
+them with his subtle hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come back to
+the house,&rdquo; said Melbury at last&mdash;&ldquo;the death of Mrs.
+Charmond.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, yes,&rdquo; said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection,
+&ldquo;he told me so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as Giles&rsquo;s. She
+was shot&mdash;by a disappointed lover. It occurred in Germany. The unfortunate
+man shot himself afterwards. He was that South Carolina gentleman of very
+passionate nature who used to haunt this place to force her to an interview,
+and followed her about everywhere. So ends the brilliant Felice
+Charmond&mdash;once a good friend to me&mdash;but no friend to you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can forgive her,&rdquo; said Grace, absently. &ldquo;Did Edgar tell
+you of this?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account of it, on the hall
+table, folded in such a way that we should see it. It will be in the Sherton
+paper this week, no doubt. To make the event more solemn still to him, he had
+just before had sharp words with her, and left her. He told Lucy this, as
+nothing about him appears in the newspaper. And the cause of the quarrel was,
+of all people, she we&rsquo;ve left behind us.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you mean Marty?&rdquo; Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily. For,
+pertinent and pointed as Melbury&rsquo;s story was, she had no heart for it
+now.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes. Marty South.&rdquo; Melbury persisted in his narrative, to divert
+her from her present grief, if possible. &ldquo;Before he went away she wrote
+him a letter, which he kept in his, pocket a long while before reading. He
+chanced to pull it out in Mrs. Charmond&rsquo;s, presence, and read it out
+loud. It contained something which teased her very much, and that led to the
+rupture. She was following him to make it up when she met with her terrible
+death.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident, which was that
+Marty South&rsquo;s letter had been concerning a certain personal adornment
+common to herself and Mrs. Charmond. Her bullet reached its billet at last. The
+scene between Fitzpiers and Felice had been sharp, as only a scene can be which
+arises out of the mortification of one woman by another in the presence of a
+lover. True, Marty had not effected it by word of mouth; the charge about the
+locks of hair was made simply by Fitzpiers reading her letter to him aloud to
+Felice in the playfully ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of
+his situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George Herbert, a
+&ldquo;flat delight.&rdquo; He had stroked those false tresses with his hand
+many a time without knowing them to be transplanted, and it was impossible when
+the discovery was so abruptly made to avoid being finely satirical, despite her
+generous disposition.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end. On his abrupt
+departure she had followed him to the station but the train was gone; and in
+travelling to Baden in search of him she had met his rival, whose reproaches
+led to an altercation, and the death of both. Of that precipitate scene of
+passion and crime Fitzpiers had known nothing till he saw an account of it in
+the papers, where, fortunately for himself, no mention was made of his prior
+acquaintance with the unhappy lady; nor was there any allusion to him in the
+subsequent inquiry, the double death being attributed to some gambling losses,
+though, in point of fact, neither one of them had visited the tables.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but one living
+thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up its tree, but, dropping
+the sweet chestnut which it carried, cried chut-chut-chut, and stamped with its
+hind legs on the ground. When the roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to
+emerge from the screen of boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her
+abstracted advance.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You clearly understand,&rdquo; she said to her step-mother some of her
+old misgiving returning, &ldquo;that I am coming back only on condition of his
+leaving as he promised? Will you let him know this, that there may be no
+mistake?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers, assured Grace
+that she need have no doubts on that point, and that he would probably be gone
+by the evening. Grace then entered with them into Melbury&rsquo;s wing of the
+house, and sat down listlessly in the parlor, while her step-mother went to
+Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon showed did honor to him,
+if anything could. Before Mrs. Melbury had returned to the room Grace, who was
+sitting on the parlor window-bench, saw her husband go from the door under the
+increasing light of morning, with a bag in his hand. While passing through the
+gate he turned his head. The firelight of the room she sat in threw her figure
+into dark relief against the window as she looked through the panes, and he
+must have seen her distinctly. In a moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he
+disappeared. At the hut she had declared that another had displaced him; and
+now she had banished him.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap44"></a>CHAPTER XLIV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The next day
+she kept her room. Old Jones was called in; he murmured some statements in
+which the words &ldquo;feverish symptoms&rdquo; occurred. Grace heard them, and
+guessed the means by which she had brought this visitation upon herself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing, wondering if she
+were really going to join him who had gone before, Grammer Oliver came to her
+bedside. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whe&rsquo;r this is meant for you to take,
+ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but I have found it on the table. It was
+left by Marty, I think, when she came this morning.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up. It was the phial left at
+the hut by her husband when he had begged her to take some drops of its
+contents if she wished to preserve herself from falling a victim to the malady
+which had pulled down Winterborne. She examined it as well as she could. The
+liquid was of an opaline hue, and bore a label with an inscription in Italian.
+He had probably got it in his wanderings abroad. She knew but little Italian,
+but could understand that the cordial was a febrifuge of some sort. Her father,
+her mother, and all the household were anxious for her recovery, and she
+resolved to obey her husband&rsquo;s directions. Whatever the risk, if any, she
+was prepared to run it. A glass of water was brought, and the drops dropped in.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable. In less than an hour she
+felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect&mdash;less inclined to fret and
+chafe and wear herself away. She took a few drops more. From that time the
+fever retreated, and went out like a damped conflagration.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How clever he is!&rdquo; she said, regretfully. &ldquo;Why could he not
+have had more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good account?
+Perhaps he has saved my useless life. But he doesn&rsquo;t know it, and
+doesn&rsquo;t care whether he has saved it or not; and on that account will
+never be told by me! Probably he only gave it to me in the arrogance of his
+skill, to show the greatness of his resources beside mine, as Elijah drew down
+fire from heaven.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon her life, Grace
+went to Marty South&rsquo;s cottage. The current of her being had again set
+towards the lost Giles Winterborne.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Marty,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;we both loved him. We will go to his
+grave together.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the village, and could be
+reached without passing through the street. In the dusk of the late September
+day they went thither by secret ways, walking mostly in silence side by side,
+each busied with her own thoughts. Grace had a trouble exceeding
+Marty&rsquo;s&mdash;that haunting sense of having put out the light of his life
+by her own hasty doings. She had tried to persuade herself that he might have
+died of his illness, even if she had not taken possession of his house.
+Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt; sometimes she did not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone down, they could
+see over the woodland for miles, and down to the vale in which he had been
+accustomed to descend every year, with his portable mill and press, to make
+cider about this time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Perhaps Grace&rsquo;s first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he could
+never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the second. On
+Marty&rsquo;s part there was the same consideration; never would she have been
+his. As no anticipation of gratified affection had been in existence while he
+was with them, there was none to be disappointed now that he had gone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she had never understood
+Giles as Marty had done. Marty South alone, of all the women in Hintock and the
+world, had approximated to Winterborne&rsquo;s level of intelligent intercourse
+with nature. In that respect she had formed the complement to him in the other
+sex, had lived as his counterpart, had subjoined her thought to his as a
+corollary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that wondrous
+world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been with these two, Giles
+and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of its finer mysteries as of
+commonplace knowledge; had been able to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary
+writing; to them the sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid
+those dense boughs, which had to Grace a touch of the uncanny, and even the
+supernatural, were simple occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they
+foreknew. They had planted together, and together they had felled; together
+they had, with the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and
+symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together made an
+alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, when brushing
+through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the tree
+whence they stretched; from the quality of the wind&rsquo;s murmur through a
+bough they could in like manner name its sort afar off. They knew by a glance
+at a trunk if its heart were sound, or tainted with incipient decay, and by the
+state of its upper twigs, the stratum that had been reached by its roots. The
+artifices of the seasons were seen by them from the conjuror&rsquo;s own point
+of view, and not from that of the spectator&rsquo;s.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He ought to have married <i>you</i>, Marty, and nobody else in the
+world!&rdquo; said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above
+strain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Marty shook her head. &ldquo;In all our out-door days and years together,
+ma&rsquo;am,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;the one thing he never spoke of to me
+was love; nor I to him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew&mdash;not
+even my father, though he came nearest knowing&mdash;the tongue of the trees
+and fruits and flowers themselves.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the hard core to
+her grief&mdash;which Marty&rsquo;s had not&mdash;remained. Had she been sure
+that Giles&rsquo;s death resulted entirely from his exposure, it would have
+driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was always that bare possibility
+that his exposure had only precipitated what was inevitable. She longed to
+believe that it had not done even this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she would be at all
+disposed to trust. Her husband was that man. Yet to ask him it would be
+necessary to detail the true conditions in which she and Winterborne had lived
+during these three or four critical days that followed her flight; and in
+withdrawing her original defiant announcement on that point, there seemed a
+weakness she did not care to show. She never doubted that Fitzpiers would
+believe her if she made a clean confession of the actual situation; but to
+volunteer the correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in
+her present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has been already
+declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace&rsquo;s fidelity could not keep
+faithful was stung into passionate throbs of interest concerning her by her
+avowal of the contrary.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously full compass if
+she were capable of such a reprisal; and, melancholy as it may be to admit the
+fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a smouldering admiration of
+her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to which he had
+retired&mdash;quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could she have known of it,
+would have been inclined to inflict upon any living creature, how much soever
+he might have wronged her. Then a sudden hope dawned upon him; he wondered if
+her affirmation were true. He asked himself whether it were not the act of a
+woman whose natural purity and innocence had blinded her to the contingencies
+of such an announcement. His wide experience of the sex had taught him that, in
+many cases, women who ventured on hazardous matters did so because they lacked
+an imagination sensuous enough to feel their full force. In this light
+Grace&rsquo;s bold avowal might merely have denoted the desperation of one who
+was a child to the realities of obliquity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers&rsquo;s mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take a
+melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock; and here he hovered
+for hours around the scene of the purest emotional experiences that he had ever
+known in his life. He walked about the woods that surrounded Melbury&rsquo;s
+house, keeping out of sight like a criminal. It was a fine evening, and on his
+way homeward he passed near Marty South&rsquo;s cottage. As usual she had
+lighted her candle without closing her shutters; he saw her within as he had
+seen her many times before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show himself, he could
+not resist speaking in to her through the half-open door. &ldquo;What are you
+doing that for, Marty?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I want to clean them. They are not mine.&rdquo; He could see,
+indeed, that they were not hers, for one was a spade, large and heavy, and
+another was a bill-hook which she could only have used with both hands. The
+spade, though not a new one, had been so completely burnished that it was
+bright as silver.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborne&rsquo;s, and he put
+the question to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She replied in the affirmative. &ldquo;I am going to keep &rsquo;em,&rdquo; she
+said, &ldquo;but I can&rsquo;t get his apple-mill and press. I wish could; it
+is going to be sold, they say.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I will buy it for you,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers. &ldquo;That will be
+making you a return for a kindness you did me.&rdquo; His glance fell upon the
+girl&rsquo;s rare-colored hair, which had grown again. &ldquo;Oh, Marty, those
+locks of yours&mdash;and that letter! But it was a kindness to send it,
+nevertheless,&rdquo; he added, musingly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+After this there was confidence between them&mdash;such confidence as there had
+never been before. Marty was shy, indeed, of speaking about the letter, and her
+motives in writing it; but she thanked him warmly for his promise of the
+cider-press. She would travel with it in the autumn season, as he had done, she
+said. She would be quite strong enough, with old Creedle as an assistant.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah! there was one nearer to him than you,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers,
+referring to Winterborne. &ldquo;One who lived where he lived, and was with him
+when he died.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true circumstances, from the
+fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were living apart, told him of
+Giles&rsquo;s generosity to Grace in giving up his house to her at the risk,
+and possibly the sacrifice, of his own life. When the surgeon heard it he
+almost envied Giles his chivalrous character. He expressed a wish to Marty that
+his visit to her should be kept secret, and went home thoughtful, feeling that
+in more that one sense his journey to Hintock had not been in vain.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He would have given much to win Grace&rsquo;s forgiveness then. But whatever he
+dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was nothing to be done yet,
+while Giles Winterborne&rsquo;s memory was green. To wait was imperative. A
+little time might melt her frozen thoughts, and lead her to look on him with
+toleration, if not with love.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap45"></a>CHAPTER XLV.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace in the
+soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had devoted
+themselves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great Hintock, and, like
+the two mourners in <i>Cymbeline</i>, sweetened his sad grave with their
+flowers and their tears. Sometimes Grace thought that it was a pity neither one
+of them had been his wife for a little while, and given the world a copy of him
+who was so valuable in their eyes. Nothing ever had brought home to her with
+such force as this death how little acquirements and culture weigh beside
+sterling personal character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer
+edge with the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at
+having had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of the
+leaf. Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs. Charmond abroad
+had waxed and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvellous escape from being dragged
+into the inquiry which followed it, through the accident of their having parted
+just before under the influence of Marty South&rsquo;s letter&mdash;the tiny
+instrument of a cause deep in nature.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her body was not brought home. It seemed to accord well with the fitful fever
+of that impassioned woman&rsquo;s life that she should not have found a native
+grave. She had enjoyed but a life-interest in the estate, which, after her
+death, passed to a relative of her husband&rsquo;s&mdash;one who knew not
+Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to blot out every vestige of her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+On a certain day in February&mdash;the cheerful day of St. Valentine, in
+fact&mdash;a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally promised
+her for that particular day a long time before.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where he had
+obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local medical man, whose
+curative principles were all wrong, though he dared not set them right. He had
+thought fit to communicate with her on that day of tender traditions to inquire
+if, in the event of his obtaining a substantial practice that he had in view
+elsewhere, she could forget the past and bring herself to join him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There the practical part ended; he then went on&mdash;
+</p>
+
+<p class="letter">
+&ldquo;My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear Grace and
+dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued. You may be absolutely
+indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have never loved any woman
+alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor you at this present moment. What
+you told me in the pride and haughtiness of your heart I never believed [this,
+by the way, was not strictly true]; but even if I had believed it, it could
+never have estranged me from you. Is there any use in telling you&mdash;no,
+there is not&mdash;that I dream of your ripe lips more frequently than I say my
+prayers; that the old familiar rustle of your dress often returns upon my mind
+till it distracts me? If you could condescend even only to see me again you
+would be breathing life into a corpse. My pure, pure Grace, modest as a
+turtledove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being present in
+your mind on this lovers&rsquo; day, I think I would almost rather have you
+hate me a little than not think of me at all. You may call my fancies
+whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that &lsquo;nature is one in love,
+and where &rsquo;tis fine it sends some instance of itself.&rsquo; I will not
+intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit happy by sending back one
+line to say that you will consent, at any rate, to a short interview. I will
+meet you and leave you as a mere acquaintance, if you will only afford me this
+slight means of making a few explanations, and of putting my position before
+you. Believe me, in spite of all you may do or feel,
+</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+Your lover always (once your husband),<br />
+<br />
+&ldquo;E.F.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which Grace
+had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having taken place
+under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary. Its perusal,
+therefore, had a certain novelty for her. She thought that, upon the whole, he
+wrote love-letters very well. But the chief rational interest of the letter to
+the reflective Grace lay in the chance that such a meeting as he proposed would
+afford her of setting her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual
+share in Winterborne&rsquo;s death. The relief of consulting a skilled mind,
+the one professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense. As
+for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which at the
+time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to admit to him
+that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself as she did when she
+made it, she had done what to her was a far more serious thing, wronged
+Winterborne&rsquo;s memory.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it, Grace
+replied to the letter. She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two conditions, of which
+the first was that the place of meeting should be the top of Rubdown Hill, the
+second that he would not object to Marty South accompanying her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers&rsquo;s
+so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting of spring
+when her brief reply came. It was one of the few pleasures that he had
+experienced of late years at all resembling those of his early youth. He
+promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and named the day and hour at
+which he would be on the spot she mentioned.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the
+well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements in their
+lives during his residence at Hintock.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret that
+seldom left him now. Whatever paths might lie open to his future, the soothing
+shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a permanent dwelling-place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings on her slighted altar
+was his first aim, and until her propitiation was complete he would constrain
+her in no way to return to him. The least reparation that he could make, in a
+case where he would gladly have made much, would be to let her feel herself
+absolutely free to choose between living with him and without him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses strange and
+mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just at present. To show
+any forwardness in suggesting a <i>modus vivendi</i> to Grace would be to put
+an end to these exotics. To be the vassal of her sweet will for a time, he
+demanded no more, and found solace in the contemplation of the soft miseries
+she caused him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers
+discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not long in
+perceiving it to be a wedding-party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the flowered
+waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern. Each of the gentler
+ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as to have with him one step,
+rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers
+recognized no other than Suke Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess;
+the small husband beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all the beauties
+of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was the chief. But he put the
+best face on the matter that he could and came on, the approaching company
+evidently discussing him and his separation from Mrs. Fitzpiers. As the couples
+closed upon him he expressed his congratulations.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit,&rdquo;
+said Tim. &ldquo;First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to here, and
+from here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round by the cross-roads
+home. Home says I, but it won&rsquo;t be that long! We be off next
+month.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Indeed. Where to?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand. Not but that he would
+have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and wanted to
+leave, so he had given way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then good-by,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers; &ldquo;I may not see you
+again.&rdquo; He shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride. &ldquo;Good-by,
+Suke,&rdquo; he said, taking her hand also. &ldquo;I wish you and your husband
+prosperity in the country you have chosen.&rdquo; With this he left them, and
+hastened on to his appointment.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise. But in restoring his
+arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming countenance had undergone a
+change. &ldquo;Holloa! me dear&mdash;what&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; said Tim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Nothing to speak o&rsquo;,&rdquo; said she. But to give the lie to her
+assertion she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon produced a
+dribbling face.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How&mdash;what the devil&rsquo;s this about!&rdquo; exclaimed the
+bridegroom.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!&rdquo; said the first
+bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke&rsquo;s eyes.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I never did like parting from people!&rdquo; said Suke, as soon as she
+could speak.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why him in particular?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;he&rsquo;s such a clever doctor, that &rsquo;tis a thousand
+pities we sha&rsquo;n&rsquo;t see him any more! There&rsquo;ll be no such
+clever doctor as he in New Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought
+o&rsquo;t got the better of my feelings!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They walked on, but Tim&rsquo;s face had grown rigid and pale, for he recalled
+slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their occurrence. The former
+boisterous laughter of the wedding-party at the groomsman&rsquo;s jokes was
+heard ringing through the woods no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill, where he
+saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand. These were the
+expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently come there by a short
+and secret path through the wood. Grace was muffled up in her winter dress, and
+he thought that she had never looked so seductive as at this moment, in the
+noontide bright but heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish-gray
+masses of brushwood around.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their glances
+met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent and gave him the
+benefit of her three-quarter face, while with courteous completeness of conduct
+he lifted his hat in a large arc. Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held
+out his hand, Grace touched it with her fingers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you something
+important,&rdquo; said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation modulating in a direction
+that she had not quite wished it to take.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am most attentive,&rdquo; said her husband. &ldquo;Shall we take to
+the wood for privacy?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public road.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+At any rate she would take his arm? This also was gravely negatived, the
+refusal being audible to Marty.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he inquired.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers&mdash;how can you ask?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Right, right,&rdquo; said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. &ldquo;It is about a matter that
+may perhaps be unpleasant to you. But I think I need not consider that too
+carefully.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Fitzpiers, heroically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne&rsquo;s death, and
+related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come upon
+him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had betaken
+himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was undergoing, all
+that he had put up with, all that he had done for her in his scrupulous
+considerateness. The retrospect brought her to tears as she asked him if he
+thought that the sin of having driven him to his death was upon her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her narrative
+indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade with her lover,
+which had at first, by her own showing, looked so grave, and he did not care to
+inquire whether that harmlessness had been the result of aim or of accident.
+With regard to her question, he declared that in his judgment no human being
+could answer it. He thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities
+turned in her favor. Winterborne&rsquo;s apparent strength, during the last
+months of his life, must have been delusive. It had often occurred that after a
+first attack of that insidious disease a person&rsquo;s apparent recovery was a
+physiological mendacity.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her knowledge of
+the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the assurances Fitzpiers gave
+her. &ldquo;Well, then, to put this case before you, and obtain your
+professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented to come here to-day,&rdquo;
+said she, when he had reached the aforesaid conclusion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;For no other reason at all?&rdquo; he asked, ruefully.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was nearly the whole.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding in the
+grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice, &ldquo;And yet
+I love you more than ever I loved you in my life.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate lips as if
+to keep them in subjection.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a different kind of love altogether,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Less
+passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the material conditions of
+the object at all; much to do with her character and goodness, as revealed by
+closer observation. &lsquo;Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with
+dearer love.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s out of <i>Measure for Measure</i>,&rdquo; said she,
+slyly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh yes&mdash;I meant it as a citation,&rdquo; blandly replied Fitzpiers.
+&ldquo;Well, then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart
+again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled the past
+at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of Winterborne.
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t ask it! My heart is in the grave with Giles,&rdquo; she
+replied, stanchly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Mine is with you&mdash;in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to
+that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the
+grave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;that&rsquo;s not so,&rdquo; returned Grace, quickly, and
+moved to go away from him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, dearest Grace,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you have condescended to
+come; and I thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long state
+of probation you would be generous. But if there can be no hope of our getting
+completely reconciled, treat me gently&mdash;wretch though I am.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear you
+think so.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace&rsquo;s heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the fear
+that she might mislead him. &ldquo;I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel
+contempt,&rdquo; she said, evasively. &ldquo;And all I feel is
+lovelessness.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I have been very bad, I know,&rdquo; he returned. &ldquo;But unless you
+can really love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you forever. I
+don&rsquo;t want you to receive me again for duty&rsquo;s sake, or anything of
+that sort. If I had not cared more for your affection and forgiveness than my
+own personal comfort, I should never have come back here. I could have obtained
+a practice at a distance, and have lived my own life without coldness or
+reproach. But I have chosen to return to the one spot on earth where my name is
+tarnished&mdash;to enter the house of a man from whom I have had worse
+treatment than from any other man alive&mdash;all for you!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who began to look
+as if she thought she had been shockingly severe.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Before you go,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;I want to know your pleasure
+about me&mdash;what you wish me to do, or not to do.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. Far be it
+from me to advise. But I will think it over. I rather need advice myself than
+stand in a position to give it.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;<i>You</i> don&rsquo;t need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever
+lived. If you did&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you give it to me?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Would you act upon what I gave?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not a fair inquiry,&rdquo; said she, smiling despite her
+gravity. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind hearing it&mdash;what you do really think
+the most correct and proper course for me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be
+provoking you to remonstrances.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press him further,
+and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, when he interrupted her
+with, &ldquo;Oh, one moment, dear Grace&mdash;you will meet me again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight. Fitzpiers expostulated at
+the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness with which she entreated him not
+to come sooner made him say hastily that he submitted to her will&mdash;that he
+would regard her as a friend only, anxious for his reform and well-being, till
+such time as she might allow him to exceed that privilege.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not won her
+confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all his deductions from
+previous experience, to find that this girl, though she had been married to
+him, could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain fascination that it carried
+with it, his reflections were sombre as he went homeward; he saw how deep had
+been his offence to produce so great a wariness in a gentle and once
+unsuspicious soul.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her. To be an object of
+misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was what he could not
+endure the thought of. Life as it stood was more tolerable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She would fain have consulted
+Marty on the question of Platonic relations with her former husband, as she
+preferred to regard him. But Marty showed no great interest in their affairs,
+so Grace said nothing. They came onward, and saw Melbury standing at the scene
+of the felling which had been audible to them, when, telling Marty that she
+wished her meeting with Mr. Fitzpiers to be kept private, she left the girl to
+join her father. At any rate, she would consult him on the expediency of
+occasionally seeing her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in earlier days.
+&ldquo;I was thinking of you when you came up,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I have
+considered that what has happened is for the best. Since your husband is gone
+away, and seems not to wish to trouble you, why, let him go, and drop out of
+your life. Many women are worse off. You can live here comfortably enough, and
+he can emigrate, or do what he likes for his good. I wouldn&rsquo;t mind
+sending him the further sum of money he might naturally expect to come to him,
+so that you may not be bothered with him any more. He could hardly have gone on
+living here without speaking to me, or meeting me; and that would have been
+very unpleasant on both sides.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense of weakness in following
+them by saying that she had just met her husband by appointment. &ldquo;Then
+you would advise me not to communicate with him?&rdquo; she observed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I shall never advise ye again. You are your own mistress&mdash;do as you
+like. But my opinion is that if you don&rsquo;t live with him, you had better
+live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playing bopeep. You sent him
+away; and now he&rsquo;s gone. Very well; trouble him no more.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace felt a guiltiness&mdash;she hardly knew why&mdash;and made no confession.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap46"></a>CHAPTER XLVI.</h2>
+
+<p>
+The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal. She
+became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her marriage But
+her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit to Winterborne&rsquo;s
+grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious strictness, for the purpose of
+putting snow-drops, primroses, and other vernal flowers thereon as they came.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father&rsquo;s
+garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted into the wood.
+A slight foot-path led along here, forming a secret way to either of the houses
+by getting through its boundary hedge. Grace was just about to adopt this mode
+of entry when a figure approached along the path, and held up his hand to
+detain her. It was her husband.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am delighted,&rdquo; he said, coming up out of breath; and there
+seemed no reason to doubt his words. &ldquo;I saw you some way off&mdash;I was
+afraid you would go in before I could reach you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is a week before the time,&rdquo; said she, reproachfully. &ldquo;I
+said a fortnight from the last meeting.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;My dear, you don&rsquo;t suppose I could wait a fortnight without trying
+to get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to meet me! Would it make
+you angry to know that I have been along this path at dusk three or four times
+since our last meeting? Well, how are you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain it a moment
+longer than mere formality required, she made it smaller, so that it slipped
+away from him, with again that same alarmed look which always followed his
+attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not yet out of the elusive
+mood; not yet to be treated presumingly; and he was correspondingly careful to
+tranquillize her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. &ldquo;I had no idea you came
+so often,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;How far do you come from?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire, people
+will know that I come; and my success with you so far has not been great enough
+to justify such overtness. Now, my dear one&mdash;as I <i>must</i> call
+you&mdash;I put it to you: will you see me a little oftener as the spring
+advances?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question, said,
+&ldquo;I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give up those
+strange studies that used to distract you so much. I am sure you would get
+on.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask you to
+burn&mdash;or, at least, get rid of&mdash;all my philosophical literature. It
+is in the bookcases in your rooms. The fact is, I never cared much for abstruse
+studies.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am so glad to hear you say that. And those other books&mdash;those
+piles of old plays&mdash;what good are they to a medical man?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;None whatever!&rdquo; he replied, cheerfully. &ldquo;Sell them at
+Sherton for what they will fetch.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid spellings of
+&lsquo;filz&rsquo; and &lsquo;ung&rsquo; and &lsquo;ilz&rsquo; and
+&lsquo;mary&rsquo; and &lsquo;ma foy?&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t been reading them, Grace?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;I just looked into them, that was all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Make a bonfire of &rsquo;em directly you get home. I meant to do it
+myself. I can&rsquo;t think what possessed me ever to collect them. I have only
+a few professional hand-books now, and am quite a practical man. I am in hopes
+of having some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think you
+could&mdash;come to me again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I would rather you did not press me on that just now,&rdquo; she
+replied, with some feeling. &ldquo;You have said you mean to lead a new,
+useful, effectual life; but I should like to see you put it in practice for a
+little while before you address that query to me. Besides&mdash;I could not
+live with you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace was silent a few instants. &ldquo;I go with Marty to Giles&rsquo;s grave.
+We swore we would show him that devotion. And I mean to keep it up.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I wouldn&rsquo;t mind that at all. I have no right to expect
+anything else, and I will not wish you to keep away. I liked the man as well as
+any I ever knew. In short, I would accompany you a part of the way to the
+place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while I waited till you came back.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then you haven&rsquo;t given up smoking?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;ahem&mdash;no. I have thought of doing so, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question about
+smoking had been to effect a diversion. Presently she said, firmly, and with a
+moisture in her eye that he could not see, as her mind returned to poor
+Giles&rsquo;s &ldquo;frustrate ghost,&rdquo; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like
+you&mdash;to speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak lightly. To be
+frank with you&mdash;quite frank&mdash;I think of him as my betrothed lover
+still. I cannot help it. So that it would be wrong for me to join you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers was now uneasy. &ldquo;You say your betrothed lover still,&rdquo; he
+rejoined. &ldquo;When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we
+common people say?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;When you were away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How could that be?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. &ldquo;It was
+when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about to be
+annulled, and that he could then marry me. So I encouraged him to love
+me.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right in telling it.
+Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute sincerity kept up his
+affectionate admiration for her under the pain of the rebuff. Time had been
+when the avowal that Grace had deliberately taken steps to replace him would
+have brought him no sorrow. But she so far dominated him now that he could not
+bear to hear her words, although the object of her high regard was no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It is rough upon me&mdash;that!&rdquo; he said, bitterly. &ldquo;Oh,
+Grace&mdash;I did not know you&mdash;tried to get rid of me! I suppose it is of
+no use, but I ask, cannot you hope to&mdash;find a little love in your heart
+for me again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!&rdquo; she replied,
+with illogical ruefulness. &ldquo;And I don&rsquo;t see why you should mind my
+having had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have had so
+many.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of them put
+together, and that&rsquo;s what you will not tell me!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am sorry; but I fear I cannot,&rdquo; she said, sighing again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I wonder if you ever will?&rdquo; He looked musingly into her indistinct
+face, as if he would read the future there. &ldquo;Now have pity, and tell me:
+will you try?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;To love you again?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; if you can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know how to reply,&rdquo; she answered, her embarrassment
+proving her truth. &ldquo;Will you promise to leave me quite free as to seeing
+you or not seeing you?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Certainly. Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first promise in
+that respect?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was obliged to admit that he had not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave,&rdquo;
+said he, with playful sadness. &ldquo;It has been there a long time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She faintly shook her head, but said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll try to think of you
+more&mdash;if I can.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked her when she
+would meet him again.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;As we arranged&mdash;in a fortnight.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If it must be a fortnight it must!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;This time at least. I&rsquo;ll consider by the day I see you again if I
+can shorten the interval.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to look at
+your window.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You must do as you like about that. Good-night.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Say &lsquo;husband.&rsquo;&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but exclaiming, &ldquo;No, no;
+I cannot,&rdquo; slipped through the garden-hedge and disappeared.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt the
+precincts of the dwelling. But his persistence in this course did not result in
+his seeing her much oftener than at the fortnightly interval which she had
+herself marked out as proper. At these times, however, she punctually appeared,
+and as the spring wore on the meetings were kept up, though their character
+changed but little with the increase in their number.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs family&mdash;father, son,
+and now son&rsquo;s wife&mdash;aligned with the larger one of the timber-dealer
+at its upper end; and when young Tim, after leaving work at Melbury&rsquo;s,
+stood at dusk in the little bower at the corner of his enclosure to smoke a
+pipe, he frequently observed the surgeon pass along the outside track
+before-mentioned. Fitzpiers always walked loiteringly, pensively, looking with
+a sharp eye into the gardens one after another as he proceeded; for Fitzpiers
+did not wish to leave the now absorbing spot too quickly, after travelling so
+far to reach it; hoping always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately
+desired to take to his arms anew.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along the garden
+boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they boded. It was, naturally,
+quite out of his power to divine the singular, sentimental revival in
+Fitzpiers&rsquo;s heart; the fineness of tissue which could take a deep,
+emotional&mdash;almost also an artistic&mdash;pleasure in being the yearning
+<i>innamorato</i> of a woman he once had deserted, would have seemed an
+absurdity to the young sawyer. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers were separated; therefore
+the question of affection as between them was settled. But his Suke had, since
+that meeting on their marriage-day, repentantly admitted, to the urgency of his
+questioning, a good deal concerning her past levities. Putting all things
+together, he could hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers&rsquo;s mysterious visits
+to this spot with Suke&rsquo;s residence under his roof. But he made himself
+fairly easy: the vessel in which they were about to emigrate sailed that month;
+and then Suke would be out of Fitzpiers&rsquo;s way forever.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure arrived. They were
+pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to them by Tim&rsquo;s father,
+after a busy day of preparation, which left them weary. In a corner stood their
+boxes, crammed and corded, their large case for the hold having already been
+sent away. The firelight shone upon Suke&rsquo;s fine face and form as she
+stood looking into it, and upon the face of Tim seated in a corner, and upon
+the walls of his father&rsquo;s house, which he was beholding that night almost
+for the last time.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tim Tangs was not happy. This scheme of emigration was dividing him from his
+father&mdash;for old Tangs would on no account leave Hintock&mdash;and had it
+not been for Suke&rsquo;s reputation and his own dignity, Tim would at the last
+moment have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back part of the room he
+regarded her moodily, and the fire and the boxes. One thing he had particularly
+noticed this evening&mdash;she was very restless; fitful in her actions, unable
+to remain seated, and in a marked degree depressed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She sighed involuntarily. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know but that I be,&rdquo; she
+answered. &ldquo;&rsquo;Tis natural, isn&rsquo;t it, when one is going
+away?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But you wasn&rsquo;t born here as I was.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;There&rsquo;s folk left behind that you&rsquo;d fain have with
+&rsquo;ee, I reckon?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why do you think that?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen things and I&rsquo;ve heard things; and, Suke, I say
+&rsquo;twill be a good move for me to get &rsquo;ee away. I don&rsquo;t mind
+his leavings abroad, but I do mind &rsquo;em at home.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Suke&rsquo;s face was not changed from its aspect of listless indifference by
+the words. She answered nothing; and shortly after he went out for his
+customary pipe of tobacco at the top of the garden.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to the gentleman of
+Tim&rsquo;s suspicions, but in a different&mdash;and it must be added in
+justice to her&mdash;more innocent sense than he supposed, judging from former
+doings. She had accidentally discovered that Fitzpiers was in the habit of
+coming secretly once or twice a week to Hintock, and knew that this evening was
+a favorite one of the seven for his journey. As she was going next day to leave
+the country, Suke thought there could be no great harm in giving way to a
+little sentimentality by obtaining a glimpse of him quite unknown to himself or
+to anybody, and thus taking a silent last farewell. Aware that
+Fitzpiers&rsquo;s time for passing was at hand she thus betrayed her feeling.
+No sooner, therefore, had Tim left the room than she let herself noiselessly
+out of the house, and hastened to the corner of the garden, whence she could
+witness the surgeon&rsquo;s transit across the scene&mdash;if he had not
+already gone by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim lounging in the arbor of the opposite
+corner, though he was hidden from her. He saw her stealthily climb into the
+hedge, and so ensconce herself there that nobody could have the least doubt her
+purpose was to watch unseen for a passer-by.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He went across to the spot and stood behind her. Suke started, having in her
+blundering way forgotten that he might be near. She at once descended from the
+hedge.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;So he&rsquo;s coming to-night,&rdquo; said Tim, laconically. &ldquo;And
+we be always anxious to see our dears.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He <i>is</i> coming to-night,&rdquo; she replied, with defiance.
+&ldquo;And we <i>be</i> anxious for our dears.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then will you step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine &rsquo;ee?
+We&rsquo;ve to mouster by half-past three to-morrow, and if we don&rsquo;t get
+to bed by eight at latest our faces will be as long as clock-cases all
+day.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly down the garden
+to the house, where he heard the door-latch click behind her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tim was incensed beyond measure. His marriage had so far been a total failure,
+a source of bitter regret; and the only course for improving his case, that of
+leaving the country, was a sorry, and possibly might not be a very effectual
+one. Do what he would, his domestic sky was likely to be overcast to the end of
+the day. Thus he brooded, and his resentment gathered force. He craved a means
+of striking one blow back at the cause of his cheerless plight, while he was
+still on the scene of his discomfiture. For some minutes no method suggested
+itself, and then he had an idea.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and entered the
+one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly been the dwelling of a
+game-keeper. Tim descended the path to the back of the house, where only an old
+woman lived at present, and reaching the wall he stopped. Owing to the slope of
+the ground the roof-eaves of the linhay were here within touch, and he thrust
+his arm up under them, feeling about in the space on the top of the wall-plate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah, I thought my memory didn&rsquo;t deceive me!&rdquo; he lipped
+silently.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object curiously framed in iron,
+which clanked as he moved it. It was about three feet in length and half as
+wide. Tim contemplated it as well as he could in the dying light of day, and
+raked off the cobwebs with his hand.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;That will spoil his pretty shins for&rsquo;n, I reckon!&rdquo; he said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was a man-trap.
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap47"></a>CHAPTER XLVII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to the
+excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic torture, the creator
+of the man-trap would occupy a very respectable if not a very high place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular form of
+man-trap of which this found in the keeper&rsquo;s out-house was a specimen.
+For there were other shapes and other sizes, instruments which, if placed in a
+row beside one of the type disinterred by Tim, would have worn the subordinate
+aspect of the bears, wild boars, or wolves in a travelling menagerie, as
+compared with the leading lion or tiger. In short, though many varieties had
+been in use during those centuries which we are accustomed to look back upon as
+the true and only period of merry England&mdash;in the rural districts more
+especially&mdash;and onward down to the third decade of the nineteenth century,
+this model had borne the palm, and had been most usually followed when the
+orchards and estates required new ones.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted
+landlords&mdash;quite contemptible in their clemency. The jaws of these
+resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but gums.
+There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts, probably devised by the
+middle-natured squires, or those under the influence of their wives: two inches
+of mercy, two inches of cruelty, two inches of mere nip, two inches of probe,
+and so on, through the whole extent of the jaws. There were also, as a class
+apart, the bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh, but only crushed the
+bone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid impression that it was
+endowed with life. It exhibited the combined aspects of a shark, a crocodile,
+and a scorpion. Each tooth was in the form of a tapering spine, two and a
+quarter inches long, which, when the jaws were closed, stood in alternation
+from this side and from that. When they were open, the two halves formed a
+complete circle between two and three feet in diameter, the plate or
+treading-place in the midst being about a foot square, while from beneath
+extended in opposite directions the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs,
+each one being of a stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight
+of the body when forcing it down.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered when the gin
+and others like it were in use. Tim Tangs&rsquo;s great-uncle had endured a
+night of six hours in this very trap, which lamed him for life. Once a keeper
+of Hintock woods set it on the track of a poacher, and afterwards, coming back
+that way, forgetful of what he had done, walked into it himself. The wound
+brought on lockjaw, of which he died. This event occurred during the thirties,
+and by the year 1840 the use of such implements was well-nigh discontinued in
+the neighborhood. But being made entirely of iron, they by no means
+disappeared, and in almost every village one could be found in some nook or
+corner as readily as this was found by Tim. It had, indeed, been a fearful
+amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads&mdash;especially those who had a dim
+sense of becoming renowned poachers when they reached their prime&mdash;to drag
+out this trap from its hiding, set it, and throw it with billets of wood, which
+were penetrated by the teeth to the depth of near an inch.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the hinges and springs were
+still perfect, he shouldered it without more ado, and returned with his burden
+to his own garden, passing on through the hedge to the path immediately outside
+the boundary. Here, by the help of a stout stake, he set the trap, and laid it
+carefully behind a bush while he went forward to reconnoitre. As has been
+stated, nobody passed this way for days together sometimes; but there was just
+a possibility that some other pedestrian than the one in request might arrive,
+and it behooved Tim to be careful as to the identity of his victim.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to the right, he reached a
+ridge whereon a large and thick holly grew. Beyond this for some distance the
+wood was more open, and the course which Fitzpiers must pursue to reach the
+point, if he came to-night, was visible a long way forward.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody. Then there shaped itself
+a spot out of the dim mid-distance, between the masses of brushwood on either
+hand. And it enlarged, and Tim could hear the brushing of feet over the tufts
+of sour-grass. The airy gait revealed Fitzpiers even before his exact outline
+could be seen.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side of the hill, till he was
+again at the head of his own garden. It was the work of a few moments to drag
+out the man-trap, very gently&mdash;that the plate might not be disturbed
+sufficiently to throw it&mdash;to a space between a pair of young oaks which,
+rooted in contiguity, grew apart upward, forming a V-shaped opening between;
+and, being backed up by bushes, left this as the only course for a
+foot-passenger. In it he laid the trap with the same gentleness of handling,
+locked the chain round one of the trees, and finally slid back the guard which
+was placed to keep the gin from accidentally catching the arms of him who set
+it, or, to use the local and better word, &ldquo;toiled&rdquo; it.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Having completed these arrangements, Tim sprang through the adjoining hedge of
+his father&rsquo;s garden, ran down the path, and softly entered the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon as he had bolted the
+door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his boots at the foot of the stairs, and
+retired likewise, without lighting a candle. His object seemed to be to undress
+as soon as possible. Before, however, he had completed the operation, a long
+cry resounded without&mdash;penetrating, but indescribable.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; said Suke, starting up in bed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Sounds as if somebody had caught a hare in his gin.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;It was not a hare, &rsquo;twas louder.
+Hark!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do &rsquo;ee get to sleep,&rdquo; said Tim. &ldquo;How be you going to
+wake at half-past three else?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She lay down and was silent. Tim stealthily opened the window and listened.
+Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation of the various species
+of trees around the premises he could hear the twitching of a chain from the
+spot whereon he had set the man-trap. But further human sound there was none.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Tim was puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not calculated upon a cry;
+but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to essay an answer, for Hintock was
+dead to him already. In half a dozen hours he would be out of its precincts for
+life, on his way to the antipodes. He closed the window and lay down.
+</p>
+
+<p class="p2">
+The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had been operating
+actively elsewhere. Awaiting in her father&rsquo;s house the minute of her
+appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers deliberated on many things.
+Should she inform her father before going out that the estrangement of herself
+and Edgar was not so complete as he had imagined, and deemed desirable for her
+happiness? If she did so she must in some measure become the apologist of her
+husband, and she was not prepared to go so far.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity. He certainly had
+changed. He had at his worst times always been gentle in his manner towards
+her. Could it be that she might make of him a true and worthy husband yet? She
+had married him; there was no getting over that; and ought she any longer to
+keep him at a distance? His suave deference to her lightest whim on the
+question of his comings and goings, when as her lawful husband he might show a
+little independence, was a trait in his character as unexpected as it was
+engaging. If she had been his empress, and he her thrall, he could not have
+exhibited a more sensitive care to avoid intruding upon her against her will.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned to the
+marriage-service. Reading it slowly through, she became quite appalled at her
+recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered what awfully solemn promises she
+had made him at those chancel steps not so very long ago.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person&rsquo;s conscience might
+be bound by vows made without at the time a full recognition of their force.
+That particular sentence, beginning &ldquo;Whom God hath joined
+together,&rdquo; was a staggerer for a gentlewoman of strong devotional
+sentiment. She wondered whether God really did join them together. Before she
+had done deliberating the time of her engagement drew near, and she went out of
+the house almost at the moment that Tim Tangs retired to his own.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as follows.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Two hundred yards to the right of the upper end of Tangs&rsquo;s garden
+Fitzpiers was still advancing, having now nearly reached the summit of the
+wood-clothed ridge, the path being the actual one which further on passed
+between the two young oaks. Thus far it was according to Tim&rsquo;s
+conjecture. But about two hundred yards to the left, or rather less, was
+arising a condition which he had not divined, the emergence of Grace as
+aforesaid from the upper corner of her father&rsquo;s garden, with the view of
+meeting Tim&rsquo;s intended victim. Midway between husband and wife was the
+diabolical trap, silent, open, ready.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers&rsquo;s walk that night had been cheerful, for he was convinced that
+the slow and gentle method he had adopted was promising success. The very
+restraint that he was obliged to exercise upon himself, so as not to kill the
+delicate bud of returning confidence, fed his flame. He walked so much more
+rapidly than Grace that, if they continued advancing as they had begun, he
+would reach the trap a good half-minute before she could reach the same spot.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+But here a new circumstance came in; to escape the unpleasantness of being
+watched or listened to by lurkers&mdash;naturally curious by reason of their
+strained relations&mdash;they had arranged that their meeting for to-night
+should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above named. So soon, accordingly, as
+Fitzpiers reached the tree he stood still to await her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He had not paused under the prickly foliage more than two minutes when he
+thought he heard a scream from the other side of the ridge. Fitzpiers wondered
+what it could mean; but such wind as there was just now blew in an adverse
+direction, and his mood was light. He set down the origin of the sound to one
+of the superstitious freaks or frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts that
+still survived in Hintock from old-English times; and waited on where he stood
+till ten minutes had passed. Feeling then a little uneasy, his mind reverted to
+the scream; and he went forward over the summit and down the embowered incline,
+till he reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow opening between them.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell. Stretching down his hand to ascertain the
+obstruction, it came in contact with a confused mass of silken drapery and
+iron-work that conveyed absolutely no explanatory idea to his mind at all. It
+was but the work of a moment to strike a match; and then he saw a sight which
+congealed his blood.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part of a woman&rsquo;s
+clothing&mdash;a patterned silk skirt&mdash;gripped with such violence that the
+iron teeth had passed through it, skewering its tissue in a score of places. He
+immediately recognized the skirt as that of one of his wife&rsquo;s
+gowns&mdash;the gown that she had worn when she met him on the very last
+occasion.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when examining the
+collection at Hintock House, and the conception instantly flashed through him
+that Grace had been caught, taken out mangled by some chance passer, and
+carried home, some of her clothes being left behind in the difficulty of
+getting her free. The shock of this conviction, striking into the very current
+of high hope, was so great that he cried out like one in corporal agony, and in
+his misery bowed himself down to the ground.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had undergone
+since his sins against Grace first began, not any even approximated in
+intensity to this.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, my own&mdash;my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven&mdash;it is too much,
+this!&rdquo; he cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessories
+of her he deplored.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to any one who
+might have been there to hear it; and one there was. Right and left of the
+narrow pass between the oaks were dense bushes; and now from behind these a
+female figure glided, whose appearance even in the gloom was, though graceful
+in outline, noticeably strange.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She was in white up to the waist, and figured above. She was, in short, Grace,
+his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the gin retained.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be grieved about me&mdash;don&rsquo;t, dear Edgar!&rdquo;
+she exclaimed, rushing up and bending over him. &ldquo;I am not hurt a bit! I
+was coming on to find you after I had released myself, but I heard footsteps;
+and I hid away, because I was without some of my clothing, and I did not know
+who the person might be.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less unpremeditated
+by him than it was irresistible by her, and would have been so by any woman not
+of Amazonian strength. He clasped his arms completely round, pressed her to his
+breast, and kissed her passionately.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You are not dead!&mdash;you are not hurt! Thank God&mdash;thank
+God!&rdquo; he said, almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror
+of his apprehension. &ldquo;Grace, my wife, my love, how is this&mdash;what has
+happened?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I was coming on to you,&rdquo; she said as distinctly as she could in
+the half-smothered state of her face against his. &ldquo;I was trying to be as
+punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late I ran along the path
+very swiftly&mdash;fortunately for myself. Just when I had passed between these
+trees I felt something clutch at my dress from behind with a noise, and the
+next moment I was pulled backward by it, and fell to the ground. I screamed
+with terror, thinking it was a man lying down there to murder me, but the next
+moment I discovered it was iron, and that my clothes were caught in a trap. I
+pulled this way and that, but the thing would not let go, drag it as I would,
+and I did not know what to do. I did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as
+I wished nobody to know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no
+other plan than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a
+strange accident had happened to me. But when I had just freed myself by
+leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being sure it was you, I did
+not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I hid away.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs would
+have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Or yours, if you had got here first,&rdquo; said she, beginning to
+realize the whole ghastliness of the possibility. &ldquo;Oh, Edgar, there has
+been an Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be thankful indeed!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He continued to press his face to hers. &ldquo;You are mine&mdash;mine again
+now.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She gently owned that she supposed she was. &ldquo;I heard what you said when
+you thought I was injured,&rdquo; she went on, shyly, &ldquo;and I know that a
+man who could suffer as you were suffering must have a tender regard for me.
+But how does this awful thing come here?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I suppose it has something to do with poachers.&rdquo; Fitzpiers was
+still so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to sit awhile,
+and it was not until Grace said, &ldquo;If I could only get my skirt out nobody
+would know anything about it,&rdquo; that he bestirred himself.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of the trap, they
+pressed them down sufficiently to insert across the jaws a billet which they
+dragged from a faggot near at hand; and it was then possible to extract the
+silk mouthful from the monster&rsquo;s bite, creased and pierced with many
+holes, but not torn. Fitzpiers assisted her to put it on again; and when her
+customary contours were thus restored they walked on together, Grace taking his
+arm, till he effected an improvement by clasping it round her waist.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no further
+attempt at reserve. &ldquo;I would ask you to come into the house,&rdquo; she
+said, &ldquo;but my meetings with you have been kept secret from my father, and
+I should like to prepare him.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Never mind, dearest. I could not very well have accepted the invitation.
+I shall never live here again&mdash;as much for your sake as for mine. I have
+news to tell you on this very point, but my alarm had put it out of my head. I
+have bought a practice, or rather a partnership, in the Midlands, and I must go
+there in a week to take up permanent residence. My poor old great-aunt died
+about eight months ago, and left me enough to do this. I have taken a little
+furnished house for a time, till we can get one of our own.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He described the place, and the surroundings, and the view from the windows,
+and Grace became much interested. &ldquo;But why are you not there now?&rdquo;
+she said.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have your promise.
+Now, darling, you will accompany me there&mdash;will you not? To-night has
+settled that.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Grace&rsquo;s tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay. They went on
+together.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the reunion which that event
+had forced on, combined to render Grace oblivious of the direction of their
+desultory ramble, till she noticed they were in an encircled glade in the
+densest part of the wood, whereon the moon, that had imperceptibly added its
+rays to the scene, shone almost vertically. It was an exceptionally soft, balmy
+evening for the time of year, which was just that transient period in the May
+month when beech-trees have suddenly unfolded large limp young leaves of the
+softness of butterflies&rsquo; wings. Boughs bearing such leaves hung low
+around, and completely enclosed them, so that it was as if they were in a great
+green vase, which had moss for its bottom and leaf sides.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The clouds having been packed in the west that evening so as to retain the
+departing glare a long while, the hour had seemed much earlier than it was. But
+suddenly the question of time occurred to her.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I must go back,&rdquo; she said; and without further delay they set
+their faces towards Hintock. As they walked he examined his watch by the aid of
+the now strong moonlight.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;By the gods, I think I have lost my train!&rdquo; said Fitzpiers.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Dear me&mdash;whereabouts are we?&rdquo; said she.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Two miles in the direction of Sherton.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then do you hasten on, Edgar. I am not in the least afraid. I recognize
+now the part of the wood we are in and I can find my way back quite easily.
+I&rsquo;ll tell my father that we have made it up. I wish I had not kept our
+meetings so private, for it may vex him a little to know I have been seeing
+you. He is getting old and irritable, that was why I did not. Good-by.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I cannot
+possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let me take care
+of you.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But what will my father think has become of me? He does not know in the
+least where I am&mdash;he thinks I only went into the garden for a few
+minutes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He will surely guess&mdash;somebody has seen me for certain. I&rsquo;ll
+go all the way back with you to-morrow.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But that newly done-up place&mdash;the Earl of Wessex!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;If you are so very particular about the publicity I will stay at the
+Three Tuns.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh no&mdash;it is not that I am particular&mdash;but I haven&rsquo;t a
+brush or comb or anything!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2><a name="chap48"></a>CHAPTER XLVIII.</h2>
+
+<p>
+All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, &ldquo;I wonder
+where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I know her bide
+out like this! She surely said she was going into the garden to get some
+parsley.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but could find
+no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the cottages of such of his
+workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs&rsquo;s because he knew the
+young people were to rise early to leave. In these inquiries one of the
+men&rsquo;s wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact that she had heard a
+scream in the wood, though from which direction she could not say.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+This set Melbury&rsquo;s fears on end. He told the men to light lanterns, and
+headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the last moment with quite
+a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not be persuaded to leave
+behind, and the company being joined by the hollow-turner and the man who kept
+the cider-house as they went along.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lighted upon
+the man-trap. Its discovery simply added an item of fact without helping their
+conjectures; but Melbury&rsquo;s indefinite alarm was greatly increased when,
+holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of the instrument some
+frayings from Grace&rsquo;s clothing. No intelligence of any kind was gained
+till they met a woodman of Delborough, who said that he had seen a lady
+answering to the description her father gave of Grace, walking through the wood
+on a gentleman&rsquo;s arm in the direction of Sherton.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Was he clutching her tight?&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well&mdash;rather,&rdquo; said the man.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Did she walk lame?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, &rsquo;tis true her head hung over towards him a bit.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Creedle groaned tragically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this account with
+the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it all meant; but the
+sinister event of the trap made him follow on. Accordingly, they bore away
+towards the town, shouting as they went, and in due course emerged upon the
+highway.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by other
+strollers, though the gentleman&rsquo;s supporting arm had disappeared from
+these later accounts. At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury informed
+his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag them farther at so late an
+hour, since he could go on alone and inquire if the woman who had been seen
+were really Grace. But they would not leave him alone in his anxiety, and
+trudged onward till the lamplight from the town began to illuminate their
+fronts. At the entrance to the High Street they got fresh scent of the pursued,
+but coupled with the new condition that the lady in the costume described had
+been going up the street alone.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Faith!&mdash;I believe she&rsquo;s mesmerized, or walking in her
+sleep,&rdquo; said Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain; but
+they plodded along the street. Percombe, the hair-dresser, who had despoiled
+Marty of her tresses, was standing at his door, and they duly put inquiries to
+him.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Ah&mdash;how&rsquo;s Little Hintock folk by now?&rdquo; he said, before
+replying. &ldquo;Never have I been over there since one winter night some three
+year ago&mdash;and then I lost myself finding it. How can ye live in such a
+one-eyed place? Great Hintock is bad enough&mdash;hut Little Hintock&mdash;the
+bats and owls would drive me melancholy-mad! It took two days to raise my
+sperrits to their true pitch again after that night I went there. Mr. Melbury,
+sir, as a man&rsquo;s that put by money, why not retire and live here, and see
+something of the world?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to the building
+that offered the best accommodation in Sherton&mdash;having been enlarged
+contemporaneously with the construction of the railway&mdash;namely, the Earl
+of Wessex Hotel.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here. His alarm was
+lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he received a brief reply
+that such a lady was in the house.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know if it is my daughter?&rdquo; asked Melbury.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+The waiter did not.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Do you know the lady&rsquo;s name?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been taken by
+brand-new people from a distance. They knew the gentleman very well by sight,
+and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his name.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, the gentleman appears again now,&rdquo; said Melbury to himself.
+&ldquo;Well, I want to see the lady,&rdquo; he declared.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace appeared
+descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if she lived there, but
+in other respects rather guilty and frightened.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Why&mdash;what the name&mdash;&rdquo; began her father. &ldquo;I thought
+you went out to get parsley!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, yes&mdash;I did&mdash;but it is all right,&rdquo; said Grace, in a
+flurried whisper. &ldquo;I am not alone here. I am here with Edgar. It is
+entirely owing to an accident, father.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I thought he was two hundred
+mile off.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes, so he is&mdash;I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred
+miles off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him. But he
+travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, and that&rsquo;s how it
+is I am here. We were just thinking of sending a messenger to let you
+know.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this explanation.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;You were caught in a man-trap?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes; my dress was. That&rsquo;s how it arose. Edgar is up-stairs in his
+own sitting-room,&rdquo; she went on. &ldquo;He would not mind seeing you, I am
+sure.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, faith, I don&rsquo;t want to see him! I have seen him too often
+a&rsquo;ready. I&rsquo;ll see him another time, perhaps, if &rsquo;tis to
+oblige &rsquo;ee.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large partnership
+I speak of, as it is very promising.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Oh, I am glad to hear it,&rdquo; said Melbury, dryly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown clothes of
+Melbury&rsquo;s companions appeared in the door-way.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Then bain&rsquo;t you coming home with us?&rdquo; he asked.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&mdash;I think not,&rdquo; said Grace, blushing.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;H&rsquo;m&mdash;very well&mdash;you are your own mistress,&rdquo; he
+returned, in tones which seemed to assert otherwise. &ldquo;Good-night;&rdquo;
+and Melbury retreated towards the door.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t be angry, father,&rdquo; she said, following him a few
+steps. &ldquo;I have done it for the best.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this.
+However, good-night. I must get home along.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of strangers
+while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed him much. His
+search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed to the task of
+investigation&mdash;some in their shirt sleeves, others in their leather
+aprons, and all much stained&mdash;just as they had come from their work of
+barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while Creedle, with his
+ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, had added melancholy to
+gawkiness.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, neighbors,&rdquo; said Melbury, on joining them, &ldquo;as it is
+getting late, we&rsquo;ll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell
+you that there has been some mistake&mdash;some arrangement entered into
+between Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn&rsquo;t quite understand&mdash;an
+important practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it
+necessary for her to join him to-night&mdash;so she says. That&rsquo;s all it
+was&mdash;and I&rsquo;m sorry I dragged you out.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the hollow-turner, &ldquo;here be we six mile from
+home, and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name.
+I say, we&rsquo;ll have a mossel and a drop o&rsquo; summat to strengthen our
+nerves afore we vamp all the way back again? My throat&rsquo;s as dry as a kex.
+What d&rsquo;ye say so&rsquo;s?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the antique
+and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three Tuns was the
+only radiant object. As soon as they had stumbled down into the room Melbury
+ordered them to be served, when they made themselves comfortable by the long
+table, and stretched out their legs upon the herring-boned sand of the floor.
+Melbury himself, restless as usual, walked to the door while he waited for
+them, and looked up and down the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;d gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go
+out in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to get
+up at five o&rsquo;clock to morrow,&rdquo; said a bark-ripper; who, not working
+regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t speak so warm as that,&rdquo; said the hollow-turner,
+&ldquo;but if &rsquo;tis right for couples to make a country talk about their
+separating, and excite the neighbors, and then make fools of &rsquo;em like
+this, why, I haven&rsquo;t stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these
+enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed in
+with, &ldquo;Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn&rsquo;t
+she ha&rsquo; bode with her father, and been faithful?&rdquo; Poor Creedle was
+thinking of his old employer.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony,&rdquo; said
+Farmer Bawtree. &ldquo;I knowed a man and wife&mdash;faith, I don&rsquo;t mind
+owning, as there&rsquo;s no strangers here, that the pair were my own
+relations&mdash;they&rsquo;d be at it that hot one hour that you&rsquo;d hear
+the poker and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the
+house with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you&rsquo;d hear
+&rsquo;em singing &lsquo;The Spotted Cow&rsquo; together as peaceable as two
+holy twins; yes&mdash;and very good voices they had, and would strike in like
+professional ballet-singers to one another&rsquo;s support in the high
+notes.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;And I knowed a woman, and the husband o&rsquo; her went away for
+four-and-twenty year,&rdquo; said the bark-ripper. &ldquo;And one night he came
+home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on the
+other side of the chimney-corner. &lsquo;Well,&rsquo; says she, &lsquo;have ye
+got any news?&rsquo; &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t know as I have,&rsquo; says he;
+&lsquo;have you?&rsquo; &lsquo;No,&rsquo; says she, &lsquo;except that my
+daughter by my second husband was married last month, which was a year after I
+was made a widow by him.&rsquo; &lsquo;Oh! Anything else?&rsquo; he says.
+&lsquo;No,&rsquo; says she. And there they sat, one on each side of that
+chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors sound asleep in their chairs,
+not having known what to talk about at all.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t care who the man is,&rdquo; said Creedle,
+&ldquo;they required a good deal to talk about, and that&rsquo;s true. It
+won&rsquo;t be the same with these.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a wonderful scholar
+too!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What women do know nowadays!&rdquo; observed the hollow-turner.
+&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t deceive &rsquo;em as you could in my time.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;What they knowed then was not small,&rdquo; said John Upjohn.
+&ldquo;Always a good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife
+that is now, the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty
+side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you&rsquo;ve noticed that
+she&rsquo;s got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say I&rsquo;ve noticed it particular much,&rdquo; said the
+hollow-turner, blandly.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, &ldquo;she has. All
+women under the sun be prettier one side than t&rsquo;other. And, as I was
+saying, the pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were
+unending! I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun,
+uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always towards
+the hedge, and that dimple towards me. There was I, too simple to see her
+wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two years younger, that she
+could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram; for that was in the third
+climate of our courtship. No; I don&rsquo;t think the women have got cleverer,
+for they was never otherwise.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?&rdquo; inquired
+a youth&mdash;the same who had assisted at Winterborne&rsquo;s Christmas party.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Five&mdash;from the coolest to the hottest&mdash;leastwise there was
+five in mine.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Can ye give us the chronicle of &rsquo;em, Mr. Upjohn?&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Yes&mdash;I could. I could certainly. But &rsquo;tis quite unnecessary.
+They&rsquo;ll come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis&rsquo;ess
+could lead you,&rdquo; the hollow-turner remarked. &ldquo;She&rsquo;s got him
+quite tame. But how long &rsquo;twill last I can&rsquo;t say. I happened to be
+setting a wire on the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other
+side of the hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor
+feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood. I should never have
+supposed it of such a girl.&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared themselves
+refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which was by no means
+cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to walk the whole distance
+they came by a foot-path rather shorter than the highway, though difficult
+except to those who knew the country well. This brought them by way of Great
+Hintock; and passing the church-yard they observed, as they talked, a
+motionless figure standing by the gate.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think it was Marty South,&rdquo; said the hollow-turner,
+parenthetically.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;I think &rsquo;twas; &rsquo;a was always a lonely maid,&rdquo; said
+Upjohn. And they passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+It was Marty, as they had supposed. That evening had been the particular one of
+the week upon which Grace and herself had been accustomed to privately deposit
+flowers on Giles&rsquo;s grave, and this was the first occasion since his
+death, eight months earlier, on which Grace had failed to keep her appointment.
+Marty had waited in the road just outside Little Hintock, where her
+fellow-pilgrim had been wont to join her, till she was weary; and at last,
+thinking that Grace had missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to
+Great Hintock, but saw no Grace in front of her. It got later, and Marty
+continued her walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace.
+Yet her sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone,
+and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood there with her
+little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her feet chilled by the damp
+ground, till more than two hours had passed.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+She then heard the footsteps of Melbury&rsquo;s men, who presently passed on
+their return from the search. In the silence of the night Marty could not help
+hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she acquired a general idea
+of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers then was.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard, going
+to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the unadorned stone that
+marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary and silent girl
+stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim figure, clothed in a plaitless
+gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible,
+the marks of poverty and toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity
+at points, and looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference
+the attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped
+down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid
+there the previous week, and put her fresh ones in their place.
+</p>
+
+<p>
+&ldquo;Now, my own, own love,&rdquo; she whispered, &ldquo;you are mine, and
+on&rsquo;y mine; for she has forgot &rsquo;ee at last, although for her you
+died. But I&mdash;whenever I get up I&rsquo;ll think of &rsquo;ee, and whenever
+I lie down I&rsquo;ll think of &rsquo;ee. Whenever I plant the young larches
+I&rsquo;ll think that none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a
+gad, and whenever I turn the cider-wring, I&rsquo;ll say none could do it like
+you. If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!&mdash;But no,
+no, my love, I never can forget &rsquo;ee; for you was a <i>good</i> man, and
+did good things!&rdquo;
+</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS ***</div>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #482 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/482)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Woodlanders
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+Posting Date: August 30, 2008 [EBook #482]
+Release Date: April, 1996
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOODLANDERS ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WOODLANDERS
+
+
+by
+
+Thomas Hardy
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should trace the
+forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line from Bristol to
+the south shore of England, would find himself during the latter half
+of his journey in the vicinity of some extensive woodlands,
+interspersed with apple-orchards.  Here the trees, timber or
+fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by
+their drip and shade, stretching over the road with easeful
+horizontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an adequate
+support for their limbs.  At one place, where a hill is crossed, the
+largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the high-way, as the head
+of thick hair is bisected by the white line of its parting.  The spot
+is lonely.
+
+The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree
+that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like
+stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of
+what is with what might be probably accounts for this.  To step, for
+instance, at the place under notice, from the hedge of the plantation
+into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and pause amid its emptiness for
+a moment, was to exchange by the act of a single stride the simple
+absence of human companionship for an incubus of the forlorn.
+
+At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter's day, there
+stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the aforesaid
+manner.  Alighting into the road from a stile hard by, he, though by no
+means a "chosen vessel" for impressions, was temporarily influenced by
+some such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before he had
+emerged upon the highway.
+
+It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress that
+he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air, after a
+while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the scenery, music
+in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment
+of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way.  The
+dead men's work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the
+blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had wetted it,
+were not his concern; for fate had given him no time for any but
+practical things.
+
+He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground with his
+walking-stick.  A closer glance at his face corroborated the testimony
+of his clothes.  It was self-complacent, yet there was small apparent
+ground for such complacence.  Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the
+magician in character, if not to the ordinary observer, the expression
+enthroned there was absolute submission to and belief in a little
+assortment of forms and habitudes.
+
+At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he desired, or
+seemed likely to appear that night.  But presently a slight noise of
+laboring wheels and the steady dig of a horse's shoe-tips became
+audible; and there loomed in the notch of the hill and plantation that
+the road formed here at the summit a carrier's van drawn by a single
+horse.  When it got nearer, he said, with some relief to himself, "'Tis
+Mrs. Dollery's--this will help me."
+
+The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women.  He held up his
+stick at its approach, and the woman who was driving drew rein.
+
+"I've been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last
+half-hour, Mrs. Dollery," he said.  "But though I've been to Great
+Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about the
+small village.  You can help me, I dare say?"
+
+She assured him that she could--that as she went to Great Hintock her
+van passed near it--that it was only up the lane that branched out of
+the lane into which she was about to turn--just ahead. "Though,"
+continued Mrs. Dollery, "'tis such a little small place that, as a town
+gentleman, you'd need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye don't
+know where 'tis.  Bedad! I wouldn't live there if they'd pay me to.
+Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit."
+
+He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they were
+ever and anon brushed over by the horse's tail.
+
+This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable
+attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who knew
+it well.  The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and color of
+heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were distorted by
+harness and drudgery from colthood--though if all had their rights, he
+ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the herbage of some
+Eastern plain instead of tugging here--had trodden this road almost
+daily for twenty years.  Even his subjection was not made congruous
+throughout, for the harness being too short, his tail was not drawn
+through the crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one
+side.  He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of
+ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas--the market-town to which he
+journeyed--as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a
+Dumpy level.
+
+The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion of the
+wheels, and at a point in it over the driver's head was a hook to which
+the reins were hitched at times, when they formed a catenary curve from
+the horse's shoulders.  Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain,
+whose only known purpose was to clink as it went.  Mrs. Dollery, having
+to hop up and down many times in the service of her passengers, wore,
+especially in windy weather, short leggings under her gown for
+modesty's sake, and instead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down with a
+handkerchief, to guard against an earache to which she was frequently
+subject.  In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she cleaned
+with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day before starting.  Looking
+at the van from the back, the spectator could thus see through its
+interior a square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw
+without, but intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who,
+as they rumbled onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in animated
+private converse, remained in happy unconsciousness that their
+mannerisms and facial peculiarities were sharply defined to the public
+eye.
+
+This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the
+happiest, of the week for them.  Snugly ensconced under the tilt, they
+could forget the sorrows of the world without, and survey life and
+recapitulate the incidents of the day with placid smiles.
+
+The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and while
+the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a
+confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise of
+the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting forward.
+
+"'Tis Barber Percombe--he that's got the waxen woman in his window at
+the top of Abbey Street," said one.  "What business can bring him from
+his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman hair-cutter, but a
+master-barber that's left off his pole because 'tis not genteel!"
+
+They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had
+nodded and spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify the curiosity
+which he had aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas which had
+animated the inside of the van before his arrival was checked
+thenceforward.
+
+Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little lane,
+whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be discerned in
+the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and orchards sunk in
+a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the woodland.  From this
+self-contained place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of smoke,
+which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their root on
+quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead with hams and flitches.  It was
+one of those sequestered spots outside the gates of the world where may
+usually be found more meditation than action, and more passivity than
+meditation; where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in
+inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less
+than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean
+are enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and
+closely knit interdependence of the lives therein.
+
+This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber's search. The
+coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but the
+position of the sequestered little world could still be distinguished
+by a few faint lights, winking more or less ineffectually through the
+leafless boughs, and the undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form
+of balls of feathers, at roost among them.
+
+Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane, at the
+corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery's van going on to the
+larger village, whose superiority to the despised smaller one as an
+exemplar of the world's movements was not particularly apparent in its
+means of approach.
+
+"A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in league
+with the devil, lives in the place you be going to--not because there's
+anybody for'n to cure there, but because 'tis the middle of his
+district."
+
+The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at parting,
+as a last attempt to get at his errand that way.
+
+But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian plunged
+towards the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the dead leaves
+which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet. As very few
+people except themselves passed this way after dark, a majority of the
+denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains unnecessary; and on
+this account Mr. Percombe made it his business to stop opposite the
+casements of each cottage that he came to, with a demeanor which showed
+that he was endeavoring to conjecture, from the persons and things he
+observed within, the whereabouts of somebody or other who resided here.
+
+Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses, whose
+size, antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that
+notwithstanding their remoteness they must formerly have been, if they
+were not still, inhabited by people of a certain social standing, being
+neglected by him entirely.  Smells of pomace, and the hiss of
+fermenting cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other
+tenements, revealed the recent occupation of some of the inhabitants,
+and joined with the scent of decay from the perishing leaves underfoot.
+
+Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result.  The next, which
+stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of radiance,
+the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the chimney and
+making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke.  The interior, as seen
+through the window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and
+watch.  The house was rather large for a cottage, and the door, which
+opened immediately into the living-room, stood ajar, so that a ribbon
+of light fell through the opening into the dark atmosphere without.
+Every now and then a moth, decrepit from the late season, would flit
+for a moment across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the
+night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a girl
+seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of the fire,
+which was ample and of wood.  With a bill-hook in one hand and a
+leather glove, much too large for her, on the other, she was making
+spars, such as are used by thatchers, with great rapidity.  She wore a
+leather apron for this purpose, which was also much too large for her
+figure.  On her left hand lay a bundle of the straight, smooth sticks
+called spar-gads--the raw material of her manufacture; on her right, a
+heap of chips and ends--the refuse--with which the fire was maintained;
+in front, a pile of the finished articles.  To produce them she took up
+each gad, looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length,
+split it into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous
+blows, which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling that
+of a bayonet.
+
+Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass candlestick
+stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an old coffin-stool,
+with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of the latter contrasting
+oddly with the black carved oak of the substructure.  The social
+position of the household in the past was almost as definitively shown
+by the presence of this article as that of an esquire or nobleman by
+his old helmets or shields. It had been customary for every well-to-do
+villager, whose tenure was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more
+permanent than that of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools
+for the use of his own dead; but for the last generation or two a
+feeling of cui bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and
+the stools were frequently made use of in the manner described.
+
+The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined the
+palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved, and
+showed little hardness or roughness about it.  The palm was red and
+blistering, as if this present occupation were not frequent enough with
+her to subdue it to what it worked in.  As with so many right hands
+born to manual labor, there was nothing in its fundamental shape to
+bear out the physiological conventionalism that gradations of birth,
+gentle or mean, show themselves primarily in the form of this member.
+Nothing but a cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl
+should handle the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash
+haft might have skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had
+they only been set to do it in good time.
+
+Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by a
+life of solitude.  Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves upon a
+countenance they seem to wear away its individuality; but in the still
+water of privacy every tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in
+visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as readily as a child's look by
+an intruder.  In years she was no more than nineteen or twenty, but the
+necessity of taking thought at a too early period of life had forced
+the provisional curves of her childhood's face to a premature finality.
+Thus she had but little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent
+particular--her hair.  Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its
+color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but
+careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that its
+true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut.
+
+On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his now
+before us the new-comer's eyes were fixed; meanwhile the fingers of his
+right hand mechanically played over something sticking up from his
+waistcoat-pocket--the bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made
+them feebly responsive to the light within.  In her present beholder's
+mind the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed itself into a
+post-Raffaelite picture of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair
+alone, as the focus of observation, was depicted with intensity and
+distinctness, and her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general,
+being a blurred mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity.
+
+He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered.  The young
+woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor, and
+exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!" quite lost her
+color for a moment.
+
+He replied, "You should shut your door--then you'd hear folk open it."
+
+"I can't," she said; "the chimney smokes so.  Mr. Percombe, you look as
+unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. Surely you
+have not come out here on my account--for--"
+
+"Yes--to have your answer about this." He touched her head with his
+cane, and she winced.  "Do you agree?" he continued.  "It is necessary
+that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going away, and it
+takes time to make up."
+
+"Don't press me--it worries me.  I was in hopes you had thought no more
+of it.  I can NOT part with it--so there!"
+
+"Now, look here, Marty," said the barber, sitting down on the
+coffin-stool table.  "How much do you get for making these spars?"
+
+"Hush--father's up-stairs awake, and he don't know that I am doing his
+work."
+
+"Well, now tell me," said the man, more softly.  "How much do you get?"
+
+"Eighteenpence a thousand," she said, reluctantly.
+
+"Who are you making them for?"
+
+"Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here."
+
+"And how many can you make in a day?"
+
+"In a day and half the night, three bundles--that's a thousand and a
+half."
+
+"Two and threepence." The barber paused.  "Well, look here," he
+continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which
+calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable monetary
+magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of her present
+purse and the woman's love of comeliness, "here's a sovereign--a gold
+sovereign, almost new." He held it out between his finger and thumb.
+"That's as much as you'd earn in a week and a half at that rough man's
+work, and it's yours for just letting me snip off what you've got too
+much of."
+
+The girl's bosom moved a very little.  "Why can't the lady send to some
+other girl who don't value her hair--not to me?" she exclaimed.
+
+"Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and 'tis
+a shade you can't match by dyeing.  But you are not going to refuse me
+now I've come all the way from Sherton o' purpose?"
+
+"I say I won't sell it--to you or anybody."
+
+"Now listen," and he drew up a little closer beside her.  "The lady is
+very rich, and won't be particular to a few shillings; so I will
+advance to this on my own responsibility--I'll make the one sovereign
+two, rather than go back empty-handed."
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried, beginning to be much agitated.  "You are
+a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe.  You go on like the Devil to Dr. Faustus
+in the penny book.  But I don't want your money, and won't agree.  Why
+did you come? I said when you got me into your shop and urged me so
+much, that I didn't mean to sell my hair!" The speaker was hot and
+stern.
+
+"Marty, now hearken.  The lady that wants it wants it badly.  And,
+between you and me, you'd better let her have it.  'Twill be bad for
+you if you don't."
+
+"Bad for me? Who is she, then?"
+
+The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question.
+
+"I am not at liberty to tell you.  And as she is going abroad soon it
+makes no difference who she is at all."
+
+"She wants it to go abroad wi'?"
+
+Percombe assented by a nod.  The girl regarded him reflectively.
+"Barber Percombe," she said, "I know who 'tis.  'Tis she at the
+House--Mrs. Charmond!"
+
+"That's my secret.  However, if you agree to let me have it, I'll tell
+you in confidence."
+
+"I'll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth. It is
+Mrs. Charmond."
+
+The barber dropped his voice.  "Well--it is.  You sat in front of her
+in church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair matched
+her own.  Ever since then she's been hankering for it, and at last
+decided to get it.  As she won't wear it till she goes off abroad, she
+knows nobody will recognize the change.  I'm commissioned to get it for
+her, and then it is to be made up.  I shouldn't have vamped all these
+miles for any less important employer.  Now, mind--'tis as much as my
+business with her is worth if it should be known that I've let out her
+name; but honor between us two, Marty, and you'll say nothing that
+would injure me?"
+
+"I don't wish to tell upon her," said Marty, coolly.  "But my hair is
+my own, and I'm going to keep it."
+
+"Now, that's not fair, after what I've told you," said the nettled
+barber.  "You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and in one of
+her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn't like to turn out, it
+would be as well to oblige her.  I say that as a friend.  But I won't
+press you to make up your mind to-night. You'll be coming to market
+to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call then.  If you think it over
+you'll be inclined to bring what I want, I know."
+
+"I've nothing more to say," she answered.
+
+Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her
+further by speech.  "As you are a trusty young woman," he said, "I'll
+put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see how
+handsome they are.  Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the
+sovereigns." He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small mantle
+looking-glass.  "I hope you'll bring it, for your sake and mine.  I
+should have thought she could have suited herself elsewhere; but as
+it's her fancy it must be indulged if possible. If you cut it off
+yourself, mind how you do it so as to keep all the locks one way." He
+showed her how this was to be done.
+
+"But I sha'nt," she replied, with laconic indifference.  "I value my
+looks too much to spoil 'em.  She wants my hair to get another lover
+with; though if stories are true she's broke the heart of many a noble
+gentleman already."
+
+"Lord, it's wonderful how you guess things, Marty," said the barber.
+"I've had it from them that know that there certainly is some foreign
+gentleman in her eye.  However, mind what I ask."
+
+"She's not going to get him through me."
+
+Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his cane
+on the coffin-stool, and looked her in the face.  "Marty South," he
+said, with deliberate emphasis, "YOU'VE GOT A LOVER YOURSELF, and
+that's why you won't let it go!"
+
+She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices to
+heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand, took up
+the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work without
+turning her face to him again.  He regarded her head for a moment, went
+to the door, and with one look back at her, departed on his way
+homeward.
+
+Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly laying
+down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of the room,
+where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed
+that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden away by such cleansing.
+At the top she gently approached a bedroom, and without entering, said,
+"Father, do you want anything?"
+
+A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, "I should be all
+right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!"
+
+"The tree again--always the tree! Oh, father, don't worry so about
+that.  You know it can do you no harm."
+
+"Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?"
+
+"A Sherton man called--nothing to trouble about," she said, soothingly.
+"Father," she went on, "can Mrs. Charmond turn us out of our house if
+she's minded to?"
+
+"Turn us out? No.  Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned
+out of my body.  'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne's.  But when
+my life drops 'twill be hers--not till then." His words on this subject
+so far had been rational and firm enough.  But now he lapsed into his
+moaning strain: "And the tree will do it--that tree will soon be the
+death of me."
+
+"Nonsense, you know better.  How can it be?" She refrained from further
+speech, and descended to the ground-floor again.
+
+"Thank Heaven, then," she said to herself, "what belongs to me I keep."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there only
+remained two in the darkness.  One of these came from a residence on
+the hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at present; the other
+shone from the window of Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect
+was produced here, however, by her rising when the clock struck ten and
+hanging up a thick cloth curtain.  The door it was necessary to keep
+ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because of the smoke; but she
+obviated the effect of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging
+a cloth over that also.  She was one of those people who, if they have
+to work harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a
+secret as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of
+wood-splintering which came from within, no wayfarer would have
+perceived that here the cottager did not sleep as elsewhere.
+
+Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher, and
+the pile of chips and ends more bulky.  Even the light on the hill had
+now been extinguished; but still she worked on.  When the temperature
+of the night without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she
+opened a large blue umbrella to ward off the draught from the door.
+The two sovereigns confronted her from the looking-glass in such a
+manner as to suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on the watch for an
+opportunity.  Whenever she sighed for weariness she lifted her gaze
+towards them, but withdrew it quickly, stroking her tresses with her
+fingers for a moment, as if to assure herself that they were still
+secure.  When the clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars
+she had last made in a bundle resembling those that lay against the
+wall.
+
+She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the door.
+The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the threshold, like the
+very brink of an absolute void, or the antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed
+in by her Teuton forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze,
+and here there was no street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly
+transition between the inner glare and the outer dark.  A lingering
+wind brought to her ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches
+in the neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and
+other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of
+owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon
+ill-balanced on its roosting-bough.
+
+But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see well
+enough for her purpose.  Taking a bundle of spars under each arm, and
+guided by the serrated line of tree-tops against the sky, she went some
+hundred yards or more down the lane till she reached a long open shed,
+carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay about everywhere.  Night,
+that strange personality, which within walls brings ominous
+introspectiveness and self-distrust, but under the open sky banishes
+such subjective anxieties as too trivial for thought, inspired Marty
+South with a less perturbed and brisker manner now.  She laid the spars
+on the ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and fro
+till her whole manufactured stock were deposited here.
+
+This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business
+hereabout, Mr. George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware
+merchant for whom Marty's father did work of this sort by the piece.
+It formed one of the many rambling out-houses which surrounded his
+dwelling, an equally irregular block of building, whose immense
+chimneys could just be discerned even now.  The four huge wagons under
+the shed were built on those ancient lines whose proportions have been
+ousted by modern patterns, their shapes bulging and curving at the base
+and ends like Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which venerable
+hulks, indeed, these vehicles evidenced a constructed spirit curiously
+in harmony.  One was laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles,
+another with ash poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had
+placed her thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles.
+
+She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment
+which follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the doing,
+when she heard a woman's voice on the other side of the hedge say,
+anxiously, "George!" In a moment the name was repeated, with "Do come
+indoors! What are you doing there?"
+
+The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she saw
+enter the latter from the timber-merchant's back door an elderly woman
+sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from which cast a moving
+thorn-pattern of shade on Marty's face.  Its rays soon fell upon a man
+whose clothes were roughly thrown on, standing in advance of the
+speaker.  He was a thin, slightly stooping figure, with a small nervous
+mouth and a face cleanly shaven; and he walked along the path with his
+eyes bent on the ground.  In the pair Marty South recognized her
+employer Melbury and his wife.  She was the second Mrs. Melbury, the
+first having died shortly after the birth of the timber-merchant's only
+child.
+
+"'Tis no use to stay in bed," he said, as soon as she came up to where
+he was pacing restlessly about.  "I can't sleep--I keep thinking of
+things, and worrying about the girl, till I'm quite in a fever of
+anxiety."  He went on to say that he could not think why "she (Marty
+knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not answer his letter.  She
+must be ill--she must, certainly," he said.
+
+"No, no.  'Tis all right, George," said his wife; and she assured him
+that such things always did appear so gloomy in the night-time, if
+people allowed their minds to run on them; that when morning came it
+was seen that such fears were nothing but shadows. "Grace is as well as
+you or I," she declared.
+
+But he persisted that she did not see all--that she did not see as much
+as he.  His daughter's not writing was only one part of his worry.  On
+account of her he was anxious concerning money affairs, which he would
+never alarm his mind about otherwise.  The reason he gave was that, as
+she had nobody to depend upon for a provision but himself, he wished
+her, when he was gone, to be securely out of risk of poverty.
+
+To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure to marry well,
+and that hence a hundred pounds more or less from him would not make
+much difference.
+
+Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, naturally
+thought; but there she was wrong, and in that lay the source of his
+trouble.  "I have a plan in my head about her," he said; "and according
+to my plan she won't marry a rich man."
+
+"A plan for her not to marry well?" said his wife, surprised.
+
+"Well, in one sense it is that," replied Melbury.  "It is a plan for
+her to marry a particular person, and as he has not so much money as
+she might expect, it might be called as you call it.  I may not be able
+to carry it out; and even if I do, it may not be a good thing for her.
+I want her to marry Giles Winterborne."
+
+His companion repeated the name.  "Well, it is all right," she said,
+presently.  "He adores the very ground she walks on; only he's close,
+and won't show it much."
+
+Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself away.
+
+Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well enough.
+Winterborne had been interested in his daughter for years; that was
+what had led him into the notion of their union.  And he knew that she
+used to have no objection to him.  But it was not any difficulty about
+that which embarrassed him.  It was that, since he had educated her so
+well, and so long, and so far above the level of daughters thereabout,
+it was "wasting her" to give her to a man of no higher standing than
+the young man in question.
+
+"That's what I have been thinking," said Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Well, then, Lucy, now you've hit it," answered the timber-merchant,
+with feeling.  "There lies my trouble.  I vowed to let her marry him,
+and to make her as valuable as I could to him by schooling her as many
+years and as thoroughly as possible.  I mean to keep my vow.  I made it
+because I did his father a terrible wrong; and it was a weight on my
+conscience ever since that time till this scheme of making amends
+occurred to me through seeing that Giles liked her."
+
+"Wronged his father?" asked Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Yes, grievously wronged him," said her husband.
+
+"Well, don't think of it to-night," she urged.  "Come indoors."
+
+"No, no, the air cools my head.  I shall not stay long." He was silent
+a while; then he told her, as nearly as Marty could gather, that his
+first wife, his daughter Grace's mother, was first the sweetheart of
+Winterborne's father, who loved her tenderly, till he, the speaker, won
+her away from him by a trick, because he wanted to marry her himself.
+He sadly went on to say that the other man's happiness was ruined by
+it; that though he married Winterborne's mother, it was but a
+half-hearted business with him. Melbury added that he was afterwards
+very miserable at what he had done; but that as time went on, and the
+children grew up, and seemed to be attached to each other, he
+determined to do all he could to right the wrong by letting his
+daughter marry the lad; not only that, but to give her the best
+education he could afford, so as to make the gift as valuable a one as
+it lay in his power to bestow.  "I still mean to do it," said Melbury.
+
+"Then do," said she.
+
+"But all these things trouble me," said he; "for I feel I am
+sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and often come down
+here and look at this."
+
+"Look at what?" asked his wife.
+
+He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, and removed a
+tile which lay in the garden-path.  "'Tis the track of her shoe that
+she made when she ran down here the day before she went away all those
+months ago.  I covered it up when she was gone; and when I come here
+and look at it, I ask myself again, why should she be sacrificed to a
+poor man?"
+
+"It is not altogether a sacrifice," said the woman.  "He is in love
+with her, and he's honest and upright.  If she encourages him, what can
+you wish for more?"
+
+"I wish for nothing definite.  But there's a lot of things possible for
+her.  Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined young lady, I hear, to
+go abroad with her--as companion or something of the kind.  She'd jump
+at Grace."
+
+"That's all uncertain.  Better stick to what's sure."
+
+"True, true," said Melbury; "and I hope it will be for the best. Yes,
+let me get 'em married up as soon as I can, so as to have it over and
+done with." He continued looking at the imprint, while he added,
+"Suppose she should be dying, and never make a track on this path any
+more?"
+
+"She'll write soon, depend upon't.  Come, 'tis wrong to stay here and
+brood so."
+
+He admitted it, but said he could not help it.  "Whether she write or
+no, I shall fetch her in a few days." And thus speaking, he covered the
+track, and preceded his wife indoors.
+
+Melbury, perhaps, was an unlucky man in having within him the sentiment
+which could indulge in this foolish fondness about the imprint of a
+daughter's footstep.  Nature does not carry on her government with a
+view to such feelings, and when advancing years render the open hearts
+of those who possess them less dexterous than formerly in shutting
+against the blast, they must suffer "buffeting at will by rain and
+storm" no less than Little Celandines.
+
+But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury's, was the centre of Marty's
+consciousness, and it was in relation to this that the matter struck
+her as she slowly withdrew.
+
+"That, then, is the secret of it all," she said.  "And Giles
+Winterborne is not for me, and the less I think of him the better."
+
+She returned to her cottage.  The sovereigns were staring at her from
+the looking-glass as she had left them.  With a preoccupied
+countenance, and with tears in her eyes, she got a pair of scissors,
+and began mercilessly cutting off the long locks of her hair, arranging
+and tying them with their points all one way, as the barber had
+directed.  Upon the pale scrubbed deal of the coffin-stool table they
+stretched like waving and ropy weeds over the washed gravel-bed of a
+clear stream.
+
+She would not turn again to the little looking-glass, out of humanity
+to herself, knowing what a deflowered visage would look back at her,
+and almost break her heart; she dreaded it as much as did her own
+ancestral goddess Sif the reflection in the pool after the rape of her
+locks by Loke the malicious.  She steadily stuck to business, wrapped
+the hair in a parcel, and sealed it up, after which she raked out the
+fire and went to bed, having first set up an alarum made of a candle
+and piece of thread, with a stone attached.
+
+But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night.  Having tossed till about
+five o'clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their long holes in
+the thatch above her sloping ceiling to their orifice at the eaves;
+whereupon she also arose, and descended to the ground-floor again.
+
+It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those
+automatic initiatory acts and touches which represent among housewives
+the installation of another day.  While thus engaged she heard the
+rumbling of Mr. Melbury's wagons, and knew that there, too, the day's
+toil had begun.
+
+An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to blaze
+up cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden prominence
+as a shadow.  At this a step approached the door.
+
+"Are folk astir here yet?" inquired a voice she knew well.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Winterborne," said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet, which
+completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors.  "Come in!"
+
+The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man not
+particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a person of
+affairs.  There was reserve in his glance, and restraint upon his
+mouth.  He carried a horn lantern which hung upon a swivel, and
+wheeling as it dangled marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of
+the walls.
+
+He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they
+did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well.
+Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would go their
+journey with a short load that day.
+
+"They are done," said Marty, "and lying in the cart-house."
+
+"Done!" he repeated.  "Your father has not been too ill to work after
+all, then?"
+
+She made some evasive reply.  "I'll show you where they be, if you are
+going down," she added.
+
+They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in the
+top of the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where they
+appeared of giant size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. They had no
+remarks to make to each other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything
+could be more isolated or more self-contained than the lives of these
+two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour, when gray shades,
+material and mental, are so very gray.  And yet, looked at in a certain
+way, their lonely courses formed no detached design at all, but were
+part of the pattern in the great web of human doings then weaving in
+both hemispheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn.
+
+The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars.  Winterborne
+regarded them silently, then looked at her.
+
+"Now, Marty, I believe--" he said, and shook his head.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That you've done the work yourself."
+
+"Don't you tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?" she pleaded, by
+way of answer.  "Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury may refuse my work if
+he knows it is mine."
+
+"But how could you learn to do it? 'Tis a trade."
+
+"Trade!" said she.  "I'd be bound to learn it in two hours."
+
+"Oh no, you wouldn't, Mrs. Marty." Winterborne held down his lantern,
+and examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay. "Marty," he said,
+with dry admiration, "your father with his forty years of practice
+never made a spar better than that.  They are too good for the
+thatching of houses--they are good enough for the furniture.  But I
+won't tell.  Let me look at your hands--your poor hands!"
+
+He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and when she seemed
+reluctant to show her hands, he took hold of one and examined it as if
+it were his own.  Her fingers were blistered.
+
+"They'll get harder in time," she said.  "For if father continues ill,
+I shall have to go on wi' it.  Now I'll help put 'em up in wagon."
+
+Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, lifted her as she
+was about to stoop over the bundles, placed her behind him, and began
+throwing up the bundles himself.  "Rather than you should do it I
+will," he said.  "But the men will be here directly.  Why,
+Marty!--whatever has happened to your head? Lord, it has shrunk to
+nothing--it looks an apple upon a gate-post!"
+
+Her heart swelled, and she could not speak.  At length she managed to
+groan, looking on the ground, "I've made myself ugly--and
+hateful--that's what I've done!"
+
+"No, no," he answered.  "You've only cut your hair--I see now."
+
+"Then why must you needs say that about apples and gate-posts?"
+
+"Let me see."
+
+"No, no!" She ran off into the gloom of the sluggish dawn.  He did not
+attempt to follow her.  When she reached her father's door she stood on
+the step and looked back.  Mr. Melbury's men had arrived, and were
+loading up the spars, and their lanterns appeared from the distance at
+which she stood to have wan circles round them, like eyes weary with
+watching.  She observed them for a few seconds as they set about
+harnessing the horses, and then went indoors.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and
+presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like
+a dead-born child.  The villagers everywhere had already bestirred
+themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far less dreary hour
+of absolute darkness.  It had been above an hour earlier, before a
+single bird had untucked his head, that twenty lights were struck in as
+many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters opened, and twenty pairs of
+eyes stretched to the sky to forecast the weather for the day.
+
+Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that had
+been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that had been
+sucking the blood of the rabbits, discerning that their human neighbors
+were on the move, discreetly withdrew from publicity, and were seen and
+heard no more that day.
+
+The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury's homestead, of which
+the wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection.  It formed three sides
+of an open quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of buildings, the
+largest and central one being the dwelling itself. The fourth side of
+the quadrangle was the public road.
+
+It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified aspect;
+which, taken with the fact that there were the remains of other such
+buildings thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had at some time or
+other been of greater importance than now, as its old name of Hintock
+St. Osmond also testified.  The house was of no marked antiquity, yet
+of well-advanced age; older than a stale novelty, but no canonized
+antique; faded, not hoary; looking at you from the still distinct
+middle-distance of the early Georgian time, and awakening on that
+account the instincts of reminiscence more decidedly than the remoter
+and far grander memorials which have to speak from the misty reaches of
+mediaevalism.  The faces, dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of
+the great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to
+gaze from those rectangular windows, and had stood under that
+key-stoned doorway, could be divined and measured by homely standards
+of to-day.  It was a house in whose reverberations queer old personal
+tales were yet audible if properly listened for; and not, as with those
+of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility of echo.
+
+The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there was a
+porch and entrance that way.  But the principal house-door opened on
+the square yard or quadrangle towards the road, formerly a regular
+carriage entrance, though the middle of the area was now made use of
+for stacking timber, fagots, bundles, and other products of the wood.
+It was divided from the lane by a lichen-coated wall, in which hung a
+pair of gates, flanked by piers out of the perpendicular, with a round
+white ball on the top of each.
+
+The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed erection,
+now used for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and copse-ware
+manufacture in general.  Opposite were the wagon-sheds where Marty had
+deposited her spars.
+
+Here Winterborne had remained after the girl's abrupt departure, to see
+that the wagon-loads were properly made up.  Winterborne was connected
+with the Melbury family in various ways.  In addition to the
+sentimental relationship which arose from his father having been the
+first Mrs. Melbury's lover, Winterborne's aunt had married and
+emigrated with the brother of the timber-merchant many years before--an
+alliance that was sufficient to place Winterborne, though the poorer,
+on a footing of social intimacy with the Melburys.  As in most villages
+so secluded as this, intermarriages were of Hapsburgian frequency among
+the inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses in Little Hintock
+unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other.
+
+For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between Melbury
+and the younger man--a partnership based upon an unwritten code, by
+which each acted in the way he thought fair towards the other, on a
+give-and-take principle.  Melbury, with his timber and copse-ware
+business, found that the weight of his labor came in winter and spring.
+Winterborne was in the apple and cider trade, and his requirements in
+cartage and other work came in the autumn of each year.  Hence horses,
+wagons, and in some degree men, were handed over to him when the apples
+began to fall; he, in return, lending his assistance to Melbury in the
+busiest wood-cutting season, as now.
+
+Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him to
+remain till Mr. Melbury had seen him.  Winterborne thereupon crossed
+over to the spar-house where two or three men were already at work, two
+of them being travelling spar-makers from White-hart Lane, who, when
+this kind of work began, made their appearance regularly, and when it
+was over disappeared in silence till the season came again.
+
+Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze of
+gad-cuds made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with that of
+the day as yet.  In the hollow shades of the roof could be seen
+dangling etiolated arms of ivy which had crept through the joints of
+the tiles and were groping in vain for some support, their leaves being
+dwarfed and sickly for want of sunlight; others were pushing in with
+such force at the eaves as to lift from their supports the shelves that
+were fixed there.
+
+Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John
+Upjohn, engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by; old
+Timothy Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers, at work
+in Mr. Melbury's pit outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the cider-house,
+and Robert Creedle, an old man who worked for Winterborne, and stood
+warming his hands; these latter being enticed in by the ruddy blaze,
+though they had no particular business there.  None of them call for
+any remark except, perhaps, Creedle.  To have completely described him
+it would have been necessary to write a military memoir, for he wore
+under his smock-frock a cast-off soldier's jacket that had seen hot
+service, its collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a
+hunting memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by
+chance; also chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife
+had been given him by a weather-beaten sailor.  But Creedle carried
+about with him on his uneventful rounds these silent testimonies of
+war, sport, and adventure, and thought nothing of their associations or
+their stories.
+
+Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the secondary
+intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on without requiring the
+sovereign attention of the head, the minds of its professors wandered
+considerably from the objects before them; hence the tales, chronicles,
+and ramifications of family history which were recounted here were of a
+very exhaustive kind, and sometimes so interminable as to defy
+description.
+
+Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back again
+outside the door; and the conversation interrupted by his momentary
+presence flowed anew, reaching his ears as an accompaniment to the
+regular dripping of the fog from the plantation boughs around.
+
+The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent one--the
+personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the surrounding woods
+and groves.
+
+"My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it," said
+Creedle, "that she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock hardly higher
+than her elbows.  'Oh, you wicked woman!' he said to himself when he
+first see her, 'you go to your church, and sit, and kneel, as if your
+knee-jints were greased with very saint's anointment, and tell off your
+Hear-us-good-Lords like a business man counting money; and yet you can
+eat your victuals such a figure as that!' Whether she's a reformed
+character by this time I can't say; but I don't care who the man is,
+that's how she went on when my brother-in-law lived there."
+
+"Did she do it in her husband's time?"
+
+"That I don't know--hardly, I should think, considering his temper.
+Ah!" Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical form by
+slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his eyes water.
+"That man! 'Not if the angels of heaven come down, Creedle,' he said,
+'shall you do another day's work for me!' Yes--he'd say
+anything--anything; and would as soon take a winged creature's name in
+vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get these spars home-along, and
+to-morrow, thank God, I must see about using 'em."
+
+An old woman now entered upon the scene.  She was Mr. Melbury's
+servant, and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard
+between the house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now for
+fuel.  She had two facial aspects--one, of a soft and flexible kind,
+she used indoors when assisting about the parlor or upstairs; the
+other, with stiff lines and corners, when she was bustling among the
+men in the spar-house or out-of-doors.
+
+"Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn, "it do do my heart good to see
+a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in mind that
+after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your smoke didn't
+rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and
+that's late, Grammer Oliver."
+
+"If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of your
+scornful meanings.  But your growing up was such a scrimped and scanty
+business that really a woman couldn't feel hurt if you were to spit
+fire and brimstone itself at her.  Here," she added, holding out a
+spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a long
+black-pudding--"here's something for thy breakfast, and if you want tea
+you must fetch it from in-doors."
+
+"Mr. Melbury is late this morning," said the bottom-sawyer.
+
+"Yes.  'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs. Oliver.  "Even when I opened the
+door, so late as I was, you couldn't have told poor men from gentlemen,
+or John from a reasonable-sized object.  And I don't think maister's
+slept at all well to-night.  He's anxious about his daughter; and I
+know what that is, for I've cried bucketfuls for my own."
+
+When the old woman had gone Creedle said,
+
+"He'll fret his gizzard green if he don't soon hear from that maid of
+his.  Well, learning is better than houses and lands.  But to keep a
+maid at school till she is taller out of pattens than her mother was in
+'em--'tis tempting Providence."
+
+"It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl," said young
+Timothy Tangs.
+
+"I can mind her mother," said the hollow-turner.  "Always a teuny,
+delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as wind.
+She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just
+about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship--ay, and a long
+apprenticeship 'twas.  I served that master of mine six years and three
+hundred and fourteen days."
+
+The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if, considering
+their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact than the years.
+
+"Mr. Winterborne's father walked with her at one time," said old
+Timothy Tangs.  "But Mr. Melbury won her.  She was a child of a woman,
+and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her.  Whenever she and her
+husband came to a puddle in their walks together he'd take her up like
+a half-penny doll and put her over without dirting her a speck.  And if
+he keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school, he'll make her as
+nesh as her mother was.  But here he comes."
+
+Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the court
+from his door.  He was carrying an open letter in his hand, and came
+straight to Winterborne.  His gloom of the preceding night had quite
+gone.
+
+"I'd no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace didn't
+come or write than I get a letter from her--'Clifton: Wednesday.  My
+dear father,' says she, 'I'm coming home to-morrow' (that's to-day),
+'but I didn't think it worth while to write long beforehand.' The
+little rascal, and didn't she! Now, Giles, as you are going to Sherton
+market to-day with your apple-trees, why not join me and Grace there,
+and we'll drive home all together?"
+
+He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same man
+as the man of the small dark hours.  Ever it happens that even among
+the moodiest the tendency to be cheered is stronger than the tendency
+to be cast down; and a soul's specific gravity stands permanently less
+than that of the sea of troubles into which it is thrown.
+
+Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion with
+something like alacrity.  There was not much doubt that Marty's grounds
+for cutting off her hair were substantial enough, if Ambrose's eyes had
+been a reason for keeping it on.  As for the timber-merchant, it was
+plain that his invitation had been given solely in pursuance of his
+scheme for uniting the pair.  He had made up his mind to the course as
+a duty, and was strenuously bent upon following it out.
+
+Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the
+spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid.
+
+"Well, John, and Lot," he said, nodding as he entered.  "A rimy
+morning."
+
+"'Tis, sir!" said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as yet been
+able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he felt the
+necessity of throwing some into his speech.  "I don't care who the man
+is, 'tis the rimiest morning we've had this fall."
+
+"I heard you wondering why I've kept my daughter so long at
+boarding-school," resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter which
+he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with the
+suddenness that was a trait in him.  "Hey?" he asked, with affected
+shrewdness.  "But you did, you know.  Well, now, though it is my own
+business more than anybody else's, I'll tell ye. When I was a boy,
+another boy--the pa'son's son--along with a lot of others, asked me
+'Who dragged Whom round the walls of What?' and I said, 'Sam Barrett,
+who dragged his wife in a chair round the tower corner when she went to
+be churched.' They laughed at me with such torrents of scorn that I
+went home ashamed, and couldn't sleep for shame; and I cried that night
+till my pillow was wet: till at last I thought to myself there and
+then--'They may laugh at me for my ignorance, but that was father's
+fault, and none o' my making, and I must bear it.  But they shall never
+laugh at my children, if I have any: I'll starve first!' Thank God,
+I've been able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and her
+scholarship is such that she stayed on as governess for a time.  Let
+'em laugh now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better informed
+than my girl Grace."
+
+There was something between high indifference and humble emotion in his
+delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. Winterborne's
+interest was of a kind which did not show itself in words; listening,
+he stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the embers with a spar-gad.
+
+"You'll be, then, ready, Giles?" Melbury continued, awaking from a
+reverie.  "Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday, Mr.
+Bawtree?"
+
+"Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still--you can't victual your carcass
+there unless you've got money; and you can't buy a cup of genuine
+there, whether or no....But as the saying is, 'Go abroad and you'll
+hear news of home.' It seems that our new neighbor, this young Dr.
+What's-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman; and there's
+good reason for supposing he has sold his soul to the wicked one."
+
+"'Od name it all," murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed by the
+news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; "I've got to
+meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I've planned to go to
+Sherton Abbas for the maid."
+
+"I won't praise the doctor's wisdom till I hear what sort of bargain
+he's made," said the top-sawyer.
+
+"'Tis only an old woman's tale," said Bawtree.  "But it seems that he
+wanted certain books on some mysterious science or black-art, and in
+order that the people hereabout should not know anything about his dark
+readings, he ordered 'em direct from London, and not from the Sherton
+book-seller.  The parcel was delivered by mistake at the pa'son's, and
+he wasn't at home; so his wife opened it, and went into hysterics when
+she read 'em, thinking her husband had turned heathen, and 'twould be
+the ruin of the children.  But when he came he said he knew no more
+about 'em than she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier's property.
+So he wrote 'Beware!' outside, and sent 'em on by the sexton."
+
+"He must be a curious young man," mused the hollow-turner.
+
+"He must," said Timothy Tangs.
+
+"Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, "he's only a gentleman
+fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact, every kind of
+knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time in making such
+matters his hobby."
+
+"Well," said old Timothy, "'tis a strange thing about doctors that the
+worse they be the better they be.  I mean that if you hear anything of
+this sort about 'em, ten to one they can cure ye as nobody else can."
+
+"True," said Bawtree, emphatically.  "And for my part I shall take my
+custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I've anything the
+matter with me.  That last medicine old Jones gave me had no taste in
+it at all."
+
+Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to these
+recitals, being moreover preoccupied with the business appointment
+which had come into his head.  He walked up and down, looking on the
+floor--his usual custom when undecided.  That stiffness about the arm,
+hip, and knee-joint which was apparent when he walked was the net
+product of the divers sprains and over-exertions that had been required
+of him in handling trees and timber when a young man, for he was of the
+sort called self-made, and had worked hard.  He knew the origin of
+every one of these cramps: that in his left shoulder had come of
+carrying a pollard, unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one
+leg was caused by the crash of an elm against it when they were
+felling; that in the other was from lifting a bole.  On many a morrow
+after wearying himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had
+risen from his bed fresh as usual; his lassitude had departed,
+apparently forever; and confident in the recuperative power of his
+youth, he had repeated the strains anew.  But treacherous Time had been
+only hiding ill results when they could be guarded against, for greater
+accumulation when they could not.  In his declining years the store had
+been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in every
+one of which Melbury recognized some act which, had its consequence
+been contemporaneously made known, he would wisely have abstained from
+repeating.
+
+On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed. Reaching
+the kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to save
+house-labor, he sat down by the fire, and looked a long time at the
+pair of dancing shadows cast by each fire-iron and dog-knob on the
+whitewashed chimney-corner--a yellow one from the window, and a blue
+one from the fire.
+
+"I don't quite know what to do to-day," he said to his wife at last.
+"I've recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond's steward in
+Round Wood at twelve o'clock, and yet I want to go for Grace."
+
+"Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? 'Twill bring 'em together all
+the quicker."
+
+"I could do that--but I should like to go myself.  I always have gone,
+without fail, every time hitherto.  It has been a great pleasure to
+drive into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and perhaps she'll be
+disappointed if I stay away."
+
+"You may be disappointed, but I don't think she will, if you send
+Giles," said Mrs. Melbury, dryly.
+
+"Very well--I'll send him."
+
+Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife's words when
+strenuous argument would have had no effect.  This second Mrs. Melbury
+was a placid woman, who had been nurse to his child Grace before her
+mother's death.  After that melancholy event little Grace had clung to
+the nurse with much affection; and ultimately Melbury, in dread lest
+the only woman who cared for the girl should be induced to leave her,
+persuaded the mild Lucy to marry him.  The arrangement--for it was
+little more--had worked satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and
+Melbury had not repented.
+
+He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to whom he
+explained the change of plan.  "As she won't arrive till five o'clock,
+you can get your business very well over in time to receive her," said
+Melbury.  "The green gig will do for her; you'll spin along quicker
+with that, and won't be late upon the road.  Her boxes can be called
+for by one of the wagons."
+
+Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant's restitutory aims,
+quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance.  Wishing even more than
+her father to despatch his apple-tree business in the market before
+Grace's arrival, he prepared to start at once.
+
+Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly.  The gig-wheels,
+for instance, were not always washed during winter-time before a
+journey, the muddy roads rendering that labor useless; but they were
+washed to-day.  The harness was blacked, and when the rather elderly
+white horse had been put in, and Winterborne was in his seat ready to
+start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a blacking-brush, and with his own
+hands touched over the yellow hoofs of the animal.
+
+"You see, Giles," he said, as he blacked, "coming from a fashionable
+school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of home; and 'tis
+these little things that catch a dainty woman's eye if they are
+neglected.  We, living here alone, don't notice how the whitey-brown
+creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh from a city--why,
+she'll notice everything!"
+
+"That she will," said Giles.
+
+"And scorn us if we don't mind."
+
+"Not scorn us."
+
+"No, no, no--that's only words.  She's too good a girl to do that. But
+when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since she last
+saw us, 'tis as well to meet her views as nearly as possible.  Why,
+'tis a year since she was in this old place, owing to her going abroad
+in the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it best for her; and
+naturally we shall look small, just at first--I only say just at first."
+
+Mr. Melbury's tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense of
+that inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and refined
+being, was she not his own all the time?  Not so Giles; he felt
+doubtful--perhaps a trifle cynical--for that strand was wound into him
+with the rest.  He looked at his clothes with misgiving, then with
+indifference.
+
+It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen
+apple-tree to market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt in.
+This had been tied across the gig; and as it would be left behind in
+the town, it would cause no inconvenience to Miss Grace Melbury coming
+home.
+
+He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and
+Melbury went in-doors.  Before the gig had passed out of sight, Mr.
+Melbury reappeared and shouted after--
+
+"Here, Giles," he said, breathlessly following with some wraps, "it may
+be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra about her.
+And, Giles," he added, when the young man, having taken the articles,
+put the horse in motion once more, "tell her that I should have come
+myself, but I had particular business with Mrs. Charmond's agent, which
+prevented me.  Don't forget."
+
+He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk--a shape into
+which emotion with him often resolved itself--"There, now, I hope the
+two will bring it to a point and have done with it! 'Tis a pity to let
+such a girl throw herself away upon him--a thousand pities!...And yet
+'tis my duty for his father's sake."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and
+without discomposure.  Had he regarded his inner self spectacularly, as
+lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might have felt pride in the
+discernment of a somewhat rare power in him--that of keeping not only
+judgment but emotion suspended in difficult cases.  But he noted it
+not.  Neither did he observe what was also the fact, that though he
+cherished a true and warm feeling towards Grace Melbury, he was not
+altogether her fool just now.  It must be remembered that he had not
+seen her for a year.
+
+Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had taken the spirit
+out of many a pedestrian in times when, with the majority, to travel
+meant to walk, he saw before him the trim figure of a young woman in
+pattens, journeying with that steadfast concentration which means
+purpose and not pleasure.  He was soon near enough to see that she was
+Marty South.  Click, click, click went the pattens; and she did not
+turn her head.
+
+She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the
+approaching gig was Giles.  She had shrunk from being overtaken by him
+thus; but as it was inevitable, she had braced herself up for his
+inspection by closing her lips so as to make her mouth quite
+unemotional, and by throwing an additional firmness into her tread.
+
+"Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough, although
+the lanes are muddy."
+
+"They save my boots."
+
+"But twelve miles in pattens--'twill twist your feet off.  Come, get up
+and ride with me."
+
+She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them
+against the wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen
+apple-tree.  She had so arranged her bonnet with a full border and
+trimmings that her lack of long hair did not much injure her
+appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was gone, and may have
+guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though infrequent,
+being not unheard of in that locality.
+
+But nature's adornment was still hard by--in fact, within two feet of
+him, though he did not know it.  In Marty's basket was a brown paper
+packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by reason of the
+barber's request for secrecy, she had not ventured to intrust to other
+hands.
+
+Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on.
+
+He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two; he
+would be quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on him.
+
+"You know why I don't ask for him so often as I might, I suppose?" said
+Winterborne.  "Or don't you know?"
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Because of the houses?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Yes.  I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about those houses,
+which I should lose by his death, more than about him. Marty, I do feel
+anxious about the houses, since half my income depends upon them; but I
+do likewise care for him; and it almost seems wrong that houses should
+be leased for lives, so as to lead to such mixed feelings."
+
+"After father's death they will be Mrs. Charmond's?"
+
+"They'll be hers."
+
+"They are going to keep company with my hair," she thought.
+
+Thus talking, they reached the town.  By no pressure would she ride up
+the street with him.  "That's the right of another woman," she said,
+with playful malice, as she put on her pattens.  "I wonder what you are
+thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that handsome gig.  Good-by."
+
+He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on ahead into the
+streets--the churches, the abbey, and other buildings on this clear
+bright morning having the liny distinctness of architectural drawings,
+as if the original dream and vision of the conceiving master-mason,
+some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to fame, were for a few minutes
+flashed down through the centuries to an unappreciative age.  Giles saw
+their eloquent look on this day of transparency, but could not construe
+it.  He turned into the inn-yard.
+
+Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the
+hair-dresser's, Mr. Percombe's.  Percombe was the chief of his trade in
+Sherton Abbas.  He had the patronage of such county offshoots as had
+been obliged to seek the shelter of small houses in that ancient town,
+of the local clergy, and so on, for some of whom he had made wigs,
+while others among them had compensated for neglecting him in their
+lifetime by patronizing him when they were dead, and letting him shave
+their corpses.  On the strength of all this he had taken down his pole,
+and called himself "Perruquier to the aristocracy."
+
+Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his children's
+mouths, and they had to be filled.  So, behind his house there was a
+little yard, reached by a passage from the back street, and in that
+yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of quite another description
+than the ornamental one in the front street.  Here on Saturday nights
+from seven till ten he took an almost innumerable succession of
+twopences from the farm laborers who flocked thither in crowds from the
+country.  And thus he lived.
+
+Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed her packet to him
+silently.  "Thank you," said the barber, quite joyfully.  "I hardly
+expected it after what you said last night."
+
+She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in each eye at this
+reminder.
+
+"Nothing of what I told you," he whispered, there being others in the
+shop.  "But I can trust you, I see."
+
+She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went
+listlessly along the street to attend to other errands.  These occupied
+her till four o'clock, at which time she recrossed the market-place.
+It was impossible to avoid rediscovering Winterborne every time she
+passed that way, for standing, as he always did at this season of the
+year, with his specimen apple-tree in the midst, the boughs rose above
+the heads of the crowd, and brought a delightful suggestion of orchards
+among the crowded buildings there.  When her eye fell upon him for the
+last time he was standing somewhat apart, holding the tree like an
+ensign, and looking on the ground instead of pushing his produce as he
+ought to have been doing.  He was, in fact, not a very successful
+seller either of his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking his
+mind, when he spoke at all, militating against this branch of his
+business.
+
+While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction away
+from Marty, his face simultaneously kindling with recognition and
+surprise.  She followed his gaze, and saw walking across to him a
+flexible young creature in whom she perceived the features of her she
+had known as Miss Grace Melbury, but now looking glorified and refined
+above her former level.  Winterborne, being fixed to the spot by his
+apple-tree, could not advance to meet her; he held out his spare hand
+with his hat in it, and with some embarrassment beheld her coming on
+tiptoe through the mud to the middle of the square where he stood.
+
+Miss Melbury's arrival so early was, as Marty could see, unexpected by
+Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to receive her.  Indeed,
+her father had named five o'clock as her probable time, for which
+reason that hour had been looming out all the day in his forward
+perspective, like an important edifice on a plain.  Now here she was
+come, he knew not how, and his arranged welcome stultified.
+
+His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the road, and
+more still at the little look of embarrassment which appeared on hers
+at having to perform the meeting with him under an apple-tree ten feet
+high in the middle of the market-place. Having had occasion to take off
+the new gloves she had bought to come home in, she held out to him a
+hand graduating from pink at the tips of the fingers to white at the
+palm; and the reception formed a scene, with the tree over their heads,
+which was not by any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets.
+
+Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a restrained
+type, which perhaps was not unnatural.  For true it was that Giles
+Winterborne, well-attired and well-mannered as he was for a yeoman,
+looked rough beside her.  It had sometimes dimly occurred to him, in
+his ruminating silence at Little Hintock, that external phenomena--such
+as the lowness or height or color of a hat, the fold of a coat, the
+make of a boot, or the chance attitude or occupation of a limb at the
+instant of view--may have a great influence upon feminine opinion of a
+man's worth--so frequently founded on non-essentials; but a certain
+causticity of mental tone towards himself and the world in general had
+prevented to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on the strength of
+that reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first sight
+of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness.
+
+He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find one who
+would accept the cumbersome gift, and the twain moved on towards the
+inn at which he had put up.  Marty made as if to step forward for the
+pleasure of being recognized by Miss Melbury; but abruptly checking
+herself, she glided behind a carrier's van, saying, dryly, "No; I baint
+wanted there," and critically regarded Winterborne's companion.
+
+It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with
+precision, either now or at any time.  Nay, from the highest point of
+view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a universe--how
+impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there never probably
+lived a person who was in herself more completely a reductio ad
+absurdum of attempts to appraise a woman, even externally, by items of
+face and figure.  Speaking generally, it may be said that she was
+sometimes beautiful, at other times not beautiful, according to the
+state of her health and spirits.
+
+In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear complexion,
+rather pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in movement.  Her look
+expressed a tendency to wait for others' thoughts before uttering her
+own; possibly also to wait for others' deeds before her own doing.  In
+her small, delicate mouth, which had perhaps hardly settled down to its
+matured curves, there was a gentleness that might hinder sufficient
+self-assertion for her own good.  She had well-formed eyebrows which,
+had her portrait been painted, would probably have been done in Prout's
+or Vandyke brown.
+
+There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a natural
+fitness and a style that was recent for the streets of Sherton.  But,
+indeed, had it been the reverse, and quite striking, it would have
+meant just as little.  For there can be hardly anything less connected
+with a woman's personality than drapery which she has neither designed,
+manufactured, cut, sewed, or even seen, except by a glance of approval
+when told that such and such a shape and color must be had because it
+has been decided by others as imperative at that particular time.
+
+What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very little;
+in truth, mainly something that was not she.  The woman herself was a
+shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do with the outlines
+presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom, whose true description
+could only be approximated by putting together a movement now and a
+glance then, in that patient and long-continued attentiveness which
+nothing but watchful loving-kindness ever troubles to give.
+
+
+There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, and Marty
+South took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view of escaping
+them on the way, lest they should feel compelled to spoil their
+tete-a-tete by asking her to ride.  She walked fast, and one-third of
+the journey was done, and the evening rapidly darkening, before she
+perceived any sign of them behind her. Then, while ascending a hill,
+she dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the lowest part of the
+incline, their heads slightly bent towards each other; drawn together,
+no doubt, by their souls, as the heads of a pair of horses well in hand
+are drawn in by the rein.  She walked still faster.
+
+But between these and herself there was a carriage, apparently a
+brougham, coming in the same direction, with lighted lamps.  When it
+overtook her--which was not soon, on account of her pace--the scene was
+much darker, and the lights glared in her eyes sufficiently to hide the
+details of the equipage.
+
+It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind this carriage and
+so keep along with it, to save herself the mortification of being
+overtaken and picked up for pity's sake by the coming pair.
+Accordingly, as the carriage drew abreast of her in climbing the long
+ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the rays of the nearest lamp
+penetrating her very pores.  She had only just dropped behind when the
+carriage stopped, and to her surprise the coachman asked her, over his
+shoulder, if she would ride.  What made the question more surprising
+was that it came in obedience to an order from the interior of the
+vehicle.
+
+Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, after working all
+night and keeping afoot all day.  She mounted beside the coachman,
+wondering why this good-fortune had happened to her. He was rather a
+great man in aspect, and she did not like to inquire of him for some
+time.
+
+At last she said, "Who has been so kind as to ask me to ride?"
+
+"Mrs. Charmond," replied her statuesque companion.
+
+Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with her last
+night's experiences.  "Is this her carriage?" she whispered.
+
+"Yes; she's inside."
+
+Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have recognized
+her plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp; recognized,
+probably, her stubbly poll (since she had kept away her face), and
+thought that those stubbles were the result of her own desire.
+
+Marty South was not so very far wrong.  Inside the carriage a pair of
+bright eyes looked from a ripely handsome face, and though behind those
+bright eyes was a mind of unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there beat
+a heart capable of quick extempore warmth--a heart which could, indeed,
+be passionately and imprudently warm on certain occasions.  At present,
+after recognizing the girl, she had acted on a mere impulse, possibly
+feeling gratified at the denuded appearance which signified the success
+of her agent in obtaining what she had required.
+
+"'Tis wonderful that she should ask ye," observed the magisterial
+coachman, presently.  "I have never known her do it before, for as a
+rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all."
+
+Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to see if she
+could get a glimpse of the Olympian creature who as the coachman had
+truly observed, hardly ever descended from her clouds into the Tempe of
+the parishioners.  But she could discern nothing of the lady.  She also
+looked for Miss Melbury and Winterborne.  The nose of their horse
+sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs. Charmond's carriage.  But
+they never attempted to pass it till the latter conveyance turned
+towards the park gate, when they sped by. Here the carriage drew up
+that the gate might be opened, and in the momentary silence Marty heard
+a gentle oral sound, soft as a breeze.
+
+"What's that?" she whispered.
+
+"Mis'ess yawning."
+
+"Why should she yawn?"
+
+"Oh, because she's been used to such wonderfully good life, and finds
+it dull here.  She'll soon be off again on account of it."
+
+"So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!" the girl murmured. "Then
+things don't fay with she any more than with we!"
+
+Marty now alighted; the lamp again shone upon her, and as the carriage
+rolled on, a soft voice said to her from the interior, "Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, ma'am," said Marty.  But she had not been able to see the
+woman who began so greatly to interest her--the second person of her
+own sex who had operated strongly on her mind that day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their
+little experiences of the same homeward journey.
+
+As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people fell
+upon them, the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a pleasant
+place, and wondering in what relation he stood towards her.
+Winterborne himself was unconscious of this.  Occupied solely with the
+idea of having her in charge, he did not notice much with outward eye,
+neither observing how she was dressed, nor the effect of the picture
+they together composed in the landscape.
+
+Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace being
+somewhat disconcerted, through not having understood till they were
+about to start that Giles was to be her sole conductor in place of her
+father.  When they were in the open country he spoke.
+
+"Don't Brownley's farm-buildings look strange to you, now they have
+been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to the top
+of the hill?"
+
+She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any
+difference in them if he had not pointed it out.
+
+"They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn't grind them all"
+(nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had been left
+lying ever since the ingathering).
+
+She said "Yes," but looking at another orchard.
+
+"Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know bitter-sweets--you
+used to well enough!"
+
+"I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to
+distinguish."
+
+Winterborne did not continue.  It seemed as if the knowledge and
+interest which had formerly moved Grace's mind had quite died away from
+her.  He wondered whether the special attributes of his image in the
+past had evaporated like these other things.
+
+However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that where
+he was seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was beholding a far
+remoter scene--a scene no less innocent and simple, indeed, but much
+contrasting--a broad lawn in the fashionable suburb of a fast city, the
+evergreen leaves shining in the evening sun, amid which bounding girls,
+gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black,
+and white, were playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the
+pride of life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from
+the open windows adjoining.  Moreover, they were girls--and this was a
+fact which Grace Melbury's delicate femininity could not lose sight
+of--whose parents Giles would have addressed with a deferential Sir or
+Madam.  Beside this visioned scene the homely farmsteads did not quite
+hold their own from her present twenty-year point of survey.  For all
+his woodland sequestration, Giles knew the primitive simplicity of the
+subject he had started, and now sounded a deeper note.
+
+"'Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often think of
+it.  I mean our saying that if we still liked each other when you were
+twenty and I twenty-five, we'd--"
+
+"It was child's tattle."
+
+"H'm!" said Giles, suddenly.
+
+"I mean we were young," said she, more considerately.  That gruff
+manner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was unaltered in
+much.
+
+"Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father SENT me to meet
+you to-day."
+
+"I know it, and I am glad of it."
+
+He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At that time you were
+sitting beside me at the back of your father's covered car, when we
+were coming home from gypsying, all the party being squeezed in
+together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen.  It got darker and
+darker, and I said--I forget the exact words--but I put my arm round
+your waist and there you let it stay till your father, sitting in front
+suddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe.
+The flash shone into the car, and showed us all up distinctly; my arm
+flew from your waist like lightning; yet not so quickly but that some
+of 'em had seen, and laughed at us.  Yet your father, to our amazement,
+instead of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased.
+Have you forgot all that, or haven't you?"
+
+She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned the
+circumstances.  "But, goodness! I must have been in short frocks," she
+said.
+
+"Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, indeed! You know
+better, as well as I."
+
+Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old friend
+she valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words with the easy
+elusiveness that will be polite at all costs.  It might possibly be
+true, she added, that she was getting on in girlhood when that event
+took place; but if it were so, then she was virtually no less than an
+old woman now, so far did the time seem removed from her present.  "Do
+you ever look at things philosophically instead of personally?" she
+asked.
+
+"I can't say that I do," answered Giles, his eyes lingering far ahead
+upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham.
+
+"I think you may, sometimes, with advantage," said she.  "Look at
+yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers, and
+consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding cracks in
+general, and not only for saving your poor one.  Shall I tell you all
+about Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visited
+last summer?"
+
+"With all my heart."
+
+She then described places and persons in such terms as might have been
+used for that purpose by any woman to any man within the four seas, so
+entirely absent from that description was everything specially
+appertaining to her own existence.  When she had done she said, gayly,
+"Now do you tell me in return what has happened in Hintock since I have
+been away."
+
+"Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me," said Giles
+within him.
+
+It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss
+Melbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of that
+she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing--that is to
+say, herself.
+
+He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when they
+drew near the carriage that had been preceding them for some time.
+Miss Melbury inquired if he knew whose carriage it was.
+
+Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into account.
+On examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond's.
+
+Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel more
+nearly akin to it than to the one she was in.
+
+"Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to that,"
+said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation at what it
+bespoke, he whipped on the horse.  This it was which had brought the
+nose of Mr. Melbury's old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond's
+much-eclipsing vehicle.
+
+"There's Marty South sitting up with the coachman," said he, discerning
+her by her dress.
+
+"Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very evening.
+How does she happen to be riding there?"
+
+"I don't know.  It is very singular."
+
+Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road
+together, till Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage, turned
+into Little Hintock, where almost the first house was the
+timber-merchant's.  Pencils of dancing light streamed out of the
+windows sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and glance
+over the polished leaves of laurel.  The interior of the rooms could be
+seen distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, which in the parlor were
+reflected from the glass of the pictures and bookcase, and in the
+kitchen from the utensils and ware.
+
+"Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them," she
+said.
+
+In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at one
+o'clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for Grace.
+A rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog,
+and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys along
+the ceiling to a large stone suspended in a corner of the room.  Old
+Grammer Oliver came and wound it up with a rattle like that of a mill.
+
+In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury's head fell on the wall and
+ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many moments their
+presence was discovered, and her father and stepmother came out to
+welcome her.
+
+The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces some
+shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait frequent in
+rural households, and one which stands in curiously inverse relation to
+most of the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of
+towns.  Thus hiding their warmer feelings under commonplace talk all
+round, Grace's reception produced no extraordinary demonstrations.  But
+that more was felt than was enacted appeared from the fact that her
+father, in taking her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Giles
+without, as did also Grace herself.  He said nothing, but took the gig
+round to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who
+particularly attended to these matters when there was no conversation
+to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. Winterborne then
+returned to the door with the intention of entering the house.
+
+The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in
+themselves.  The fire was, as before, the only light, and it irradiated
+Grace's face and hands so as to make them look wondrously smooth and
+fair beside those of the two elders; shining also through the loose
+hair about her temples as sunlight through a brake.  Her father was
+surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed and
+progressed in manner and stature since he last had set eyes on her.
+
+Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door,
+mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters carved
+in the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of householders who had
+lived and died there.
+
+No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the family;
+they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that he had
+brought her home.  Still, he was a little surprised that her father's
+eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted in such an
+anticlimax as this.
+
+He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking back
+when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last glimpse of
+the timber-merchant's roof.  He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was
+saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision,
+"nothing about me!" He looked also in the other direction, and saw
+against the sky the thatched hip and solitary chimney of Marty's
+cottage, and thought of her too, struggling bravely along under that
+humble shelter, among her spar-gads and pots and skimmers.
+
+At the timber-merchant's, in the mean time, the conversation flowed;
+and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on subjects in
+which he had no share.  Among the excluding matters there was, for one,
+the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of his
+daughter, which took him so much unawares that, though it did not make
+him absolutely forget the existence of her conductor homeward, thrust
+Giles's image back into quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain.
+Another was his interview with Mrs. Charmond's agent that morning, at
+which the lady herself had been present for a few minutes.  Melbury had
+purchased some standing timber from her a long time before, and now
+that the date had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost his
+own course.  This was what the household were actually talking of
+during Giles's cogitation without; and Melbury's satisfaction with the
+clear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity of the
+groves which enclosed his residence was the cause of a counterbalancing
+mistiness on the side towards Winterborne.
+
+"So thoroughly does she trust me," said Melbury, "that I might fell,
+top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' timber whatever in her
+wood, and fix the price o't, and settle the matter.  But, name it all!
+I wouldn't do such a thing.  However, it may be useful to have this
+good understanding with her....I wish she took more interest in the
+place, and stayed here all the year round."
+
+"I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of Hintock,
+that makes her so easy about the trees," said Mrs. Melbury.
+
+When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble
+pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she had
+latterly become wellnigh an alien.  Each nook and each object revived a
+memory, and simultaneously modified it.  The chambers seemed lower than
+they had appeared on any previous occasion of her return, the surfaces
+of both walls and ceilings standing in such relations to the eye that
+it could not avoid taking microscopic note of their irregularities and
+old fashion.  Her own bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than
+when she had left it, and yet a face estranged.  The world of little
+things therein gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they
+had tried and been unable to make any progress without her presence.
+Over the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she
+had used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still the
+brown spot of smoke.  She did not know that her father had taken
+especial care to keep it from being cleaned off.
+
+Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly commodious
+edifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long journey since the
+morning; and when her father had been up himself, as well as his wife,
+to see that her room was comfortable and the fire burning, she prepared
+to retire for the night.  No sooner, however, was she in bed than her
+momentary sleepiness took itself off, and she wished she had stayed up
+longer.  She amused herself by listening to the old familiar noises
+that she could hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking
+towards the window as she lay.  The blind had been drawn up, as she
+used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim
+tree-tops against the sky on the neighboring hill.  Beneath this
+meeting-line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitary
+point of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro before
+its beams.  From its position it seemed to radiate from the window of a
+house on the hill-side.  The house had been empty when she was last at
+home, and she wondered who inhabited the place now.
+
+Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she was
+watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at
+length shone blue as sapphire.  Thus it remained several minutes, and
+then it passed through violet to red.
+
+Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up
+in bed, and stared steadily at the shine.  An appearance of this sort,
+sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in
+Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet.  Almost every diurnal and
+nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct
+result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season's
+changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal
+sequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge.
+
+It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparing
+to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her
+father bolting the doors.  Then the stairs creaked, and her father and
+mother passed her chamber.  The last to come was Grammer Oliver.
+
+Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch,
+said, "I am not asleep, Grammer.  Come in and talk to me."
+
+Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the bedclothes.
+Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself on the edge of
+Miss Melbury's coverlet.
+
+"I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side," said
+Grace.
+
+Mrs. Oliver looked across.  "Oh, that," she said, "is from the
+doctor's.  He's often doing things of that sort.  Perhaps you don't
+know that we've a doctor living here now--Mr. Fitzpiers by name?"
+
+Grace admitted that she had not heard of him.
+
+"Well, then, miss, he's come here to get up a practice.  I know him
+very well, through going there to help 'em scrub sometimes, which your
+father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare time.  Being a
+bachelor-man, he've only a lad in the house.  Oh yes, I know him very
+well.  Sometimes he'll talk to me as if I were his own mother."
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"Yes.  'Grammer,' he said one day, when I asked him why he came here
+where there's hardly anybody living, 'I'll tell you why I came here.  I
+took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones's practice ends to the
+north of this district, and where Mr. Taylor's ends on the south, and
+little Jimmy Green's on the east, and somebody else's to the west.
+Then I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact middle of the
+country that was left between these bounds, and that middle was Little
+Hintock; so here I am....'  But, Lord, there: poor young man!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He said, 'Grammer Oliver, I've been here three months, and although
+there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the villages round,
+and a scattered practice is often a very good one, I don't seem to get
+many patients.  And there's no society at all; and I'm pretty near
+melancholy mad,' he said, with a great yawn. 'I should be quite if it
+were not for my books, and my lab--laboratory, and what not.  Grammer,
+I was made for higher things.' And then he'd yawn and yawn again."
+
+"Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he
+clever?"
+
+"Well, no.  How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a broken
+man or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an ache if you
+tell him nearly where 'tis; but these young men--they should live to my
+time of life, and then they'd see how clever they were at
+five-and-twenty! And yet he's a projick, a real projick, and says the
+oddest of rozums.  'Ah, Grammer,' he said, at another time, 'let me
+tell you that Everything is Nothing. There's only Me and not Me in the
+whole world.' And he told me that no man's hands could help what they
+did, any more than the hands of a clock....Yes, he's a man of strange
+meditations, and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star."
+
+"He will soon go away, no doubt."
+
+"I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Grammer hesitated.  At
+last she went on: "Don't tell your father or mother, miss, if I let you
+know a secret."
+
+Grace gave the required promise.
+
+"Well, he talks of buying me; so he won't go away just yet."
+
+"Buying you!--how?"
+
+"Not my soul--my body, when I'm dead.  One day when I was there
+cleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large brain--a very large organ
+of brain,' he said.  'A woman's is usually four ounces less than a
+man's; but yours is man's size.' Well, then--hee, hee!--after he'd
+flattered me a bit like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds to have
+me as a natomy after my death.  Well, knowing I'd no chick nor chiel
+left, and nobody with any interest in me, I thought, faith, if I can be
+of any use to my fellow-creatures after I'm gone they are welcome to my
+services; so I said I'd think it over, and would most likely agree and
+take the ten pounds.  Now this is a secret, miss, between us two.  The
+money would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in it."
+
+"Of course there's no harm.  But oh, Grammer, how can you think to do
+it?  I wish you hadn't told me."
+
+"I wish I hadn't--if you don't like to know it, miss.  But you needn't
+mind.  Lord--hee, hee!--I shall keep him waiting many a year yet, bless
+ye!"
+
+"I hope you will, I am sure."
+
+The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that conversation
+languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle, wished Miss Melbury
+good-night.  The latter's eyes rested on the distant glimmer, around
+which she allowed her reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that
+shaped the doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines of
+intelligence just received.  It was strange to her to come back from
+the world to Little Hintock and find in one of its nooks, like a
+tropical plant in a hedgerow, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices
+which had nothing in common with the life around.  Chemical
+experiments, anatomical projects, and metaphysical conceptions had
+found a strange home here.
+
+Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man behind the
+light intermingling with conjectural sketches of his personality, till
+her eyes fell together with their own heaviness, and she slept.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer Oliver's
+skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought Grace Melbury to
+the morning of the next day.  It was fine.  A north wind was
+blowing--that not unacceptable compromise between the atmospheric
+cutlery of the eastern blast and the spongy gales of the west quarter.
+She looked from her window in the direction of the light of the
+previous evening, and could just discern through the trees the shape of
+the surgeon's house.  Somehow, in the broad, practical daylight, that
+unknown and lonely gentleman seemed to be shorn of much of the interest
+which had invested his personality and pursuits in the hours of
+darkness, and as Grace's dressing proceeded he faded from her mind.
+
+Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father's favor, was
+rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury's behavior. Despite his dry
+self-control, he could not help looking continually from his own door
+towards the timber-merchant's, in the probability of somebody's
+emergence therefrom.  His attention was at length justified by the
+appearance of two figures, that of Mr. Melbury himself, and Grace
+beside him.  They stepped out in a direction towards the densest
+quarter of the wood, and Winterborne walked contemplatively behind
+them, till all three were soon under the trees.
+
+Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there were sheltered
+hollows amid the Hintock plantations and copses in which a more tardy
+leave-taking than on windy summits was the rule with the foliage.  This
+caused here and there an apparent mixture of the seasons; so that in
+some of the dells that they passed by holly-berries in full red were
+found growing beside oak and hazel whose leaves were as yet not far
+removed from green, and brambles whose verdure was rich and deep as in
+the month of August.  To Grace these well-known peculiarities were as
+an old painting restored.
+
+Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to the curious which
+the features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter months.
+Angles were taking the place of curves, and reticulations of
+surfaces--a change constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate to the
+primitive on Nature's canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step
+from the art of an advanced school of painting to that of the Pacific
+Islander.
+
+Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as they
+threaded their way through these sylvan phenomena.  Mr. Melbury's long
+legs, and gaiters drawn in to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop,
+his habit of getting lost in thought and arousing himself with an
+exclamation of "Hah!" accompanied with an upward jerk of the head,
+composed a personage recognizable by his neighbors as far as he could
+be seen.  It seemed as if the squirrels and birds knew him.  One of the
+former would occasionally run from the path to hide behind the arm of
+some tree, which the little animal carefully edged round pari passu
+with Melbury and his daughters movement onward, assuming a mock manner,
+as though he were saying, "Ho, ho; you are only a timber-merchant, and
+carry no gun!"
+
+They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through
+interspersed tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading roots,
+whose mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green gloves; elbowed
+old elms and ashes with great forks, in which stood pools of water that
+overflowed on rainy days, and ran down their stems in green cascades.
+On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs.
+Here, as everywhere, the Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what
+it is, was as obvious as it could be among the depraved crowds of a
+city slum.  The leaf was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper
+was interrupted; the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy
+slowly strangled to death the promising sapling.
+
+They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the younger boughs
+still retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in the breeze with a
+sound almost metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage of the fabled
+Jarnvid wood.  Some flecks of white in Grace's drapery had enabled
+Giles to keep her and her father in view till this time; but now he
+lost sight of them, and was obliged to follow by ear--no difficult
+matter, for on the line of their course every wood-pigeon rose from its
+perch with a continued clash, dashing its wings against the branches
+with wellnigh force enough to break every quill.  By taking the track
+of this noise he soon came to a stile.
+
+Was it worth while to go farther? He examined the doughy soil at the
+foot of the stile, and saw among the large sole-and-heel tracks an
+impression of a slighter kind from a boot that was obviously not local,
+for Winterborne knew all the cobblers' patterns in that district,
+because they were very few to know. The mud-picture was enough to make
+him swing himself over and proceed.
+
+The character of the woodland now changed.  The bases of the smaller
+trees were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers points heaps of
+fresh-made chips, and the newly-cut stool of a tree, stared white
+through the undergrowth.  There had been a large fall of timber this
+year, which explained the meaning of some sounds that soon reached him.
+
+A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human bark, which
+reminded Giles that there was a sale of trees and fagots that very day.
+Melbury would naturally be present.  Thereupon Winterborne remembered
+that he himself wanted a few fagots, and entered upon the scene.
+
+A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or followed him
+when, between his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of plantation
+produce to another, like some philosopher of the Peripatetic school
+delivering his lectures in the shady groves of the Lyceum.  His
+companions were timber-dealers, yeomen, farmers, villagers, and others;
+mostly woodland men, who on that account could afford to be curious in
+their walking-sticks, which consequently exhibited various
+monstrosities of vegetation, the chief being cork-screw shapes in black
+and white thorn, brought to that pattern by the slow torture of an
+encircling woodbine during their growth, as the Chinese have been said
+to mould human beings into grotesque toys by continued compression in
+infancy.  Two women, wearing men's jackets on their gowns, conducted in
+the rear of the halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped
+barrel of beer, from which they drew and replenished horns that were
+handed round, with bread-and-cheese from a basket.
+
+The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his
+walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any convenient
+object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a little boy's head,
+or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no business there except to
+taste the brew; a proceeding which would have been deemed humorous but
+for the air of stern rigidity which that auctioneer's face preserved,
+tending to show that the eccentricity was a result of that absence of
+mind which is engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy
+at all.
+
+Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the Peripatetics, and
+Grace beside him, clinging closely to his arm, her modern attire
+looking almost odd where everything else was old-fashioned, and
+throwing over the familiar garniture of the trees a homeliness that
+seemed to demand improvement by the addition of a few contemporary
+novelties also.  Grace seemed to regard the selling with the interest
+which attaches to memories revived after an interval of obliviousness.
+
+Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant spoke,
+and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled.  To justify his presence
+there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots that he did not
+want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted mood, in which the
+auctioneer's voice seemed to become one of the natural sounds of the
+woodland.  A few flakes of snow descended, at the sight of which a
+robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent winter, and seeing that no
+offence was meant by the human invasion, came and perched on the tip of
+the fagots that were being sold, and looked into the auctioneer's face,
+while waiting for some chance crumb from the bread-basket.  Standing a
+little behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail
+downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would choose
+her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which took up so much
+of his attention that his biddings proceeded incoherently; and when the
+auctioneer said, every now and then, with a nod towards him, "Yours,
+Mr. Winterborne," he had no idea whether he had bought fagots, poles,
+or logwood.
+
+He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her father should
+show such inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace tightly on his
+arm to-day, when he had quite lately seemed anxious to recognize their
+betrothal as a fact.  And thus musing, and joining in no conversation
+with other buyers except when directly addressed, he followed the
+assemblage hither and thither till the end of the auction, when Giles
+for the first time realized what his purchases had been.  Hundreds of
+fagots, and divers lots of timber, had been set down to him, when all
+he had required had been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert
+Creedle's use in baking and lighting fires.
+
+Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber merchant. But
+Melbury's manner was short and distant; and Grace, too, looked vexed
+and reproachful.  Winterborne then discovered that he had been
+unwittingly bidding against her father, and picking up his favorite
+lots in spite of him.  With a very few words they left the spot and
+pursued their way homeward.
+
+Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and remained standing
+under the trees, all the other men having strayed silently away.  He
+saw Melbury and his daughter pass down a glade without looking back.
+While they moved slowly through it a lady appeared on horseback in the
+middle distance, the line of her progress converging upon that of
+Melbury's.  They met, Melbury took off his hat, and she reined in her
+horse.  A conversation was evidently in progress between Grace and her
+father and this equestrian, in whom he was almost sure that he
+recognized Mrs. Charmond, less by her outline than by the livery of the
+groom who had halted some yards off.
+
+The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause, during
+which much seemed to be said.  When Melbury and Grace resumed their
+walk it was with something of a lighter tread than before.
+
+Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward.  He was unwilling to
+let coldness grow up between himself and the Melburys for any trivial
+reason, and in the evening he went to their house. On drawing near the
+gate his attention was attracted by the sight of one of the bedrooms
+blinking into a state of illumination.  In it stood Grace lighting
+several candles, her right hand elevating the taper, her left hand on
+her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed on each wick as it kindled, as
+if she saw in every flame's growth the rise of a life to maturity.  He
+wondered what such unusual brilliancy could mean to-night.  On getting
+in-doors he found her father and step-mother in a state of suppressed
+excitement, which at first he could not comprehend.
+
+"I am sorry about my biddings to-day," said Giles.  "I don't know what
+I was doing.  I have come to say that any of the lots you may require
+are yours."
+
+"Oh, never mind--never mind," replied the timber-merchant, with a
+slight wave of his hand, "I have so much else to think of that I nearly
+had forgot it.  Just now, too, there are matters of a different kind
+from trade to attend to, so don't let it concern ye."
+
+As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, down to him from a higher
+moral plane than his own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Grace is going to the House to-morrow," she said, quietly.  "She is
+looking out her things now.  I dare say she is wanting me this minute
+to assist her." Thereupon Mrs. Melbury left the room.
+
+Nothing is more remarkable than the independent personality of the
+tongue now and then.  Mr. Melbury knew that his words had been a sort
+of boast.  He decried boasting, particularly to Giles; yet whenever the
+subject was Grace, his judgment resigned the ministry of speech in
+spite of him.
+
+Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little apprehension at
+the news.  He repeated Mrs. Melbury's words.
+
+"Yes," said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged out of him what
+he could not in any circumstances have kept in.  "Coming home from the
+woods this afternoon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. She spoke to
+me on a little matter of business, and then got acquainted with Grace.
+'Twas wonderful how she took to Grace in a few minutes; that
+freemasonry of education made 'em close at once. Naturally enough she
+was amazed that such an article--ha, ha!--could come out of my house.
+At last it led on to Mis'ess Grace being asked to the House.  So she's
+busy hunting up her frills and furbelows to go in."  As Giles remained
+in thought without responding, Melbury continued: "But I'll call her
+down-stairs."
+
+"No, no; don't do that, since she's busy," said Winterborne.
+
+Melbury, feeling from the young man's manner that his own talk had been
+too much at Giles and too little to him, repented at once. His face
+changed, and he said, in lower tones, with an effort, "She's yours,
+Giles, as far as I am concerned."
+
+"Thanks--my best thanks....But I think, since it is all right between
+us about the biddings, that I'll not interrupt her now. I'll step
+homeward, and call another time."
+
+On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again.  Grace,
+surrounded by a sufficient number of candles to answer all purposes of
+self-criticism, was standing before a cheval-glass that her father had
+lately bought expressly for her use; she was bonneted, cloaked, and
+gloved, and glanced over her shoulder into the mirror, estimating her
+aspect.  Her face was lit with the natural elation of a young girl
+hoping to inaugurate on the morrow an intimate acquaintance with a new,
+interesting, and powerful friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge in a
+six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire, carried her
+over the ground the next morning with a springy tread. Her sense of
+being properly appreciated on her own native soil seemed to brighten
+the atmosphere and herbage around her, as the glowworm's lamp
+irradiates the grass.  Thus she moved along, a vessel of emotion going
+to empty itself on she knew not what.
+
+Twenty minutes' walking through copses, over a stile, and along an
+upland lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom of
+which Hintock House appeared immediately beneath her eye.  To describe
+it as standing in a hollow would not express the situation of the
+manor-house; it stood in a hole, notwithstanding that the hole was full
+of beauty.  From the spot which Grace had reached a stone could easily
+have been thrown over or into, the birds'-nested chimneys of the
+mansion.  Its walls were surmounted by a battlemented parapet; but the
+gray lead roofs were quite visible behind it, with their gutters, laps,
+rolls, and skylights, together with incised letterings and
+shoe-patterns cut by idlers thereon.
+
+The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation of
+Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich snuff-colored
+freestone from local quarries.  The ashlar of the walls, where not
+overgrown with ivy and other creepers, was coated with lichen of every
+shade, intensifying its luxuriance with its nearness to the ground,
+till, below the plinth, it merged in moss.
+
+Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of whose
+trees were above the level of the chimneys.  The corresponding high
+ground on which Grace stood was richly grassed, with only an old tree
+here and there.  A few sheep lay about, which, as they ruminated,
+looked quietly into the bedroom windows. The situation of the house,
+prejudicial to humanity, was a stimulus to vegetation, on which account
+an endless shearing of the heavy-armed ivy was necessary, and a
+continual lopping of trees and shrubs.  It was an edifice built in
+times when human constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the
+boisterous was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place,
+the insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an
+ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the fragility to
+which these have declined.  The highest architectural cunning could
+have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and
+ruthless ignorance could have done little to make it unpicturesque.  It
+was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to inspire the painter and poet
+of still life--if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing
+atmosphere--and to draw groans from the gregariously disposed.  Grace
+descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path into the drive, which
+swept round beneath the slope. The exterior of the house had been
+familiar to her from her childhood, but she had never been inside, and
+the approach to knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively
+experience.  It was with a little flutter that she was shown in; but
+she recollected that Mrs. Charmond would probably be alone.  Up to a
+few days before this time that lady had been accompanied in her
+comings, stayings, and goings by a relative believed to be her aunt;
+latterly, however, these two ladies had separated, owing, it was
+supposed, to a quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. Being
+presumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this deprivation
+might possibly account for her sudden interest in Grace.
+
+Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall when
+Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass doors between
+them.  She came forward with a smile on her face, and told the young
+girl it was good of her to come.
+
+"Ah! you have noticed those," she said, seeing that Grace's eyes were
+attracted by some curious objects against the walls.  "They are
+man-traps.  My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns
+and such articles, collecting them from all his neighbors.  He knew the
+histories of all these--which gin had broken a man's leg, which gun had
+killed a man.  That one, I remember his saying, had been set by a
+game-keeper in the track of a notorious poacher; but the keeper,
+forgetting what he had done, went that way himself, received the charge
+in the lower part of his body, and died of the wound.  I don't like
+them here, but I've never yet given directions for them to be taken
+away." She added, playfully, "Man-traps are of rather ominous
+significance where a person of our sex lives, are they not?"
+
+Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one which
+her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating.
+
+"They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time happily
+past," she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied designs of these
+instruments of torture--some with semi-circular jaws, some with
+rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth, but a few with none,
+so that their jaws looked like the blank gums of old age.
+
+"Well, we must not take them too seriously," said Mrs. Charmond, with
+an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward.  When she had
+shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she deemed likely
+to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, ivories, miniatures,
+and so on--always with a mien of listlessness which might either have
+been constitutional, or partly owing to the situation of the
+place--they sat down to an early cup of tea.
+
+"Will you pour it out, please? Do," she said, leaning back in her
+chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond
+eyes--those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early Italian
+art--became longer, and her voice more languishing.  She showed that
+oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most frequent in women of
+darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament than Mrs. Charmond's
+was; who lingeringly smile their meanings to men rather than speak
+them, who inveigle rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents
+rather than steer.
+
+"I am the most inactive woman when I am here," she said.  "I think
+sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but float
+about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams.  But that cannot be
+really my destiny, and I must struggle against such fancies."
+
+"I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion--it is quite sad! I wish I
+could tend you and make you very happy."
+
+There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound of
+Grace's voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their
+customary reservations in talking to her.  "It is tender and kind of
+you to feel that," said Mrs. Charmond.  "Perhaps I have given you the
+notion that my languor is more than it really is.  But this place
+oppresses me, and I have a plan of going abroad a good deal.  I used to
+go with a relative, but that arrangement has dropped through."
+Regarding Grace with a final glance of criticism, she seemed to make up
+her mind to consider the young girl satisfactory, and continued: "Now I
+am often impelled to record my impressions of times and places.  I have
+often thought of writing a 'New Sentimental Journey.'  But I cannot
+find energy enough to do it alone.  When I am at different places in
+the south of Europe I feel a crowd of ideas and fancies thronging upon
+me continually, but to unfold writing-materials, take up a cold steel
+pen, and put these impressions down systematically on cold, smooth
+paper--that I cannot do.  So I have thought that if I always could have
+somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might dictate any
+ideas that come into my head.  And directly I had made your
+acquaintance the other day it struck me that you would suit me so well.
+Would you like to undertake it?  You might read to me, too, if
+desirable.  Will you think it over, and ask your parents if they are
+willing?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Grace.  "I am almost sure they would be very glad."
+
+"You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite honored by such
+intellectual company."
+
+Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea.
+
+"Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?"
+
+"Oh no.  Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they are
+not carried on by me."
+
+"What--another student in that retreat?"
+
+"There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a great
+deal--I see his light sometimes through the trees late at night."
+
+"Oh yes--a doctor--I believe I was told of him.  It is a strange place
+for him to settle in."
+
+"It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say.  But he does not
+confine his studies to medicine, it seems.  He investigates theology
+and metaphysics and all sorts of subjects."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"Fitzpiers.  He represents a very old family, I believe, the
+Fitzpierses of Buckbury-Fitzpiers--not a great many miles from here."
+
+"I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family.  I was
+never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs. Charmond did
+not care to pursue this line of investigation. Whatever mysterious
+merit might attach to family antiquity, it was one which, though she
+herself could claim it, her adaptable, wandering weltburgerliche nature
+had grown tired of caring about--a peculiarity that made her a contrast
+to her neighbors.  "It is of rather more importance to know what the
+man is himself than what his family is," she said, "if he is going to
+practise upon us as a surgeon.  Have you seen him?"
+
+Grace had not.  "I think he is not a very old man," she added.
+
+"Has he a wife?"
+
+"I am not aware that he has."
+
+"Well, I hope he will be useful here.  I must get to know him when I
+come back.  It will be very convenient to have a medical man--if he is
+clever--in one's own parish.  I get dreadfully nervous sometimes,
+living in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so far to send to.
+No doubt you feel Hintock to be a great change after watering-place
+life."
+
+"I do.  But it is home.  It has its advantages and its disadvantages."
+Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of the attendant
+circumstances.
+
+They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease by her
+entertainer.  Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a woman not to
+know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive young girl who
+would probably be very quick to discern it, was to demolish her dignity
+rather than to establish it in that young girl's eyes.  So, being
+violently possessed with her idea of making use of this gentle
+acquaintance, ready and waiting at her own door, she took great pains
+to win her confidence at starting.
+
+Just before Grace's departure the two chanced to pause before a mirror
+which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so as to bring
+into prominence their resemblances and their contrasts.  Both looked
+attractive as glassed back by the faithful reflector; but Grace's
+countenance had the effect of making Mrs. Charmond appear more than her
+full age.  There are complexions which set off each other to great
+advantage, and there are those which antagonize, the one killing or
+damaging its neighbor unmercifully.  This was unhappily the case here.
+Mrs. Charmond fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a
+cursory remark of her companion's.  However, she parted from her young
+friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know as
+soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had suggested.
+
+When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope she
+looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the door,
+meditatively regarding her.
+
+
+Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys,
+Winterborne's thoughts ran upon Grace's announced visit to Hintock
+House.  Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of the
+way? Something told him that she might not, on such an occasion, care
+for his company.
+
+He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden next
+day, he saw her go past on the journey with such a pretty pride in the
+event.  He wondered if her father's ambition, which had purchased for
+her the means of intellectual light and culture far beyond those of any
+other native of the village, would conduce to the flight of her future
+interests above and away from the local life which was once to her the
+movement of the world.
+
+Nevertheless, he had her father's permission to win her if he could;
+and to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon to a crisis,
+if he ever hoped to do so.  If she should think herself too good for
+him, he could let her go and make the best of his loss; but until he
+had really tested her he could not say that she despised his suit.  The
+question was how to quicken events towards an issue.
+
+He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as any
+would be to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her parents to
+come as chief guests.
+
+These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a slight
+knocking at his front door.  He descended the path and looked out, and
+beheld Marty South, dressed for out-door work.
+
+"Why didn't you come, Mr. Winterborne?" she said.  "I've been waiting
+there hours and hours, and at last I thought I must try to find you."
+
+"Bless my soul, I'd quite forgot," said Giles.
+
+What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-trees to
+be planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared by the
+wood-cutters, and that he had arranged to plant them with his own
+hands.  He had a marvellous power of making trees grow. Although he
+would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly, there was a sort of
+sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that he was
+operating on, so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days.
+When, on the other hand, any of the journeymen planted, although they
+seemed to go through an identically similar process, one quarter of the
+trees would die away during the ensuing August.
+
+Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at present,
+he contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in which he had no
+personal interest.  Marty, who turned her hand to anything, was usually
+the one who performed the part of keeping the trees in a perpendicular
+position while he threw in the mould.
+
+He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further to
+proceed with the work by the knowledge that the ground was close to the
+way-side along which Grace must pass on her return from Hintock House.
+
+"You've a cold in the head, Marty," he said, as they walked. "That
+comes of cutting off your hair."
+
+"I suppose it do.  Yes; I've three headaches going on in my head at the
+same time."
+
+"Three headaches!"
+
+"Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my eyes,
+and a misery headache in the middle of my brain.  However, I came out,
+for I thought you might be waiting and grumbling like anything if I was
+not there."
+
+The holes were already dug, and they set to work.  Winterborne's
+fingers were endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading the
+roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress, under which
+the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper directions
+for growth.  He put most of these roots towards the south-west; for, he
+said, in forty years' time, when some great gale is blowing from that
+quarter, the trees will require the strongest holdfast on that side to
+stand against it and not fall.
+
+"How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though while they are lying
+down they don't sigh at all," said Marty.
+
+"Do they?" said Giles.  "I've never noticed it."
+
+She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her
+finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to
+cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled--probably long
+after the two planters should be felled themselves.
+
+"It seems to me," the girl continued, "as if they sigh because they are
+very sorry to begin life in earnest--just as we be."
+
+"Just as we be?" He looked critically at her.  "You ought not to feel
+like that, Marty."
+
+Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they planted
+on through a great part of the day, almost without another word.
+Winterborne's mind ran on his contemplated evening-party, his
+abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty's presence
+beside him.  From the nature of their employment, in which he handled
+the spade and she merely held the tree, it followed that he got good
+exercise and she got none.  But she was an heroic girl, and though her
+out-stretched hand was chill as a stone, and her cheeks blue, and her
+cold worse than ever, she would not complain while he was disposed to
+continue work.  But when he paused she said, "Mr. Winterborne, can I
+run down the lane and back to warm my feet?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening anew to her existence.
+"Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season. Now I
+warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was.  You had no
+business to chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost right.
+Look here, cut off home at once."
+
+"A run down the lane will be quite enough."
+
+"No, it won't.  You ought not to have come out to-day at all."
+
+"But I should like to finish the--"
+
+"Marty, I tell you to go home," said he, peremptorily.  "I can manage
+to keep the rest of them upright with a stick or something."
+
+She went away without saying any more.  When she had gone down the
+orchard a little distance she looked back.  Giles suddenly went after
+her.
+
+"Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know.  But warm
+yourself in your own way, I don't care."
+
+When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman's dress through
+the holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road. It was Grace
+at last, on her way back from the interview with Mrs. Charmond.  He
+threw down the tree he was planting, and was about to break through the
+belt of holly when he suddenly became aware of the presence of another
+man, who was looking over the hedge on the opposite side of the way
+upon the figure of the unconscious Grace.  He appeared as a handsome
+and gentlemanly personage of six or eight and twenty, and was quizzing
+her through an eye-glass. Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he
+let his glass drop with a click upon the rail which protected the
+hedge, and walked away in the opposite direction.  Giles knew in a
+moment that this must be Mr. Fitzpiers.  When he was gone, Winterborne
+pushed through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting
+object of their contemplation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"I heard the bushes move long before I saw you," she began.  "I said
+first, 'it is some terrible beast;' next, 'it is a poacher;' next, 'it
+is a friend!'"
+
+He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but the
+question whether he should tell her that she had been watched. He
+decided in the negative.
+
+"You have been to the house?" he said.  "But I need not ask." The fact
+was that there shone upon Miss Melbury's face a species of exaltation,
+which saw no environing details nor his own occupation; nothing more
+than his bare presence.
+
+"Why need you not ask?"
+
+"Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the Mount."
+
+She reddened a little and said, "How can you be so profane, Giles
+Winterborne?"
+
+"How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg pardon;
+I didn't mean to speak so freely.  How do you like her house and her?"
+
+"Exceedingly.  I had not been inside the walls since I was a child,
+when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's late
+husband bought the property.  She is SO nice!" And Grace fell into such
+an abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her
+niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air
+before them.
+
+"She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay much
+longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. She is going
+abroad.  Only think, she would like me to go with her."
+
+Giles's features stiffened a little at the news.  "Indeed; what for?
+But I won't keep you standing here.  Hoi, Robert!" he cried to a
+swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the figure of
+Creedle his man.  "Go on filling in there till I come back."
+
+"I'm a-coming, sir; I'm a-coming."
+
+"Well, the reason is this," continued she, as they went on
+together--"Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character--a
+desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre Dumas, and
+Mery, and Sterne,  and others.  But she cannot find energy enough to do
+it herself." And Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond's proposal at
+large.  "My notion is that Mery's style will suit her best, because he
+writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she has," Grace said,
+musingly.
+
+"Indeed!" said Winterborne, with mock awe.  "Suppose you talk over my
+head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean it!" she said, repentantly, looking into his eyes.
+"And as for myself, I hate French books.  And I love dear old Hintock,
+AND THE PEOPLE IN IT, fifty times better than all the Continent.  But
+the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don't you, Giles?"
+
+"It is well enough in one sense, but it will take you away," said he,
+mollified.
+
+"Only for a short time.  We should return in May."
+
+"Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father."
+
+Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house.  He had awaited her
+coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal to have
+a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and
+jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the lofty
+matters of her converse and thought that he refrained.
+
+As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his
+planting, and could not help saying to himself as he walked, that this
+engagement of his was a very unpromising business.  Her outing to-day
+had not improved it.  A woman who could go to Hintock House and be
+friendly with its mistress, enter into the views of its mistress, talk
+like her, and dress not much unlike her, why, she would hardly be
+contented with him, a yeoman, now immersed in tree-planting, even
+though he planted them well.  "And yet she's a true-hearted girl," he
+said, thinking of her words about Hintock.  "I must bring matters to a
+point, and there's an end of it."
+
+When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back, and
+dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl as
+before.
+
+"Suppose, Marty," he said, after a while, looking at her extended arm,
+upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple in the
+cold wind--"suppose you know a person, and want to bring that person to
+a good understanding with you, do you think a Christmas party of some
+sort is a warming-up thing, and likely to be useful in hastening on the
+matter?"
+
+"Is there to be dancing?"
+
+"There might be, certainly."
+
+"Will He dance with She?"
+
+"Well, yes."
+
+"Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I won't be
+the one to say which."
+
+"It shall be done," said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke the
+words quite loudly.  And as the day was nearly ended, he added, "Here,
+Marty, I'll send up a man to plant the rest to-morrow.  I've other
+things to think of just now."
+
+She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him walking
+with Grace Melbury.  She looked towards the western sky, which was now
+aglow like some vast foundery wherein new worlds were being cast.
+Across it the bare bough of a tree stretched horizontally, revealing
+every twig against the red, and showing in dark profile every beck and
+movement of three pheasants that were settling themselves down on it in
+a row to roost.
+
+"It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty, observing them with the
+vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, "for they are
+a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough.  If it were going to be
+stormy they'd squeeze close to the trunk.  The weather is almost all
+they have to think of, isn't it, Mr. Winterborne? and so they must be
+lighter-hearted than we."
+
+"I dare say they are," said Winterborne.
+
+
+Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with no
+great hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant's to
+ascertain if Grace and her parents would honor him with their presence.
+Having first to set his nightly gins in the garden, to catch the
+rabbits that ate his winter-greens, his call was delayed till just
+after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the Hintock houses but
+fitfully as yet, on account of the trees. Melbury was crossing his yard
+on his way to call on some one at the larger village, but he readily
+turned and walked up and down the path with the young man.
+
+Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller scale
+than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that his
+invitation was to a gathering of any importance.  So he put it in the
+mild form of "Can you come in for an hour, when you have done business,
+the day after to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury, if they have
+nothing more pressing to do?"
+
+Melbury would give no answer at once.  "No, I can't tell you to-day,"
+he said.  "I must talk it over with the women.  As far as I am
+concerned, my dear Giles, you know I'll come with pleasure. But how do
+I know what Grace's notions may be?  You see, she has been away among
+cultivated folks a good while; and now this acquaintance with Mrs.
+Charmond--Well, I'll ask her.  I can say no more."
+
+When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way.  He knew
+very well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either go or not
+go, according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for the moment, to
+suggest the negative.  His errand took him past the church, and the way
+to his destination was either across the church-yard or along-side it,
+the distances being the same.  For some reason or other he chose the
+former way.
+
+The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path, and the
+front of the building.  Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, turned ill upon
+the grass, and approached a particular headstone, where he read, "In
+memory of John Winterborne," with the subjoined date and age.  It was
+the grave of Giles's father.
+
+The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was humanized.
+"Jack, my wronged friend!" he said.  "I'll be faithful to my plan of
+making amends to 'ee."
+
+When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs. Melbury,
+who were working at a little table by the fire,
+
+"Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day after
+to-morrow; and I'm thinking, that as 'tis Giles who asks us, we'll go."
+
+They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant sent
+Giles the next morning an answer in the affirmative.
+
+
+
+Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no
+particular hour in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and his
+family, expecting no other guests, chose their own time, which chanced
+to be rather early in the afternoon, by reason of the somewhat quicker
+despatch than usual of the timber-merchant's business that day.  To
+show their sense of the unimportance of the occasion, they walked quite
+slowly to the house, as if they were merely out for a ramble, and going
+to nothing special at all; or at most intending to pay a casual call
+and take a cup of tea.
+
+At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of Winterborne's
+domicile from cellar to apple-loft.  He had planned an elaborate high
+tea for six o'clock or thereabouts, and a good roaring supper to come
+on about eleven.  Being a bachelor of rather retiring habits, the whole
+of the preparations devolved upon himself and his trusty man and
+familiar, Robert Creedle, who did everything that required doing, from
+making Giles's bed to catching moles in his field.  He was a survival
+from the days when Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles was a
+playing boy.
+
+These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to both,
+were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house, expecting nobody
+before six o'clock.  Winterborne was standing before the brick oven in
+his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the
+blazing mass with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork,
+the heat shining out upon his streaming face and making his eyes like
+furnaces, the thorns crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having
+ranged the pastry dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be
+ready, was pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a
+rolling-pin.  A great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door
+of the back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the
+snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter standing
+upside down on the hob to melt out the grease.
+
+Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window first
+the timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury in her best
+silk, and Grace in the fashionable attire which, in part brought home
+with her from the Continent, she had worn on her visit to Mrs.
+Charmond's.  The eyes of the three had been attracted to the
+proceedings within by the fierce illumination which the oven threw out
+upon the operators and their utensils.
+
+"Lord, Lord! if they baint come a'ready!" said Creedle.
+
+"No--hey?" said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in the
+background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight.  As there was no
+help for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way.
+
+"My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time," said the
+timber-merchant's wife, her face lengthening with concern.
+
+"Oh, it is not much difference.  I hope you'll come in."
+
+"But this means a regular randyvoo!" said Mr. Melbury, accusingly,
+glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick.
+
+"Well, yes," said Giles.
+
+"And--not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?"
+
+"I told three of 'em they might drop in if they'd nothing else to do,"
+Giles mildly admitted.
+
+"Now, why the name didn't ye tell us 'twas going to be a serious kind
+of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they don't say?
+Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come back along in a
+couple of hours?"
+
+"I hope you'll stay, if you'll be so good as not to mind, now you are
+here.  I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little time.  I
+ought not to have been so backward." Giles spoke quite anxiously for
+one of his undemonstrative temperament; for he feared that if the
+Melburys once were back in their own house they would not be disposed
+to turn out again.
+
+"'Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that's what 'tis," said Mr.
+Melbury, testily.  "Don't keep us here in the sitting-room; lead on to
+the bakehouse, man.  Now we are here we'll help ye get ready for the
+rest.  Here, mis'ess, take off your things, and help him out in his
+baking, or he won't get done to-night. I'll finish heating the oven,
+and set you free to go and skiver up them ducks." His eye had passed
+with pitiless directness of criticism into yet remote recesses of
+Winterborne's awkwardly built premises, where the aforesaid birds were
+hanging.
+
+"And I'll help finish the tarts," said Grace, cheerfully.
+
+"I don't know about that," said her father.  "'Tisn't quite so much in
+your line as it is in your mother-law's and mine."
+
+"Of course I couldn't let you, Grace!" said Giles, with some distress.
+
+"I'll do it, of course," said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her silk train,
+hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her sleeves, pinning
+them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his apron for her own use.
+
+So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped on
+the preparations.  A kindly pity of his household management, which
+Winterborne saw in her eyes whenever he caught them, depressed him much
+more than her contempt would have done.
+
+Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the others
+was absorbed in the difficulties of a cuisine based on utensils,
+cupboards, and provisions that were strange to them.  He groaned to the
+young man in a whisper, "This is a bruckle het, maister, I'm much
+afeared!  Who'd ha' thought they'd ha' come so soon?"
+
+The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look adumbrated the misgivings he
+did not care to express.  "Have you got the celery ready?" he asked,
+quickly.
+
+"Now that's a thing I never could mind; no, not if you'd paid me in
+silver and gold.  And I don't care who the man is, I says that a stick
+of celery that isn't scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is not clean."
+
+"Very well, very well!  I'll attend to it.  You go and get 'em
+comfortable in-doors."
+
+He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks to
+Creedle, who was still in a tragic mood.  "If ye'd ha' married, d'ye
+see, maister," he said, "this caddle couldn't have happened to us."
+
+Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done that
+could insure the supper turning up ready at some time or other, Giles
+and his friends entered the parlor, where the Melburys again dropped
+into position as guests, though the room was not nearly so warm and
+cheerful as the blazing bakehouse. Others now arrived, among them
+Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner, and tea went off very well.
+
+Grace's disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at
+deficiencies in Winterborne's menage, was so uniform and persistent
+that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies than he was
+aware of.  That suppressed sympathy which had showed in her face ever
+since her arrival told him as much too plainly.
+
+"This muddling style of house-keeping is what you've not lately been
+used to, I suppose?" he said, when they were a little apart.
+
+"No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything here in
+dear old Hintock is just as it used to be.  The oil is--not quite nice;
+but everything else is."
+
+"The oil?"
+
+"On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one's dress.  Still, mine is
+not a new one."
+
+Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright, had
+smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish, and
+refrained from rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the mirror-like
+effect that the mixture produced as laid on.  Giles apologized and
+called Creedle; but he felt that the Fates were against him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked meats from the oven, laid on a
+snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as in
+Flemish "Last Suppers."  Creedle and the boy fetched and carried with
+amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior and make things
+pleasant, expressing his admiration of Creedle's cleverness when they
+were alone.
+
+"I s'pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr.
+Creedle, was when you was in the militia?"
+
+"Well, yes.  I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly, and
+many ways of strange dashing life.  Not but that Giles has worked hard
+in helping me to bring things to such perfection to-day.  'Giles,' says
+I, though he's maister.  Not that I should call'n maister by rights,
+for his father growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had
+twinned us and been our nourishing."
+
+"I s'pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr.
+Creedle?"
+
+"Oh yes.  Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and
+hang-fairs and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday.  Ah, many's the
+patriarch I've seed come and go in this parish! There, he's calling for
+more plates.  Lord, why can't 'em turn their plates bottom upward for
+pudding, as they used to do in former days?"
+
+Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a
+half-unconscious state.  He could not get over the initial failures in
+his scheme for advancing his suit, and hence he did not know that he
+was eating mouthfuls of bread and nothing else, and continually
+snuffing the two candles next him till he had reduced them to mere
+glimmers drowned in their own grease.  Creedle now appeared with a
+specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little
+three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into a
+dish, exclaiming, simultaneously, "Draw back, gentlemen and ladies,
+please!"
+
+A splash followed.  Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod and blink, and
+put her handkerchief to her face.
+
+"Good heavens! what did you do that for, Creedle?" said Giles, sternly,
+and jumping up.
+
+"'Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister," mildly expostulated
+Creedle, in an aside audible to all the company.
+
+"Well, yes--but--" replied Giles.  He went over to Grace, and hoped
+none of it had gone into her eye.
+
+"Oh no," she said.  "Only a sprinkle on my face.  It was nothing."
+
+"Kiss it and make it well," gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree.
+
+Miss Melbury blushed.
+
+The timber-merchant said, quickly, "Oh, it is nothing! She must bear
+these little mishaps." But there could be discerned in his face
+something which said "I ought to have foreseen this."
+
+Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not quite
+liked to see Grace present.  He wished he had not asked such people as
+Bawtree and the hollow-turner.  He had done it, in dearth of other
+friends, that the room might not appear empty.  In his mind's eye,
+before the event, they had been the mere background or padding of the
+scene, but somehow in reality they were the most prominent personages
+there.
+
+After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner
+monopolizing the new packs for an interminable game, in which a lump of
+chalk was incessantly used--a game those two always played wherever
+they were, taking a solitary candle and going to a private table in a
+corner with the mien of persons bent on weighty matters.  The rest of
+the company on this account were obliged to put up with old packs for
+their round game, that had been lying by in a drawer ever since the
+time that Giles's grandmother was alive.  Each card had a great stain
+in the middle of its back, produced by the touch of generations of damp
+and excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens
+wore a decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an
+impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums than
+real regal characters.  Every now and then the comparatively few
+remarks of the players at the round game were harshly intruded on by
+the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner from the
+back of the room:
+
+    "And I' will hold' a wa'-ger with you'
+     That all' these marks' are thirt'-y two!"
+
+accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table; then an
+exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; then the commencement
+of the rhymes anew.
+
+The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with a satisfied
+sense of weight in his words, and by praising the party in a
+patronizing tone, when Winterborne expressed his fear that he and his
+were not enjoying themselves.
+
+"Oh yes, yes; pretty much.  What handsome glasses those are!  I didn't
+know you had such glasses in the house.  Now, Lucy" (to his wife), "you
+ought to get some like them for ourselves." And when they had abandoned
+cards, and Winterborne was talking to Melbury by the fire, it was the
+timber-merchant who stood with his back to the mantle in a proprietary
+attitude, from which post of vantage he critically regarded Giles's
+person, rather as a superficies than as a solid with ideas and feelings
+inside it, saying, "What a splendid coat that one is you have on,
+Giles! I can't get such coats.  You dress better than I."
+
+After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great Hintock having
+arrived some time before.  Grace had been away from home so long that
+she had forgotten the old figures, and hence did not join in the
+movement.  Then Giles felt that all was over.  As for her, she was
+thinking, as she watched the gyrations, of a very different measure
+that she had been accustomed to tread with a bevy of sylph-like
+creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a large house, most of whom
+were now moving in scenes widely removed from this, both as regarded
+place and character.
+
+A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with the
+abandoned cards.  Grace assented to the proposal, and the woman told
+her tale unskilfully, for want of practice, as she declared.
+
+Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, "Tell her
+fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science--what do
+you call 'em? Phrenologists.  You can't teach her anything new.  She's
+been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at anything she can
+hear among us folks in Hintock."
+
+At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family being the
+earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing their game
+doggedly in the corner, where they had completely covered Giles's
+mahogany table with chalk scratches.  The three walked home, the
+distance being short and the night clear.
+
+"Well, Giles is a very good fellow," said Mr. Melbury, as they struck
+down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in which the
+stars seemed set.
+
+"Certainly he is," said Grace, quickly, and in such a tone as to show
+that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard than he had stood
+before.
+
+When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the doctor's
+house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his rooms,
+although it was now about two o'clock.
+
+"The doctor is not abed yet," said Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Hard study, no doubt," said her husband.
+
+"One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about here by
+day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night. 'Tis
+astonishing how little we see of him."
+
+Melbury's mind seemed to turn with much relief to the contemplation of
+Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. "It is natural enough,"
+he replied.  "What can a man of that sort find to interest him in
+Hintock?  I don't expect he'll stay here long."
+
+His mind reverted to Giles's party, and when they were nearly home he
+spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: "It is hardly
+the line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she's been
+accustomed to.  I didn't foresee that in sending her to boarding-school
+and letting her travel, and what not, to make her a good bargain for
+Giles, I should be really spoiling her for him. Ah, 'tis a thousand
+pities! But he ought to have her--he ought!"
+
+At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last really
+finished their play, could be heard coming along in the rear,
+vociferously singing a song to march-time, and keeping vigorous step to
+the same in far-reaching strides--
+
+     "She may go, oh!
+      She may go, oh!
+      She may go to the d---- for me!"
+
+
+The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury.  "That's the
+sort of society we've been asked to meet," he said.  "For us old folk
+it didn't matter; but for Grace--Giles should have known better!"
+
+
+Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just cleared
+out, the subject of their discourse was walking from room to room
+surveying the general displacement of furniture with no ecstatic
+feeling; rather the reverse, indeed.  At last he entered the bakehouse,
+and found there Robert Creedle sitting over the embers, also lost in
+contemplation.  Winterborne sat down beside him.
+
+"Well, Robert, you must be tired.  You'd better get on to bed."
+
+"Ay, ay, Giles--what do I call ye? Maister, I would say.  But 'tis well
+to think the day IS done, when 'tis done."
+
+Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled
+forehead was ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth, till
+it was like a vast scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders lying about
+everywhere.  "Do you think it went off well, Creedle?" he asked.
+
+"The victuals did; that I know.  And the drink did; that I steadfastly
+believe, from the holler sound of the barrels.  Good, honest drink
+'twere, the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best wine that berries
+could rise to; and the briskest Horner-and-Cleeves cider ever wrung
+down, leaving out the spice and sperrits I put into it, while that
+egg-flip would ha' passed through muslin, so little curdled 'twere.
+'Twas good enough to make any king's heart merry--ay, to make his whole
+carcass smile.  Still, I don't deny I'm afeared some things didn't go
+well with He and his." Creedle nodded in a direction which signified
+where the Melburys lived.
+
+"I'm afraid, too, that it was a failure there!"
+
+"If so, 'twere doomed to be so.  Not but what that snail might as well
+have come upon anybody else's plate as hers."
+
+"What snail?"
+
+"Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate when
+I brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves of
+wintergreen."
+
+"How the deuce did a snail get there?"
+
+"That I don't know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman was."
+
+"But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn't have been!"
+
+"Well, 'twas his native home, come to that; and where else could we
+expect him to be? I don't care who the man is, snails and caterpillars
+always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in that tantalizing
+way."
+
+"He wasn't alive, I suppose?" said Giles, with a shudder on Grace's
+account.
+
+"Oh no.  He was well boiled.  I warrant him well boiled.  God forbid
+that a LIVE snail should be seed on any plate of victuals that's served
+by Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don't mind 'em myself--them
+small ones, for they were born on cabbage, and they've lived on
+cabbage, so they must be made of cabbage.  But she, the close-mouthed
+little lady, she didn't say a word about it; though 'twould have made
+good small conversation as to the nater of such creatures; especially
+as wit ran short among us sometimes."
+
+"Oh yes--'tis all over!" murmured Giles to himself, shaking his head
+over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead more than
+ever.  "Do you know, Robert," he said, "that she's been accustomed to
+servants and everything superfine these many years? How, then, could
+she stand our ways?"
+
+"Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob elsewhere.
+They shouldn't have schooled her so monstrous high, or else bachelor
+men shouldn't give randys, or if they do give 'em, only to their own
+race."
+
+"Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne, rising and yawning a sigh.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+"'Tis a pity--a thousand pities!" her father kept saying next morning
+at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom.
+
+But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne's suit at
+this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to promote--was,
+indeed, mechanically promoting at this moment?  A crisis was
+approaching, mainly as a result of his contrivances, and it would have
+to be met.
+
+But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing what
+an immense change her last twelve months of absence had produced in his
+daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he had been spending for
+several years upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marry
+Giles Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant,
+apple-farmer, and what not, even were she willing to marry him herself.
+
+"She will be his wife if you don't upset her notion that she's bound to
+accept him as an understood thing," said Mrs. Melbury. "Bless ye,
+she'll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content with Giles's way
+of living, which he'll improve with what money she'll have from you.
+'Tis the strangeness after her genteel life that makes her feel
+uncomfortable at first.  Why, when I saw Hintock the first time I
+thought I never could like it.  But things gradually get familiar, and
+stone floors seem not so very cold and hard, and the hooting of the
+owls not so very dreadful, and loneliness not so very lonely, after a
+while."
+
+"Yes, I believe ye.  That's just it.  I KNOW Grace will gradually sink
+down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of speaking, and
+feel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife.  But I can't bear the
+thought of dragging down to that old level as promising a piece of
+maidenhood as ever lived--fit to ornament a palace wi'--that I've taken
+so much trouble to lift up.  Fancy her white hands getting redder every
+day, and her tongue losing its pretty up-country curl in talking, and
+her bounding walk becoming the regular Hintock shail and wamble!"
+
+"She may shail, but she'll never wamble," replied his wife, decisively.
+
+When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so late;
+not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of indulgence
+as discomposed by these other reflections.
+
+The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down.  "You used to
+complain with justice when I was a girl," she said.  "But I am a woman
+now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is something
+else!" Instead of sitting down she went outside the door.
+
+He was sorry.  The petulance that relatives show towards each other is
+in truth directed against that intangible Causality which has shaped
+the situation no less for the offenders than the offended, but is too
+elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor humanity in irritated
+mood.  Melbury followed her.  She had rambled on to the paddock, where
+the white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties and
+thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable family of
+sparrows perched in a line along the string-course of the chimney,
+preening themselves in the rays of the sun.
+
+"Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said.  "And as to Giles, use your
+own mind.  Whatever pleases you will please me."
+
+"I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in honor
+I ought to marry him, whenever I do marry."
+
+He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her heart
+there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to Giles,
+though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes.  But he would not
+distinctly express his views on the promise.  "Very well," he said.
+"But I hope I sha'n't lose you yet.  Come in to breakfast.  What did
+you think of the inside of Hintock House the other day?"
+
+"I liked it much."
+
+"Different from friend Winterborne's?"
+
+She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by her
+silence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons.
+
+"Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again--when, did you say?"
+
+"She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know if
+it suited her." And with this subject upon their lips they entered to
+breakfast.
+
+Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond.  Nor was there any on
+Wednesday.  In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a sign, and it
+looked suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not going further in the
+direction of "taking up" Grace at present.
+
+Her father reasoned thereon.  Immediately after his daughter's two
+indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond--the interview in the wood and
+a visit to the House--she had attended Winterborne's party.  No doubt
+the out-and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in the
+neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had been widely
+spoken of--Grace, with her exceptional qualities, above all.  What,
+then, so natural as that Mrs. Charmond should have heard the village
+news, and become quite disappointed in her expectations of Grace at
+finding she kept such company?
+
+Full of this post hoc argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the infinite
+throng of other possible reasons and unreasons for a woman changing her
+mind.  For instance, while knowing that his Grace was attractive, he
+quite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also great pretensions to beauty.
+In his simple estimate, an attractive woman attracted all around.
+
+So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the
+villagers at the unlucky Winterborne's was the cause of her most
+grievous loss, as he deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House.
+
+"'Tis a thousand pities!" he would repeat to himself.  "I am ruining
+her for conscience' sake!"
+
+It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his
+mind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just as
+they finished breakfast.  Looking up, they saw Giles in person mounted
+on horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for
+some time, to catch their attention through the window.  Grace had been
+the first to see him, and involuntarily exclaimed, "There he is--and a
+new horse!"
+
+On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended
+thoughts and compound feelings concerning him, could he have read them
+through those old panes.  But he saw nothing: his features just now
+were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile at some other idea.  So
+they rose from breakfast and went to the door, Grace with an anxious,
+wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. Melbury placid and
+inquiring.  "We have come out to look at your horse," she said.
+
+It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and explained
+that he had ridden a mile or two to try the animal's paces.  "I bought
+her," he added, with warmth so severely repressed as to seem
+indifference, "because she has been used to carry a lady."
+
+Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten.  Mrs. Melbury said, "And is she
+quiet?"
+
+Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it.  "I took care of
+that.  She's five-and-twenty, and very clever for her age."
+
+"Well, get off and come in," said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles
+dismounted accordingly.
+
+This event was the concrete result of Winterborne's thoughts during the
+past week or two.  The want of success with his evening party he had
+accepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable of; but there had
+been enthusiasm enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market to
+purchase this old mare, which had belonged to a neighboring parson with
+several daughters, and was offered him to carry either a gentleman or a
+lady, and to do odd jobs of carting and agriculture at a pinch.  This
+obliging quadruped seemed to furnish Giles with a means of reinstating
+himself in Melbury's good opinion as a man of considerateness by
+throwing out future possibilities to Grace.
+
+The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning, in the
+mood which is altogether peculiar to woman's nature, and which, when
+reduced into plain words, seems as impossible as the penetrability of
+matter--that of entertaining a tender pity for the object of her own
+unnecessary coldness.  The imperturbable poise which marked Winterborne
+in general was enlivened now by a freshness and animation that set a
+brightness in his eye and on his cheek.  Mrs. Melbury asked him to have
+some breakfast, and he pleasurably replied that he would join them,
+with his usual lack of tactical observation, not perceiving that they
+had all finished the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, and
+that the note piped by the kettle denoted it to be nearly empty; so
+that fresh water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil,
+and a general renovation of the table carried out.  Neither did he
+know, so full was he of his tender ulterior object in buying that
+horse, how many cups of tea he was gulping down one after another, nor
+how the morning was slipping, nor how he was keeping the family from
+dispersing about their duties.
+
+Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse's purchase,
+looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the room, a way he
+always looked when he narrated anything that amused him.  While he
+was still thinking of the scene he had described, Grace rose and
+said, "I have to go and help my mother now, Mr. Winterborne."
+
+"H'm!" he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her.
+
+She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness; whereupon
+Giles, becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious, jumped up, saying,
+"To be sure, to be sure!" wished them quickly good-morning, and bolted
+out of the house.
+
+Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position, with
+her at least.  Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father saw with
+some regret) already the homeliness of Hintock life was fast becoming
+effaced from her observation as a singularity; just as the first
+strangeness of a face from which we have for years been separated
+insensibly passes off with renewed intercourse, and tones itself down
+into simple identity with the lineaments of the past.
+
+Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to the
+sacrifice of the gem he had been at such pains in mounting.  He fain
+could hope, in the secret nether chamber of his mind, that something
+would happen, before the balance of her feeling had quite turned in
+Winterborne's favor, to relieve his conscience and preserve her on her
+elevated plane.
+
+He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned all
+interest in his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it, and was
+as firmly convinced as ever that the comradeship which Grace had shown
+with Giles and his crew by attending his party had been the cause.
+
+Matters lingered on thus.  And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on this
+side and on that is made to travel in specific directions, the little
+touches of circumstance in the life of this young girl shaped the
+curves of her career.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+It was a day of rather bright weather for the season.  Miss Melbury
+went out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful father, having an
+hour's leisure, offered to walk with her.  The breeze was fresh and
+quite steady, filtering itself through the denuded mass of twigs
+without swaying them, but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the
+trunks scratch its underlying neighbor restlessly.  Grace's lips sucked
+in this native air of hers like milk.  They soon reached a place where
+the wood ran down into a corner, and went outside it towards
+comparatively open ground. Having looked round about, they were
+intending to re-enter the copse when a fox quietly emerged with a
+dragging brush, trotted past them tamely as a domestic cat, and
+disappeared amid some dead fern.  They walked on, her father merely
+observing, after watching the animal, "They are hunting somewhere near."
+
+Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither and
+thither, as if there were little or no scent that day.  Soon divers
+members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was evident from
+their movements that the chase had been stultified by general
+puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended victim.  In a
+minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting with acteonic
+excitement, and Grace being a few steps in advance, he addressed her,
+asking if she had seen the fox.
+
+"Yes," said she.  "We saw him some time ago--just out there."
+
+"Did you cry Halloo?"
+
+"We said nothing."
+
+"Then why the d---- didn't you, or get the old buffer to do it for you?"
+said the man, as he cantered away.
+
+She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her
+father's face, saw that it was quite red.
+
+"He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!" said the old man, in the
+tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by the epithet
+applied to himself.  "And he wouldn't if he had been a gentleman.
+'Twas not the language to use to a woman of any niceness.  You, so well
+read and cultivated--how could he expect ye to know what tom-boy
+field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you had just come from
+trimming swedes or mangolds--joking with the rough work-folk and all
+that--I could have stood it.  But hasn't it cost me near a hundred a
+year to lift you out of all that, so as to show an example to the
+neighborhood of what a woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret
+of it? 'Twas because I was in your company.  If a black-coated squire
+or pa'son had been walking with you instead of me he wouldn't have
+spoken so."
+
+"No, no, father; there's nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!"
+
+"I tell you it is that! I've noticed, and I've noticed it many times,
+that a woman takes her color from the man she's walking with.  The
+woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she's with a polished-up
+fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when she's hobbing and
+nobbing with a homely blade.  You sha'n't be treated like that for
+long, or at least your children sha'n't. You shall have somebody to
+walk with you who looks more of a dandy than I--please God you shall!"
+
+"But, my dear father," she said, much distressed, "I don't mind at all.
+I don't wish for more honor than I already have!"
+
+"A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter," according to
+Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more so
+than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him.  As for Grace,
+she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to
+unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she was
+conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibility of being the
+social hope of the family.
+
+"You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?" asked her
+father, in continuation of the subject.
+
+Despite her feeling she assented to this.  His reasoning had not been
+without its weight upon her.
+
+"Grace," he said, just before they had reached the house, "if it costs
+me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that whatever a
+young woman's niceness, she stands for nothing alone. You shall marry
+well."
+
+He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the breeze,
+which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance.
+
+She looked calmly at him.  "And how about Mr. Winterborne?" she asked.
+"I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but as a question
+of keeping faith."
+
+The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a moment.  "I don't know--I don't
+know," he said.  "'Tis a trying strait.  Well, well; there's no hurry.
+We'll wait and see how he gets on."
+
+That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment
+behind the large parlor.  It had at one time been part of the
+bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr.
+Melbury, in turning it into an office, had built into the cavity an
+iron safe, which he used for holding his private papers.  The door of
+the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it.
+
+"Sit down, Grace, and keep me company," he said.  "You may amuse
+yourself by looking over these." He threw out a heap of papers before
+her.
+
+"What are they?" she asked.
+
+"Securities of various sorts." He unfolded them one by one. "Papers
+worth so much money each.  Now here's a lot of turnpike bonds for one
+thing.  Would you think that each of these pieces of paper is worth two
+hundred pounds?"
+
+"No, indeed, if you didn't say so."
+
+"'Tis so, then.  Now here are papers of another sort.  They are for
+different sums in the three-per-cents.  Now these are Port Breedy
+Harbor bonds.  We have a great stake in that harbor, you know, because
+I send off timber there.  Open the rest at your pleasure.  They'll
+interest ye."
+
+"Yes, I will, some day," said she, rising.
+
+"Nonsense, open them now.  You ought to learn a little of such matters.
+A young lady of education should not be ignorant of money affairs
+altogether.  Suppose you should be left a widow some day, with your
+husband's title-deeds and investments thrown upon your hands--"
+
+"Don't say that, father--title-deeds; it sounds so vain!"
+
+"It does not.  Come to that, I have title-deeds myself.  There, that
+piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas."
+
+"Yes, but--" She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a low
+voice: "If what has been arranged about me should come to anything, my
+sphere will be quite a middling one."
+
+"Your sphere ought not to be middling," he exclaimed, not in passion,
+but in earnest conviction.  "You said you never felt more at home, more
+in your element, anywhere than you did that afternoon with Mrs.
+Charmond, when she showed you her house and all her knick-knacks, and
+made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room--surely you did!"
+
+"Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace.
+
+"Was it true?"
+
+"Yes, I felt so at the time.  The feeling is less strong now, perhaps."
+
+"Ah! Now, though you don't see it, your feeling at the time was the
+right one, because your mind and body were just in full and fresh
+cultivation, so that going there with her was like meeting like.  Since
+then you've been biding with us, and have fallen back a little, and so
+you don't feel your place so strongly.  Now, do as I tell ye, and look
+over these papers and see what you'll be worth some day.  For they'll
+all be yours, you know; who have I got to leave 'em to but you?
+Perhaps when your education is backed up by what these papers
+represent, and that backed up by another such a set and their owner,
+men such as that fellow was this morning may think you a little more
+than a buffer's girl."
+
+So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded representatives
+of hard cash that her father put before her.  To sow in her heart
+cravings for social position was obviously his strong desire, though in
+direct antagonism to a better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with
+him, and had, indeed, only succumbed that morning during the ramble.
+
+She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility of
+such a position was too great.  She had made it for herself mainly by
+her appearance and attractive behavior to him since her return.  "If I
+had only come home in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this
+might not have happened," she thought.  She deplored less the fact than
+the sad possibilities that might lie hidden therein.
+
+Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and
+reading the counterfoils.  This, also, she obediently did, and at last
+came to two or three which had been drawn to defray some of the late
+expenses of her clothes, board, and education.
+
+"I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn," she
+said, looking up sorrily.
+
+"I didn't want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an idea
+of my investment transactions.  But if you do cost as much as they,
+never mind.  You'll yield a better return."
+
+"Don't think of me like that!" she begged.  "A mere chattel."
+
+"A what? Oh, a dictionary word.  Well, as that's in your line I don't
+forbid it, even if it tells against me," he said, good-humoredly.  And
+he looked her proudly up and down.
+
+A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper was
+ready, and in giving the information she added, incidentally, "So we
+shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock House for some time, I hear,
+Maister Melbury.  Yes, she's going off to foreign parts to-morrow, for
+the rest of the winter months; and be-chok'd if I don't wish I could do
+the same, for my wynd-pipe is furred like a flue."
+
+When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his daughter
+and said, "So, Grace, you've lost your new friend, and your chance of
+keeping her company and writing her travels is quite gone from ye!"
+
+Grace said nothing.
+
+"Now," he went on, emphatically, "'tis Winterborne's affair has done
+this.  Oh yes, 'tis.  So let me say one word.  Promise me that you will
+not meet him again without my knowledge."
+
+"I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or with it."
+
+"So much the better.  I don't like the look of this at all.  And I say
+it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of tenderness to
+you.  For how could a woman, brought up delicately as you have been,
+bear the roughness of a life with him?"
+
+She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a
+sense of the intractability of circumstances.
+
+
+At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a
+conversation about Winterborne in progress in the village street,
+opposite Mr. Melbury's gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and Robert
+Creedle had accidentally met.
+
+The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over the
+parish, the skin of his face being drawn two ways on the
+matter--towards brightness in respect of it as news, and towards
+concern in respect of it as circumstance.
+
+"Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to lose
+her father.  He was almost well, but is much worse again.  A man all
+skin and grief he ever were, and if he leave Little Hintock for a
+better land, won't it make some difference to your Maister Winterborne,
+neighbor Creedle?"
+
+"Can I be a prophet in Israel?" said Creedle.  "Won't it! I was only
+shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing way, and all
+the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know what it means? It
+is upon John South's life that all Mr. Winterborne's houses hang.  If
+so be South die, and so make his decease, thereupon the law is that the
+houses fall without the least chance of absolution into HER hands at
+the House.  I told him so; but the words of the faithful be only as
+wind!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The news was true.  The life--the one fragile life--that had been used
+as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being frayed away.
+It was the last of a group of lives which had served this purpose, at
+the end of whose breathings the small homestead occupied by South
+himself, the larger one of Giles Winterborne, and half a dozen others
+that had been in the possession of various Hintock village families for
+the previous hundred years, and were now Winterborne's, would fall in
+and become part of the encompassing estate.
+
+Yet a short two months earlier Marty's father, aged fifty-five years,
+though something of a fidgety, anxious being, would have been looked on
+as a man whose existence was so far removed from hazardous as any in
+the parish, and as bidding fair to be prolonged for another quarter of
+a century.
+
+Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day thinking of the
+contingency.  The sense that the paths he was pacing, the
+cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar,
+wring-house, stables, and weathercock, were all slipping away over his
+head and beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a magic-lantern
+slide, was curious.  In spite of John South's late indisposition he had
+not anticipated danger.  To inquire concerning his health had been to
+show less sympathy than to remain silent, considering the material
+interest he possessed in the woodman's life, and he had, accordingly,
+made a point of avoiding Marty's house.
+
+While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him.  It was
+Marty herself, and she showed her distress by her unconsciousness of a
+cropped poll.
+
+"Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree," she
+said.  "You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall one in
+front of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill us.  Can you
+come and see if you can persuade him out of his notion? I can do
+nothing."
+
+He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted him upstairs.
+John South was pillowed up in a chair between the bed and the window
+exactly opposite the latter, towards which his face was turned.
+
+"Ah, neighbor Winterborne," he said.  "I wouldn't have minded if my
+life had only been my own to lose; I don't vallie it in much of itself,
+and can let it go if 'tis required of me.  But to think what 'tis worth
+to you, a young man rising in life, that do trouble me! It seems a
+trick of dishonesty towards ye to go off at fifty-five! I could bear
+up, I know I could, if it were not for the tree--yes, the tree, 'tis
+that's killing me.  There he stands, threatening my life every minute
+that the wind do blow.  He'll come down upon us and squat us dead; and
+what will ye do when the life on your property is taken away?"
+
+"Never you mind me--that's of no consequence," said Giles.  "Think of
+yourself alone."
+
+He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman's gaze.
+The tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood, which stood at
+a distance of two-thirds its own height from the front of South's
+dwelling.  Whenever the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked,
+naturally enough; and the sight of its motion and sound of its sighs
+had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in the woodman's mind that
+it would descend and kill him.  Thus he would sit all day, in spite of
+persuasion, watching its every sway, and listening to the melancholy
+Gregorian melodies which the air wrung out of it.  This fear it
+apparently was, rather than any organic disease which was eating away
+the health of John South.
+
+As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man with
+abject obedience.  "Ah, when it was quite a small tree," he said, "and
+I was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it off with my hook
+to make a clothes-line prop with.  But I put off doing it, and then I
+again thought that I would; but I forgot it, and didn't.  And at last
+it got too big, and now 'tis my enemy, and will be the death o' me.
+Little did I think, when I let that sapling stay, that a time would
+come when it would torment me, and dash me into my grave."
+
+"No, no," said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly.  But they thought it
+possible that it might hasten him into his grave, though in another way
+than by falling.
+
+"I tell you what," added Winterborne, "I'll climb up this afternoon and
+shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won't be so heavy, and the
+wind won't affect it so."
+
+"She won't allow it--a strange woman come from nobody knows where--she
+won't have it done."
+
+"You mean Mrs. Charmond?  Oh, she doesn't know there's such a tree on
+her estate.  Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I'll risk that
+much."
+
+He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook from
+the woodman's shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower part of
+the tree, where he began lopping off--"shrouding," as they called it at
+Hintock--the lowest boughs.  Each of these quivered under his attack,
+bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge.  Having cut away the lowest
+tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a few steps higher, and
+attacked those at the next level.  Thus he ascended with the progress
+of his work far above the top of the ladder, cutting away his perches
+as he went, and leaving nothing but a bare stem below him.
+
+The work was troublesome, for the tree was large.  The afternoon wore
+on, turning dark and misty about four o'clock.  From time to time Giles
+cast his eyes across towards the bedroom window of South, where, by the
+flickering fire in the chamber, he could see the old man watching him,
+sitting motionless with a hand upon each arm of the chair.  Beside him
+sat Marty, also straining her eyes towards the skyey field of his
+operations.
+
+A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, and he stopped his
+chopping.  He was operating on another person's property to prolong the
+years of a lease by whose termination that person would considerably
+benefit.  In that aspect of the case he doubted if he ought to go on.
+On the other hand he was working to save a man's life, and this seemed
+to empower him to adopt arbitrary measures.
+
+The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was weighing the
+circumstances he saw coming along the road through the increasing mist
+a figure which, indistinct as it was, he knew well.  It was Grace
+Melbury, on her way out from the house, probably for a short evening
+walk before dark.  He arranged himself for a greeting from her, since
+she could hardly avoid passing immediately beneath the tree.
+
+But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just at that time too
+full of the words of her father to give him any encouragement. The
+years-long regard that she had had for him was not kindled by her
+return into a flame of sufficient brilliancy to make her rebellious.
+Thinking that she might not see him, he cried, "Miss Melbury, here I
+am."
+
+She looked up again.  She was near enough to see the expression of his
+face, and the nails in his soles, silver-bright with constant walking.
+But she did not reply; and dropping her glance again, went on.
+
+Winterborne's face grew strange; he mused, and proceeded automatically
+with his work.  Grace meanwhile had not gone far. She had reached a
+gate, whereon she had leaned sadly, and whispered to herself, "What
+shall I do?"
+
+A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, passing under the
+tree again on her return.  Again he addressed her.  "Grace," he said,
+when she was close to the trunk, "speak to me." She shook her head
+without stopping, and went on to a little distance, where she stood
+observing him from behind the hedge.
+
+Her coldness had been kindly meant.  If it was to be done, she had said
+to herself, it should be begun at once.  While she stood out of
+observation Giles seemed to recognize her meaning; with a sudden start
+he worked on, climbing higher, and cutting himself off more and more
+from all intercourse with the sublunary world. At last he had worked
+himself so high up the elm, and the mist had so thickened, that he
+could only just be discerned as a dark-gray spot on the light-gray sky:
+he would have been altogether out of notice but for the stroke of his
+billhook and the flight of a bough downward, and its crash upon the
+hedge at intervals.
+
+It was not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were best.
+She went back a third time; he did not see her now, and she lingeringly
+gazed up at his unconscious figure, loath to put an end to any kind of
+hope that might live on in him still. "Giles--  Mr. Winterborne," she
+said.
+
+He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear.  "Mr. Winterborne!"
+she cried again, and this time he stopped, looked down, and replied.
+
+"My silence just now was not accident," she said, in an unequal voice.
+"My father says it is best not to think too much of that--engagement,
+or understanding between us, that you know of.  I, too, think that upon
+the whole he is right.  But we are friends, you know, Giles, and almost
+relations."
+
+"Very well," he answered, as if without surprise, in a voice which
+barely reached down the tree.  "I have nothing to say in objection--I
+cannot say anything till I've thought a while."
+
+She added, with emotion in her tone, "For myself, I would have married
+you--some day--I think.  But I give way, for I see it would be unwise."
+
+He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his elbow in a
+fork, and rested his head upon his hand.  Thus he remained till the fog
+and the night had completely enclosed him from her view.
+
+Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved
+onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her eyes
+wet.  Had Giles, instead of remaining still, immediately come down from
+the tree to her, would she have continued in that filial acquiescent
+frame of mind which she had announced to him as final? If it be true,
+as women themselves have declared, that one of their sex is never so
+much inclined to throw in her lot with a man for good and all as five
+minutes after she has told him such a thing cannot be, the
+probabilities are that something might have been done by the appearance
+of Winterborne on the ground beside Grace. But he continued motionless
+and silent in that gloomy Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and
+she proceeded on her way.
+
+The spot seemed now to be quite deserted.  The light from South's
+window made rays on the fog, but did not reach the tree.  A quarter of
+an hour passed, and all was blackness overhead.  Giles had not yet come
+down.
+
+Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a movement was
+audible, and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly to the ground.  He
+had thought the matter out, and having returned the ladder and billhook
+to their places, pursued his way homeward.  He would not allow this
+incident to affect his outer conduct any more than the danger to his
+leaseholds had done, and went to bed as usual.  Two simultaneous
+troubles do not always make a double trouble; and thus it came to pass
+that Giles's practical anxiety about his houses, which would have been
+enough to keep him awake half the night at any other time, was
+displaced and not reinforced by his sentimental trouble about Grace
+Melbury.  This severance was in truth more like a burial of her than a
+rupture with her; but he did not realize so much at present; even when
+he arose in the morning he felt quite moody and stern: as yet the
+second note in the gamut of such emotions, a tender regret for his
+loss, had not made itself heard.
+
+A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning to a builder
+whose works were in a town many miles off.  The proud trunks were taken
+up from the silent spot which had known them through the buddings and
+sheddings of their growth for the foregoing hundred years; chained down
+like slaves to a heavy timber carriage with enormous red wheels, and
+four of the most powerful of Melbury's horses were harnessed in front
+to draw them.
+
+The horses wore their bells that day.  There were sixteen to the team,
+carried on a frame above each animal's shoulders, and tuned to scale,
+so as to form two octaves, running from the highest note on the right
+or off-side of the leader to the lowest on the left or near-side of the
+shaft-horse.  Melbury was among the last to retain horse-bells in that
+neighborhood; for, living at Little Hintock, where the lanes yet
+remained as narrow as before the days of turnpike roads, these
+sound-signals were still as useful to him and his neighbors as they had
+ever been in former times.  Much backing was saved in the course of a
+year by the warning notes they cast ahead; moreover, the tones of all
+the teams in the district being known to the carters of each, they
+could tell a long way off on a dark night whether they were about to
+encounter friends or strangers.
+
+The fog of the previous evening still lingered so heavily over the
+woods that the morning could not penetrate the trees till long after
+its time.  The load being a ponderous one, the lane crooked, and the
+air so thick, Winterborne set out, as he often did, to accompany the
+team as far as the corner, where it would turn into a wider road.
+
+So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the roadside cottages by
+the weight of their progress, the sixteen bells chiming harmoniously
+over all, till they had risen out of the valley and were descending
+towards the more open route, the sparks rising from their creaking skid
+and nearly setting fire to the dead leaves alongside.
+
+Then occurred one of the very incidents against which the bells were an
+endeavor to guard.  Suddenly there beamed into their eyes, quite close
+to them, the two lamps of a carriage, shorn of rays by the fog.  Its
+approach had been quite unheard, by reason of their own noise.  The
+carriage was a covered one, while behind it could be discerned another
+vehicle laden with luggage.
+
+Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the coachman
+telling the carter that he must turn back.  The carter declared that
+this was impossible.
+
+"You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses," said the coachman.
+
+"It is much easier for you to turn than for us," said Winterborne.
+"We've five tons of timber on these wheels if we've an ounce."
+
+"But I've another carriage with luggage at my back."
+
+Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument.  "But even with
+that," he said, "you can back better than we.  And you ought to, for
+you could hear our bells half a mile off."
+
+"And you could see our lights."
+
+"We couldn't, because of the fog."
+
+"Well, our time's precious," said the coachman, haughtily.  "You are
+only going to some trumpery little village or other in the
+neighborhood, while we are going straight to Italy."
+
+"Driving all the way, I suppose," said Winterborne, sarcastically.
+
+The argument continued in these terms till a voice from the interior of
+the carriage inquired what was the matter.  It was a lady's.
+
+She was briefly informed of the timber people's obstinacy; and then
+Giles could hear her telling the footman to direct the timber people to
+turn their horses' heads.
+
+The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to say
+that he begged the lady's pardon, but that he could not do as she
+requested; that though he would not assert it to be impossible, it was
+impossible by comparison with the slight difficulty to her party to
+back their light carriages.  As fate would have it, the incident with
+Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles less gentle than he might
+otherwise have shown himself, his confidence in the sex being rudely
+shaken.
+
+In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled to
+back till they reached one of the sidings or turnouts constructed in
+the bank for the purpose.  Then the team came on ponderously, and the
+clanging of its sixteen bells as it passed the discomfited carriages,
+tilted up against the bank, lent a particularly triumphant tone to the
+team's progress--a tone which, in point of fact, did not at all attach
+to its conductor's feelings.
+
+Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got past the yet
+stationary carriages he heard a soft voice say, "Who is that rude man?
+Not Melbury?" The sex of the speaker was so prominent in the voice that
+Winterborne felt a pang of regret.
+
+"No, ma'am.  A younger man, in a smaller way of business in Little
+Hintock.  Winterborne is his name."
+
+Thus they parted company.  "Why, Mr. Winterborne," said the wagoner,
+when they were out of hearing, "that was She--Mrs. Charmond! Who'd ha'
+thought it? What in the world can a woman that does nothing be
+cock-watching out here at this time o' day for? Oh, going to Italy--yes
+to be sure, I heard she was going abroad, she can't endure the winter
+here."
+
+Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew Mr.
+Melbury, in his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first to blame
+him if it became known.  But saying no more, he accompanied the load to
+the end of the lane, and then turned back with an intention to call at
+South's to learn the result of the experiment of the preceding evening.
+
+It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who now
+rose soon enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the
+unwontedness of the hour, had been commissioned by him to make the same
+inquiry at South's.  Marty had been standing at the door when Miss
+Melbury arrived.  Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs. Charmond's
+carriages, released from the obstruction up the lane, came bowling
+along, and the two girls turned to regard the spectacle.
+
+Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for them
+to discern her outline between the carriage windows.  A noticeable
+feature in her tournure was a magnificent mass of braided locks.
+
+"How well she looks this morning!" said Grace, forgetting Mrs.
+Charmond's slight in her generous admiration.  "Her hair so becomes her
+worn that way.  I have never seen any more beautiful!"
+
+"Nor have I, miss," said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her crown.
+
+Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were out of
+sight.  She then learned of Marty that South was no better. Before she
+had come away Winterborne approached the house, but seeing that one of
+the two girls standing on the door-step was Grace, he suddenly turned
+back again and sought the shelter of his own home till she should have
+gone away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's mind
+the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel went from
+her to the fact that several cottages and other houses in the two
+Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of
+South's death.  He marvelled what people could have been thinking about
+in the past to invent such precarious tenures as these; still more,
+what could have induced his ancestors at Hintock, and other village
+people, to exchange their old copyholds for life-leases.  But having
+naturally succeeded to these properties through his father, he had done
+his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck with his
+father's negligence in not insuring South's life.
+
+After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went upstairs,
+turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which lay between
+the mattress and the sacking.  In this he kept his leases, which had
+remained there unopened ever since his father's death.  It was the
+usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents.
+Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over.  They were
+ordinary leases for three lives, which a member of the South family,
+some fifty years before this time, had accepted of the lord of the
+manor in lieu of certain copyholds and other rights, in consideration
+of having the dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord.  They had come
+into his father's possession chiefly through his mother, who was a
+South.
+
+Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter, which
+Winterborne had never seen before.  It bore a remote date, the
+handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the signature
+the landholder's.  It was to the effect that at any time before the
+last of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or
+his representative, should have the privilege of adding his own and his
+son's life to the life remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum;
+the concession being in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consent
+to demolish one of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at
+an awkward corner of the lane and impeded the way.
+
+The house had been pulled down years before.  Why Giles's father had
+not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his son's
+lives it was impossible to say.  The likelihood was that death alone
+had hindered him in the execution of his project, as it surely was, the
+elder Winterborne having been a man who took much pleasure in dealing
+with house property in his small way.
+
+Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt that
+Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his own life
+was concerned.  This possibility cheered him much, for by those houses
+hung many things.  Melbury's doubt of the young man's fitness to be the
+husband of Grace had been based not a little on the precariousness of
+his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. He resolved to attend to the
+business at once, the fine for renewal being a sum that he could easily
+muster.  His scheme, however, could not be carried out in a day; and
+meanwhile he would run up to South's, as he had intended to do, to
+learn the result of the experiment with the tree.
+
+Marty met him at the door.  "Well, Marty," he said; and was surprised
+to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as he had imagined.
+
+"I am sorry for your labor," she said.  "It is all lost.  He says the
+tree seems taller than ever."
+
+Winterborne looked round at it.  Taller the tree certainly did seem,
+the gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than before.
+
+"It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it this
+morning," she added.  "He declares it will come down upon us and cleave
+us, like 'the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'"
+
+"Well; can I do anything else?" asked he.
+
+"The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down."
+
+"Oh--you've had the doctor?"
+
+"I didn't send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that
+father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense."
+
+"That was very good of her.  And he says it ought to be cut down. We
+mustn't cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose."
+
+He went up-stairs.  There the old man sat, staring at the now gaunt
+tree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk.  Unluckily the tree
+waved afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and blown the fog
+away, and his eyes turned with its wavings.
+
+They heard footsteps--a man's, but of a lighter type than usual. "There
+is Doctor Fitzpiers again," she said, and descended. Presently his
+tread was heard on the naked stairs.
+
+Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or less
+wont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room is that
+of a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient with that
+preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has wellnigh
+forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances since he
+dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the same apartment.
+He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was already a little acquainted,
+recalled the case to his thoughts, and went leisurely on to where South
+sat.
+
+Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man.  His eyes
+were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of energy or
+of susceptivity--it was difficult to say which; it might have been a
+little of both.  That quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the
+surface of things and for nothing beneath it, he had not.  But whether
+his apparent depth of vision was real, or only an artistic accident of
+his corporeal moulding, nothing but his deeds could reveal.
+
+His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale than
+flushed; his nose--if a sketch of his features be de rigueur for a
+person of his pretensions--was artistically beautiful enough to have
+been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence
+devoid of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; while the
+double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was not without a looseness
+in its close.  Nevertheless, either from his readily appreciative mien,
+or his reflective manner, or the instinct towards profound things which
+was said to possess him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather
+than the dandy or macaroni--an effect which was helped by the absence
+of trinkets or other trivialities from his attire, though this was more
+finished and up to date than is usually the case among rural
+practitioners.
+
+Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little about
+him by report, might have said that he seemed likely to err rather in
+the possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a dreamy 'ist of
+some sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind of 'ism.  However
+this may be, it will be seen that he was undoubtedly a somewhat rare
+kind of gentleman and doctor to have descended, as from the clouds,
+upon Little Hintock.
+
+"This is an extraordinary case," he said at last to Winterborne, after
+examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and learning that the
+craze about the elm was stronger than ever. "Come down-stairs, and I'll
+tell you what I think."
+
+They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, "The tree must be
+cut down, or I won't answer for his life."
+
+"'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree, and I suppose we must get permission?" said
+Giles.  "If so, as she is gone away, I must speak to her agent."
+
+"Oh--never mind whose tree it is--what's a tree beside a life! Cut it
+down.  I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet, but I am
+disposed to risk that much with her."
+
+"'Tis timber," rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would have been
+had not his own interests stood so closely involved. "They'll never
+fell a stick about here without it being marked first, either by her or
+the agent."
+
+"Then we'll inaugurate a new era forthwith.  How long has he complained
+of the tree?" asked the doctor of Marty.
+
+"Weeks and weeks, sir.  The shape of it seems to haunt him like an evil
+spirit.  He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has got human
+sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to rule him, and
+keep him as its slave.  Others have been like it afore in Hintock."
+
+They could hear South's voice up-stairs "Oh, he's rocking this way; he
+must come! And then my poor life, that's worth houses upon houses, will
+be squashed out o' me.  Oh! oh!"
+
+"That's how he goes on," she added.  "And he'll never look anywhere
+else but out of the window, and scarcely have the curtains drawn."
+
+"Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond," said Mr. Fitzpiers. "The
+best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark, or early
+in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn't see it fall, for
+that would terrify him worse than ever.  Keep the blind down till I
+come, and then I'll assure him, and show him that his trouble is over."
+
+The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening.  When it
+was dusk, and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple of
+woodmen to bring a crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree was
+soon nearly off at its base.  He would not fell it completely then, on
+account of the possible crash, but next morning, before South was
+awake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a direction away from
+the cottage.  It was a business difficult to do quite silently; but it
+was done at last, and the elm of the same birth-year as the woodman's
+lay stretched upon the ground. The weakest idler that passed could now
+set foot on marks formerly made in the upper forks by the shoes of
+adventurous climbers only; once inaccessible nests could be examined
+microscopically; and on swaying extremities where birds alone had
+perched, the by-standers sat down.
+
+As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne
+entered the house with him.  Marty said that her father was wrapped up
+and ready, as usual, to be put into his chair.  They ascended the
+stairs, and soon seated him.  He began at once to complain of the tree,
+and the danger to his life and Winterborne's house-property in
+consequence.
+
+The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed
+cotton curtains.  "'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitzpiers.
+
+As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the
+branched column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless, his
+eyes rose from their hollows till the whites showed all round; he fell
+back, and a bluish whiteness overspread him.
+
+Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed.  As soon as he came a little
+out of his fit, he gasped, "Oh, it is gone!--where?--where?"
+
+His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement.  They were
+thunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did all they could.
+Nothing seemed to avail.  Giles and Fitzpiers went and came, but
+uselessly.  He lingered through the day, and died that evening as the
+sun went down.
+
+"D--d if my remedy hasn't killed him!" murmured the doctor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and walked
+thoughtfully about the premises.  On South's own account he was
+genuinely sorry; and on Winterborne's he was the more grieved in that
+this catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat harsh dismissal
+of Giles as the betrothed of his daughter.
+
+He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting on
+Giles a second trouble when the needful one inflicted by himself was
+all that the proper order of events demanded.  "I told Giles's father
+when he came into those houses not to spend too much money on lifehold
+property held neither for his own life nor his son's," he exclaimed.
+"But he wouldn't listen to me.  And now Giles has to suffer for it."
+
+"Poor Giles!" murmured Grace.
+
+"Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable.  It is almost
+as if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your escape, though I
+am sincerely sorry for Giles.  Had we not dismissed him already, we
+could hardly have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now.  So I say,
+be thankful.  I'll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a pretender
+to the position of my son-in law, that can never be thought of more."
+
+And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor
+Winterborne's suit had been reduced was touching Grace's heart to a
+warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years concerning
+him.
+
+He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house which
+had ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal survey of
+affairs.  The pendulum of the clock bumped every now and then against
+one side of the case in which it swung, as the muffled drum to his
+worldly march.  Looking out of the window he could perceive that a
+paralysis had come over Creedle's occupation of manuring the garden,
+owing, obviously, to a conviction that they might not be living there
+long enough to profit by next season's crop.
+
+He looked at the leases again and the letter attached.  There was no
+doubt that he had lost his houses by an accident which might easily
+have been circumvented if he had known the true conditions of his
+holding.  The time for performance had now lapsed in strict law; but
+might not the intention be considered by the landholder when she became
+aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to retain the holdings
+for the term of his life be conceded?
+
+His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the legal
+reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the upshot of the
+matter amounted to this, that it depended upon the mere caprice--good
+or ill--of the woman he had met the day before in such an unfortunate
+way, whether he was to possess his houses for life or no.
+
+While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and Melbury
+appeared, looking very sorry for his position. Winterborne welcomed him
+by a word and a look, and went on with his examination of the
+parchments.  His visitor sat down.
+
+"Giles," he said, "this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it. What
+are you going to do?"
+
+Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he had
+missed availing himself of his chance of renewal.
+
+"What a misfortune! Why was this neglected?  Well, the best thing you
+can do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw yourself upon
+her generosity."
+
+"I would rather not," murmured Giles.
+
+"But you must," said Melbury.
+
+In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be
+persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to
+Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded to her.
+
+Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as almost
+to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing, went home; and
+Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for a reply from the
+divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock population.  By this time
+all the villagers knew of the circumstances, and being wellnigh like
+one family, a keen interest was the result all round.
+
+Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty.  Had any of them
+looked in upon her during those moonlight nights which preceded the
+burial of her father, they would have seen the girl absolutely alone in
+the house with the dead man.  Her own chamber being nearest the stairs,
+the coffin had been placed there for convenience; and at a certain hour
+of the night, when the moon arrived opposite the window, its beams
+streamed across the still profile of South, sublimed by the august
+presence of death, and onward a few feet farther upon the face of his
+daughter, lying in her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost
+as dignified as that of her companion--the repose of a guileless soul
+that had nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she
+did not overvalue.
+
+South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a
+reply from Mrs. Charmond.  Melbury was very sanguine as to its tenor;
+but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her carriage,
+when, if ever he had heard an affronted tone on a woman's lips, he had
+heard it on hers.
+
+The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's men had
+assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on his
+own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into the lane
+every morning and meet the post-man at the end of one of the green
+rides through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch of which his
+laden figure could be seen a long way off.  Grace also was very
+anxious; more anxious than her father; more, perhaps, than Winterborne
+himself.  This anxiety led her into the spar-house on some pretext or
+other almost every morning while they were awaiting the reply.
+
+Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much
+interested, and not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been
+informed by an authority of what he had himself conjectured, that if
+the tree had been allowed to stand, the old man would have gone on
+complaining, but might have lived for twenty years.
+
+Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and
+looked up its long straight slope through the wet grays of winter dawn.
+But though the postman's bowed figure loomed in view pretty regularly,
+he brought nothing for Giles.  On the twelfth day the man of missives,
+while yet in the extreme distance, held up his hand, and Winterborne
+saw a letter in it.  He took it into the spar-house before he broke the
+seal, and those who were there gathered round him while he read, Grace
+looking in at the door.
+
+The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at
+Sherton.  Winterborne glanced it over and looked up.
+
+"It's all over," he said.
+
+"Ah!" said they altogether.
+
+"Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason for
+disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she
+contemplates pulling the houses down," he said, quietly.
+
+"Only think of that!" said several.
+
+Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, "Then let
+her pull 'em down, and be d--d to her!"
+
+Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, "Ah, 'twas
+that sperrit that lost 'em for ye, maister!"
+
+Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever they
+were, kept them entirely to himself.  There could be no doubt that, up
+to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace
+in the event of this negotiation turning out a success.  Not being
+aware of the fact that her father could have settled upon her a fortune
+sufficient to enable both to live in comfort, he deemed it now an
+absurdity to dream any longer of such a vanity as making her his wife,
+and sank into silence forthwith.
+
+Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it is
+apt to express more than talkativeness when he dwells among friends.
+The countryman who is obliged to judge the time of day from changes in
+external nature sees a thousand successive tints and traits in the
+landscape which are never discerned by him who hears the regular chime
+of a clock, because they are never in request.  In like manner do we
+use our eyes on our taciturn comrade.  The infinitesimal movement of
+muscle, curve, hair, and wrinkle, which when accompanied by a voice
+goes unregarded, is watched and translated in the lack of it, till
+virtually the whole surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the
+reserved one's moods and meanings.
+
+This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his neighbors
+after his stroke of ill-luck.  He held his tongue; and they observed
+him, and knew that he was discomposed.
+
+Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than any
+one else, except his daughter.  Had Winterborne been going on in the
+old fashion, Grace's father could have alluded to his disapproval of
+the alliance every day with the greatest frankness; but to speak any
+further on the subject he could not find it in his heart to do now.  He
+hoped that Giles would of his own accord make some final announcement
+that he entirely withdrew his pretensions to Grace, and so get the
+thing past and done with. For though Giles had in a measure acquiesced
+in the wish of her family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose
+to work upon Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the young man
+approaching along the road one day, he kept friendliness and frigidity
+exactly balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles's manner
+was presumptive or not.
+
+His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims.  "I am glad to
+meet ye, Mr. Melbury," he said, in a low voice, whose quality he
+endeavored to make as practical as possible.  "I am afraid I shall not
+be able to keep that mare I bought, and as I don't care to sell her, I
+should like--if you don't object--to give her to Miss Melbury.  The
+horse is very quiet, and would be quite safe for her."
+
+Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this.  "You sha'n't hurt your pocket
+like that on our account, Giles.  Grace shall have the horse, but I'll
+pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you may have been put to
+for her keep."
+
+He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged. They
+were now opposite Melbury's house, and the timber-merchant pressed
+Winterborne to enter, Grace being out of the way.
+
+"Pull round the settle, Giles," said the timber-merchant, as soon as
+they were within.  "I should like to have a serious talk with you."
+
+Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a
+friendly way.  He declared that he did not like to be hard on a man
+when he was in difficulty; but he really did not see how Winterborne
+could marry his daughter now, without even a house to take her to.
+
+Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation.  But from a
+momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace's mind from her own
+lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. He accordingly
+departed somewhat abruptly, and went home to consider whether he would
+seek to bring about a meeting with her.
+
+In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he
+heard a scraping on the wall outside his house.  The boughs of a
+monthly rose which grew there made such a noise sometimes, but as no
+wind was stirring he knew that it could not be the rose-tree. He took
+up the candle and went out.  Nobody was near.  As he turned, the light
+flickered on the whitewashed rough case of the front, and he saw words
+written thereon in charcoal, which he read as follows:
+
+    "O Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place,
+     And therefore, Giles, you'll lose your Grace."
+
+
+Giles went in-doors.  He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of those
+lines, but he could not be sure.  What suddenly filled his heart far
+more than curiosity about their authorship was a terrible belief that
+they were turning out to be true, try to see Grace as he might.  They
+decided the question for him.  He sat down and wrote a formal note to
+Melbury, in which he briefly stated that he was placed in such a
+position as to make him share to the full Melbury's view of his own and
+his daughter's promise, made some years before; to wish that it should
+be considered as cancelled, and they themselves quite released from any
+obligation on account of it.
+
+Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to get
+it out of his hands and have done with it; to which end he went off to
+Melbury's at once.  It was now so late that the family had all retired;
+he crept up to the house, thrust the note under the door, and stole
+away as silently as he had come.
+
+Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when he had
+read the letter his relief was great.  "Very honorable of Giles, very
+honorable," he kept saying to himself.  "I shall not forget him.  Now
+to keep her up to her own true level."
+
+It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning,
+passing through the door and gate while her father was in the
+spar-house.  To go in her customary direction she could not avoid
+passing Winterborne's house.  The morning sun was shining flat upon its
+white surface, and the words, which still remained, were immediately
+visible to her.  She read them.  Her face flushed to crimson.  She
+could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the back; the charred
+spar-gad with which the lines had been written lay on the ground
+beneath the wall.  Feeling pretty sure that Winterborne would observe
+her action, she quickly went up to the wall, rubbed out "lose" and
+inserted "keep" in its stead.  Then she made the best of her way home
+without looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now if he
+chose.
+
+There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming to
+more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than ever she
+had done while he was her promised lover; that since his misfortune
+those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with
+her later experiences of life, had become obscured by the generous
+revival of an old romantic attachment to him. Though mentally trained
+and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared with her youthful
+time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, and might, if left to herself,
+have declined Winterborne without much discontent or unhappiness.  Her
+feelings just now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall
+had thus quickened her to an unusual rashness.
+
+Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently.  When her
+step-mother had left the room she said to her father, "I have made up
+my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to continue, for the
+present at any rate, till I can see further what I ought to do."
+
+Melbury looked much surprised.
+
+"Nonsense," he said, sharply.  "You don't know what you are talking
+about.  Look here."
+
+He handed across to her the letter received from Giles.
+
+She read it, and said no more.  Could he have seen her write on the
+wall?  She did not know.  Fate, it seemed, would have it this way, and
+there was nothing to do but to acquiesce.
+
+It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously enough,
+had NOT perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the tree from the
+front of South's late dwelling.  He saw Marty standing in her door-way,
+a slim figure in meagre black, almost without womanly contours as yet.
+He went up to her and said, "Marty, why did you write that on my wall
+last night?  It WAS you, you know."
+
+"Because it was the truth.  I didn't mean to let it stay, Mr.
+Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I was
+obliged to run off."
+
+"Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another? Your
+predictions can't be worth much."
+
+"I have not altered it."
+
+"But you have."
+
+"No."
+
+"It is altered.  Go and see."
+
+She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he
+would KEEP his Grace.  Marty came back surprised.
+
+"Well, I never," she said.  "Who can have made such nonsense of it?"
+
+"Who, indeed?" said he.
+
+"I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone."
+
+"You'd no business to rub it out.  I didn't tell you to.  I meant to
+let it stay a little longer."
+
+"Some idle boy did it, no doubt," she murmured.
+
+As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was
+unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter from
+his mind.
+
+From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, Winterborne,
+though not absolutely out of his house as yet, retired into the
+background of human life and action thereabout--a feat not particularly
+difficult of performance anywhere when the doer has the assistance of a
+lost prestige.  Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no
+further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly
+launched was stranded and lost.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much less
+pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than the
+timber-merchant's.  The latter had, without doubt, been once the
+manorial residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain of Little
+Hintock, of which the boundaries were now lost by its absorption with
+others of its kind into the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond.  Though
+the Melburys themselves were unaware of the fact, there was every
+reason to believe--at least so the parson said--that the owners of that
+little manor had been Melbury's own ancestors, the family name
+occurring in numerous documents relating to transfers of land about the
+time of the civil wars.
+
+Mr. Fitzpiers's dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-like, and
+comparatively modern.  It had been occupied, and was in part occupied
+still, by a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the surgeon's arrival
+in quest of a home, had accommodated him by receding from their front
+rooms into the kitchen quarter, whence they administered to his wants,
+and emerged at regular intervals to receive from him a not unwelcome
+addition to their income.
+
+The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement that
+they might have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time of
+William and Mary.  In a low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, was a
+door over which the hedge formed an arch, and from the inside of the
+door a straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran up the slope of
+the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the middle of the house
+front, with two windows on each side.  Right and left of the path were
+first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next of currant; next of raspberry;
+next of strawberry; next of old-fashioned flowers; at the corners
+opposite the porch being spheres of box resembling a pair of school
+globes.  Over the roof of the house could be seen the orchard, on yet
+higher ground, and behind the orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to
+the crest of the hill.
+
+Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor window was a
+swing-gate leading into a field, across which there ran a footpath.
+The swing-gate had just been repainted, and on one fine afternoon,
+before the paint was dry, and while gnats were still dying thereon, the
+surgeon was standing in his sitting-room abstractedly looking out at
+the different pedestrians who passed and repassed along that route.
+Being of a philosophical stamp, he perceived that the character of each
+of these travellers exhibited itself in a somewhat amusing manner by
+his or her method of handling the gate.
+
+As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the gate a
+kick and passed through.  The women were more contrasting. To them the
+sticky wood-work was a barricade, a disgust, a menace, a treachery, as
+the case might be.
+
+The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts tucked
+up and her hair uncombed.  She grasped the gate without looking, giving
+it a supplementary push with her shoulder, when the white imprint drew
+from her an exclamation in language not too refined.  She went to the
+green bank, sat down and rubbed herself in the grass, cursing the while.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the doctor.
+
+The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the surgeon
+recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman South.
+Moreover, a black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning unpleasantly
+reminded him that he had ordered the felling of a tree which had caused
+her parent's death and Winterborne's losses. She walked and thought,
+and not recklessly; but her preoccupation led her to grasp
+unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it with her arm.
+Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled that new black frock,
+poor as it was, for it was probably her only one.  She looked at her
+hand and arm, seemed but little surprised, wiped off the disfigurement
+with an almost unmoved face, and as if without abandoning her original
+thoughts.  Thus she went on her way.
+
+Then there came over the green quite a different sort of personage.
+She walked as delicately as if she had been bred in town, and as firmly
+as if she had been bred in the country; she seemed one who dimly knew
+her appearance to be attractive, but who retained some of the charm of
+being ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensiveness.
+She approached the gate. To let such a creature touch it even with a
+tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to
+tragical self-destruction.  He jumped up and looked for his hat, but
+was unable to find the right one; glancing again out of the window he
+saw that he was too late.  Having come up, she stopped, looked at the
+gate, picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed open
+the obstacle without touching it at all.
+
+He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight, recognizing
+her as the very young lady whom he had seen once before and been unable
+to identify.  Whose could that emotional face be? All the others he had
+seen in Hintock as yet oppressed him with their crude rusticity; the
+contrast offered by this suggested that she hailed from elsewhere.
+
+Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of
+seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and considered
+that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately in that spot
+she could not have come a very long distance.  She must be somebody
+staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard
+so much--at any rate an inmate, and this probability was sufficient to
+set a mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat dull sky.
+
+Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing.  It happened to be
+that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a practical man,
+except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world to the real, and the
+discovery of principles to their application. The young lady remained
+in his thoughts.  He might have followed her; but he was not
+constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pursuit.  However,
+when he went out for a ramble just before dusk he insensibly took the
+direction of Hintock House, which was the way that Grace had been
+walking, it having happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that
+day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be
+seen, returning by another route.
+
+Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking the
+manor-house.  The shutters were shut, and only one chimney smoked.  The
+mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond
+had gone away and that nobody else was staying there.  Fitzpiers felt a
+vague disappointment that the young lady was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom
+he had heard so much; and without pausing longer to gaze at a carcass
+from which the spirit had flown, he bent his steps homeward.
+
+Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage patient
+about two miles distant.  Like the majority of young practitioners in
+his position he was far from having assumed the dignity of being driven
+his rounds by a servant in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a
+mirror; his way of getting about was by means of a gig which he drove
+himself, hitching the rein of the horse to the gate post, shutter hook,
+or garden paling of the domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to
+little boys to hold the animal during his stay--pennies which were well
+earned when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind
+that wore out the patience of the little boys.
+
+On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which Fitzpiers
+had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious apparent
+perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be a birth in a
+particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that event should occur in
+the night.  The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated
+the solitary midnight woodland.  He was not altogether skilful with the
+reins, and it often occurred to his mind that if in some remote depths
+of the trees an accident were to happen, the fact of his being alone
+might be the death of him.  Hence he made a practice of picking up any
+countryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of
+treating him to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the
+journey, and his convenient assistance in opening gates.
+
+The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night in
+question when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form of
+Winterborne, walking leisurely along, as if he had no object in life.
+Winterborne was a better class of companion than the doctor usually
+could get, and he at once pulled up and asked him if he would like a
+drive through the wood that fine night.
+
+Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor's friendliness, but said
+that he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr. Fitzpiers.
+
+They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network upon the
+stars, all the trees of a species alike in one respect, and no two of
+them alike in another.  Looking up as they passed under a horizontal
+bough they sometimes saw objects like large tadpoles lodged
+diametrically across it, which Giles explained to be pheasants there at
+roost; and they sometimes heard the report of a gun, which reminded him
+that others knew what those tadpole shapes represented as well as he.
+
+Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some time:
+
+"Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood--a very attractive
+girl--with a little white boa round her neck, and white fur round her
+gloves?"
+
+Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had caught
+the doctor peering at, was represented by these accessaries.  With a
+wary grimness, partly in his character, partly induced by the
+circumstances, he evaded an answer by saying, "I saw a young lady
+talking to Mrs. Charmond the other day; perhaps it was she."
+
+Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him looking
+over the hedge.  "It might have been," he said.  "She is quite a
+gentlewoman--the one I mean.  She cannot be a permanent resident in
+Hintock or I should have seen her before.  Nor does she look like one."
+
+"She is not staying at Hintock House?"
+
+"No; it is closed."
+
+"Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or farmhouses?"
+
+"Oh no--you mistake.  She was a different sort of girl altogether." As
+Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him accordingly, and apostrophized
+the night in continuation:
+
+  "'She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,
+    A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
+    One impulse of her being--in her lightness
+    Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,
+    Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue,
+    To nourish some far desert: she did seem
+    Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
+    Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
+    Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life's dark stream.'"
+
+
+The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he
+divined that they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of his
+lost love's charms upon Fitzpiers.
+
+"You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir," he said, with a
+sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to mention
+Grace by name.
+
+"Oh no--I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I do by
+the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid like a
+Leyden-jar with electric, for want of some conductor at hand to
+disperse it.  Human love is a subjective thing--the essence itself of
+man, as that great thinker Spinoza the philosopher says--ipsa hominis
+essentia--it is joy accompanied by an idea which we project against any
+suitable object in the line of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is
+projected against an oak, ash, or elm tree indifferently.  So that if
+any other young lady had appeared instead of the one who did appear, I
+should have felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted
+precisely the same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I
+saw.  Such miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!"
+
+"Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, whether or
+no," said Winterborne.
+
+"You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with something in
+my own head, and no thing in itself outside it at all."
+
+"Is it part of a country doctor's duties to learn that view of things,
+may I ask, sir?" said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic {Greek word:
+irony} with such well-assumed simplicity that Fitzpiers answered,
+readily,
+
+"Oh no.  The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in
+places like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of bitter
+stuff for this and that old woman--the bitterer the better--compounded
+from a few simple stereotyped prescriptions; occasional attendance at
+births, where mere presence is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong
+are the people; and a lance for an abscess now and then.  Investigation
+and experiment cannot be carried on without more appliances than one
+has here--though I have attempted it a little."
+
+Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been struck
+with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers's manner and
+Grace's, as shown by the fact of both of them straying into a subject
+of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it made them forget it
+was foreign to him.
+
+Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation to
+Grace till they were on their way back.  They had stopped at a way-side
+inn for a glass of brandy and cider hot, and when they were again in
+motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the
+subject by saying, "I should like very much to know who that young lady
+was."
+
+"What difference can it make, if she's only the tree your rainbow falls
+on?"
+
+"Ha! ha! True."
+
+"You have no wife, sir?"
+
+"I have no wife, and no idea of one.  I hope to do better things than
+marry and settle in Hintock.  Not but that it is well for a medical man
+to be married, and sometimes, begad, 'twould be pleasant enough in this
+place, with the wind roaring round the house, and the rain and the
+boughs beating against it.  I hear that you lost your life-holds by the
+death of South?"
+
+"I did.  I lost in more ways than one."
+
+They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it could be
+called such where three-quarters of the road-side consisted of copse
+and orchard.  One of the first houses to be passed was Melbury's.  A
+light was shining from a bedroom window facing lengthwise of the lane.
+Winterborne glanced at it, and saw what was coming.  He had withheld an
+answer to the doctor's inquiry to hinder his knowledge of Grace; but,
+as he thought to himself, "who hath gathered the wind in his fists? who
+hath bound the waters in a garment?" he could not hinder what was
+doomed to arrive, and might just as well have been outspoken.  As they
+came up to the house, Grace's figure was distinctly visible, drawing
+the two white curtains together which were used here instead of blinds.
+
+"Why, there she is!" said Fitzpiers.  "How does she come there?"
+
+"In the most natural way in the world.  It is her home.  Mr. Melbury is
+her father."
+
+"Oh, indeed--indeed--indeed!  How comes he to have a daughter of that
+stamp?"
+
+Winterborne laughed coldly.  "Won't money do anything," he said, "if
+you've promising material to work upon? Why shouldn't a Hintock girl,
+taken early from home, and put under proper instruction, become as
+finished as any other young lady, if she's got brains and good looks to
+begin with?"
+
+"No reason at all why she shouldn't," murmured the surgeon, with
+reflective disappointment.  "Only I didn't anticipate quite that kind
+of origin for her."
+
+"And you think an inch or two less of her now." There was a little
+tremor in Winterborne's voice as he spoke.
+
+"Well," said the doctor, with recovered warmth, "I am not so sure that
+I think less of her.  At first it was a sort of blow; but, dammy! I'll
+stick up for her.  She's charming, every inch of her!"
+
+"So she is," said Winterborne, "but not to me."
+
+From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander's, Dr.
+Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of some
+haughtiness in her bearing towards him, and had, on that account,
+withheld her name.  The supposition did not tend to diminish his
+admiration for her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Grace's exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the
+window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in the
+house that day--nothing less than the illness of Grammer Oliver, a
+woman who had never till now lain down for such a reason in her life.
+Like others to whom unbroken years of health has made the idea of
+keeping their bed almost as repugnant as death itself, she had
+continued on foot till she literally fell on the floor; and though she
+had, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty, she had sickened into quite
+a different personage from the independent Grammer of the yard and
+spar-house.  Ill as she was, on one point she was firm.  On no account
+would she see a doctor; in other words, Fitzpiers.
+
+The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but the old
+woman's.  On the girl's way to bed she had received a message from
+Grammer, to the effect that she would much like to speak to her that
+night.
+
+Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed, so
+that the profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen shadow
+upon the whitened wall, her large head being still further magnified by
+an enormous turban, which was, really, her petticoat wound in a wreath
+round her temples.  Grace put the room a little in order, and
+approaching the sick woman, said, "I am come, Grammer, as you wish.  Do
+let us send for the doctor before it gets later."
+
+"I will not have him," said Grammer Oliver, decisively.
+
+"Then somebody to sit up with you."
+
+"Can't abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because 'ch have
+something on my mind.  Dear Miss Grace, I TOOK THAT MONEY OF THE
+DOCTOR, AFTER ALL!"
+
+"What money?"
+
+"The ten pounds."
+
+Grace did not quite understand.
+
+"The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I've a large brain.
+I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling concerned about it
+at all.  I have not liked to tell ye that it was really settled with
+him, because you showed such horror at the notion.  Well, having
+thought it over more at length, I wish I hadn't done it; and it weighs
+upon my mind.  John South's death of fear about the tree makes me think
+that I shall die of this....'Ch have been going to ask him again to let
+me off, but I hadn't the face."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I've spent some of the money--more'n two pounds o't.  It do wherrit me
+terribly; and I shall die o' the thought of that paper I signed with my
+holy cross, as South died of his trouble."
+
+ "If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I'm sure, and think no
+more of it."
+
+ "'Ch have done it once already, miss.  But he laughed cruel like.
+'Yours is such a fine brain, Grammer,' 'er said, 'that science couldn't
+afford to lose you.  Besides, you've taken my money.'...Don't let your
+father know of this, please, on no account whatever!"
+
+"No, no.  I will let you have the money to return to him."
+
+Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. "Even if I should
+be well enough to take it to him, he won't like it.  Though why he
+should so particular want to look into the works of a poor old woman's
+head-piece like mine when there's so many other folks about, I don't
+know.  I know how he'll answer me: 'A lonely person like you, Grammer,'
+er woll say.  'What difference is it to you what becomes of ye when the
+breath's out of your body?' Oh, it do trouble me! If you only knew how
+he do chevy me round the chimmer in my dreams, you'd pity me.  How I
+could do it I can't think! But 'ch was always so rackless!...If I only
+had anybody to plead for me!"
+
+"Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure."
+
+"Ay; but he wouldn't hearken to she! It wants a younger face than hers
+to work upon such as he."
+
+Grace started with comprehension.  "You don't think he would do it for
+me?" she said.
+
+"Oh, wouldn't he!"
+
+"I couldn't go to him, Grammer, on any account.  I don't know him at
+all."
+
+"Ah, if I were a young lady," said the artful Grammer, "and could save
+a poor old woman's skellington from a heathen doctor instead of a
+Christian grave, I would do it, and be glad to.  But nobody will do
+anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out of the way."
+
+"You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that.  But you are ill, I
+know, and that's why you speak so.  Now believe me, you are not going
+to die yet.  Remember you told me yourself that you meant to keep him
+waiting many a year."
+
+"Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in sickness
+one's gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed small looks large;
+and the grim far-off seems near."
+
+Grace's eyes had tears in them.  "I don't like to go to him on such an
+errand, Grammer," she said, brokenly.  "But I will, to ease your mind."
+
+It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next morning
+for the undertaking.  She was all the more indisposed to the journey by
+reason of Grammer's allusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr.
+Fitzpiers; and hence she most illogically did that which, had the
+doctor never seen her, would have operated to stultify the sole motive
+of her journey; that is to say, she put on a woollen veil, which hid
+all her face except an occasional spark of her eyes.
+
+Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and grewsome
+proceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver's own desire, led Grace to take
+every precaution against being discovered.  She went out by the garden
+door as the safest way, all the household having occupations at the
+other side.  The morning looked forbidding enough when she stealthily
+opened it.  The battle between frost and thaw was continuing in
+mid-air: the trees dripped on the garden-plots, where no vegetables
+would grow for the dripping, though they were planted year after year
+with that curious mechanical regularity of country people in the face
+of hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad gravel terrace
+was swamped; and Grace stood irresolute.  Then she thought of poor
+Grammer, and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel in
+hand, and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South's
+ending in the same way; thereupon she stepped out into the drizzle.
+
+The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver's account of the compact
+she had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace's conception of
+Fitzpiers.  She knew that he was a young man; but her single object in
+seeking an interview with him put all considerations of his age and
+social aspect from her mind. Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver's
+shoes, he was simply a remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would not
+have mercy, and would have sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, she
+would have preferred to avoid knowing.  But since, in such a small
+village, it was improbable that any long time could pass without their
+meeting, there was not much to deplore in her having to meet him now.
+
+But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury's view of the doctor as a
+merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in
+accordance with fact.  The real Dr. Fitzpiers was a man of too many
+hobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in the
+profession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wide practice in the
+rural district he had marked out as his field of survey for the
+present.  In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to pass in a
+grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual
+heaven.  Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month
+he would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the
+Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature
+and metaphysics.  In justice to him it must be stated that he took such
+studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn with
+the rest, and it had been in a month of anatomical ardor without the
+possibility of a subject that he had proposed to Grammer Oliver the
+terms she had mentioned to her mistress.
+
+As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with Winterborne,
+he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with much zest; perhaps
+his keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical mind found this a realm
+more to his taste than any other.  Though his aims were desultory,
+Fitzpiers's mental constitution was not without its admirable side; a
+keen inquirer he honestly was, even if the midnight rays of his lamp,
+visible so far through the trees of Hintock, lighted rank literatures
+of emotion and passion as often as, or oftener than, the books and
+materiel of science.
+
+But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the loneliness
+of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his impressionable nature.
+Winter in a solitary house in the country, without society, is
+tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful, given certain
+conditions, but these are not the conditions which attach to the life
+of a professional man who drops down into such a place by mere
+accident.  They were present to the lives of Winterborne, Melbury, and
+Grace; but not to the doctor's.  They are old association--an almost
+exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance with every object,
+animate and inanimate, within the observer's horizon.  He must know all
+about those invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have
+traversed the fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose
+creaking plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands
+planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose horses
+and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds affect that
+particular brake; what domestic dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or
+disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, the
+street, or on the green.  The spot may have beauty, grandeur,
+salubrity, convenience; but if it lack memories it will ultimately pall
+upon him who settles there without opportunity of intercourse with his
+kind.
+
+In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal friend,
+till he throws himself into the arms of any impostor who chooses to
+wear that title on his face.  A young man may dream of an ideal friend
+likewise, but some humor of the blood will probably lead him to think
+rather of an ideal mistress, and at length the rustle of a woman's
+dress, the sound of her voice, or the transit of her form across the
+field of his vision, will enkindle his soul with a flame that blinds
+his eyes.
+
+The discovery of the attractive Grace's name and family would have been
+enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to put her
+personality out of his head, to change the character of his interest in
+her.  Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at most
+have played with it as a toy.  He was that kind of a man.  But situated
+here he could not go so far as amative cruelty.  He dismissed all
+reverential thought about her, but he could not help taking her
+seriously.
+
+He went on to imagine the impossible.  So far, indeed, did he go in
+this futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he constructed
+dialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to be the mistress
+of Hintock Manor-house, the mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularly
+ready and willing to be wooed by himself and nobody else.  "Well, she
+isn't that," he said, finally.  "But she's a very sweet, nice,
+exceptional girl."
+
+The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual.  It was snowing with a
+fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the woodland gray,
+without ever achieving whiteness.  There was not a single letter for
+Fitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly newspaper.
+
+To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and gradually
+acquire energy till the evening came, and then, with lamp alight, and
+feeling full of vigor, to pursue some engrossing subject or other till
+the small hours, had hitherto been his practice.  But to-day he could
+not settle into his chair.  That self-contained position he had lately
+occupied, in which the only attention demanded was the concentration of
+the inner eye, all outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have
+been taken by insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an
+interest outside the house.  He walked from one window to another, and
+became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude of
+remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable company.
+
+The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed, in
+the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being the
+inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too radiant
+for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late midwinter at
+Hintock.  To people at home there these changeful tricks had their
+interests; the strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees
+had made in budding before their month, to be incontinently glued up by
+frozen thawings now; the similar sanguine errors of impulsive birds in
+framing nests that were now swamped by snow-water, and other such
+incidents, prevented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the
+natives.  But these were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers,
+and the inner visions to which he had almost exclusively attended
+having suddenly failed in their power to absorb him, he felt
+unutterably dreary.
+
+He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. The
+season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her
+out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to become
+acquainted.  One thing was clear--any acquaintance with her could only,
+with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature of a
+flirtation; for he had high aims, and they would some day lead him into
+other spheres than this.
+
+Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch, which,
+as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed with a hood,
+being in fact a legitimate development from the settle.  He tried to
+read as he reclined, but having sat up till three o'clock that morning,
+the book slipped from his hand and he fell asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+It was at this time that Grace approached the house.  Her knock, always
+soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason of her
+strange errand.  However, it was heard by the farmer's wife who kept
+the house, and Grace was admitted.  Opening the door of the doctor's
+room the housewife glanced in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked
+Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few minutes while she should go and
+find him, believing him to be somewhere on the premises.  Grace
+acquiesced, went in, and sat down close to the door.
+
+As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room, and
+started at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the couch,
+like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb of the
+fifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means clasped in
+prayer.  She had no doubt that this was the doctor. Awaken him herself
+she could not, and her immediate impulse was to go and pull the broad
+ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at one side of the fireplace.
+But expecting the landlady to re-enter in a moment she abandoned this
+intention, and stood gazing in great embarrassment at the reclining
+philosopher.
+
+The windows of Fitzpiers's soul being at present shuttered, he probably
+appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation; but the light
+abstracted from his material presence by sleep was more than
+counterbalanced by the mysterious influence of that state, in a
+stranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so sensitive.  So far as
+she could criticise at all, she became aware that she had encountered a
+specimen of creation altogether unusual in that locality.  The
+occasions on which Grace had observed men of this stamp were when she
+had been far removed away from Hintock, and even then such examples as
+had met her eye were at a distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than
+the one who now confronted her.
+
+She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her mistake and
+returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. Approaching the chimney
+her back was to Fitzpiers, but she could see him in the glass.  An
+indescribable thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes
+of the reflected image were open, gazing wonderingly at her, and under
+the curious unexpectedness of the sight she became as if spellbound,
+almost powerless to turn her head and regard the original.  However, by
+an effort she did turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before.
+
+Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was sufficient
+to lead her to precipitately abandon her errand.  She crossed quickly
+to the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and went out of the
+house unobserved.  By the time that she had gone down the path and
+through the garden door into the lane she had recovered her equanimity.
+Here, screened by the hedge, she stood and considered a while.
+
+Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she had
+come out on such a morning because of the seriousness of the matter in
+hand; yet now she had allowed her mission to be stultified by a
+momentary tremulousness concerning an incident which perhaps had meant
+nothing after all.
+
+In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had been,
+had roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up.  In the reflection from the mirror
+which Grace had beheld there was no mystery; he had opened his eyes for
+a few moments, but had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if,
+indeed, he had ever been positively awake.  That somebody had just left
+the room he was certain, and that the lovely form which seemed to have
+visited him in a dream was no less than the real presentation of the
+person departed he could hardly doubt.
+
+Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edged
+gravel-path which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently
+open, and through it enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace having
+just at this juncture determined to return and attempt the interview a
+second time.  That he saw her coming instead of going made him ask
+himself if his first impression of her were not a dream indeed.  She
+came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so low over her head
+that he could hardly see her face.  When she reached the point where
+the raspberry bushes ended and the strawberry bed began, she made a
+little pause.
+
+Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and
+hastily quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her.  The
+nature of her errand he could not divine, but he was prepared to give
+her any amount of encouragement.
+
+"I beg pardon, Miss Melbury," he said.  "I saw you from the window, and
+fancied you might imagine that I was not at home--if it is I you were
+coming for."
+
+"I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more," she replied.
+"And I can say it here."
+
+"No, no.  Please do come in.  Well, then, if you will not come into the
+house, come as far as the porch."
+
+Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together inside
+it, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her.
+
+"I have merely a request or petition to make," she said.  "My father's
+servant is ill--a woman you know--and her illness is serious."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it.  You wish me to come and see her at once?"
+
+"No; I particularly wish you not to come."
+
+"Oh, indeed."
+
+"Yes; and she wishes the same.  It would make her seriously worse if
+you were to come.  It would almost kill her....My errand is of a
+peculiar and awkward nature.  It is concerning a subject which weighs
+on her mind--that unfortunate arrangement she made with you, that you
+might have her body--after death."
+
+"Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head.  Seriously ill,
+is she!"
+
+"And SO disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the money
+back--will you please return to her the agreement she signed?" Grace
+held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had kept ready
+tucked in her glove.
+
+Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his
+thoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace's personality, and
+the sudden close relation in which he stood to her.  The porch was
+narrow; the rain increased.  It ran off the porch and dripped on the
+creepers, and from the creepers upon the edge of Grace's cloak and
+skirts.
+
+"The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in," he said.  "It
+really makes my heart ache to let you stay here."
+
+Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting-room; he
+flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude.  Try how she would,
+Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written in the face and
+manner of this man, and distressful resignation sat on her as she
+glided past him into the room--brushing his coat with her elbow by
+reason of the narrowness.
+
+He followed her, shut the door--which she somehow had hoped he would
+leave open--and placing a chair for her, sat down.  The concern which
+Grace felt at the development of these commonplace incidents was, of
+course, mainly owing to the strange effect upon her nerves of that view
+of him in the mirror gazing at her with open eyes when she had thought
+him sleeping, which made her fancy that his slumber might have been a
+feint based on inexplicable reasons.
+
+She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at a
+piece of live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said, "Will
+you then reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer Oliver so
+foolishly gave?"
+
+"I'll cancel it without reconsideration.  Though you will allow me to
+have my own opinion about her foolishness.  Grammer is a very wise
+woman, and she was as wise in that as in other things.  You think there
+was something very fiendish in the compact, do you not, Miss Melbury?
+But remember that the most eminent of our surgeons in past times have
+entered into such agreements."
+
+"Not fiendish--strange."
+
+"Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing,
+but in its relation to something extrinsic--in this case an unessential
+observer."
+
+He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be
+unfolded and brought to her.  A thick cross appeared in ink at the
+bottom--evidently from the hand of Grammer.  Grace put the paper in her
+pocket with a look of much relief.
+
+As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come from
+Grace's own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. "No, no.  I
+shall not take it from the old woman," he said.  "It is more strange
+than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection
+that our acquaintance should be formed out of it."
+
+"I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion.
+But I did not mean to be."
+
+"Oh no, no."  He looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzled
+interest.  "I cannot think, I cannot think," he murmured. "Something
+bewilders me greatly."  He still reflected and hesitated.  "Last night
+I sat up very late," he at last went on, "and on that account I fell
+into a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago.  And during my
+few minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed--what do you think?--that you
+stood in the room."
+
+Should she tell? She merely blushed.
+
+"You may imagine," Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had,
+indeed, been a dream, "that I should not have dreamed of you without
+considerable thinking about you first."
+
+He could not be acting; of that she felt assured.
+
+"I fancied in my vision that you stood there," he said, pointing to
+where she had paused.  "I did not see you directly, but reflected in
+the glass.  I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for once
+carried out.  Nature has at last recovered her lost union with the
+Idea! My thoughts ran in that direction because I had been reading the
+work of a transcendental philosopher last night; and I dare say it was
+the dose of Idealism that I received from it that made me scarcely able
+to distinguish between reality and fancy.  I almost wept when I awoke,
+and found that you had appeared to me in Time, but not in Space, alas!"
+
+At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of
+Fitzpiers's effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that it was
+intrinsically theatrical.  It often happens that in situations of
+unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, real
+feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not easily distinguishable
+from rodomontade.  A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth,
+with the evil consequence, if perceived, that the substance is
+estimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected.
+
+Grace, however, was no specialist in men's manners, and she admired the
+sentiment without thinking of the form.  And she was embarrassed:
+"lovely creature" made explanation awkward to her gentle modesty.
+
+"But can it be," said he, suddenly, "that you really were here?"
+
+"I have to confess that I have been in the room once before," faltered
+she.  "The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch you; but as she
+did not return, I left."
+
+"And you saw me asleep," he murmured, with the faintest show of
+humiliation.
+
+"Yes--IF you were asleep, and did not deceive me."
+
+"Why do you say if?"
+
+"I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I
+looked round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me.
+
+"Never," said Fitzpiers, fervently--"never could I deceive you."
+
+Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them might
+have spoiled the effect of that pretty speech.  Never deceive her! But
+they knew nothing, and the phrase had its day.
+
+Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the
+compelling power of Fitzpiers's atmosphere still held her there. She
+was like an inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up her
+position on the boards, and spoken her speeches, does not know how to
+move off.  The thought of Grammer occurred to her.  "I'll go at once
+and tell poor Grammer of your generosity," she said. "It will relieve
+her at once."
+
+"Grammer's a nervous disease, too--how singular!" he answered,
+accompanying her to the door.  "One moment; look at this--it is
+something which may interest you."
+
+He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and she
+saw a microscope on the table of the confronting room.  "Look into it,
+please; you'll be interested," he repeated.
+
+She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned all
+over with a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort.  "What do you
+think that is?" said Fitzpiers.
+
+She did not know.
+
+"That's a fragment of old John South's brain, which I am investigating."
+
+She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how it
+should have got there.  Fitzpiers laughed.
+
+"Here am I," he said, "endeavoring to carry on simultaneously the study
+of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material world and the
+ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of contrast between them;
+and your finer sense is quite offended!"
+
+"Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers," said Grace, earnestly.  "It is not so at all.
+I know from seeing your light at night how deeply you meditate and
+work.  Instead of condemning you for your studies, I admire you very
+much!"
+
+Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and
+self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more than
+wished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from his own.
+Whether anything of the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remained
+no longer at the microscope, but quickly went her way into the rain.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+Instead of resuming his investigation of South's brain, which perhaps
+was not so interesting under the microscope as might have been expected
+from the importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers reclined and
+ruminated on the interview.  Grace's curious susceptibility to his
+presence, though it was as if the currents of her life were disturbed
+rather than attracted by him, added a special interest to her general
+charm.  Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree scientific, being ready and
+zealous to interrogate all physical manifestations, but primarily he
+was an idealist.  He believed that behind the imperfect lay the
+perfect; that rare things were to be discovered amid a bulk of
+commonplace; that results in a new and untried case might be different
+from those in other cases where the conditions had been precisely
+similar. Regarding his own personality as one of unbounded
+possibilities, because it was his own--notwithstanding that the factors
+of his life had worked out a sorry product for thousands--he saw
+nothing but what was regular in his discovery at Hintock of an
+altogether exceptional being of the other sex, who for nobody else
+would have had any existence.
+
+One habit of Fitzpiers's--commoner in dreamers of more advanced age
+than in men of his years--was that of talking to himself.  He paced
+round his room with a selective tread upon the more prominent blooms of
+the carpet, and murmured, "This phenomenal girl will be the light of my
+life while I am at Hintock; and the special beauty of the situation is
+that our attitude and relations to each other will be purely spiritual.
+Socially we can never be intimate.  Anything like matrimonial
+intentions towards her, charming as she is, would be absurd.  They
+would spoil the ethereal character of my regard.  And, indeed, I have
+other aims on the practical side of my life."
+
+Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he
+was bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of
+purse much longer.  But as an object of contemplation for the present,
+as objective spirit rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would
+serve to keep his soul alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days.
+
+His first notion--acquired from the mere sight of her without
+converse--that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a
+timber-merchant's pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that
+he had found what Grace intrinsically was.  Personal intercourse with
+such as she could take no lower form than intellectual communion, and
+mutual explorations of the world of thought.  Since he could not call
+at her father's, having no practical views, cursory encounters in the
+lane, in the wood, coming and going to and from church, or in passing
+her dwelling, were what the acquaintance would have to feed on.
+
+Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves in
+the event.  Rencounters of not more than a minute's duration,
+frequently repeated, will build up mutual interest, even an intimacy,
+in a lonely place.  Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the tree-twigs
+budded.  There never was a particular moment at which it could be said
+they became friends; yet a delicate understanding now existed between
+two who in the winter had been strangers.
+
+Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that had
+long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one warm night.
+The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could almost be heard.  The
+flowers of late April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they
+had been blooming a long while, though there had been no trace of them
+the day before yesterday; birds began not to mind getting wet.  In-door
+people said they had heard the nightingale, to which out-door people
+replied contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before.
+
+The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a London
+surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood.  Indeed such practice as
+he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have been
+necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions.  One day, book
+in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly
+oaks.  It was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere around that
+sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature which is apt
+to fill reflective human beings who are not undertaking much themselves
+with a sudden uneasiness at the contrast.  He heard in the distance a
+curious sound, something like the quack of a duck, which, though it was
+common enough here about this time, was not common to him.
+
+Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of the
+noise.  The barking season had just commenced, and what he had heard
+was the tear of the ripping tool as it ploughed its way along the
+sticky parting between the trunk and the rind.  Melbury did a large
+business in bark, and as he was Grace's father, and possibly might be
+found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the scene even more than
+he might have been by its intrinsic interest.  When he got nearer he
+recognized among the workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who
+probably had been "lent" by Winterborne; Marty South also assisted.
+
+Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by Creedle.
+With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of the tree from
+twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a height of a foot or
+two above the ground, an operation comparable to the "little toilet" of
+the executioner's victim.  After this it was barked in its erect
+position to a point as high as a man could reach.  If a fine product of
+vegetable nature could ever be said to look ridiculous it was the case
+now, when the oak stood naked-legged, and as if ashamed, till the
+axe-man came and cut a ring round it, and the two Timothys finished the
+work with the crosscut-saw.
+
+As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and in a
+short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and larger
+limbs.  Marty South was an adept at peeling the upper parts, and there
+she stood encaged amid the mass of twigs and buds like a great bird,
+running her tool into the smallest branches, beyond the farthest points
+to which the skill and patience of the men enabled them to
+proceed--branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed high above the
+bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and earliest rays of the sun
+and moon while the lower part of the forest was still in darkness.
+
+"You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty," said Fitzpiers.
+
+"No, sir," she said, holding up the tool--a horse's leg-bone fitted
+into a handle and filed to an edge--"'tis only that they've less
+patience with the twigs, because their time is worth more than mine."
+
+A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched hurdles and
+boughs, and in front of it was a fire, over which a kettle sung.
+Fitzpiers sat down inside the shelter, and went on with his reading,
+except when he looked up to observe the scene and the actors.  The
+thought that he might settle here and become welded in with this sylvan
+life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed his mind for a moment.  Why
+should he go farther into the world than where he was?  The secret of
+quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas and aspirations; these men's
+thoughts were conterminous with the margin of the Hintock woodlands,
+and why should not his be likewise limited--a small practice among the
+people around him being the bound of his desires?
+
+Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the quivering
+boughs, came out from the reclining oak, and prepared tea.  When it was
+ready the men were called; and Fitzpiers being in a mood to join, sat
+down with them.
+
+The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself when
+the faint creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible, and one
+of the men said, "Here's he." Turning their heads they saw Melbury's
+gig approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding moss.
+
+The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at
+every few steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where and
+how to duck her head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. They
+stopped at the spot where the bark-ripping had been temporarily
+suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of bark, and drawing
+near to where the workmen were sitting down, accepted their shouted
+invitation to have a dish of tea, for which purpose he hitched the
+horse to a bough.  Grace declined to take any of their beverage, and
+remained in her place in the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight
+that came in thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were
+interspersed.
+
+When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first time
+perceived that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated
+Fitzpiers's invitation to sit down on the log beside him.
+
+"Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here," he said,
+obviously much pleased at the circumstance.  "I wonder now if my
+daughter knows you are so nigh at hand.  I don't expect she do."
+
+He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still turned
+in the opposite direction.  "She doesn't see us.  Well, never mind: let
+her be."
+
+Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers's propinquity. She was
+thinking of something which had little connection with the scene before
+her--thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond; of
+her capricious conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was possibly
+enjoying at that very moment in other climes, to which Grace herself
+had hoped to be introduced by her friend's means.  She wondered if this
+patronizing lady would return to Hintock during the summer, and whether
+the acquaintance which had been nipped on the last occasion of her
+residence there would develop on the next.
+
+Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them directly
+to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard them often
+before.  Marty, who poured out tea, was just saying, "I think I'll take
+out a cup to Miss Grace," when they heard a clashing of the
+gig-harness, and turning round Melbury saw that the horse had become
+restless, and was jerking about the vehicle in a way which alarmed its
+occupant, though she refrained from screaming.  Melbury jumped up
+immediately, but not more quickly than Fitzpiers; and while her father
+ran to the horse's head and speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers
+was alongside the gig assisting Grace to descend.  Her surprise at his
+appearance was so great that, far from making a calm and independent
+descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms.  He relinquished
+her when she touched ground, and hoped she was not frightened.
+
+"Oh no, not much," she managed to say.  "There was no danger--unless he
+had run under the trees where the boughs are low enough to hit my head."
+
+"Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount of
+alarm."
+
+He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she
+could not tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but much
+with himself.  His contiguity had, in fact, the same effect upon her as
+on those former occasions when he had come closer to her than
+usual--that of producing in her an unaccountable tendency to
+tearfulness.  Melbury soon put the horse to rights, and seeing that
+Grace was safe, turned again to the work-people.  His daughter's
+nervous distress had passed off in a few moments, and she said quite
+gayly to Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards the group, "There's
+destiny in it, you see.  I was doomed to join in your picnic, although
+I did not intend to do so."
+
+Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the circle,
+and listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father and the
+bark-rippers sundry narratives of their fathers', their grandfathers',
+and their own adventures in these woods; of the mysterious sights they
+had seen--only to be accounted for by supernatural agency; of white
+witches and black witches; and the standard story of the spirits of the
+two brothers who had fought and fallen, and had haunted Hintock House
+till they were exorcised by the priest, and compelled to retreat to a
+swamp in this very wood, whence they were returning to their old
+quarters at the rate of a cock's stride every New-year's Day, old
+style; hence the local saying, "On New-year's tide, a cock's stride."
+
+It was a pleasant time.  The smoke from the little fire of peeled
+sticks rose between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its blue
+veil stretched the naked arms of the prostrate trees. The smell of the
+uncovered sap mingled with the smell of the burning wood, and the
+sticky inner surface of the scattered bark glistened as it revealed its
+pale madder hues to the eye.  Melbury was so highly satisfied at having
+Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he would have sat on for any length
+of time, but Grace, on whom Fitzpiers's eyes only too frequently
+alighted, seemed to think it incumbent upon her to make a show of
+going; and her father thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle.
+
+As the doctor had helped her out of it he appeared to think that he had
+excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the attention
+lingeringly enough.
+
+"What were you almost in tears about just now?" he asked, softly.
+
+"I don't know," she said: and the words were strictly true.
+
+Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the grove,
+their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses, hyacinths,
+primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and ordinary plants, and
+cracking up little sticks that lay across the track.  Their way
+homeward ran along the crest of a lofty hill, whence on the right they
+beheld a wide valley, differing both in feature and atmosphere from
+that of the Hintock precincts.  It was the cider country, which met the
+woodland district on the axis of this hill.  Over the vale the air was
+blue as sapphire--such a blue as outside that apple-valley was never
+seen.  Under the blue the orchards were in a blaze of bloom, some of
+the richly flowered trees running almost up to where they drove along.
+Over a gate which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms,
+regarding this fair promise so intently that he did not observe their
+passing.
+
+"That was Giles," said Melbury, when they had gone by.
+
+"Was it? Poor Giles," said she.
+
+"All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. If no
+blight happens before the setting the apple yield will be such as we
+have not had for years."
+
+Meanwhile, in the wood they had come from, the men had sat on so long
+that they were indisposed to begin work again that evening; they were
+paid by the ton, and their time for labor was as they chose.  They
+placed the last gatherings of bark in rows for the curers, which led
+them farther and farther away from the shed; and thus they gradually
+withdrew as the sun went down.
+
+Fitzpiers lingered yet.  He had opened his book again, though he could
+hardly see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire, scarcely
+knowing of the men's departure.  He dreamed and mused till his
+consciousness seemed to occupy the whole space of the woodland around,
+so little was there of jarring sight or sound to hinder perfect unity
+with the sentiment of the place.  The idea returned upon him of
+sacrificing all practical aims to live in calm contentment here, and
+instead of going on elaborating new conceptions with infinite pains, to
+accept quiet domesticity according to oldest and homeliest notions.
+These reflections detained him till the wood was embrowned with the
+coming night, and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to
+pour out all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far
+off.
+
+Fitzpiers's eyes commanded as much of the ground in front as was open.
+Entering upon this he saw a figure, whose direction of movement was
+towards the spot where he sat.  The surgeon was quite shrouded from
+observation by the recessed shadow of the hut, and there was no reason
+why he should move till the stranger had passed by.  The shape resolved
+itself into a woman's; she was looking on the ground, and walking
+slowly as if searching for something that had been lost, her course
+being precisely that of Mr. Melbury's gig.  Fitzpiers by a sort of
+divination jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer
+approach made the guess a certainty.
+
+Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round by the prostrate
+trees that would have been invisible but for the white nakedness which
+enabled her to avoid them easily.  Thus she approached the heap of
+ashes, and acting upon what was suggested by a still shining ember or
+two, she took a stick and stirred the heap, which thereupon burst into
+a flame.  On looking around by the light thus obtained she for the
+first time saw the illumined face of Fitzpiers, precisely in the spot
+where she had left him.
+
+Grace gave a start and a scream: the place had been associated with him
+in her thoughts, but she had not expected to find him there still.
+Fitzpiers lost not a moment in rising and going to her side.
+
+"I frightened you dreadfully, I know," he said.  "I ought to have
+spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you.  I have been
+sitting here ever since."
+
+He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the
+impression that she was quite overcome, and in danger of falling. As
+soon as she could collect her ideas she gently withdrew from his grasp,
+and explained what she had returned for: in getting up or down from the
+gig, or when sitting by the hut fire, she had dropped her purse.
+
+"Now we will find it," said Fitzpiers.
+
+He threw an armful of last year's leaves on to the fire, which made the
+flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave themselves into
+a denser contrast, turning eve into night in a moment.  By this
+radiance they groped about on their hands and knees, till Fitzpiers
+rested on his elbow, and looked at Grace. "We must always meet in odd
+circumstances," he said; "and this is one of the oddest.  I wonder if
+it means anything?"
+
+"Oh no, I am sure it doesn't," said Grace in haste, quickly assuming an
+erect posture.  "Pray don't say it any more."
+
+"I hope there was not much money in the purse," said Fitzpiers, rising
+to his feet more slowly, and brushing the leaves from his trousers.
+
+"Scarcely any.  I cared most about the purse itself, because it was
+given me.  Indeed, money is of little more use at Hintock than on
+Crusoe's island; there's hardly any way of spending it."
+
+They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by his
+foot.  "Here it is," he said, "so that your father, mother, friend, or
+ADMIRER will not have his or her feelings hurt by a sense of your
+negligence after all."
+
+"Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now."
+
+"The admirer?" said Fitzpiers, slyly.
+
+"I don't know if you would call him that," said Grace, with simplicity.
+"The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature, and this person is
+quite different."
+
+"He has all the cardinal virtues."
+
+"Perhaps--though I don't know them precisely."
+
+"You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better.
+According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance,
+Wisdom, and Love; and his is the best list that I know."
+
+"I am afraid poor--" She was going to say that she feared
+Winterborne--the giver of the purse years before--had not much
+perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she determined to
+go no further in this direction, and was silent.
+
+These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. His
+sense of personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed in his
+eyes the true aspect of a mistress in her lover's regard.
+
+"Miss Melbury," he said, suddenly, "I divine that this virtuous man you
+mention has been refused by you?"
+
+She could do no otherwise than admit it.
+
+"I do not inquire without good reason.  God forbid that I should kneel
+in another's place at any shrine unfairly.  But, my dear Miss Melbury,
+now that he is gone, may I draw near?"
+
+"I--I can't say anything about that!" she cried, quickly. "Because when
+a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and like him more than
+you did before."
+
+This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in the
+surgeon's eyes: it rendered her adorable.  "But cannot you say?" he
+pleaded, distractedly.
+
+"I'd rather not--I think I must go home at once."
+
+"Oh yes," said Fitzpiers.  But as he did not move she felt it awkward
+to walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently together.  A
+diversion was created by the accident of two birds, that had either
+been roosting above their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the
+other into the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a
+desperate quarrel that prevented the use of their wings.  They speedily
+parted, however, and flew up, and were seen no more.
+
+"That's the end of what is called love!" said some one.
+
+The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who
+approached with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to trace
+the birds.  Suddenly perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, "Oh, Miss
+Melbury! I have been following they pigeons, and didn't see you.  And
+here's Mr. Winterborne!" she continued, shyly, as she looked towards
+Fitzpiers, who stood in the background.
+
+"Marty," Grace interrupted.  "I want you to walk home with me--will
+you? Come along." And without lingering longer she took hold of Marty's
+arm and led her away.
+
+They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they lay,
+and onward among the growing trees, by a path where there were no oaks,
+and no barking, and no Fitzpiers--nothing but copse-wood, between
+which the primroses could be discerned in pale bunches.  "I didn't know
+Mr. Winterborne was there," said Marty, breaking the silence when they
+had nearly reached Grace's door.
+
+"Nor was he," said Grace.
+
+"But, Miss Melbury, I saw him."
+
+"No," said Grace.  "It was somebody else.  Giles Winterborne is nothing
+to me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the
+woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque body
+of infinitely larger shape and importance.  The boughs cast green
+shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked there; and a
+fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury's garden dripped on his
+seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with
+pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a place were no
+good at all.  The two trees that had creaked all the winter left off
+creaking, the whir of the night-jar, however, forming a very
+satisfactory continuation of uncanny music from that quarter.  Except
+at mid-day the sun was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but
+rather in the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves.
+
+Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as the
+hour grew later, and nine o'clock drew on, the irradiation of the
+daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of
+indistinctness.  Imagination could trace upon the trunks and boughs
+strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the surfaces of
+the holly-leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while
+such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks assumed
+the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues.  This was before the
+moonrise.  Later on, when that planet was getting command of the upper
+heaven, and consequently shining with an unbroken face into such open
+glades as there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became
+apparent that the margin of the wood which approached the
+timber-merchant's premises was not to be left to the customary
+stillness of that reposeful time.
+
+Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his garden
+gate--where he now looked more frequently than into his books--fancying
+that Grace might be abroad with some friends.  He was now irretrievably
+committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure
+that she was so far committed to him. That the Idea had for once
+completely fulfilled itself in the objective substance--which he had
+hitherto deemed an impossibility--he was enchanted enough to fancy must
+be the case at last.  It was not Grace who had passed, however, but
+several of the ordinary village girls in a group--some steadily
+walking, some in a mood of wild gayety.  He quietly asked his landlady,
+who was also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she
+informed him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to
+attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford them a glimpse of
+their future partners for life.  She declared it to be an ungodly
+performance, and one which she for her part would never countenance;
+saying which, she entered her house and retired to bed.
+
+The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly up
+the road.  They had turned into the wood at an opening between
+Melbury's and Marty South's; but Fitzpiers could easily track them by
+their voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones.
+
+In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become aware
+of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also sauntering
+stealthily after the frisky maidens.  Miss Melbury had been informed by
+Marty South during the day of the proposed peep into futurity, and,
+being only a girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to
+wish to see the issue.  The moon was so bright and the night so calm
+that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her;
+and thus, joined by Marty, these went onward in the same direction.
+
+Passing Winterborne's house, they heard a noise of hammering. Marty
+explained it.  This was the last night on which his paternal roof would
+shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand having expired;
+and Giles was taking down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an
+early exit next morning.  His encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him
+dearly.
+
+When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by Grammer
+Oliver (who was as young as the youngest in such matters), and Grace
+and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had arrived at the
+spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary intention of
+keeping their expedition a secret had been quite defeated.  Grace and
+her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and at a little distance stood
+Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, intently observing Grace, who
+was in the full rays of the moon.
+
+He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty and
+Grammer, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly which
+sheltered Mrs. and Miss Melbury on its bright side.  The two former
+conversed in low tones.
+
+"If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they'll come as one,"
+said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace.  "Instead of my
+skellington he'll carry home her living carcass before long. But though
+she's a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me
+that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Charmond, and
+that Miss Grace should make the best of Winterborne."
+
+Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of whom
+were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the incantation,
+it being now about midnight.
+
+"Directly we see anything we'll run home as fast as we can," said one,
+whose courage had begun to fail her.  To this the rest assented, not
+knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes around.
+
+"I wish we had not thought of trying this," said another, "but had
+contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and
+hearing our husbands' trades.  It is too much like having dealings with
+the Evil One to try to raise their forms."
+
+However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to march
+forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the deeper
+recesses of the wood.  As far as the listeners could gather, the
+particular form of black-art to be practised on this occasion was one
+connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful of which was carried
+by each girl.  At the moment of their advance they looked back, and
+discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone of all the observers,
+stood in the full face of the moonlight, deeply engrossed in the
+proceedings.  By contrast with her life of late years they made her
+feel as if she had receded a couple of centuries in the world's
+history.  She was rendered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and
+after a few whispered words, one of the girls--a bouncing maiden,
+plighted to young Timothy Tangs--asked her if she would join in.
+Grace, with some excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little
+in the rear of the rest.
+
+Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond the
+faintest occasional rustle of leaves.  Grammer whispered again to
+Marty: "Why didn't ye go and try your luck with the rest of the maids?"
+
+"I don't believe in it," said Marty, shortly.
+
+"Why, half the parish is here--the silly hussies should have kept it
+quiet.  I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up with
+Robert Creedle.  Marty, we ought to act the part o' Providence
+sometimes.  Do go and tell him that if he stands just behind the bush
+at the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes
+back, and she will most likely rush into his arms; for as soon as the
+clock strikes, they'll bundle back home--along like hares.  I've seen
+such larries before."
+
+"Do you think I'd better?" said Marty, reluctantly.
+
+"Oh yes, he'll bless ye for it."
+
+"I don't want that kind of blessing." But after a moment's thought she
+went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the satisfaction of
+seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy defile along which
+Grace would have to return.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers and
+Winterborne, and also the move of the latter.  An improvement on
+Grammer's idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had lately
+discerned what her husband had not--that Grace was rapidly fascinating
+the surgeon.  She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers.
+
+"You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing," she said to him,
+significantly.  "She will run down through that opening much faster
+than she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls."
+
+Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice.  He went across to
+Winterborne and stood beside him.  Each knew the probable purpose of
+the other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers scorning to
+look upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the
+off-hand manner of indifference which had grown upon him since his
+dismissal.
+
+Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon's manoeuvre, and,
+still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman suggested to
+the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and
+"tole" her down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in
+another direction.  Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice desire to
+obligation, walked forward accordingly, and waited as a beacon, still
+and silent, for the retreat of Grace and her giddy companions, now
+quite out of hearing.
+
+The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great
+Hintock clock striking the significant hour.  About a minute later that
+quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded with the
+flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and rabbits
+bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after these the
+rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted the hurried
+approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns soon became
+visible.  Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in the rear of the
+rest, was one of the first to return, and the excitement being
+contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who still stood as a
+hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush
+where the undergrowth narrowed to a gorge.  Marty arrived at her heels
+just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward
+in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his position, had
+turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not have
+thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury's encouragement and the sentiment
+of an eve which effaced conventionality.  Stretching out his arms as
+the white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she
+had been a bird.
+
+"Oh!" cried Grace, in her fright.
+
+"You are in my arms, dearest," said Fitzpiers, "and I am going to claim
+you, and keep you there all our two lives!"
+
+She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several seconds
+before she recovered from this helplessness.  Subdued screams and
+struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed that there had
+been other lurkers thereabout for a similar purpose.  Grace, unlike
+most of these companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said
+in a trembling voice, "Mr. Fitzpiers, will you let me go?"
+
+"Certainly," he said, laughing; "as soon as you have recovered."
+
+She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him
+aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush away.
+But it had been enough--new relations between them had begun.
+
+The case of the other girls was different, as has been said.  They
+wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle.
+Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace had
+left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her,
+Winterborne having gone away.  On a sudden another girl came bounding
+down the same descent that had been followed by Grace--a fine-framed
+young woman with naked arms.  Seeing Fitzpiers standing there, she
+said, with playful effrontery, "May'st kiss me if 'canst catch me, Tim!"
+
+Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of the
+hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover.  He was
+impulsively disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she began
+racing away he started in pursuit.
+
+On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking over
+her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand; but so
+cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades that she never
+allowed him to get dangerously near her.  Thus they ran and doubled,
+Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound of their companions
+had quite died away.  He began to lose hope of ever overtaking her,
+when all at once, by way of encouragement, she turned to a fence in
+which there was a stile and leaped over it.  Outside the scene was a
+changed one--a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in heaps, in
+the uninterrupted shine of the now high moon.
+
+Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she had
+placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over after her.
+She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at once her light form
+disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in
+one of the hay-cocks.
+
+Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape him
+thus.  He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one.
+As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by
+an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of
+a local ballad in the smallest voice she could assume:
+
+    "O come in from the foggy, foggy dew."
+
+
+In a minute or two he uncovered her.
+
+"Oh, 'tis not Tim!" said she, burying her face.
+
+Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its
+mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down on
+the next hay-cock, panting with his race.
+
+"Whom do you mean by Tim?" he asked, presently.
+
+"My young man, Tim Tangs," said she.
+
+"Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?"
+
+"I did at first."
+
+"But you didn't at last?"
+
+"I didn't at last."
+
+"Do you much mind that it was not?"
+
+"No," she answered, slyly.
+
+Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning.  In the moonlight Suke looked
+very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to her out-door
+occupation being invisible under these pale rays. While they remain
+silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically
+from the top of a tree at the nearest corner of the wood.  Besides this
+not a sound of any kind reached their ears, the time of nightingales
+being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance of two miles at least.
+In the opposite direction the hay-field stretched away into remoteness
+till it was lost to the eye in a soft mist.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been looking
+on, and encountering one of the girls, had asked her what caused them
+all to fly.
+
+She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something very
+different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for one would
+never attempt such unholy ceremonies again.  "We saw Satan pursuing us
+with his hour-glass.  It was terrible!"
+
+This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards the
+spot from which the girls had retreated.  After listening there a few
+minutes he heard slow footsteps rustling over the leaves, and looking
+through a tangled screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bough, he saw
+in the open space beyond a short stout man in evening-dress, carrying
+on one arm a light overcoat and also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as
+possibly to have suggested the "hour-glass" to his timid observers--if
+this were the person whom the girls had seen.  With the other hand he
+silently gesticulated and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow
+showed him to have dark hair and a high forehead of the shape seen
+oftener in old prints and paintings than in real life.  His curious and
+altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like those of one who is
+rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual place and hour, were
+sufficient to account for any trepidation among the Hintock daughters
+at encountering him.
+
+He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was; not
+observing Giles, who was of the color of his environment.  The latter
+advanced into the light.  The gentleman held up his hand and came
+towards Giles, the two meeting half-way.
+
+"I have lost my way," said the stranger.  "Perhaps you can put me in
+the path again."  He wiped his forehead with the air of one suffering
+under an agitation more than that of simple fatigue.
+
+"The turnpike-road is over there," said Giles
+
+"I don't want the turnpike-road," said the gentleman, impatiently. "I
+came from that.  I want Hintock House.  Is there not a path to it
+across here?"
+
+"Well, yes, a sort of path.  But it is hard to find from this point.
+I'll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure."
+
+"Thanks, my good friend.  The truth is that I decided to walk across
+the country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I am staying
+for a day or two.  But I did not know it was so far."
+
+"It is about a mile to the house from here."
+
+They walked on together.  As there was no path, Giles occasionally
+stepped in front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to give
+his companion a passage, saying every now and then when the twigs, on
+being released, flew back like whips, "Mind your eyes, sir." To which
+the stranger replied, "Yes, yes," in a preoccupied tone.
+
+So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick
+succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger said,
+
+"Is it far?"
+
+"Not much farther," said Winterborne.  "The plantation runs up into a
+corner here, close behind the house." He added with hesitation, "You
+know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not at home?"
+
+"You mistake," said the other, quickly.  "Mrs.  Charmond has been away
+for some time, but she's at home now."
+
+Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the gentleman
+was wrong.
+
+"You are a native of this place?" the stranger said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you are happy in having a home.  It is what I don't possess."
+
+"You come from far, seemingly?"
+
+"I come now from the south of Europe."
+
+"Oh, indeed, sir.  You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French gentleman,
+perhaps?"
+
+"I am not either."
+
+Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who
+seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at length
+answered the question.
+
+"I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth," he said.
+"I left my native country on the failure of the Southern cause, and
+have never returned to it since."
+
+He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the wood.
+Here, striding over the fence out upon the upland sward, they could at
+once see the chimneys of the house in the gorge immediately beneath
+their position, silent, still, and pale.
+
+"Can you tell me the time?" the gentleman asked.  "My watch has
+stopped."
+
+"It is between twelve and one," said Giles.
+
+His companion expressed his astonishment.  "I thought it between nine
+and ten at latest! Dear me--dear me!"
+
+He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which
+looked like a sovereign, for the assistance rendered.  Giles declined
+to accept anything, to the surprise of the stranger, who, on putting
+the money back into his pocket, said, awkwardly, "I offered it because
+I want you to utter no word about this meeting with me.  Will you
+promise?"
+
+Winterborne promised readily.  He thereupon stood still while the other
+ascended the slope.  At the bottom he looked back dubiously. Giles
+would no longer remain when he was so evidently desired to leave, and
+returned through the boughs to Hintock.
+
+He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and melancholy,
+might be that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs. Charmond whom he had
+heard so frequently spoken of, and whom it was said she had treated
+cavalierly.  But he received no confirmation of his suspicion beyond a
+report which reached him a few days later that a gentleman had called
+up the servants who were taking care of Hintock House at an hour past
+midnight; and on learning that Mrs. Charmond, though returned from
+abroad, was as yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and gone away
+without leaving a card or any trace of himself.
+
+The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times before
+he swore, but this part of the narrative was not corroborated.  Anyhow,
+such a gentleman had driven away from the hotel at Sherton next day in
+a carriage hired at that inn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of Midsummer Eve
+brought a visitor to Fitzpiers's door; a voice that he knew sounded in
+the passage.  Mr. Melbury had called.  At first he had a particular
+objection to enter the parlor, because his boots were dusty, but as the
+surgeon insisted he waived the point and came in.
+
+Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers
+himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied gaze at
+the floor, he said, "I've called to ask you, doctor, quite privately, a
+question that troubles me.  I've a daughter, Grace, an only daughter,
+as you may have heard.  Well, she's been out in the dew--on Midsummer
+Eve in particular she went out in thin slippers to watch some vagary of
+the Hintock maids--and she's got a cough, a distinct hemming and
+hacking, that makes me uneasy. Now, I have decided to send her away to
+some seaside place for a change--"
+
+"Send her away!" Fitzpiers's countenance had fallen.
+
+"Yes.  And the question is, where would you advise me to send her?"
+
+The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when Fitzpiers was
+at the spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a necessity of his
+existence.  The sudden pressure of her form upon his breast as she came
+headlong round the bush had never ceased to linger with him, ever since
+he adopted the manoeuvre for which the hour and the moonlight and the
+occasion had been the only excuse. Now she was to be sent away.
+Ambition? it could be postponed. Family? culture and reciprocity of
+tastes had taken the place of family nowadays.  He allowed himself to
+be carried forward on the wave of his desire.
+
+"How strange, how very strange it is," he said, "that you should have
+come to me about her just now.  I have been thinking every day of
+coming to you on the very same errand."
+
+"Ah!--you have noticed, too, that her health----"
+
+"I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there is
+nothing.  But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several times by
+accident.  I have admired her infinitely, and I was coming to ask you
+if I may become better acquainted with her--pay my addresses to her?"
+
+Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air of
+half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers's face as
+he made this declaration.
+
+"You have--got to know her?" said Melbury, a spell of dead silence
+having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with
+almost visible effect.
+
+"Yes," said Fitzpiers.
+
+"And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with a
+view to marriage--of course that is what you mean?"
+
+"Yes," said the young man.  "I mean, get acquainted with her, with a
+view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other, what
+would naturally follow."
+
+The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his hand
+trembled as he laid by his walking-stick.  "This takes me unawares,"
+said he, his voice wellnigh breaking down.  "I don't mean that there is
+anything unexpected in a gentleman being attracted by her; but it did
+not occur to me that it would be you. I always said," continued he,
+with a lump in his throat, "that my Grace would make a mark at her own
+level some day.  That was why I educated her.  I said to myself, 'I'll
+do it, cost what it may;' though her mother-law was pretty frightened
+at my paying out so much money year after year.  I knew it would tell
+in the end. 'Where you've not good material to work on, such doings
+would be waste and vanity,' I said.  'But where you have that material
+it is sure to be worth while.'"
+
+"I am glad you don't object," said Fitzpiers, almost wishing that Grace
+had not been quite so cheap for him.
+
+"If she is willing I don't object, certainly.  Indeed," added the
+honest man, "it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel anything
+else than highly honored personally; and it is a great credit to her to
+have drawn to her a man of such good professional station and venerable
+old family.  That huntsman-fellow little thought how wrong he was about
+her! Take her and welcome, sir."
+
+"I'll endeavor to ascertain her mind."
+
+"Yes, yes.  But she will be agreeable, I should think.  She ought to
+be."
+
+"I hope she may.  Well, now you'll expect to see me frequently."
+
+"Oh yes.  But, name it all--about her cough, and her going away. I had
+quite forgot that that was what I came about."
+
+"I assure you," said the surgeon, "that her cough can only be the
+result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to any
+seaside place at all."
+
+Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take
+Fitzpiers's professional opinion in circumstances which naturally led
+him to wish to keep her there.  The doctor saw this, and honestly
+dreading to lose sight of her, he said, eagerly, "Between ourselves, if
+I am successful with her I will take her away myself for a month or
+two, as soon as we are married, which I hope will be before the chilly
+weather comes on.  This will be so very much better than letting her go
+now."
+
+The proposal pleased Melbury much.  There could be hardly any danger in
+postponing any desirable change of air as long as the warm weather
+lasted, and for such a reason.  Suddenly recollecting himself, he said,
+"Your time must be precious, doctor.  I'll get home-along.  I am much
+obliged to ye.  As you will see her often, you'll discover for yourself
+if anything serious is the matter."
+
+"I can assure you it is nothing," said Fitzpiers, who had seen Grace
+much oftener already than her father knew of.
+
+When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his sensations,
+like a man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a medium of which he
+knows not the density or temperature.  But he had done it, and Grace
+was the sweetest girl alive.
+
+As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in Melbury's
+ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had said in the
+emotion of the moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and unsuited to a
+dialogue with an educated gentleman, the smallness of whose practice
+was more than compensated by the former greatness of his family.  He
+had uttered thoughts before they were weighed, and almost before they
+were shaped.  They had expressed in a certain sense his feeling at
+Fitzpiers's news, but yet they were not right.  Looking on the ground,
+and planting his stick at each tread as if it were a flag-staff, he
+reached his own precincts, where, as he passed through the court, he
+automatically stopped to look at the men working in the shed and
+around.  One of them asked him a question about wagon-spokes.
+
+"Hey?" said Melbury, looking hard at him.  The man repeated the words.
+
+Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he went up
+the court and entered the house.  As time was no object with the
+journeymen, except as a thing to get past, they leisurely surveyed the
+door through which he had disappeared.
+
+"What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?" said Tangs the elder.
+"Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you've got a maid of yer
+own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him, that will take the
+squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But you'll never be tall enough
+to accomplish such as she; and 'tis a lucky thing for ye, John, as
+things be.  Well, he ought to have a dozen--that would bring him to
+reason.  I see 'em walking together last Sunday, and when they came to
+a puddle he lifted her over like a halfpenny doll.  He ought to have a
+dozen; he'd let 'em walk through puddles for themselves then."
+
+Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who sees
+a vision before him.  His wife was in the room.  Without taking off his
+hat he sat down at random.
+
+"Luce--we've done it!" he said.  "Yes--the thing is as I expected. The
+spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked.  She's done it, and
+done it well.  Where is she--Grace, I mean?"
+
+"Up in her room--what has happened!"
+
+Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. "I
+told you so," he said.  "A maid like her couldn't stay hid long, even
+in a place like this.  But where is Grace? Let's have her down.
+Here--Gra-a-ace!"
+
+She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently
+spoiled by this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry, however
+impatient his tones.  "What is it, father?" said she, with a smile.
+
+"Why, you scamp, what's this you've been doing? Not home here more than
+six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your father's rank,
+making havoc in the educated classes."
+
+Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her
+father's meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a loss
+now.
+
+"No, no--of course you don't know what I mean, or you pretend you
+don't; though, for my part, I believe women can see these things
+through a double hedge.  But I suppose I must tell ye.  Why, you've
+flung your grapnel over the doctor, and he's coming courting forthwith."
+
+"Only think of that, my dear! Don't you feel it a triumph?" said Mrs.
+Melbury.
+
+"Coming courting! I've done nothing to make him," Grace exclaimed.
+
+"'Twasn't necessary that you should, 'Tis voluntary that rules in these
+things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my consent.
+You'll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say.  I needn't tell
+you to make it all smooth for him."
+
+"You mean, to lead him on to marry me?"
+
+"I do.  Haven't I educated you for it?"
+
+Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no animation
+in her face.  "Why is it settled off-hand in this way?" said she,
+coquettishly.  "You'll wait till you hear what I think of him, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Oh yes, of course.  But you see what a good thing it will be."
+
+She weighed the statement without speaking.
+
+"You will be restored to the society you've been taken away from,"
+continued her father; "for I don't suppose he'll stay here long."
+
+She admitted the advantage; but it was plain that though Fitzpiers
+exercised a certain fascination over her when he was present, or even
+more, an almost psychic influence, and though his impulsive act in the
+wood had stirred her feelings indescribably, she had never regarded him
+in the light of a destined husband.  "I don't know what to answer," she
+said.  "I have learned that he is very clever."
+
+"He's all right, and he's coming here to see you."
+
+A premonition that she could not resist him if he came strangely moved
+her.  "Of course, father, you remember that it is only lately that
+Giles--"
+
+"You know that you can't think of him.  He has given up all claim to
+you."
+
+She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he could state
+his opinion, even though she had skill in speech, and her father had
+none.  That Fitzpiers acted upon her like a dram, exciting her,
+throwing her into a novel atmosphere which biassed her doings until the
+influence was over, when she felt something of the nature of regret for
+the mood she had experienced--still more if she reflected on the
+silent, almost sarcastic, criticism apparent in Winterborne's air
+towards her--could not be told to this worthy couple in words.
+
+It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called away from
+Hintock by an engagement to attend some medical meetings, and his
+visits, therefore, did not begin at once.  A note, however, arrived
+from him addressed to Grace, deploring his enforced absence.  As a
+material object this note was pretty and superfine, a note of a sort
+that she had been unaccustomed to see since her return to Hintock,
+except when a school friend wrote to her--a rare instance, for the
+girls were respecters of persons, and many cooled down towards the
+timber-dealer's daughter when she was out of sight.  Thus the receipt
+of it pleased her, and she afterwards walked about with a reflective
+air.
+
+In the evening her father, who knew that the note had come, said, "Why
+be ye not sitting down to answer your letter? That's what young folks
+did in my time."
+
+She replied that it did not require an answer.
+
+"Oh, you know best," he said.  Nevertheless, he went about his business
+doubting if she were right in not replying; possibly she might be so
+mismanaging matters as to risk the loss of an alliance which would
+bring her much happiness.
+
+Melbury's respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his professional
+position, which was not much, than on the standing of his family in the
+county in by-gone days.  That implicit faith in members of
+long-established families, as such, irrespective of their personal
+condition or character, which is still found among old-fashioned people
+in the rural districts reached its full intensity in Melbury.  His
+daughter's suitor was descended from a family he had heard of in his
+grandfather's time as being once great, a family which had conferred
+its name upon a neighboring village; how, then, could anything be amiss
+in this betrothal?
+
+"I must keep her up to this," he said to his wife.  "She sees it is for
+her happiness; but still she's young, and may want a little prompting
+from an older tongue."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when he
+wished to say anything specially impressive.  Their way was over the
+top of that lofty ridge dividing their woodland from the cider
+district, whence they had in the spring beheld the miles of apple-trees
+in bloom.  All was now deep green.  The spot recalled to Grace's mind
+the last occasion of her presence there, and she said, "The promise of
+an enormous apple-crop is fulfilling itself, is it not?  I suppose
+Giles is getting his mills and presses ready."
+
+This was just what her father had not come there to talk about. Without
+replying he raised his arm, and moved his finger till he fixed it at a
+point.  "There," he said, "you see that plantation reaching over the
+hill like a great slug, and just behind the hill a particularly green
+sheltered bottom?  That's where Mr. Fitzpiers's family were lords of
+the manor for I don't know how many hundred years, and there stands the
+village of Buckbury Fitzpiers.  A wonderful property 'twas--wonderful!"
+
+"But they are not lords of the manor there now."
+
+"Why, no.  But good and great things die as well as little and foolish.
+The only ones representing the family now, I believe, are our doctor
+and a maiden lady living I don't know where.  You can't help being
+happy, Grace, in allying yourself with such a romantical family.
+You'll feel as if you've stepped into history."
+
+"We've been at Hintock as long as they've been at Buckbury; is it not
+so? You say our name occurs in old deeds continually."
+
+"Oh yes--as yeomen, copyholders, and such like.  But think how much
+better this will be for 'ee.  You'll be living a high intellectual
+life, such as has now become natural to you; and though the doctor's
+practice is small here, he'll no doubt go to a dashing town when he's
+got his hand in, and keep a stylish carriage, and you'll be brought to
+know a good many ladies of excellent society.  If you should ever meet
+me then, Grace, you can drive past me, looking the other way.  I
+shouldn't expect you to speak to me, or wish such a thing, unless it
+happened to be in some lonely, private place where 'twouldn't lower ye
+at all. Don't think such men as neighbor Giles your equal.  He and I
+shall be good friends enough, but he's not for the like of you.  He's
+lived our rough and homely life here, and his wife's life must be rough
+and homely likewise."
+
+So much pressure could not but produce some displacement.  As Grace was
+left very much to herself, she took advantage of one fine day before
+Fitzpiers's return to drive into the aforesaid vale where stood the
+village of Buckbury Fitzpiers.  Leaving her father's man at the inn
+with the horse and gig, she rambled onward to the ruins of a castle,
+which stood in a field hard by.  She had no doubt that it represented
+the ancient stronghold of the Fitzpiers family.
+
+The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants of the lower
+vaulting, supported on low stout columns surmounted by the crochet
+capital of the period.  The two or three arches of these vaults that
+were still in position were utilized by the adjoining farmer as shelter
+for his calves, the floor being spread with straw, amid which the young
+creatures rustled, cooling their thirsty tongues by licking the quaint
+Norman carving, which glistened with the moisture.  It was a
+degradation of even such a rude form of art as this to be treatad so
+grossly, she thought, and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers
+assumed in her imagination the hues of a melancholy romanticism.
+
+It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the distance with a
+preoccupied mind.  The idea of so modern a man in science and
+aesthetics as the young surgeon springing out of relics so ancient was
+a kind of novelty she had never before experienced. The combination
+lent him a social and intellectual interest which she dreaded, so much
+weight did it add to the strange influence he exercised upon her
+whenever he came near her.
+
+In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, rather a fearful
+consciousness of hazard in the air, she awaited his return.
+
+Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also.  In his house there was an
+old work on medicine, published towards the end of the last century,
+and to put himself in harmony with events Melbury spread this work on
+his knees when he had done his day's business, and read about Galen,
+Hippocrates, and Herophilus--of the dogmatic, the empiric, the
+hermetical, and other sects of practitioners that have arisen in
+history; and thence proceeded to the classification of maladies and the
+rules for their treatment, as laid down in this valuable book with
+absolute precision.  Melbury regretted that the treatise was so old,
+fearing that he might in consequence be unable to hold as complete a
+conversation as he could wish with Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt,
+with more recent discoveries.
+
+The day of Fitzpiers's return arrived, and he sent to say that he would
+call immediately.  In the little time that was afforded for putting the
+house in order the sweeping of Melbury's parlor was as the sweeping of
+the parlor at the Interpreter's which wellnigh choked the Pilgrim.  At
+the end of it Mrs. Melbury sat down, folded her hands and lips, and
+waited.  Her husband restlessly walked in and out from the timber-yard,
+stared at the interior of the room, jerked out "ay, ay," and retreated
+again.  Between four and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to
+the hook outside the door.
+
+As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in the
+room, he seemed to have a misgiving.  Nothing less than her actual
+presence could long keep him to the level of this impassioned
+enterprise, and that lacking he appeared as one who wished to retrace
+his steps.
+
+He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron's level
+of thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and Grace came in.
+Fitzpiers was for once as agitated as she.  Over and above the genuine
+emotion which she raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was
+casting a die by impulse which he might not have thrown by judgment.
+
+Mr. Melbury was not in the room.  Having to attend to matters in the
+yard, he had delayed putting on his afternoon coat and waistcoat till
+the doctor's appearance, when, not wishing to be backward in receiving
+him, he entered the parlor hastily buttoning up those garments.
+Grace's fastidiousness was a little distressed that Fitzpiers should
+see by this action the strain his visit was putting upon her father;
+and to make matters worse for her just then, old Grammer seemed to have
+a passion for incessantly pumping in the back kitchen, leaving the
+doors open so that the banging and splashing were distinct above the
+parlor conversation.
+
+Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness Mr.
+Melbury broke in with speeches of labored precision on very remote
+topics, as if he feared to let Fitzpiers's mind dwell critically on the
+subject nearest the hearts of all.  In truth a constrained manner was
+natural enough in Melbury just now, for the greatest interest of his
+life was reaching its crisis.  Could the real have been beheld instead
+of the corporeal merely, the corner of the room in which he sat would
+have been filled with a form typical of anxious suspense, large-eyed,
+tight-lipped, awaiting the issue.  That paternal hopes and fears so
+intense should be bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly
+circumstanced, and not have dispersed themselves over the larger field
+of a whole family, involved dangerous risks to future happiness.
+
+Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time had apparently
+advanced his sentiments towards Grace, once and for all, from a vaguely
+liquescent to an organic shape.  She would not have accompanied him to
+the door in response to his whispered "Come!" if her mother had not
+said in a matter-of-fact way, "Of course, Grace; go to the door with
+Mr. Fitzpiers."  Accordingly Grace went, both her parents remaining in
+the room.  When the young pair were in the great brick-floored hall the
+lover took the girl's hand in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led
+her on to the door, where he stealthily kissed her.
+
+She broke from him trembling, blushed and turned aside, hardly knowing
+how things had advanced to this.  Fitzpiers drove off, kissing his hand
+to her, and waving it to Melbury who was visible through the window.
+Her father returned the surgeon's action with a great flourish of his
+own hand and a satisfied smile.
+
+The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced in Grace's
+brain during the visit passed off somewhat with his withdrawal. She
+felt like a woman who did not know what she had been doing for the
+previous hour, but supposed with trepidation that the afternoon's
+proceedings, though vague, had amounted to an engagement between
+herself and the handsome, coercive, irresistible Fitzpiers.
+
+
+This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long summer
+days of that year.  Grace was borne along upon a stream of reasonings,
+arguments, and persuasions, supplemented, it must be added, by
+inclinations of her own at times.  No woman is without aspirations,
+which may be innocent enough within certain limits; and Grace had been
+so trained socially, and educated intellectually, as to see clearly
+enough a pleasure in the position of wife to such a man as Fitzpiers.
+His material standing of itself, either present or future, had little
+in it to give her ambition, but the possibilities of a refined and
+cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had their
+charm.  It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying well which
+caused her to float with the current, and to yield to the immense
+influence which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever she shared his
+society.
+
+Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not she
+loved him as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to do so in
+time.
+
+One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk
+together, and for a short cut homeward passed through the shrubberies
+of Hintock House--still deserted, and still blankly confronting with
+its sightless shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes.
+Grace was tired, and they approached the wall, and sat together on one
+of the stone sills--still warm with the sun that had been pouring its
+rays upon them all the afternoon.
+
+"This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest," said her
+betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at the old facade.
+
+"Oh yes," said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy had ever
+crossed her mind.  "She is away from home still," Grace added in a
+minute, rather sadly, for she could not forget that she had somehow
+lost the valuable friendship of the lady of this bower.
+
+"Who is?--oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond.  Do you know, dear, that at one
+time I thought you lived here."
+
+"Indeed!" said Grace.  "How was that?"
+
+He explained, as far as he could do so without mentioning his
+disappointment at finding it was otherwise; and then went on: "Well,
+never mind that.  Now I want to ask you something.  There is one detail
+of our wedding which I am sure you will leave to me. My inclination is
+not to be married at the horrid little church here, with all the yokels
+staring round at us, and a droning parson reading."
+
+"Where, then, can it be?  At a church in town?"
+
+"No.  Not at a church at all.  At a registry office.  It is a quieter,
+snugger, and more convenient place in every way."
+
+"Oh," said she, with real distress.  "How can I be married except at
+church, and with all my dear friends round me?"
+
+"Yeoman Winterborne among them."
+
+"Yes--why not? You know there was nothing serious between him and me."
+
+"You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church has this
+objection in our case: it would be a thing of report a long way round.
+Now I would gently, as gently as possible, indicate to you how
+inadvisable such publicity would be if we leave Hintock, and I purchase
+the practice that I contemplate purchasing at Budmouth--hardly more
+than twenty miles off.  Forgive my saying that it will be far better if
+nobody there knows where you come from, nor anything about your
+parents.  Your beauty and knowledge and manners will carry you anywhere
+if you are not hampered by such retrospective criticism."
+
+"But could it not be a quiet ceremony, even at church?" she pleaded.
+
+"I don't see the necessity of going there!" he said, a trifle
+impatiently.  "Marriage is a civil contract, and the shorter and
+simpler it is made the better.  People don't go to church when they
+take a house, or even when they make a will."
+
+"Oh, Edgar--I don't like to hear you speak like that."
+
+"Well, well--I didn't mean to.  But I have mentioned as much to your
+father, who has made no objection; and why should you?"
+
+She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ought to allow
+sentiment to give way to policy--if there were indeed policy in his
+plan.  But she was indefinably depressed as they walked homeward.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+He left her at the door of her father's house.  As he receded, and was
+clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace as a man
+who hardly appertained to her existence at all. Cleverer, greater than
+herself, one outside her mental orbit, as she considered him, he seemed
+to be her ruler rather than her equal, protector, and dear familiar
+friend.
+
+The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the shock given to
+her girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of marriage, together
+with the sure and near approach of the day fixed for committing her
+future to his keeping, made her so restless that she could scarcely
+sleep at all that night.  She rose when the sparrows began to walk out
+of the roof-holes, sat on the floor of her room in the dim light, and
+by-and-by peeped out behind the window-curtains.  It was even now day
+out-of-doors, though the tones of morning were feeble and wan, and it
+was long before the sun would be perceptible in this overshadowed vale.
+Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet.  The tree-trunks,
+the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore that aspect
+of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to
+such scenes.  Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be
+combined with intense consciousness; a meditative inertness possessed
+all things, oppressively contrasting with her own active emotions.
+Beyond the road were some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs
+and over the apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed by the
+plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by her future
+husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely through its creepers.
+The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains closely drawn,
+and not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from the rugged chimneys.
+
+Something broke the stillness.  The front door of the house she was
+gazing at opened softly, and there came out into the porch a female
+figure, wrapped in a large shawl, beneath which was visible the white
+skirt of a long loose garment.  A gray arm, stretching from within the
+porch, adjusted the shawl over the woman's shoulders; it was withdrawn
+and disappeared, the door closing behind her.
+
+The woman went quickly down the box-edged path between the raspberries
+and currants, and as she walked her well-developed form and gait
+betrayed her individuality.  It was Suke Damson, the affianced one of
+simple young Tim Tangs.  At the bottom of the garden she entered the
+shelter of the tall hedge, and only the top of her head could be seen
+hastening in the direction of her own dwelling.
+
+Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the gray arm
+stretching from the porch, the sleeve of a dressing-gown which Mr.
+Fitzpiers had been wearing on her own memorable visit to him.  Her face
+fired red.  She had just before thought of dressing herself and taking
+a lonely walk under the trees, so coolly green this early morning; but
+she now sat down on her bed and fell into reverie.  It seemed as if
+hardly any time had passed when she heard the household moving briskly
+about, and breakfast preparing down-stairs; though, on rousing herself
+to robe and descend, she found that the sun was throwing his rays
+completely over the tree-tops, a progress of natural phenomena
+denoting that at least three hours had elapsed since she last looked
+out of the window.
+
+When attired she searched about the house for her father; she found him
+at last in the garden, stooping to examine the potatoes for signs of
+disease.  Hearing her rustle, he stood up and stretched his back and
+arms, saying, "Morning t'ye, Gracie.  I congratulate ye.  It is only a
+month to-day to the time!"
+
+She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded between the
+dewy rows of tall potato-green into the middle of the plot where he was.
+
+"I have been thinking very much about my position this morning--ever
+since it was light," she began, excitedly, and trembling so that she
+could hardly stand.  "And I feel it is a false one.  I wish not to
+marry Mr. Fitzpiers.  I wish not to marry anybody; but I'll marry Giles
+Winterborne if you say I must as an alternative."
+
+Her father's face settled into rigidity, he turned pale, and came
+deliberately out of the plot before he answered her.  She had never
+seen him look so incensed before.
+
+"Now, hearken to me," he said.  "There's a time for a woman to alter
+her mind; and there's a time when she can no longer alter it, if she
+has any right eye to her parents' honor and the seemliness of things.
+That time has come.  I won't say to ye, you SHALL marry him.  But I
+will say that if you refuse, I shall forever be ashamed and a-weary of
+ye as a daughter, and shall look upon you as the hope of my life no
+more.  What do you know about life and what it can bring forth, and how
+you ought to act to lead up to best ends?  Oh, you are an ungrateful
+maid, Grace; you've seen that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye;
+that's where the secret lies, I'll warrant me!"
+
+"No, father, no! It is not Giles--it is something I cannot tell you
+of--"
+
+"Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it off;
+have your own way."
+
+"But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it disgrace
+you?"
+
+Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the engagement
+to this acquaintance and to that, till she perceived that in his
+restlessness and pride he had published it everywhere. She went
+dismally away to a bower of laurel at the top of the garden.  Her
+father followed her.
+
+"It is that Giles Winterborne!" he said, with an upbraiding gaze at her.
+
+"No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once," she
+said, troubled to the verge of despair.  "It is not Giles, it is Mr.
+Fitzpiers."
+
+"You've had a tiff--a lovers' tiff--that's all, I suppose!"
+
+"It is some woman--"
+
+"Ay, ay; you are jealous.  The old story.  Don't tell me.  Now do you
+bide here.  I'll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in front of
+his house but a minute by-gone."
+
+He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane.  But she
+would not stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the
+garden-fence, walked away into the wood.  Just about here the trees
+were large and wide apart, and there was no undergrowth, so that she
+could be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, greenish-white creature,
+as toned by the sunlight and leafage.  She heard a foot-fall crushing
+dead leaves behind her, and found herself reconnoitered by Fitzpiers
+himself, approaching gay and fresh as the morning around them.
+
+His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than of
+rapture.  But she looked so lovely in the green world about her, her
+pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate flexibility of
+her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that
+his eyes kindled as he drew near.
+
+"My darling, what is it?  Your father says you are in the pouts, and
+jealous, and I don't know what.  Ha! ha! ha! as if there were any rival
+to you, except vegetable nature, in this home of recluses! We know
+better."
+
+"Jealous; oh no, it is not so," said she, gravely.  "That's a mistake
+of his and yours, sir.  I spoke to him so closely about the question of
+marriage with you that he did not apprehend my state of mind."
+
+"But there's something wrong--eh?" he asked, eying her narrowly, and
+bending to kiss her.  She shrank away, and his purposed kiss miscarried.
+
+"What is it?" he said, more seriously for this little defeat.
+
+She made no answer beyond, "Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no breakfast, I
+must go in."
+
+"Come," he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her.  "Tell me at once, I
+say."
+
+It was the greater strength against the smaller; but she was mastered
+less by his manner than by her own sense of the unfairness of silence.
+"I looked out of the window," she said, with hesitation.  "I'll tell
+you by-and-by.  I must go in-doors. I have had no breakfast."
+
+By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to the fact. "Nor
+I," said he, lightly.  "Indeed, I rose late to-day.  I have had a
+broken night, or rather morning.  A girl of the village--I don't know
+her name--came and rang at my bell as soon as it was light--between
+four and five, I should think it was--perfectly maddened with an aching
+tooth.  As no-body heard her ring, she threw some gravel at my window,
+till at last I heard her and slipped on my dressing-gown and went down.
+The poor thing begged me with tears in her eyes to take out her
+tormentor, if I dragged her head off.  Down she sat and out it came--a
+lovely molar, not a speck upon it; and off she went with it in her
+handkerchief, much contented, though it would have done good work for
+her for fifty years to come."
+
+It was all so plausible--so completely explained.  Knowing nothing of
+the incident in the wood on old Midsummer-eve, Grace felt that her
+suspicions were unworthy and absurd, and with the readiness of an
+honest heart she jumped at the opportunity of honoring his word.  At
+the moment of her mental liberation the bushes about the garden had
+moved, and her father emerged into the shady glade. "Well, I hope it is
+made up?" he said, cheerily.
+
+"Oh yes," said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, whose eyes were
+shyly bent downward.
+
+"Now," said her father, "tell me, the pair of ye, that you still mean
+to take one another for good and all; and on the strength o't you shall
+have another couple of hundred paid down.  I swear it by the name."
+
+Fitzpiers took her hand.  "We declare it, do we not, my dear Grace?"
+said he.
+
+Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever anxious to please,
+she was disposed to settle the matter; yet, womanlike, she would not
+relinquish her opportunity of asking a concession of some sort.  "If
+our wedding can be at church, I say yes," she answered, in a measured
+voice.  "If not, I say no."
+
+Fitzpiers was generous in his turn.  "It shall be so," he rejoined,
+gracefully.  "To holy church we'll go, and much good may it do us."
+
+They returned through the bushes indoors, Grace walking, full of
+thought between the other two, somewhat comforted, both by Fitzpiers's
+ingenious explanation and by the sense that she was not to be deprived
+of a religious ceremony.  "So let it be," she said to herself.  "Pray
+God it is for the best."
+
+From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalcitration on her
+part.  Fitzpiers kept himself continually near her, dominating any
+rebellious impulse, and shaping her will into passive concurrence with
+all his desires.  Apart from his lover-like anxiety to possess her, the
+few golden hundreds of the timber-dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm
+background to Grace's lovely face, and went some way to remove his
+uneasiness at the prospect of endangering his professional and social
+chances by an alliance with the family of a simple countryman.
+
+
+The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. Whenever
+Grace had any doubts of her position, the sense of contracting time was
+like a shortening chamber: at other moments she was comparatively
+blithe.  Day after day waxed and waned; the one or two woodmen who
+sawed, shaped, spokeshaved on her father's premises at this inactive
+season of the year, regularly came and unlocked the doors in the
+morning, locked them in the evening, supped, leaned over their
+garden-gates for a whiff of evening air, and to catch any last and
+farthest throb of news from the outer world, which entered and expired
+at Little Hintock like the exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost
+cavern of some innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news
+interfered with the nuptial purpose at their neighbor's house.  The
+sappy green twig-tips of the season's growth would not, she thought,
+be appreciably woodier on the day she became a wife, so near was the
+time; the tints of the foliage would hardly have changed.  Everything
+was so much as usual that no itinerant stranger would have supposed a
+woman's fate to be hanging in the balance at that summer's decline.
+
+But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough by those who had
+special knowledge.  In the remote and fashionable town of Sandbourne
+something was growing up under the hands of several persons who had
+never seen Grace Melbury, never would see her, or care anything about
+her at all, though their creation had such interesting relation to her
+life that it would enclose her very heart at a moment when that heart
+would beat, if not with more emotional ardor, at least with more
+emotional turbulence than at any previous time.
+
+Why did Mrs. Dollery's van, instead of passing along at the end of the
+smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn one Saturday night into
+Little Hintock Lane, and never pull up till it reached Mr. Melbury's
+gates?  The gilding shine of evening fell upon a large, flat box not
+less than a yard square, and safely tied with cord, as it was handed
+out from under the tilt with a great deal of care.  But it was not
+heavy for its size; Mrs. Dollery herself carried it into the house.
+Tim Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, Suke Damson, and others, looked
+knowing, and made remarks to each other as they watched its entrance.
+Melbury stood at the door of the timber-shed in the attitude of a man
+to whom such an arrival was a trifling domestic detail with which he
+did not condescend to be concerned.  Yet he well divined the contents
+of that box, and was in truth all the while in a pleasant exaltation at
+the proof that thus far, at any rate, no disappointment had supervened.
+While Mrs. Dollery remained--which was rather long, from her sense of
+the importance of her errand--he went into the out-house; but as soon
+as she had had her say, been paid, and had rumbled away, he entered the
+dwelling, to find there what he knew he should find--his wife and
+daughter in a flutter of excitement over the wedding-gown, just arrived
+from the leading dress-maker of Sandbourne watering-place aforesaid.
+
+During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or heard
+of.  At the close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some of his
+furniture, packed up the rest--a few pieces endeared by associations,
+or necessary to his occupation--in the house of a friendly neighbor,
+and gone away.  People said that a certain laxity had crept into his
+life; that he had never gone near a church latterly, and had been
+sometimes seen on Sundays with unblacked boots, lying on his elbow
+under a tree, with a cynical gaze at surrounding objects.  He was
+likely to return to Hintock when the cider-making season came round,
+his apparatus being stored there, and travel with his mill and press
+from village to village.
+
+The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished yet. There was
+in Grace's mind sometimes a certain anticipative satisfaction, the
+satisfaction of feeling that she would be the heroine of an hour;
+moreover, she was proud, as a cultivated woman, to be the wife of a
+cultivated man.  It was an opportunity denied very frequently to young
+women in her position, nowadays not a few; those in whom parental
+discovery of the value of education has implanted tastes which parental
+circles fail to gratify.  But what an attenuation was this cold pride
+of the dream of her youth, in which she had pictured herself walking in
+state towards the altar, flushed by the purple light and bloom of her
+own passion, without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the bond,
+and fervently receiving as her due
+
+  "The homage of a thousand hearts; the fond, deep love of one."
+
+
+Everything had been clear then, in imagination; now something was
+undefined.  She had little carking anxieties; a curious fatefulness
+seemed to rule her, and she experienced a mournful want of some one to
+confide in.
+
+The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in fancy,
+catch the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as she came out
+of church, imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned Hintock bells.
+The dialogues seemed to grow louder, and the ding-ding-dong of those
+three crazed bells more persistent.  She awoke: the morning had come.
+
+Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with a
+yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping coachmen to
+back premises of wonderful commodiousness.  The windows to the street
+were mullioned into narrow lights, and only commanded a view of the
+opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose that the best and most
+luxurious private sitting-room that the inn could afford over-looked
+the nether parts of the establishment, where beyond the yard were to be
+seen gardens and orchards, now bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet and
+gold fruit, stretching to infinite distance under a luminous lavender
+mist.  The time was early autumn,
+
+    "When the fair apples, red as evening sky,
+    Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground,
+     When juicy pears, and berries of black dye,
+    Do dance in air, and call the eyes around."
+
+
+The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part of
+the identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton had in
+his mind.
+
+In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till the
+finger of fate touched her and turned her to a wife.  It was two months
+after the wedding, and she was alone.  Fitzpiers had walked out to see
+the abbey by the light of sunset, but she had been too fatigued to
+accompany him.  They had reached the last stage of a long eight-weeks'
+tour, and were going on to Hintock that night.
+
+In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a scene
+natural to the locality at this time of the year.  An apple-mill and
+press had been erected on the spot, to which some men were bringing
+fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding
+them, and others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed
+forth into tubs and pails.  The superintendent of these proceedings, to
+whom the others spoke as master, was a young yeoman of prepossessing
+manner and aspect, whose form she recognized in a moment.  He had hung
+his coat to a nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves
+rolled up beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the
+pomace into the bags of horse-hair.  Fragments of apple-rind had
+alighted upon the brim of his hat--probably from the bursting of a
+bag--while brown pips of the same fruit were sticking among the down
+upon his fine, round arms.
+
+She realized in a moment how he had come there.  Down in the heart of
+the apple country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making apparatus
+and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace in great straw
+"cheeses," as they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona's
+plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan exclusively,
+where the apple produce was hardly sufficient to warrant each
+proprietor in keeping a mill of his own.  This was the field of the
+travelling cider-maker.  His press and mill were fixed to wheels
+instead of being set up in a cider-house; and with a couple of horses,
+buckets, tubs, strainers, and an assistant or two, he wandered from
+place to place, deriving very satisfactory returns for his trouble in
+such a prolific season as the present.
+
+The back parts of the town were just now abounding with
+apple-gatherings.  They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose
+heaps; and the blue, stagnant air of autumn which hung over everything
+was heavy with a sweet cidery smell.  Cakes of pomace lay against the
+walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to be used as fuel.
+Yet it was not the great make of the year as yet; before the standard
+crop came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, a large
+superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the trees of later
+harvest, which would not keep long.  Thus, in the baskets, and
+quivering in the hopper of the mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates,
+including the mellow countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards,
+stubbards, ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous
+youth.
+
+Grace watched the head-man with interest.  The slightest sigh escaped
+her.  Perhaps she thought of the day--not so far distant--when that
+friend of her childhood had met her by her father's arrangement in this
+same town, warm with hope, though diffident, and trusting in a promise
+rather implied than given.  Or she might have thought of days earlier
+yet--days of childhood--when her mouth was somewhat more ready to
+receive a kiss from his than was his to bestow one.  However, all that
+was over.  She had felt superior to him then, and she felt superior to
+him now.
+
+She wondered why he never looked towards her open window.  She did not
+know that in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at the inn
+that afternoon Winterborne had caught sight of her through the archway,
+had turned red, and was continuing his work with more concentrated
+attention on the very account of his discovery. Robert Creedle, too,
+who travelled with Giles, had been incidentally informed by the hostler
+that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were in the hotel, after which
+news Creedle kept shaking his head and saying to himself, "Ah!" very
+audibly, between his thrusts at the screw of the cider-press.
+
+"Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?" asked Winterborne, at
+last.
+
+"Ah, maister--'tis my thoughts--'tis my thoughts!...Yes, ye've lost a
+hundred load o' timber well seasoned; ye've lost five hundred pound in
+good money; ye've lost the stone-windered house that's big enough to
+hold a dozen families; ye've lost your share of half a dozen good
+wagons and their horses--all lost!--through your letting slip she that
+was once yer own!"
+
+"Good God, Creedle, you'll drive me mad!" said Giles, sternly. "Don't
+speak of that any more!"
+
+Thus the subject had ended in the yard.  Meanwhile, the passive cause
+of all this loss still regarded the scene.  She was beautifully
+dressed; she was seated in the most comfortable room that the inn
+afforded; her long journey had been full of variety, and almost
+luxuriously performed--for Fitzpiers did not study economy where
+pleasure was in question.  Hence it perhaps arose that Giles and all
+his belongings seemed sorry and common to her for the moment--moving in
+a plane so far removed from her own of late that she could scarcely
+believe she had ever found congruity therein.  "No--I could never have
+married him!" she said, gently shaking her head.  "Dear father was
+right.  It would have been too coarse a life for me." And she looked at
+the rings of sapphire and opal upon her white and slender fingers that
+had been gifts from Fitzpiers.
+
+Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of the
+above-described pride of life--easily to be understood, and possibly
+excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she had married
+well--she said at last, with a smile on her lips, "Mr. Winterborne!"
+
+He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, "Mr.
+Winterborne!"
+
+Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to him to
+see the expression of his face might have doubted it; and she said a
+third time, with a timid loudness, "Mr. Winterborne! What, have you
+forgotten my voice?" She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming
+smile.
+
+He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the window.
+"Why do you call me?" he said, with a sternness that took her
+completely unawares, his face being now pale.  "Is it not enough that
+you see me here moiling and muddling for my daily bread while you are
+sitting there in your success, that you can't refrain from opening old
+wounds by calling out my name?"
+
+She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave his
+unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. "I am sorry
+I offended you by speaking," she replied, meekly. "Believe me, I did
+not intend to do that.  I could hardly sit here so near you without a
+word of recognition."
+
+Winterborne's heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by this
+time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice moved him.
+He assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her, that he was not
+angry.  He then managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if
+she had had a pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights.  She
+spoke of a few places that she had visited, and so the time passed till
+he withdrew to take his place at one of the levers which pulled round
+the screw.
+
+Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as his
+bitterness showed.  But though in the heat of the moment he had
+reproached her keenly, his second mood was a far more tender one--that
+which could regard her renunciation of such as he as her glory and her
+privilege, his own fidelity notwithstanding.  He could have declared
+with a contemporary poet--
+
+           "If I forget,
+   The salt creek may forget the ocean;
+            If I forget
+   The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion,
+   May I sink meanlier than the worst
+   Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst,
+            If I forget.
+
+            "Though you forget,
+   No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;
+            Though you forget,
+   You filled my barren life with treasure,
+   You may withdraw the gift you gave;
+   You still are queen, I still am slave,
+            Though you forget."
+
+
+She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind him
+of what he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the pressure
+of events had dissipated the dreams of their early youth. Grace was
+thus unexpectedly worsted in her encounter with her old friend.  She
+had opened the window with a faint sense of triumph, but he had turned
+it into sadness; she did not quite comprehend the reason why.  In truth
+it was because she was not cruel enough in her cruelty.  If you have to
+use the knife, use it, say the great surgeons; and for her own peace
+Grace should have contemned Winterborne thoroughly or not at all.  As
+it was, on closing the window an indescribable, some might have said
+dangerous, pity quavered in her bosom for him.
+
+Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a wonderful
+sunset there was to be seen.
+
+"I have not noticed it.  But I have seen somebody out there that we
+know," she replied, looking into the court.
+
+Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not
+recognize anybody.
+
+"Why, Mr. Winterborne--there he is, cider-making.  He combines that
+with his other business, you know."
+
+"Oh--that fellow," said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming extinct.
+
+She, reproachfully: "What, call Mr. Winterborne a fellow, Edgar? It is
+true I was just saying to myself that I never could have married him;
+but I have much regard for him, and always shall."
+
+"Well, do by all means, my dear one.  I dare say I am inhuman, and
+supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle family;
+but I do honestly confess to you that I feel as if I belonged to a
+different species from the people who are working in that yard."
+
+"And from me too, then.  For my blood is no better than theirs."
+
+He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening.  It was, indeed, a
+startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be
+standing there beside him as his wife, if his sentiments were as he had
+said.  In their travels together she had ranged so unerringly at his
+level in ideas, tastes, and habits that he had almost forgotten how his
+heart had played havoc with his principles in taking her to him.
+
+"Ah YOU--you are refined and educated into something quite different,"
+he said, self-assuringly.
+
+"I don't quite like to think that," she murmured with soft regret. "And
+I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne.  Remember, I was brought
+up with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be radically
+different.  At any rate, I don't feel so.  That is, no doubt, my fault,
+and a great blemish in me.  But I hope you will put up with it, Edgar."
+
+Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now
+getting on for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of their
+journey, so as to arrive at Hintock before it grew very late.
+
+In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard
+having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds
+audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the tightly
+screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had drunk itself so
+tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall.  Grace was very cheerful at
+the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, but Fitzpiers sat beside
+her almost silent.  An indescribable oppressiveness had overtaken him
+with the near approach of the journey's end and the realities of life
+that lay there.
+
+"You don't say a word, Edgar," she observed.  "Aren't you glad to get
+back? I am."
+
+"You have friends here.  I have none."
+
+"But my friends are yours."
+
+"Oh yes--in that sense."
+
+The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock
+Lane.  It had been decided that they should, at least for a time, take
+up their abode in her father's roomy house, one wing of which was quite
+at their service, being almost disused by the Melburys. Workmen had
+been painting, papering, and whitewashing this set of rooms in the
+wedded pair's absence; and so scrupulous had been the timber-dealer
+that there should occur no hitch or disappointment on their arrival,
+that not the smallest detail remained undone. To make it all complete a
+ground-floor room had been fitted up as a surgery, with an independent
+outer door, to which Fitzpiers's brass plate was screwed--for mere
+ornament, such a sign being quite superfluous where everybody knew the
+latitude and longitude of his neighbors for miles round.
+
+Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, and all the
+house with deference.  They went up to explore their rooms, that opened
+from a passage on the left hand of the staircase, the entrance to which
+could be shut off on the landing by a door that Melbury had hung for
+the purpose.  A friendly fire was burning in the grate, although it was
+not cold.  Fitzpiers said it was too soon for any sort of meal, they
+only having dined shortly before leaving Sherton-Abbas.  He would walk
+across to his old lodging, to learn how his locum tenens had got on in
+his absence.
+
+In leaving Melbury's door he looked back at the house.  There was
+economy in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but in
+some way he was dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed him so
+deeply in son-in-lawship to Melbury.  He went on to his former
+residence.  His deputy was out, and Fitzpiers fell into conversation
+with his former landlady.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Cox, what's the best news?" he asked of her, with cheery
+weariness.
+
+She was a little soured at losing by his marriage so profitable a
+tenant as the surgeon had proved to be during his residence under her
+roof; and the more so in there being hardly the remotest chance of her
+getting such another settler in the Hintock solitudes.  "'Tis what I
+don't wish to repeat, sir; least of all to you," she mumbled.
+
+"Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead."
+
+"It is what people say about your hasty marrying, Dr. Fitzpiers.
+Whereas they won't believe you know such clever doctrines in physic as
+they once supposed of ye, seeing as you could marry into Mr. Melbury's
+family, which is only Hintock-born, such as me."
+
+"They are kindly welcome to their opinion," said Fitzpiers, not
+allowing himself to recognize that he winced.  "Anything else?"
+
+"Yes; SHE'S come home at last."
+
+"Who's she?"
+
+"Mrs. Charmond."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest.  "I've never
+seen her."
+
+"She has seen you, sir, whether or no."
+
+"Never."
+
+"Yes; she saw you in some hotel or street for a minute or two while you
+were away travelling, and accidentally heard your name; and when she
+made some remark about you, Miss Ellis--that's her maid--told her you
+was on your wedding-tower with Mr. Melbury's daughter; and she said,
+'He ought to have done better than that. I fear he has spoiled his
+chances,' she says."
+
+Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and
+walked home with no very brisk step.  He entered the door quietly, and
+went straight up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for their use
+by Melbury in his and his bride's absence, expecting to find her there
+as he had left her.  The fire was burning still, but there were no
+lights.  He looked into the next apartment, fitted up as a little
+dining-room, but no supper was laid.  He went to the top of the stairs,
+and heard a chorus of voices in the timber-merchant's parlor below,
+Grace's being occasionally intermingled.
+
+Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found quite
+a large gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances, praising and
+congratulating Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among them being the
+dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, and the master-blacksmith from Great Hintock;
+also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some others,
+with their wives, who lived hard by. Grace, girl that she was, had
+quite forgotten her new dignity and her husband's; she was in the midst
+of them, blushing, and receiving their compliments with all the
+pleasure of old-comradeship.
+
+Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. Melbury
+was nowhere in the room, but Melbury's wife, perceiving the doctor,
+came to him.  "We thought, Grace and I," she said, "that as they have
+called, hearing you were come, we could do no less than ask them to
+supper; and then Grace proposed that we should all sup together, as it
+is the first night of your return."
+
+By this time Grace had come round to him.  "Is it not good of them to
+welcome me so warmly?" she exclaimed, with tears of friendship in her
+eyes.  "After so much good feeling I could not think of our shutting
+ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room."
+
+"Certainly not--certainly not," said Fitzpiers; and he entered the room
+with the heroic smile of a martyr.
+
+As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to see at
+once that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such
+demonstrative reception.  He thereupon privately chid his wife for her
+forwardness in the matter.  Mrs. Melbury declared that it was as much
+Grace's doing as hers, after which there was no more to be said by that
+young woman's tender father.  By this time Fitzpiers was making the
+best of his position among the wide-elbowed and genial company who sat
+eating and drinking and laughing and joking around him; and getting
+warmed himself by the good cheer, was obliged to admit that, after all,
+the supper was not the least enjoyable he had ever known.
+
+At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his
+opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted him
+like a handwriting on the wall.  Then his manner would become suddenly
+abstracted.  At one moment he would mentally put an indignant query why
+Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make it her business to have
+opinions about his opportunities; at another he thought that he could
+hardly be angry with her for taking an interest in the doctor of her
+own parish.  Then he would drink a glass of grog and so get rid of the
+misgiving.  These hitches and quaffings were soon perceived by Grace as
+well as by her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when
+the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late rose
+and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words
+Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes
+they were gone.
+
+"Now, Grace," said her husband as soon as he found himself alone with
+her in their private apartments, "we've had a very pleasant evening,
+and everybody has been very kind.  But we must come to an understanding
+about our way of living here.  If we continue in these rooms there must
+be no mixing in with your people below.  I can't stand it, and that's
+the truth."
+
+She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for
+those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he
+had professed to regard with so much interest.  But she assented in a
+moment.
+
+"We must be simply your father's tenants," he continued, "and our
+goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived elsewhere."
+
+"Certainly, Edgar--I quite see that it must be so."
+
+"But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without knowing
+whether I should approve or disapprove.  When I came I couldn't help
+myself at all."
+
+She, sighing: "Yes--I see I ought to have waited; though they came
+unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best."
+
+Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his old
+rounds as usual.  But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye as his to
+discern, or to think he discerned, that he was no longer regarded as an
+extrinsic, unfathomed gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific
+and social; but as Mr. Melbury's compeer, and therefore in a degree
+only one of themselves.  The Hintock woodlandlers held with all the
+strength of inherited conviction to the aristocratic principle, and as
+soon as they had discovered that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury
+Fitzpierses they had accorded to him for nothing a touching of
+hat-brims, promptness of service, and deference of approach, which
+Melbury had to do without, though he paid for it over and over.  But
+now, having proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage,
+Fitzpiers was believed in no more as a superior hedged by his own
+divinity; while as doctor he began to be rated no higher than old
+Jones, whom they had so long despised.
+
+His few patients seemed in his two months' absence to have dwindled
+considerably in number, and no sooner had he returned than there came
+to him from the Board of Guardians a complaint that a pauper had been
+neglected by his substitute.  In a fit of pride Fitzpiers resigned his
+appointment as one of the surgeons to the union, which had been the
+nucleus of his practice here.
+
+At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening to Grace more
+briskly than usual.  "They have written to me again about that practice
+in Budmouth that I once negotiated for," he said to her.  "The premium
+asked is eight hundred pounds, and I think that between your father and
+myself it ought to be raised.  Then we can get away from this place
+forever."
+
+The question had been mooted between them before, and she was not
+unprepared to consider it.  They had not proceeded far with the
+discussion when a knock came to the door, and in a minute Grammer ran
+up to say that a message had arrived from Hintock House requesting Dr.
+Fitzpiers to attend there at once.  Mrs. Charmond had met with a slight
+accident through the overturning of her carriage.
+
+"This is something, anyhow," said Fitzpiers, rising with an interest
+which he could not have defined.  "I have had a presentiment that this
+mysterious woman and I were to be better acquainted."
+
+The latter words were murmured to himself alone.
+
+"Good-night," said Grace, as soon as he was ready.  "I shall be asleep,
+probably, when you return."
+
+"Good-night," he replied, inattentively, and went down-stairs.  It was
+the first time since their marriage that he had left her without a kiss.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+Winterborne's house had been pulled down.  On this account his face had
+been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably have
+disappeared from the place altogether but for his slight business
+connection with Melbury, on whose premises Giles kept his cider-making
+apparatus, now that he had no place of his own to stow it in.  Coming
+here one evening on his way to a hut beyond the wood where he now
+slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-thatched pinion of his
+paternal roof had vanished from its site, and that the walls were
+levelled.  In present circumstances he had a feeling for the spot that
+might have been called morbid, and when he had supped in the hut
+aforesaid he made use of the spare hour before bedtime to return to
+Little Hintock in the twilight and ramble over the patch of ground on
+which he had first seen the day.
+
+He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions.  Even in the
+gloom he could trace where the different rooms had stood; could mark
+the shape of the kitchen chimney-corner, in which he had roasted apples
+and potatoes in his boyhood, cast his bullets, and burned his initials
+on articles that did and did not belong to him.  The apple-trees still
+remained to show where the garden had been, the oldest of them even now
+retaining the crippled slant to north-east given them by the great
+November gale of 1824, which carried a brig bodily over the Chesil
+Bank.  They were at present bent to still greater obliquity by the
+heaviness of their produce. Apples bobbed against his head, and in the
+grass beneath he crunched scores of them as he walked.  There was
+nobody to gather them now.
+
+It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half leaning
+against one of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had become lost in
+his thoughts, as usual, till one little star after another had taken up
+a position in the piece of sky which now confronted him where his walls
+and chimneys had formerly raised their outlines.  The house had jutted
+awkwardly into the road, and the opening caused by its absence was very
+distinct.
+
+In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels
+became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the blank
+sky, bearing down upon him with the bend in the lane which here
+occurred, and of which the house had been the cause.  He could discern
+the figure of a woman high up on the driving-seat of a phaeton, a groom
+being just visible behind.  Presently there was a slight scrape, then a
+scream.  Winterborne went across to the spot, and found the phaeton
+half overturned, its driver sitting on the heap of rubbish which had
+once been his dwelling, and the man seizing the horses' heads.  The
+equipage was Mrs. Charmond's, and the unseated charioteer that lady
+herself.
+
+To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent reply to the
+effect that she did not know.  The damage in other respects was little
+or none: the phaeton was righted, Mrs. Charmond placed in it, and the
+reins given to the servant.  It appeared that she had been deceived by
+the removal of the house, imagining the gap caused by the demolition to
+be the opening of the road, so that she turned in upon the ruins
+instead of at the bend a few yards farther on.
+
+"Drive home--drive home!" cried the lady, impatiently; and they started
+on their way.  They had not, however, gone many paces when, the air
+being still, Winterborne heard her say "Stop; tell that man to call the
+doctor--Mr. Fitzpiers--and send him on to the House.  I find I am hurt
+more seriously than I thought."
+
+Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the
+doctor's at once.  Having delivered it, he stepped back into the
+darkness, and waited till he had seen Fitzpiers leave the door. He
+stood for a few minutes looking at the window which by its light
+revealed the room where Grace was sitting, and went away under the
+gloomy trees.
+
+
+Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he now saw open
+for the first time.  Contrary to his expectation there was visible no
+sign of that confusion or alarm which a serious accident to the
+mistress of the abode would have occasioned.  He was shown into a room
+at the top of the staircase, cosily and femininely draped, where, by
+the light of the shaded lamp, he saw a woman of full round figure
+reclining upon a couch in such a position as not to disturb a pile of
+magnificent hair on the crown of her head.  A deep purple dressing-gown
+formed an admirable foil to the peculiarly rich brown of her
+hair-plaits; her left arm, which was naked nearly up to the shoulder,
+was thrown upward, and between the fingers of her right hand she held a
+cigarette, while she idly breathed from her plump lips a thin stream of
+smoke towards the ceiling.
+
+The doctor's first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated prevision in
+having brought appliances for a serious case; the next, something more
+curious.  While the scene and the moment were new to him and
+unanticipated, the sentiment and essence of the moment were
+indescribably familiar.  What could be the cause of it? Probably a
+dream.
+
+Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her eyes to him, and he
+came and stood by her.  She glanced up at his face across her brows and
+forehead, and then he observed a blush creep slowly over her decidedly
+handsome cheeks.  Her eyes, which had lingered upon him with an
+inquiring, conscious expression, were hastily withdrawn, and she
+mechanically applied the cigarette again to her lips.
+
+For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arousing himself he
+addressed her, formally condoled with her, and made the usual
+professional inquiries about what had happened to her, and where she
+was hurt.
+
+"That's what I want you to tell me," she murmured, in tones of
+indefinable reserve.  "I quite believe in you, for I know you are very
+accomplished, because you study so hard."
+
+"I'll do my best to justify your good opinion," said the young man,
+bowing.  "And none the less that I am happy to find the accident has
+not been serious."
+
+"I am very much shaken," she said.
+
+"Oh yes," he replied; and completed his examination, which convinced
+him that there was really nothing the matter with her, and more than
+ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched, since she did not
+appear to be a timid woman.  "You must rest a while, and I'll send
+something," he said.
+
+"Oh, I forgot," she returned.  "Look here." And she showed him a little
+scrape on her arm--the full round arm that was exposed. "Put some
+court-plaster on that, please."
+
+He obeyed.  "And now," she said, "before you go I want to put a
+question to you.  Sit round there in front of me, on that low chair,
+and bring the candles, or one, to the little table.  Do you smoke? Yes?
+That's right--I am learning.  Take one of these; and here's a light."
+She threw a matchbox across.
+
+Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new
+position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first time
+afforded him a full view of her face.  "How many years have passed
+since first we met!" she resumed, in a voice which she mainly
+endeavored to maintain at its former pitch of composure, and eying him
+with daring bashfulness.
+
+"WE met, do you say?"
+
+She nodded.  "I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you were
+passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized you as
+one I had met in my girlhood.  Do you remember, when you were studying
+at Heidelberg, an English family that was staying there, who used to
+walk--"
+
+"And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair--ah, I
+see it before my eyes!--who lost her gloves on the Great Terrace--who
+was going back in the dusk to find them--to whom I said, 'I'll go for
+them,' and you said, 'Oh, they are not worth coming all the way up
+again for.' I DO remember, and how very long we stayed talking there! I
+went next morning while the dew was on the grass: there they lay--the
+little fingers sticking out damp and thin.  I see them now! I picked
+them up, and then--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I kissed them," he rejoined, rather shamefacedly.
+
+"But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?"
+
+"Never mind.  I was young then, and I kissed them.  I wondered how I
+could make the most of my trouvaille, and decided that I would call at
+your hotel with them that afternoon.  It rained, and I waited till next
+day.  I called, and you were gone."
+
+"Yes," answered she, with dry melancholy.  "My mother, knowing my
+disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go falling
+in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away to Baden.  As
+it is all over and past I'll tell you one thing: I should have sent you
+a line passing warm had I known your name. That name I never knew till
+my maid said, as you passed up the hotel stairs a month ago, 'There's
+Dr. Fitzpiers.'"
+
+"Good Heaven!" said Fitzpiers, musingly.  "How the time comes back to
+me!  The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot.  When I found that
+you really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed down my
+back.  I went up to where you had stood when I last saw you--I flung
+myself on the grass, and--being not much more than a boy--my eyes were
+literally blinded with tears.  Nameless, unknown to me as you were, I
+couldn't forget your voice."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"Oh--ever so long.  Days and days."
+
+"Days and days! ONLY days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days and
+days!"
+
+"But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. It was
+not a full-blown love--it was the merest bud--red, fresh, vivid, but
+small.  It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in embryo.  It
+never matured."
+
+"So much the better, perhaps."
+
+"Perhaps.  But see how powerless is the human will against
+predestination.  We were prevented meeting; we have met.  One feature
+of the case remains the same amid many changes.  You are still rich,
+and I am still poor.  Better than that, you have (judging by your last
+remark) outgrown the foolish, impulsive passions of your early
+girl-hood.  I have not outgrown mine."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said she, with vibrations of strong feeling in her
+words.  "I have been placed in a position which hinders such
+outgrowings.  Besides, I don't believe that the genuine subjects of
+emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such people get the
+worse they are.  Possibly at ninety or a hundred they may feel they are
+cured; but a mere threescore and ten won't do it--at least for me."
+
+He gazed at her in undisguised admiration.  Here was a soul of souls!
+
+"Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly," he exclaimed.  "But you speak sadly
+as well.  Why is that?"
+
+"I always am sad when I come here," she said, dropping to a low tone
+with a sense of having been too demonstrative.
+
+"Then may I inquire why you came?"
+
+"A man brought me.  Women are always carried about like corks upon the
+waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you; but
+Hintock has the curious effect of bottling up the emotions till one can
+no longer hold them; I am often obliged to fly away and discharge my
+sentiments somewhere, or I should die outright."
+
+"There is very good society in the county for those who have the
+privilege of entering it."
+
+"Perhaps so.  But the misery of remote country life is that your
+neighbors have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. My
+neighbors think I am an atheist, except those who think I am a Roman
+Catholic; and when I speak disrespectfully of the weather or the crops
+they think I am a blasphemer."
+
+She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea.
+
+"You don't wish me to stay any longer?" he inquired, when he found that
+she remained musing.
+
+"No--I think not."
+
+"Then tell me that I am to be gone."
+
+"Why? Cannot you go without?"
+
+"I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself."
+
+"Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you'll be in my way?"
+
+"I feared it might be so."
+
+"Then fear no more.  But good-night.  Come to-morrow and see if I am
+going on right.  This renewal of acquaintance touches me.  I have
+already a friendship for you."
+
+"If it depends upon myself it shall last forever."
+
+"My best hopes that it may.  Good-by."
+
+Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to decide whether she
+had sent for him in the natural alarm which might have followed her
+mishap, or with the single view of making herself known to him as she
+had done, for which the capsize had afforded excellent opportunity.
+Outside the house he mused over the spot under the light of the stars.
+It seemed very strange that he should have come there more than once
+when its inhabitant was absent, and observed the house with a nameless
+interest; that he should have assumed off-hand before he knew Grace
+that it was here she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and seasons
+the individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself upon him
+as appertaining to some existence with which he was concerned.
+
+The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond's for a day
+or two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her at the
+time, but it had been so evanescent that in the ordinary onward roll of
+affairs he would scarce ever have recalled it again.  To find her here,
+however, in these somewhat romantic circumstances, magnified that
+by-gone and transitory tenderness to indescribable proportions.
+
+On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding it in a new
+way--from the Hintock House point of view rather than from his own and
+the Melburys'.  The household had all gone to bed, and as he went
+up-stairs he heard the snore of the timber-merchant from his quarter of
+the building, and turned into the passage communicating with his own
+rooms in a strange access of sadness.  A light was burning for him in
+the chamber; but Grace, though in bed, was not asleep.  In a moment her
+sympathetic voice came from behind the curtains.
+
+"Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?"
+
+Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient that
+he was not on the instant ready with a reply.
+
+"Oh no," he said.  "There are no bones broken, but she is shaken. I am
+going again to-morrow."
+
+Another inquiry or two, and Grace said,
+
+"Did she ask for me?"
+
+"Well--I think she did--I don't quite remember; but I am under the
+impression that she spoke of you."
+
+"Cannot you recollect at all what she said?"
+
+"I cannot, just this minute."
+
+"At any rate she did not talk much about me?" said Grace with
+disappointment.
+
+"Oh no."
+
+"But you did, perhaps," she added, innocently fishing for a compliment.
+
+"Oh yes--you may depend upon that!" replied he, warmly, though scarcely
+thinking of what he was saying, so vividly was there present to his
+mind the personality of Mrs. Charmond.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+The doctor's professional visit to Hintock House was promptly repeated
+the next day and the next.  He always found Mrs. Charmond reclining on
+a sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient who was in no great
+hurry to lose that title.  On each occasion he looked gravely at the
+little scratch on her arm, as if it had been a serious wound.
+
+He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on her
+temple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black plaster on
+this conspicuous part of her person in preference to gold-beater's
+skin, so that it might catch the eyes of the servants, and make his
+presence appear decidedly necessary, in case there should be any doubt
+of the fact.
+
+"Oh--you hurt me!" she exclaimed one day.
+
+He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the
+scrape had turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to
+vanishing altogether.  "Wait a moment, then--I'll damp it," said
+Fitzpiers.  He put his lips to the place and kept them there till the
+plaster came off easily.  "It was at your request I put it on," said he.
+
+"I know it," she replied.  "Is that blue vein still in my temple that
+used to show there?  The scar must be just upon it.  If the cut had
+been a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood indeed!"
+Fitzpiers examined so closely that his breath touched her tenderly, at
+which their eyes rose to an encounter--hers showing themselves as deep
+and mysterious as interstellar space.  She turned her face away
+suddenly.  "Ah! none of that! none of that--I cannot coquet with you!"
+she cried.  "Don't suppose I consent to for one moment.  Our poor,
+brief, youthful hour of love-making was too long ago to bear continuing
+now.  It is as well that we should understand each other on that point
+before we go further."
+
+"Coquet! Nor I with you.  As it was when I found the historic gloves,
+so it is now.  I might have been and may be foolish; but I am no
+trifler.  I naturally cannot forget that little space in which I
+flitted across the field of your vision in those days of the past, and
+the recollection opens up all sorts of imaginings."
+
+"Suppose my mother had not taken me away?" she murmured, her dreamy
+eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree.
+
+"I should have seen you again."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then the fire would have burned higher and higher.  What would have
+immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart at
+last."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well--that's the end of all love, according to Nature's law.  I can
+give no other reason."
+
+"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed.  "Since we are only
+picturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake, spoil
+the picture." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she added, with an
+incipient pout upon her full lips, "Let me think at least that if you
+had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me for ever
+and ever!"
+
+"You are right--think it with all your heart," said he.  "It is a
+pleasant thought, and costs nothing."
+
+She weighed that remark in silence a while.  "Did you ever hear
+anything of me from then till now?" she inquired.
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"So much the better.  I had to fight the battle of life as well as you.
+I may tell you about it some day.  But don't ever ask me to do it, and
+particularly do not press me to tell you now."
+
+Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender acquaintance
+on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were stretched out in
+retrospect to the length and importance of years; made to form a canvas
+for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious melancholies, and sweet,
+alluring assertions which could neither be proved nor disproved.  Grace
+was never mentioned between them, but a rumor of his proposed domestic
+changes somehow reached her ears.
+
+"Doctor, you are going away," she exclaimed, confronting him with
+accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her rich
+cooing voice.  "Oh yes, you are," she went on, springing to her feet
+with an air which might almost have been called passionate.  "It is no
+use denying it.  You have bought a practice at Budmouth.  I don't blame
+you.  Nobody can live at Hintock--least of all a professional man who
+wants to keep abreast of recent discovery.  And there is nobody here to
+induce such a one to stay for other reasons.  That's right, that's
+right--go away!"
+
+"But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I am
+indeed in treaty for it.  And, my dear friend, if I continue to feel
+about the business as I feel at this moment--perhaps I may conclude
+never to go at all."
+
+"But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you
+don't mean to take away with you?"
+
+Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and she
+lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid passions of no
+mean strength--strange, smouldering, erratic passions, kept down like a
+stifled conflagration, but bursting out now here, now there--the only
+certain element in their direction being its unexpectedness.  If one
+word could have expressed her it would have been Inconsequence.  She
+was a woman of perversities, delighting in frequent contrasts.  She
+liked mystery, in her life, in her love, in her history.  To be fair to
+her, there was nothing in the latter which she had any great reason to
+be ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been proud; but
+it had never been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she
+rarely volunteered her experiences.  As for her capricious nature, the
+people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that marvellous
+subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in
+sons of the soil and dependants generally, they managed to get along
+under her government rather better than they would have done beneath a
+more equable rule.
+
+Now, with regard to the doctor's notion of leaving Hintock, he had
+advanced further towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth
+surgeon's good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond.  The whole
+matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours.
+The evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, and walked and
+pondered between the high hedges, now greenish-white with wild
+clematis--here called "old-man's beard," from its aspect later in the
+year.
+
+The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which his
+departure from Hintock would be irrevocable.  But could he go away,
+remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the
+grass--each had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since he
+had discovered the person and history, and, above all, mood of their
+owner.  There was every temporal reason for leaving; it would be
+entering again into a world which he had only quitted in a passion for
+isolation, induced by a fit of Achillean moodiness after an imagined
+slight.  His wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here,
+and cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, towards which every step
+had been taken but the last.  But could he find it in his heart--as he
+found it clearly enough in his conscience--to go away?
+
+He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors.  Here he rapidly penned a
+letter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty for the
+Budmouth practice.  As the postman had already left Little Hintock for
+that night, he sent one of Melbury's men to intercept a mail-cart on
+another turnpike-road, and so got the letter off.
+
+The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the thing was
+done.  Fitzpiers went back to his house musing.  Why had he carried out
+this impulse--taken such wild trouble to effect a probable injury to
+his own and his young wife's prospects? His motive was fantastic,
+glowing, shapeless as the fiery scenery about the western sky.  Mrs.
+Charmond could overtly be nothing more to him than a patient now, and
+to his wife, at the outside, a patron.  In the unattached bachelor days
+of his first sojourning here how highly proper an emotional reason for
+lingering on would have appeared to troublesome dubiousness.
+Matrimonial ambition is such an honorable thing.
+
+"My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with a
+late letter to Budmouth," cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to meet
+him under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung, solitary, the
+folding star.  "I said at once that you had finally agreed to pay the
+premium they ask, and that the tedious question had been settled.  When
+do we go, Edgar?"
+
+"I have altered my mind," said he.  "They want too much--seven hundred
+and fifty is too large a sum--and in short, I have declined to go
+further.  We must wait for another opportunity.  I fear I am not a good
+business-man." He spoke the last words with a momentary faltering at
+the great foolishness of his act; for, as he looked in her fair and
+honorable face, his heart reproached him for what he had done.
+
+Her manner that evening showed her disappointment.  Personally she
+liked the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. But
+her husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout
+since their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake.
+
+It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. The
+morning had been windy, and little showers had sowed themselves like
+grain against the walls and window-panes of the Hintock cottages.  He
+went on foot across the wilder recesses of the park, where slimy
+streams of green moisture, exuding from decayed holes caused by old
+amputations, ran down the bark of the oaks and elms, the rind below
+being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emerald.  They were
+stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their stems in the fiercest
+gale, responding to it entirely by crooking their limbs.  Wrinkled like
+an old crone's face, and antlered with dead branches that rose above
+the foliage of their summits, they were nevertheless still
+green--though yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees.
+
+She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor, and
+Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window-curtains were
+closed and a red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-of-doors
+it was broad daylight.  Moreover, a large fire was burning in the
+grate, though it was not cold.
+
+"What does it all mean?" he asked.
+
+She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away.  "Oh," she
+murmured, "it is because the world is so dreary outside.  Sorrow and
+bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating against the
+panes.  I lay awake last night, and I could hear the scrape of snails
+creeping up the window-glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy this
+morning that I could have wept my life away.  I cannot bear you to see
+my face; I keep it away from you purposely.  Oh! why were we given
+hungry hearts and wild desires if we have to live in a world like this?
+Why should Death only lend what Life is compelled to borrow--rest?
+Answer that, Dr. Fitzpiers."
+
+"You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before you can do it,
+Felice Charmond."
+
+"Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full of
+fears, till I think I shall die for very fear.  The terrible
+insistencies of society--how severe they are, and cold and
+inexorable--ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of stone.
+Oh, I am afraid of them; a stab for this error, and a stab for
+that--correctives and regulations framed that society may tend to
+perfection--an end which I don't care for in the least.  Yet for this,
+all I do care for has to be stunted and starved."
+
+Fitzpiers had seated himself near her.  "What sets you in this mournful
+mood?" he asked, gently.  (In reality he knew that it was the result of
+a loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he did not say so.)
+
+"My reflections.  Doctor, you must not come here any more.  They begin
+to think it a farce already.  I say you must come no more. There--don't
+be angry with me;" and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked
+anxiously at him.  "It is necessary.  It is best for both you and me."
+
+"But," said Fitzpiers, gloomily, "what have we done?"
+
+"Done--we have done nothing.  Perhaps we have thought the more.
+However, it is all vexation.  I am going away to Middleton Abbey, near
+Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is confined
+to her bed.  The engagement was made in London, and I can't get out of
+it.  Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is past.
+When are you going to enter on your new practice, and leave Hintock
+behind forever, with your pretty wife on your arm?"
+
+"I have refused the opportunity.  I love this place too well to depart."
+
+"You HAVE?" she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty.
+"Why do you ruin yourself in that way?  Great Heaven, what have I done!"
+
+"Nothing.  Besides, you are going away."
+
+"Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two.  Yet perhaps I
+shall gain strength there--particularly strength of mind--I require it.
+And when I come back I shall be a new woman; and you can come and see
+me safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we'll be friends--she
+and I.  Oh, how this shutting up of one's self does lead to indulgence
+in idle sentiments.  I shall not wish you to give your attendance to me
+after to-day.  But I am glad that you are not going away--if your
+remaining does not injure your prospects at all."
+
+As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had preserved
+in her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which she had
+conversed with him, equally departed from her.  She became as heavy as
+lead--just as she had been before he arrived.  Her whole being seemed
+to dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the sense of it
+made her lips tremulous and her closed eyes wet.  His footsteps again
+startled her, and she turned round.
+
+"I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to be
+fine.  The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out those
+lights.  Shall I do it for you?"
+
+"Please--if you don't mind."
+
+He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the lamp
+and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the flood of
+late autumn sunlight that poured in.  "Shall I come round to you?" he
+asked, her back being towards him.
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I am crying, and I don't want to see you."
+
+He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the
+rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in
+garish day.
+
+"Then I am going," he said.
+
+"Very well," she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and
+patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other.
+
+"Shall I write a line to you at--"
+
+"No, no." A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added, "It
+must not be, you know.  It won't do."
+
+"Very well.  Good-by." The next moment he was gone.
+
+In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid who
+dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers's marriage.
+
+"Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne," said the
+young woman.
+
+"And why didn't she marry him?" said Mrs. Charmond.
+
+"Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses."
+
+"Lost his houses? How came he to do that?"
+
+"The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your agent
+wouldn't renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne had a very
+good claim.  That's as I've heard it, ma'am, and it was through it that
+the match was broke off."
+
+Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk into
+a mood of dismal self-reproach.  "In refusing that poor man his
+reasonable request," she said to herself, "I foredoomed my rejuvenated
+girlhood's romance.  Who would have thought such a business matter
+could have nettled my own heart like this? Now for a winter of regrets
+and agonies and useless wishes, till I forget him in the spring.  Oh! I
+am glad I am going away."
+
+She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh.  On the stairs
+she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and looked out upon
+the lawn.  It was not yet quite dark.  Half-way up the steep green
+slope confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his
+way homeward by clambering here where there was no road, and in
+opposition to express orders that no path was to be made there.  Tangs
+had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs.
+Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail.
+His precipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a barrel
+to the bottom, his snuffbox rolling in front of him.
+
+Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her
+constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still hung
+upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood started by the
+spectacle.  She burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, her very
+gloom of the previous hour seeming to render it the more
+uncontrollable.  It had not died out of her when she reached the
+dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly
+shook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity
+mingled with the remnants of those engendered by her grief.
+
+She resolved to be sad no more.  She drank two glasses of champagne,
+and a little more still after those, and amused herself in the evening
+with singing little amatory songs.
+
+"I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however," she said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. Middleton
+Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by
+road, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways.
+
+Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless, that
+at moments he even was disposed to avoid her.  The scrupulous civility
+of mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when sitting at
+meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks.  Her little doings
+interested him no longer, while towards her father his bearing was not
+far from supercilious.  It was plain that his mind was entirely outside
+her life, whereabouts outside it she could not tell; in some region of
+science, possibly, or of psychological literature.  But her hope that
+he was again immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her
+marriage had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply
+on the slender fact that he often sat up late.
+
+One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down Hill,
+the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing, and which opened
+on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or
+the Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to
+a distance of many miles.  His attention was fixed on the landscape far
+away, and Grace's approach was so noiseless that he did not hear her.
+When she came close she could see his lips moving unconsciously, as to
+some impassioned visionary theme.
+
+She spoke, and Fitzpiers started.  "What are you looking at?" she asked.
+
+"Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle way," he
+said.
+
+It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that
+cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further
+observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in
+silence.  She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of
+his gaze.  "Are you going to have out Darling this afternoon?" she
+asked, presently.  Darling being the light-gray mare which Winterborne
+had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now constantly used, the
+animal having turned out a wonderful bargain, in combining a perfect
+docility with an almost human intelligence; moreover, she was not too
+young.  Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these
+qualities.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "but not to drive.  I am riding her.  I practise
+crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I can take much
+shorter cuts on horseback."
+
+He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week, only
+since Mrs. Charmond's absence, his universal practice hitherto having
+been to drive.
+
+Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse to see
+a patient in the aforesaid Vale.  It was about five o'clock in the
+evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not reached home.
+There was nothing very singular in this, though she was not aware that
+he had any patient more than five or six miles distant in that
+direction.  The clock had struck one before Fitzpiers entered the
+house, and he came to his room softly, as if anxious not to disturb her.
+
+The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he.
+
+In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the man
+who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that the latter
+was "hag-rid;" for when he had arrived at the stable that morning she
+was in such a state as no horse could be in by honest riding.  It was
+true that the doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that
+she was not looked after as she would have been if he had groomed and
+fed her; but that did not account for the appearance she presented, if
+Mr. Fitzpiers's journey had been only where he had stated.  The
+phenomenal exhaustion of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient to
+develop a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, the
+narration of which occupied a considerable time.
+
+Grace returned in-doors.  In passing through the outer room she picked
+up her husband's overcoat which he had carelessly flung down across a
+chair.  A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-pocket, and she saw
+that it had been issued at Middleton Gate.  He had therefore visited
+Middleton the previous night, a distance of at least five-and-thirty
+miles on horseback, there and back.
+
+During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first time
+that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey.  She could not
+resist an inference--strange as that inference was.
+
+A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and in
+the same direction.  She knew that the state of the cottager who lived
+that way was a mere pretext; she was quite sure he was going to Mrs.
+Charmond.  Grace was amazed at the mildness of the passion which the
+suspicion engendered in her.  She was but little excited, and her
+jealousy was languid even to death.  It told tales of the nature of her
+affection for him.  In truth, her antenuptial regard for Fitzpiers had
+been rather of the quality of awe towards a superior being than of
+tender solicitude for a lover.  It had been based upon mystery and
+strangeness--the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his
+professional skill, of his beliefs.  When this structure of ideals was
+demolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely
+human as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand
+for an enduring and stanch affection--a sympathetic interdependence,
+wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive
+alliance.  Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded
+confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could
+spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now watched
+the mare brought round.
+
+"I'll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry," she
+said, rather loath, after all, to let him go.
+
+"Do; there's plenty of time," replied her husband.  Accordingly he led
+along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough nevertheless.
+Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and ascended Rub-Down Hill to
+the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days
+before.  This was the end of her excursion.  Fitzpiers bade her adieu
+with affection, even with tenderness, and she observed that he looked
+weary-eyed.
+
+"Why do you go to-night?" she said.  "You have been called up two
+nights in succession already."
+
+"I must go," he answered, almost gloomily.  "Don't wait up for me."
+With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the gate which
+Grace held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridle-track to the
+valley.
+
+She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey
+onward.  His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back
+beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill.
+Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding she was determined to be loyal
+if he proved true; and the determination to love one's best will carry
+a heart a long way towards making that best an ever-growing thing.  The
+conspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse and
+rider easy objects for the vision.  Though Darling had been chosen with
+such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek
+creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient,
+particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying
+power being left in Darling yet.  Fitzpiers, like others of his
+character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not at all
+disdain to spend Melbury's money, or appropriate to his own use the
+horse which belonged to Melbury's daughter.
+
+And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous
+autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards lustrous
+with the reds of apple-crops, berries, and foliage, the whole
+intensified by the gilding of the declining sun.  The earth this year
+had been prodigally bountiful, and now was the supreme moment of her
+bounty.  In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and
+blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of
+chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious
+sellers in a fruit-market.  In all this proud show some kernels were
+unsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one world
+in the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow.
+
+Herr Tannhauser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him
+distinctly visible yet.  Could she have heard Fitzpiers's voice at that
+moment she would have found him murmuring--
+
+    "...Towards the loadstar of my one desire
+     I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light."
+
+
+But he was a silent spectacle to her now.  Soon he rose out of the
+valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right,
+which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy clay, the
+character and herbage of the two formations being so distinct that the
+calcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a few years' antiquity
+upon the level vale.  He kept along the edge of this high, unenclosed
+country, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she could still see
+white Darling in relief upon it--a mere speck now--a Wouvermans
+eccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions.  Upon this high ground
+he gradually disappeared.
+
+Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in pure
+love of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to convey her
+husband away from her to the side of a new-found idol. While she was
+musing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she discerned shapes
+moving up the valley towards her, quite near at hand, though till now
+hidden by the hedges.  Surely they were Giles Winterborne, with his two
+horses and cider-apparatus, conducted by Robert Creedle.  Up, upward
+they crept, a stray beam of the sun alighting every now and then like a
+star on the blades of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted to
+steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid.  She opened the gate
+when he came close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the
+ascent.
+
+"How do you do, Giles?" said she, under a sudden impulse to be familiar
+with him.
+
+He replied with much more reserve.  "You are going for a walk, Mrs.
+Fitzpiers?" he added.  "It is pleasant just now."
+
+"No, I am returning," said she.
+
+The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne walked
+by her side in the rear of the apple-mill.
+
+He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt
+to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggings
+dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of
+apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that
+atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an
+indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among
+the orchards.  Her heart rose from its late sadness like a released
+spring; her senses revelled in the sudden lapse back to nature
+unadorned.  The consciousness of having to be genteel because of her
+husband's profession, the veneer of artificiality which she had
+acquired at the fashionable schools, were thrown off, and she became
+the crude, country girl of her latent, earliest instincts.
+
+Nature was bountiful, she thought.  No sooner had she been starved off
+by Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and undiluted
+manliness, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. This was an
+excursion of the imagination which she did not encourage, and she said
+suddenly, to disguise the confused regard which had followed her
+thoughts, "Did you meet my husband?"
+
+Winterborne, with some hesitation, "Yes."
+
+"Where did you meet him?"
+
+"At Calfhay Cross.  I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been making
+there for the last week."
+
+"Haven't they a mill of their own?"
+
+"Yes, but it's out of repair."
+
+"I think--I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?"
+
+"Yes.  I have seen her at the windows once or twice."
+
+Grace waited an interval before she went on: "Did Mr. Fitzpiers take
+the way to Middleton?"
+
+"Yes...I met him on Darling." As she did not reply, he added, with a
+gentler inflection, "You know why the mare was called that?"
+
+"Oh yes--of course," she answered, quickly.
+
+They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole west
+sky was revealed.  Between the broken clouds they could see far into
+the recesses of heaven, the eye journeying on under a species of golden
+arcades, and past fiery obstructions, fancied cairns, logan-stones,
+stalactites and stalagmite of topaz.  Deeper than this their gaze
+passed thin flakes of incandescence, till it plunged into a bottomless
+medium of soft green fire.
+
+Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage, her
+revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire for
+primitive life, may have showed in her face.  Winterborne was looking
+at her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in her bosom.
+Almost with the abstraction of a somnambulist he stretched out his hand
+and gently caressed the flower.
+
+She drew back.  "What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!" she exclaimed,
+with a look of severe surprise.  The evident absence of all
+premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think that it
+was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. "You must
+bear in mind, Giles," she said, kindly, "that we are not as we were;
+and some people might have said that what you did was taking a liberty."
+
+It was more than she need have told him; his action of forgetfulness
+had made him so angry with himself that he flushed through his tan.  "I
+don't know what I am coming to!" he exclaimed, savagely.  "Ah--I was
+not once like this!" Tears of vexation were in his eyes.
+
+"No, now--it was nothing.  I was too reproachful."
+
+"It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like it
+done elsewhere--at Middleton lately," he said, thoughtfully, after a
+while.
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"Don't ask it."
+
+She scanned him narrowly.  "I know quite well enough," she returned,
+indifferently.  "It was by my husband, and the woman was Mrs. Charmond.
+Association of ideas reminded you when you saw me....Giles--tell me all
+you know about that--please do, Giles! But no--I won't hear it.  Let
+the subject cease.  And as you are my friend, say nothing to my father."
+
+They reached a place where their ways divided.  Winterborne continued
+along the highway which kept outside the copse, and Grace opened a gate
+that entered it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by
+nut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and fours.
+A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a similar one at
+right angles.  Here Grace stopped; some few yards up the transverse
+ride the buxom Suke Damson was visible--her gown tucked up high through
+her pocket-hole, and no bonnet on her head--in the act of pulling down
+boughs from which she was gathering and eating nuts with great
+rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing near her engaged in the same
+pleasant meal.
+
+Crack, crack went Suke's jaws every second or two.  By an automatic
+chain of thought Grace's mind reverted to the tooth-drawing scene
+described by her husband; and for the first time she wondered if that
+narrative were really true, Susan's jaws being so obviously sound and
+strong.  Grace turned up towards the nut-gatherers, and conquered her
+reluctance to speak to the girl who was a little in advance of Tim.
+"Good-evening, Susan," she said.
+
+"Good-evening, Miss Melbury" (crack).
+
+"Mrs. Fitzpiers."
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Suke, with a peculiar smile.
+
+Grace, not to be daunted, continued: "Take care of your teeth, Suke.
+That accounts for the toothache."
+
+"I don't know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head, thank the
+Lord" (crack).
+
+"Nor the loss of one, either?"
+
+"See for yourself, ma'am." She parted her red lips, and exhibited the
+whole double row, full up and unimpaired.
+
+"You have never had one drawn?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"So much the better for your stomach," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an
+altered voice.  And turning away quickly, she went on.
+
+As her husband's character thus shaped itself under the touch of time,
+Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered from that
+jealous excitement which is conventionally attributed to all wives in
+such circumstances.  But though possessed by none of that feline
+wildness which it was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to
+know that she had made a frightful mistake in her marriage.
+Acquiescence in her father's wishes had been degradation to herself.
+People are not given premonitions for nothing; she should have obeyed
+her impulse on that early morning, and steadfastly refused her hand.
+
+Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her about
+Suke--the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw the aching
+enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the story by
+explaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw!
+
+She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by the
+complications of her position.  If his protestations to her before
+their marriage could be believed, her husband had felt affection of
+some sort for herself and this woman simultaneously; and was now again
+spreading the same emotion over Mrs. Charmond and herself conjointly,
+his manner being still kind and fond at times. But surely, rather than
+that, he must have played the hypocrite towards her in each case with
+elaborate completeness; and the thought of this sickened her, for it
+involved the conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motive
+for making her his wife must have been her little fortune.  Yet here
+Grace made a mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpiers is
+unquestionably of such quality as to bear division and transference.
+He had indeed, once declared, though not to her, that on one occasion
+he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at
+the same time.  Therein it differed from the highest affection as the
+lower orders of the animal world differ from advanced organisms,
+partition causing, not death, but a multiplied existence.  He had loved
+her sincerely, and had by no means ceased to love her now. But such
+double and treble barrelled hearts were naturally beyond her conception.
+
+Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more.  She had had her day.
+
+"If he does not love me I will not love him!" said Grace, proudly. And
+though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable thing for
+Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in which it might
+be possible to carry them out.  That very absence of hot jealousy which
+made his courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he congratulated
+himself, meant, unknown to either wife or husband, more mischief than
+the inconvenient watchfulness of a jaundiced eye.
+
+Her sleep that night was nervous.  The wing allotted to her and her
+husband had never seemed so lonely.  At last she got up, put on her
+dressing-gown, and went down-stairs.  Her father, who slept lightly,
+heard her descend, and came to the stair-head.
+
+"Is that you, Grace? What's the matter?" he said.
+
+"Nothing more than that I am restless.  Edgar is detained by a case at
+Owlscombe in White Hart Vale."
+
+"But how's that? I saw the woman's husband at Great Hintock just afore
+bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone then."
+
+"Then he's detained somewhere else," said Grace.  "Never mind me; he
+will soon be home.  I expect him about one."
+
+She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times.  One
+o'clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but it
+passed now by a long way, and Fitzpiers did not come.  Just before dawn
+she heard the men stirring in the yard; and the flashes of their
+lanterns spread every now and then through her window-blind.  She
+remembered that her father had told her not to be disturbed if she
+noticed them, as they would be rising early to send off four loads of
+hurdles to a distant sheep-fair.  Peeping out, she saw them bustling
+about, the hollow-turner among the rest; he was loading his
+wares--wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and
+so on--upon one of her father's wagons, who carried them to the fair
+for him every year out of neighborly kindness.
+
+The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her
+husband was still absent; though it was now five o'clock.  She could
+hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have prolonged to a
+later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond at
+Middleton; and he could have ridden home in two hours and a half.
+What, then, had become of him? That he had been out the greater part of
+the two preceding nights added to her uneasiness.
+
+She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight of
+advancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making the men's
+faces wan.  As soon as Melbury saw her he came round, showing his alarm.
+
+"Edgar is not come," she said.  "And I have reason to know that he's
+not attending anybody.  He has had no rest for two nights before this.
+I was going to the top of the hill to look for him."
+
+"I'll come with you," said Melbury.
+
+She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw a
+peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and
+did not like the look of it.  Telling the men he would be with them
+again soon, he walked beside her into the turnpike-road, and partly up
+the hill whence she had watched Fitzpiers the night before across the
+Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley.  They halted beneath a half-dead
+oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out
+like accipitrine claws grasping the ground.  A chilly wind circled
+round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree,
+supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs
+downward like fledglings from their nest.  The vale was wrapped in a
+dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain
+edged with pink.  There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers.
+
+"It is no use standing here," said her father.  "He may come home fifty
+ways...why, look here!--here be Darling's tracks--turned homeward and
+nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours ago without your
+seeing him."
+
+"He has not done that," said she.
+
+They went back hastily.  On entering their own gates they perceived
+that the men had left the wagons, and were standing round the door of
+the stable which had been appropriated to the doctor's use.  "Is there
+anything the matter?" cried Grace.
+
+"Oh no, ma'am.  All's well that ends well," said old Timothy Tangs.
+"I've heard of such things before--among workfolk, though not among
+your gentle people--that's true."
+
+They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling standing in
+the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound asleep.
+Darling was munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her
+month, and the reins, which had fallen from Fitzpiers's hand, hung upon
+her neck.
+
+Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse him.
+He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, "Ah, Felice!...Oh,
+it's Grace.  I could not see in the gloom.  What--am I in the saddle?"
+
+"Yes," said she.  "How do you come here?"
+
+He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, "I was
+riding along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having been
+up so much of late.  When I came opposite Holywell spring the mare
+turned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink.  I let her go in,
+and she drank; I thought she would never finish.  While she was
+drinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck twelve.  I distinctly
+remember counting the strokes.  From that moment I positively recollect
+nothing till I saw you here by my side."
+
+"The name! If it had been any other horse he'd have had a broken neck!"
+murmured Melbury.
+
+"'Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at such
+times!" said John Upjohn.  "And what's more wonderful than keeping your
+seat in a deep, slumbering sleep?  I've knowed men drowze off walking
+home from randies where the mead and other liquors have gone round
+well, and keep walking for more than a mile on end without waking.
+Well, doctor, I don't care who the man is, 'tis a mercy you wasn't a
+drownded, or a splintered, or a hanged up to a tree like Absalom--also
+a handsome gentleman like yerself, as the prophets say."
+
+"True," murmured old Timothy.  "From the soul of his foot to the crown
+of his head there was no blemish in him."
+
+"Or leastwise you might ha' been a-wownded into tatters a'most, and no
+doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven mile!"
+
+While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, and
+taking Grace's arm walked stiffly in-doors with her.  Melbury stood
+staring at the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, was
+spattered with mud.  There was no mud to speak of about the Hintocks
+just now--only in the clammy hollows of the vale beyond Owlscombe, the
+stiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the uplands were
+dry.  While they were rubbing down the mare, Melbury's mind coupled
+with the foreign quality of the mud the name he had heard unconsciously
+muttered by the surgeon when Grace took his hand--"Felice."  Who was
+Felice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she, as he knew, was staying at
+Middleton.
+
+Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers's
+half-awakened soul--wherein there had been a picture of a recent
+interview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged
+him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey.
+"What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you.
+If they were to see you they would seize you as a thief!" And she had
+turbulently admitted to his wringing questions that her visit to
+Middleton had been undertaken less because of the invalid relative than
+in shamefaced fear of her own weakness if she remained near his home.
+A triumph then it was to Fitzpiers, poor and hampered as he had become,
+to recognize his real conquest of this beauty, delayed so many years.
+His was the selfish passion of Congreve's Millamont, to whom love's
+supreme delight lay in "that heart which others bleed for, bleed for
+me."
+
+When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here and
+there about his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the comfortable
+views which had lately possessed him on his domestic concerns.  It is
+true that he had for some days discerned that Grace more and more
+sought his company, preferred supervising his kitchen and bakehouse
+with her step-mother to occupying herself with the lighter details of
+her own apartments.  She seemed no longer able to find in her own
+hearth an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee
+after leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into the
+parent hive.  But he had not construed these and other incidents of the
+kind till now.
+
+Something was wrong in the dove-cot.  A ghastly sense that he alone
+would be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be brought upon
+her for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain under his roof he
+had faced the numerous inconveniences involved in giving up the best
+part of his house to Fitzpiers.  There was no room for doubt that, had
+he allowed events to take their natural course, she would have accepted
+Winterborne, and realized his old dream of restitution to that young
+man's family.
+
+That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature for a
+moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and astonishment.  In the
+pure and simple life he had led it had scarcely occurred to him that
+after marriage a man might be faithless.  That he could sweep to the
+heights of Mrs. Charmond's position, lift the veil of Isis, so to
+speak, would have amazed Melbury by its audacity if he had not
+suspected encouragement from that quarter.  What could he and his
+simple Grace do to countervail the passions of such as those two
+sophisticated beings--versed in the world's ways, armed with every
+apparatus for victory?  In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer
+felt as inferior as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons
+of modern warfare.
+
+Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on.  The village was
+silent, most of the folk having gone to the fair.  Fitzpiers had
+retired to bed, and was sleeping off his fatigue.  She went to the
+stable and looked at poor Darling: in all probability Giles
+Winterborne, by obtaining for her a horse of such intelligence and
+docility, had been the means of saving her husband's life.  She paused
+over the strange thought; and then there appeared her father behind
+her.  She saw that he knew things were not as they ought to be, from
+the troubled dulness of his eye, and from his face, different points of
+which had independent motions, twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to
+himself, and involuntary.
+
+"He was detained, I suppose, last night?" said Melbury.
+
+"Oh yes; a bad case in the vale," she replied, calmly.
+
+"Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home."
+
+"But he couldn't, father."
+
+Her father turned away.  He could hardly bear to see his whilom
+truthful girl brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that.
+
+That night carking care sat beside Melbury's pillow, and his stiff
+limbs tossed at its presence.  "I can't lie here any longer," he
+muttered.  Striking a light, he wandered about the room.  "What have I
+done--what have I done for her?" he said to his wife, who had anxiously
+awakened.  "I had long planned that she should marry the son of the man
+I wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I told you all about it,
+Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! but I was not content with
+doing right, I wanted to do more!"
+
+"Don't raft yourself without good need, George," she replied.  "I won't
+quite believe that things are so much amiss.  I won't believe that Mrs.
+Charmond has encouraged him.  Even supposing she has encouraged a great
+many, she can have no motive to do it now. What so likely as that she
+is not yet quite well, and doesn't care to let another doctor come near
+her?"
+
+He did not heed.  "Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing a
+curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no
+employment now!"
+
+"Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond's past history? Perhaps that
+would throw some light upon things.  Before she came here as the wife
+of old Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems to have heard
+aught of her.  Why not make inquiries? And then do ye wait and see
+more; there'll be plenty of opportunity.  Time enough to cry when you
+know 'tis a crying matter; and 'tis bad to meet troubles half-way."
+
+There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. Melbury
+resolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, but oppressed
+between-whiles with much fear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing.  For the
+present, therefore, he simply watched.
+
+The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought almost
+a miraculous change in Melbury's nature.  No man so furtive for the
+time as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has
+been abused.  Melbury's heretofore confidential candor towards his
+gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a feline stealth that did
+injury to his every action, thought, and mood.  He knew that a woman
+once given to a man for life took, as a rule, her lot as it came and
+made the best of it, without external interference; but for the first
+time he asked himself why this so generally should be so.  Moreover,
+this case was not, he argued, like ordinary cases.  Leaving out the
+question of Grace being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar
+situation, as it were in mid-air between two planes of society,
+together with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband's neglect a far
+more tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large
+circle of friends to fall back upon.  Wisely or unwisely, and whatever
+other fathers did, he resolved to fight his daughter's battle still.
+
+Mrs. Charmond had returned.  But Hintock House scarcely gave forth
+signs of life, so quietly had she reentered it.  He went to church at
+Great Hintock one afternoon as usual, there being no service at the
+smaller village.  A few minutes before his departure, he had casually
+heard Fitzpiers, who was no church-goer, tell his wife that he was
+going to walk in the wood.  Melbury entered the building and sat down
+in his pew; the parson came in, then Mrs. Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers.
+
+The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite sure that a
+mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between those two;
+he fancied that more than once their eyes met.  At the end, Fitzpiers
+so timed his movement into the aisle that it exactly coincided with
+Felice Charmond's from the opposite side, and they walked out with
+their garments in contact, the surgeon being just that two or three
+inches in her rear which made it convenient for his eyes to rest upon
+her cheek.  The cheek warmed up to a richer tone.
+
+This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. If she
+had been playing with him in an idle freak the game might soon have
+wearied her; but the smallest germ of passion--and women of the world
+do not change color for nothing--was a threatening development.  The
+mere presence of Fitzpiers in the building, after his statement, was
+wellnigh conclusive as far as he was concerned; but Melbury resolved
+yet to watch.
+
+He had to wait long.  Autumn drew shiveringly to its end.  One day
+something seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves of
+vegetables had shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung like faded
+linen rags; then the forest leaves, which had been descending at
+leisure, descended in haste and in multitudes, and all the golden
+colors that had hung overhead were now crowded together in a degraded
+mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads got redder and hornier, and
+curled themselves up to rot.  The only suspicious features in Mrs.
+Charmond's existence at this season were two: the first, that she lived
+with no companion or relative about her, which, considering her age and
+attractions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely
+country-house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years,
+start from Hintock to winter abroad.  In Fitzpiers, the only change
+from his last autumn's habits lay in his abandonment of night
+study--his lamp never shone from his new dwelling as from his old.
+
+If the suspected ones met, it was by such adroit contrivances that even
+Melbury's vigilance could not encounter them together.  A simple call
+at her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about it, and that he
+had paid two or three such calls was certain. What had passed at those
+interviews was known only to the parties themselves; but that Felice
+Charmond was under some one's influence Melbury soon had opportunity of
+perceiving.
+
+Winter had come on.  Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and
+evenings, and flocks of wood-pigeons made themselves prominent again.
+One day in February, about six months after the marriage of Fitzpiers,
+Melbury was returning from Great Hintock on foot through the lane, when
+he saw before him the surgeon also walking. Melbury would have
+overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers turned in through a gate to
+one of the rambling drives among the trees at this side of the wood,
+which led to nowhere in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine
+curves was the only justification of their existence.  Felice almost
+simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a
+little basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate,
+unaccompanied by a servant.  She turned in at the same place without
+having seen either Melbury or apparently Fitzpiers. Melbury was soon at
+the spot, despite his aches and his sixty years.  Mrs. Charmond had
+come up with the doctor, who was standing immediately behind the
+carriage.  She had turned to him, her arm being thrown carelessly over
+the back of the seat.  They looked in each other's faces without
+uttering a word, an arch yet gloomy smile wreathing her lips.
+Fitzpiers clasped her hanging hand, and, while she still remained in
+the same listless attitude, looking volumes into his eyes, he
+stealthily unbuttoned her glove, and stripped her hand of it by rolling
+back the gauntlet over the fingers, so that it came off inside out.  He
+then raised her hand to his month, she still reclining passively,
+watching him as she might have watched a fly upon her dress.  At last
+she said, "Well, sir, what excuse for this disobedience?"
+
+"I make none."
+
+"Then go your way, and let me go mine." She snatched away her hand,
+touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there, holding
+the reversed glove.
+
+Melbury's first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers, and
+upbraid him bitterly.  But a moment's thought was sufficient to show
+him the futility of any such simple proceeding.  There was not, after
+all, so much in what he had witnessed as in what that scene might be
+the surface and froth of--probably a state of mind on which censure
+operates as an aggravation rather than as a cure. Moreover, he said to
+himself that the point of attack should be the woman, if either.  He
+therefore kept out of sight, and musing sadly, even tearfully--for he
+was meek as a child in matters concerning his daughter--continued his
+way towards Hintock.
+
+The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never more finely
+exemplified than in this instance.  Through her guarded manner, her
+dignified speech, her placid countenance, he discerned the interior of
+Grace's life only too truly, hidden as were its incidents from every
+outer eye.
+
+These incidents had become painful enough.  Fitzpiers had latterly
+developed an irritable discontent which vented itself in monologues
+when Grace was present to hear them.  The early morning of this day had
+been dull, after a night of wind, and on looking out of the window
+Fitzpiers had observed some of Melbury's men dragging away a large limb
+which had been snapped off a beech-tree.  Everything was cold and
+colorless.
+
+"My good Heaven!" he said, as he stood in his dressing-gown. "This is
+life!" He did not know whether Grace was awake or not, and he would not
+turn his head to ascertain.  "Ah, fool," he went on to himself, "to
+clip your own wings when you were free to soar!...But I could not rest
+till I had done it.  Why do I never recognize an opportunity till I
+have missed it, nor the good or ill of a step till it is
+irrevocable!...I fell in love....Love, indeed!--
+
+    "'Love's but the frailty of the mind
+      When 'tis not with ambition joined;
+      A sickly flame which if not fed, expires,
+      And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!'
+
+Ah, old author of 'The Way of the World,' you knew--you knew!" Grace
+moved.  He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. He was
+sorry--though he had not taken any precaution to prevent her.
+
+He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an extreme
+reserve.  It was enough, however, to make him repent that he should
+have done anything to produce discomfort; for he attributed her manner
+entirely to what he had said.  But Grace's manner had not its cause
+either in his sayings or in his doings. She had not heard a single word
+of his regrets.  Something even nearer home than her husband's blighted
+prospects--if blighted they were--was the origin of her mood, a mood
+that was the mere continuation of what her father had noticed when he
+would have preferred a passionate jealousy in her, as the more natural.
+
+She had made a discovery--one which to a girl of honest nature was
+almost appalling.  She had looked into her heart, and found that her
+early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized into
+luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was great and
+little in life.  His homeliness no longer offended her acquired tastes;
+his comparative want of so-called culture did not now jar on her
+intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior
+roughness fascinated her.  Having discovered by marriage how much that
+was humanly not great could co-exist with attainments of an exceptional
+order, there was a revulsion in her sentiments from all that she had
+formerly clung to in this kind: honesty, goodness, manliness,
+tenderness, devotion, for her only existed in their purity now in the
+breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one who had manifested them
+towards her from his youth up.
+
+There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles as a
+man whom she had wronged--a man who had been unfortunate in his worldly
+transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, he had, like
+Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing
+
+    "As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing."
+
+
+It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband's
+murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her.
+
+When her father approached the house after witnessing the interview
+between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking out of her
+sitting-room window, as if she had nothing to do, or think of, or care
+for.  He stood still.
+
+"Ah, Grace," he said, regarding her fixedly.
+
+"Yes, father," she murmured.
+
+"Waiting for your dear husband?" he inquired, speaking with the sarcasm
+of pitiful affection.
+
+"Oh no--not especially.  He has a great many patients to see this
+afternoon."
+
+Melbury came quite close.  "Grace, what's the use of talking like that,
+when you know--Here, come down and walk with me out in the garden,
+child."
+
+He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited.  This
+apparent indifference alarmed him.  He would far rather that she had
+rushed in all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of
+conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice Charmond _unguibus et
+rostro_, and accused her even in exaggerated shape of stealing away her
+husband.  Such a storm might have cleared the air.
+
+She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. "You
+know as well as I do," he resumed, "that there is something threatening
+mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I
+don't see the trouble in your face every day?  I am very sure that this
+quietude is wrong conduct in you.  You should look more into matters."
+
+"I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to action."
+
+Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions--did she not feel jealous?
+was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained him.  "You are
+very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say," he remarked, pointedly.
+
+"I am what I feel, father," she repeated.
+
+He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of her
+offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last days
+before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the fact that
+she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more than she had
+ever done when she was comparatively free to choose him.
+
+"What would you have me do?" she asked, in a low voice.
+
+He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical
+matter before them.  "I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond," he said.
+
+"Go to Mrs. Charmond--what for?" said she.
+
+"Well--if I must speak plain, dear Grace--to ask her, appeal to her in
+the name of your common womanhood, and your many like sentiments on
+things, not to make unhappiness between you and your husband.  It lies
+with her entirely to do one or the other--that I can see."
+
+Grace's face had heated at her father's words, and the very rustle of
+her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur.  "I shall not think of
+going to her, father--of course I could not!" she answered.
+
+"Why--don't 'ee want to be happier than you be at present?" said
+Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself.
+
+"I don't wish to be more humiliated.  If I have anything to bear I can
+bear it in silence."
+
+"But, my dear maid, you are too young--you don't know what the present
+state of things may lead to.  Just see the harm done a'ready! Your
+husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had
+not been for this.  Although it has gone such a little way, it is
+poisoning your future even now.  Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly bad,
+not bad by calculation; and just a word to her now might save 'ee a
+peck of woes."
+
+"Ah, I loved her once," said Grace, with a broken articulation, "and
+she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. Let her do
+her worst: I don't care."
+
+"You ought to care.  You have got into a very good position to start
+with.  You have been well educated, well tended, and you have become
+the wife of a professional man of unusually good family.  Surely you
+ought to make the best of your position."
+
+"I don't see that I ought.  I wish I had never got into it.  I wish you
+had never, never thought of educating me.  I wish I worked in the woods
+like Marty South.  I hate genteel life, and I want to be no better than
+she."
+
+"Why?" said her amazed father.
+
+"Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and troubles.
+I say again, I wish you had never sent me to those fashionable schools
+you set your mind on.  It all arose out of that, father.  If I had
+stayed at home I should have married--" She closed up her mouth
+suddenly and was silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying.
+
+Melbury was much grieved.  "What, and would you like to have grown up
+as we be here in Hintock--knowing no more, and with no more chance of
+seeing good life than we have here?"
+
+"Yes.  I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know of,
+and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away.  Oh, the
+misery of those January days when I had got back to school, and left
+you all here in the wood so happy.  I used to wonder why I had to bear
+it.  And I was always a little despised by the other girls at school,
+because they knew where I came from, and that my parents were not in so
+good a station as theirs."
+
+Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude and
+intractability.  He had admitted to himself bitterly enough that he
+should have let young hearts have their way, or rather should have
+helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her to him according
+to his original plan; but he was not prepared for her deprecation of
+those attainments whose completion had been a labor of years, and a
+severe tax upon his purse.
+
+"Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit.  "If you don't
+like to go to her I don't wish to force you."
+
+And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy this
+perilous state of things?  For days he sat in a moody attitude over the
+fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth beside him, and his
+drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it.  He spent a week and more
+thus composing a letter to the chief offender, which he would every now
+and then attempt to complete, and suddenly crumple up in his hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom of
+the woodmen's homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little began to
+have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had grown the
+timber-dealer's troubles.  It took the form of a wide sprinkling of
+conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. Tantalizing phenomena,
+at once showing and concealing the real relationship of the persons
+concerned, caused a diffusion of excited surprise.  Honest people as
+the woodlanders were, it was hardly to be expected that they could
+remain immersed in the study of their trees and gardens amid such
+circumstances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers of
+Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady.
+
+Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little.  There were, in fact, in this
+case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the hills, which,
+with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of
+Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were rencounters
+accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, sudden misgivings on
+one side, sudden self-reproaches on the other.  The inner state of the
+twain was one as of confused noise that would not allow the accents of
+calmer reason to be heard.  Determinations to go in this direction, and
+headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified collapses;
+not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against
+judgment.
+
+It was all that Melbury had expected and feared.  It was more, for he
+had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as it now
+had done.  What should he do--appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since
+Grace would not? He bethought himself of Winterborne, and resolved to
+consult him, feeling the strong need of some friend of his own sex to
+whom he might unburden his mind.
+
+He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment.  That judgment on which
+he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a false companion
+unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and
+speciousness where all had seemed solidity.  He felt almost afraid to
+form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or the fruit-promise, so
+great was his self-abasement.
+
+It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles.  The woods
+seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung from every
+bare twig; the sky had no color, and the trees rose before him as
+haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality were passed.
+Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he believed him to be occupying
+a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. Charmond's estate, though
+still within the circuit of the woodland.  The timber-merchant's thin
+legs stalked on through the pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead
+leaves of last year; while every now and then a hasty "Ay?" escaped his
+lips in reply to some bitter proposition.
+
+His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind which
+arose sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that way, he saw
+Winterborne just in front of him.  It just now happened that Giles,
+after being for a long time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of
+the busiest men in the neighborhood. It is often thus; fallen friends,
+lost sight of, we expect to find starving; we discover them going on
+fairly well.  Without any solicitation, or desire for profit on his
+part, he had been asked to execute during that winter a very large
+order for hurdles and other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been
+obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing.  He was now engaged
+in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work
+daily like an automaton.
+
+The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day.  The whole of the
+copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that
+hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making a hurdle,
+the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row, over which he
+bent and wove the twigs.  Beside him was a square, compact pile like
+the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, which bristled
+on all sides with the sharp points of their stakes.  At a little
+distance the men in his employ were assisting him to carry out his
+contract.  Rows of copse-wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under
+the axe; and a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of
+which burned the fire whose smoke had attracted him.  The air was so
+dank that the smoke hung heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without
+rising from the ground.
+
+After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew nearer, and
+briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily engaged, with an
+undertone of slight surprise that Winterborne could seem so thriving
+after being deprived of Grace.  Melbury was not without emotion at the
+meeting; for Grace's affairs had divided them, and ended their intimacy
+of old times.
+
+Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes from
+his occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of him.
+
+"'Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared," said Melbury.
+
+"Yes, there or thereabouts," said Winterborne, a chop of the billhook
+jerking the last word into two pieces.
+
+There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from
+Winterborne's hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and legs
+of his visitor, who took no heed.
+
+"Ah, Giles--you should have been my partner.  You should have been my
+son-in-law," the old man said at last.  "It would have been far better
+for her and for me."
+
+Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former friend,
+and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave, he responded
+only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. "Is she ill?" he
+said, hurriedly.
+
+"No, no." Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and then, as
+though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to go away.
+
+Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and
+walked after Melbury.
+
+"Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir," he said,
+"especially since we don't stand as we used to stand to one another;
+but I hope it is well with them all over your way?"
+
+"No," said Melbury--"no."  He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk of a
+young ash-tree with the flat of his hand.  "I would that his ear had
+been where that rind is!" he exclaimed; "I should have treated him to
+little compared wi what he deserves."
+
+"Now," said Winterborne, "don't be in a hurry to go home.  I've put
+some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we'll sit and drink it
+and talk this over."
+
+Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went back
+to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the other woodmen
+having gone.  He drew out the cider-mug from the ashes and they drank
+together.
+
+"Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now," repeated
+Melbury.  "I'll tell you why for the first time."
+
+He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of how
+he won away Giles's father's chosen one--by nothing worse than a
+lover's cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in love,
+would certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair.  He explained
+how he had always intended to make reparation to Winterborne the father
+by giving Grace to Winterborne the son, till the devil tempted him in
+the person of Fitzpiers, and he broke his virtuous vow.
+
+"How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who'd have supposed he'd
+have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have had her,
+Giles, and there's an end on't."
+
+Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously
+cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury's concentration on
+the more vital subject had blinded him.  The young man endeavored to
+make the best of the case for Grace's sake.
+
+"She would hardly have been happy with me," he said, in the dry,
+unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings.  "I was not well
+enough educated: too rough, in short.  I couldn't have surrounded her
+with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at all."
+
+"Nonsense--you are quite wrong there," said the unwise old man,
+doggedly.  "She told me only this day that she hates refinements and
+such like.  All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is
+thrown away upon her quite.  She'd fain be like Marty South--think o'
+that! That's the top of her ambition! Perhaps she's right.  Giles, she
+loved you--under the rind; and, what's more, she loves ye still--worse
+luck for the poor maid!"
+
+If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he
+might have held his peace.  Winterborne was silent a long time. The
+darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of the fog
+from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain.
+
+"Oh, she never cared much for me," Giles managed to say, as he stirred
+the embers with a brand.
+
+"She did, and does, I tell ye," said the other, obstinately. "However,
+all that's vain talking now.  What I come to ask you about is a more
+practical matter--how to make the best of things as they are.  I am
+thinking of a desperate step--of calling on the woman Charmond.  I am
+going to appeal to her, since Grace will not.  'Tis she who holds the
+balance in her hands--not he.  While she's got the will to lead him
+astray he will follow--poor, unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer--and
+how long she'll do it depends upon her whim.  Did ye ever hear anything
+about her character before she came to Hintock?"
+
+"She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe," replied Giles,
+with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. "One who
+has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she has not married.
+Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress."
+
+"Hey?  But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What besides?"
+
+"Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the north,
+twenty or thirty years older than she.  He married her and retired, and
+came down here and bought this property, as they do nowadays."
+
+"Yes, yes--I know all about that; but the other I did not know.  I fear
+it bodes no good.  For how can I go and appeal to the forbearance of a
+woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements
+her trade for years?  I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it
+makes my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that unstable
+tribe."
+
+Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that beat
+about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose weavings a large
+drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly into the fire.  Mrs.
+Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it
+was not in his heart to let her be condemned without a trial.
+
+"She is said to be generous," he answered.  "You might not appeal to
+her in vain."
+
+"It shall be done," said Melbury, rising.  "For good or for evil, to
+Mrs. Charmond I'll go."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+At nine o'clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in shining
+broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor, and started
+for Hintock House.  He was the more impelled to go at once by the
+absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to attend, really
+or ostensibly, some professional meetings.  He said nothing of his
+destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing that they might
+entreat him to abandon so risky a project, and went out unobserved.  He
+had chosen his time with a view, as he supposed, of conveniently
+catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just finished her breakfast, before
+any other business people should be about, if any came.  Plodding
+thoughtfully onward, he crossed a glade lying between Little Hintock
+Woods and the plantation which abutted on the park; and the spot being
+open, he was discerned there by Winterborne from the copse on the next
+hill, where he and his men were working.  Knowing his mission, the
+younger man hastened down from the copse and managed to intercept the
+timber-merchant.
+
+"I have been thinking of this, sir," he said, "and I am of opinion that
+it would be best to put off your visit for the present."
+
+But Melbury would not even stop to hear him.  His mind was made up, the
+appeal was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched him sadly till
+he entered the second plantation and disappeared.
+
+Melbury rang at the tradesmen's door of the manor-house, and was at
+once informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he might
+have guessed had he been anybody but the man he was. Melbury said he
+would wait, whereupon the young man informed him in a neighborly way
+that, between themselves, she was in bed and asleep.
+
+"Never mind," said Melbury, retreating into the court, "I'll stand
+about here." Charged so fully with his mission, he shrank from contact
+with anybody.
+
+But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still nobody
+came to him.  At last he entered the house and sat down in a small
+waiting-room, from which he got glimpses of the kitchen corridor, and
+of the white-capped maids flitting jauntily hither and thither.  They
+had heard of his arrival, but had not seen him enter, and, imagining
+him still in the court, discussed freely the possible reason of his
+calling.  They marvelled at his temerity; for though most of the
+tongues which had been let loose attributed the chief blame-worthiness
+to Fitzpiers, these of her household preferred to regard their mistress
+as the deeper sinner.
+
+Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn
+walking-stick, whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its use.
+The scene to him was not the material environment of his person, but a
+tragic vision that travelled with him like an envelope.  Through this
+vision the incidents of the moment but gleamed confusedly here and
+there, as an outer landscape through the high-colored scenes of a
+stained window.  He waited thus an hour, an hour and a half, two hours.
+He began to look pale and ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked
+him to have a glass of wine.  Melbury roused himself and said, "No, no.
+Is she almost ready?"
+
+"She is just finishing breakfast," said the butler.  "She will soon see
+you now.  I am just going up to tell her you are here."
+
+"What! haven't you told her before?" said Melbury.
+
+"Oh no," said the other.  "You see you came so very early."
+
+At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him.  She was not in her
+private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he heard her
+coming from the front staircase, and she entered where he stood.
+
+At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and more.
+She might almost have been taken for the typical femme de trente ans,
+though she was really not more than seven or eight and twenty.  There
+being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl thrown loosely
+round her shoulders, and obviously without the least suspicion that
+Melbury had called upon any other errand than timber.  Felice was,
+indeed, the only woman in the parish who had not heard the rumor of her
+own weaknesses; she was at this moment living in a fool's paradise in
+respect of that rumor, though not in respect of the weaknesses
+themselves, which, if the truth be told, caused her grave misgivings.
+
+"Do sit down, Mr. Melbury.  You have felled all the trees that were to
+be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I believe."
+
+"Yes," said Melbury.
+
+"How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just now!"
+
+She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous person's
+affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect
+social machine.  Hence her words "very nice," "so charming," were
+uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie.  He did not take a chair, and
+she also remained standing.  Resting upon his stick, he began: "Mrs.
+Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter--at least to
+me--than tree-throwing.  And whatever mistakes I make in my manner of
+speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set 'em down to my
+want of practice, and not to my want of care."
+
+Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease.  She might have begun to guess his
+meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact with
+anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his preliminaries alone
+were enough to distress her.  "Yes, what is it?" she said.
+
+"I am an old man," said Melbury, "whom, somewhat late in life, God
+thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter.  Her mother
+was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us when the
+child was young, and the child became precious as the apple of my eye
+to me, for she was all I had left to love.  For her sake entirely I
+married as second wife a homespun woman who had been kind as a mother
+to her.  In due time the question of her education came on, and I said,
+'I will educate the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.' Of her
+possible marriage I could not bear to think, for it seemed like a death
+that she should cleave to another man, and grow to think his house her
+home rather than mine.  But I saw it was the law of nature that this
+should be, and that it was for the maid's happiness that she should
+have a home when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to
+help it on for her sake.  In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and
+to make amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession,
+to my friend's son, seeing that they liked each other well. Things came
+about which made me doubt if it would be for my daughter's happiness to
+do this, inasmuch as the young man was poor, and she was delicately
+reared.  Another man came and paid court to her--one her equal in
+breeding and accomplishments; in every way it seemed to me that he only
+could give her the home which her training had made a necessity almost.
+I urged her on, and she married him.  But, ma'am, a fatal mistake was
+at the root of my reckoning.  I found that this well-born gentleman I
+had calculated on so surely was not stanch of heart, and that therein
+lay a danger of great sorrow for my daughter.  Madam, he saw you, and
+you know the rest....I have come to make no demands--to utter no
+threats; I have come simply as a father in great grief about this only
+child, and I beseech you to deal kindly with my daughter, and to do
+nothing which can turn her husband's heart away from her forever.
+Forbid him your presence, ma'am, and speak to him on his duty as one
+with your power over him well can do, and I am hopeful that the rent
+between them may be patched up. For it is not as if you would lose by
+so doing; your course is far higher than the courses of a simple
+professional man, and the gratitude you would win from me and mine by
+your kindness is more than I can say."
+
+Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indignation on
+comprehending Melbury's story; hot and cold by turns, she had murmured,
+"Leave me, leave me!" But as he seemed to take no notice of this, his
+words began to influence her, and when he ceased speaking she said,
+with hurried, hot breath, "What has led you to think this of me?  Who
+says I have won your daughter's husband away from her?  Some monstrous
+calumnies are afloat--of which I have known nothing until now!"
+
+Melbury started, and looked at her simply.  "But surely, ma'am, you
+know the truth better than I?"
+
+Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on her
+handsome face for the first time showed themselves as an extrinsic
+film.  "Will you leave me to myself?" she said, with a faintness which
+suggested a guilty conscience.  "This is so utterly unexpected--you
+obtain admission to my presence by misrepresentation--"
+
+"As God's in heaven, ma'am, that's not true.  I made no pretence; and I
+thought in reason you would know why I had come.  This gossip--"
+
+"I have heard nothing of it.  Tell me of it, I say."
+
+"Tell you, ma'am--not I.  What the gossip is, no matter.  What really
+is, you know.  Set facts right, and the scandal will right of itself.
+But pardon me--I speak roughly; and I came to speak gently, to coax
+you, beg you to be my daughter's friend.  She loved you once, ma'am;
+you began by liking her.  Then you dropped her without a reason, and it
+hurt her warm heart more than I can tell ye.  But you were within your
+right as the superior, no doubt.  But if you would consider her
+position now--surely, surely, you would do her no harm!"
+
+"Certainly I would do her no harm--I--" Melbury's eye met hers. It was
+curious, but the allusion to Grace's former love for her seemed to
+touch her more than all Melbury's other arguments.  "Oh, Melbury," she
+burst out, "you have made me so unhappy! How could you come to me like
+this! It is too dreadful! Now go away--go, go!"
+
+"I will," he said, in a husky tone.
+
+As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and there sat
+and writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation mingled
+with better sentiments.
+
+Mrs. Charmond's mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods of
+stress and storm.  She had never so clearly perceived till now that her
+soul was being slowly invaded by a delirium which had brought about all
+this; that she was losing judgment and dignity under it, becoming an
+animated impulse only, a passion incarnate. A fascination had led her
+on; it was as if she had been seized by a hand of velvet; and this was
+where she found herself--overshadowed with sudden night, as if a
+tornado had passed by.
+
+While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview,
+lunch-time came, and then the early afternoon, almost without her
+consciousness.  Then "a strange gentleman who says it is not necessary
+to give his name," was suddenly announced.
+
+"I cannot see him, whoever he may be.  I am not at home to anybody."
+
+She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt to
+recover some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she put on
+her hat and cloak and went out-of-doors, taking a path which led her up
+the slopes to the nearest spur of the wood.  She disliked the woods,
+but they had the advantage of being a place in which she could walk
+comparatively unobserved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters
+concerned.  It was not till the Hintock dinner-time--one o'clock--that
+Grace discovered her father's absence from the house after a departure
+in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions.  By a little
+reasoning and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion on his
+destination, and to divine his errand.
+
+Her husband was absent, and her father did not return.  He had, in
+truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did not
+know.  In an indefinite dread that something serious would arise out of
+Melbury's visit by reason of the inequalities of temper and nervous
+irritation to which he was subject, something possibly that would bring
+her much more misery than accompanied her present negative state of
+mind, she left the house about three o'clock, and took a loitering walk
+in the woodland track by which she imagined he would come home.  This
+track under the bare trees and over the cracking sticks, screened and
+roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of
+boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees
+behind her and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his
+men were clearing the undergrowth.
+
+Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would not
+have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the opposite
+glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled as Grace
+herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which, since her
+father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's return with his
+tidings.  Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened up to
+her.
+
+She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious of
+the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. "I am
+only looking for my father," she said, in an unnecessarily apologetic
+intonation.
+
+"I was looking for him too," said Giles.  "I think he may perhaps have
+gone on farther."
+
+"Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?" she said, turning her
+large tender eyes anxiously upon him.  "Did he tell you what for?"
+
+Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that her
+father had visited him the evening before, and that their old
+friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest.
+
+"Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!" she cried.
+And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other, troubling
+each other's souls.  Grace experienced acute misery at the sight of
+these wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged herself from them,
+craving, even to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan
+life of her father which in the best probable succession of events
+would shortly be denied her.
+
+At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was
+shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the evenings.
+While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at her in their
+mutual embarrassment at each other's presence, they beheld approaching
+the girl a lady in a dark fur mantle and a black hat, having a white
+veil tied picturesquely round it.  She spoke to Marty, who turned and
+courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation with her.  It was Mrs.
+Charmond.
+
+On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under the
+fret and fever of her mind with more vigor than she was accustomed to
+show in her normal moods--a fever which the solace of a cigarette did
+not entirely allay.  Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed
+Marty at work, threw away her cigarette, and came near.  Chop, chop,
+chop, went Marty's little billhook with never more assiduity, till Mrs.
+Charmond spoke.
+
+"Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?" she asked.
+
+"Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma'am," said Marty.
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had not
+recognized Grace at that distance.  "And the man she is talking to?"
+
+"That's Mr. Winterborne."
+
+A redness stole into Marty's face as she mentioned Giles's name, which
+Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the state of the
+girl's heart.  "Are you engaged to him?" she asked, softly.
+
+"No, ma'am," said Marty.  "SHE was once; and I think--"
+
+But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her thoughts
+on this matter--which were nothing less than one of extraordinary
+acuteness for a girl so young and inexperienced--namely, that she saw
+danger to two hearts naturally honest in Grace being thrown back into
+Winterborne's society by the neglect of her husband.  Mrs. Charmond,
+however, with the almost supersensory means to knowledge which women
+have on such occasions, quite understood what Marty had intended to
+convey, and the picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away,
+involving the wreck of poor Marty's hopes, prompted her to more
+generous resolves than all Melbury's remonstrances had been able to
+stimulate.
+
+Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and went on
+over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne were standing.
+They saw her approach, and Winterborne said, "She is coming to you; it
+is a good omen.  She dislikes me, so I'll go away."  He accordingly
+retreated to where he had been working before Grace came, and Grace's
+formidable rival approached her, each woman taking the other's measure
+as she came near.
+
+"Dear--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Felice Charmond, with some inward turmoil
+which stopped her speech.  "I have not seen you for a long time."
+
+She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild animal
+on first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of
+civilization.  Was it really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? If it
+was, she could no longer form any guess as to what it signified.
+
+"I want to talk with you," said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for the
+gaze of the young woman had chilled her through.  "Can you walk on with
+me till we are quite alone?"
+
+Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork and
+they moved evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the woods.
+They went farther, much farther than Mrs. Charmond had meant to go; but
+she could not begin her conversation, and in default of it kept walking.
+
+"I have seen your father," she at length resumed.  "And--I am much
+troubled by what he told me."
+
+"What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence on
+anything he may have said to you."
+
+"Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily divine?"
+
+"True--true," returned Grace, mournfully.  "Why should you repeat what
+we both know to be in our minds already?"
+
+"Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband--" The moment that the speaker's tongue
+touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of self-consciousness
+flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by a lightning gleam,
+what filled it to overflowing.  So transitory was the expression that
+none but a sensitive woman, and she in Grace's position, would have had
+the power to catch its meaning. Upon her the phase was not lost.
+
+"Then you DO love him!" she exclaimed, in a tone of much surprise.
+
+"What do you mean, my young friend?"
+
+"Why," cried Grace, "I thought till now that you had only been cruelly
+flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments--a rich lady with
+a poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she despised not much
+less than her who belongs to him.  But I guess from your manner that
+you love him desperately, and I don't hate you as I did before."
+
+"Yes, indeed," continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue,
+"since it is not playing in your case at all, but REAL.  Oh, I do pity
+you, more than I despise you, for you will s-s-suffer most!"
+
+Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace.  "I ought not to allow
+myself to argue with you," she exclaimed.  "I demean myself by doing
+it.  But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time I try to tell
+you how mistaken you are!" Much of her confusion resulted from her
+wonder and alarm at finding herself in a sense dominated mentally and
+emotionally by this simple school-girl.  "I do not love him," she went
+on, with desperate untruth.  "It was a kindness--my making somewhat
+more of him than one usually does of one's doctor.  I was lonely; I
+talked--well, I trifled with him. I am very sorry if such child's
+playing out of pure friendship has been a serious matter to you.  Who
+could have expected it? But the world is so simple here."
+
+"Oh, that's affectation," said Grace, shaking her head.  "It is no
+use--you love him.  I can see in your face that in this matter of my
+husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings.  During these
+last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet; but you have
+not been insincere, and that almost disarms me."
+
+"I HAVE been insincere--if you will have the word--I mean I HAVE
+coquetted, and do NOT love him!"
+
+But Grace clung to her position like a limpet.  "You may have trifled
+with others, but him you love as you never loved another man."
+
+"Oh, well--I won't argue," said Mrs. Charmond, laughing faintly. "And
+you come to reproach me for it, child."
+
+"No," said Grace, magnanimously.  "You may go on loving him if you
+like--I don't mind at all.  You'll find it, let me tell you, a bitterer
+business for yourself than for me in the end.  He'll get tired of you
+soon, as tired as can be--you don't know him so well as I--and then you
+may wish you had never seen him!"
+
+Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. It was
+extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have
+characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her
+interlocutor.  "You exaggerate--cruel, silly young woman," she
+reiterated, writhing with little agonies.  "It is nothing but playful
+friendship--nothing! It will be proved by my future conduct.  I shall
+at once refuse to see him more--since it will make no difference to my
+heart, and much to my name."
+
+"I question if you will refuse to see him again," said Grace, dryly, as
+with eyes askance she bent a sapling down.  "But I am not incensed
+against you as you are against me," she added, abandoning the tree to
+its natural perpendicular.  "Before I came I had been despising you for
+wanton cruelty; now I only pity you for misplaced affection.  When
+Edgar has gone out of the house in hope of seeing you, at seasonable
+hours and unseasonable; when I have found him riding miles and miles
+across the country at midnight, and risking his life, and getting
+covered with mud, to get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish
+man--the plaything of a finished coquette.  I thought that what was
+getting to be a tragedy to me was a comedy to you.  But now I see that
+tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no less than on MINE, and
+more; that if I have felt trouble at my position, you have felt anguish
+at yours; that if I have had disappointments, you have had despairs.
+Heaven may fortify me--God help you!"
+
+"I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence," returned the
+other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely collapsed.
+"My acts will be my proofs.  In the world which you have seen nothing
+of, friendships between men and women are not unknown, and it would
+have been better both for you and your father if you had each judged me
+more respectfully, and left me alone.  As it is I wish never to see or
+speak to you, madam, any more."
+
+Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away.  The two went apart in
+directly opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by
+their umbrageous surroundings and by the shadows of eve.
+
+In the excitement of their long argument they had walked onward and
+zigzagged about without regarding direction or distance.  All sound of
+the woodcutters had long since faded into remoteness, and even had not
+the interval been too great for hearing them they would have been
+silent and homeward bound at this twilight hour. But Grace went on her
+course without any misgiving, though there was much underwood here,
+with only the narrowest passages for walking, across which brambles
+hung.  She had not, however, traversed this the wildest part of the
+wood since her childhood, and the transformation of outlines had been
+great; old trees which once were landmarks had been felled or blown
+down, and the bushes which then had been small and scrubby were now
+large and overhanging.  She soon found that her ideas as to direction
+were vague--that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all.  If
+the evening had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not put on
+its night moan so distinctly, Grace would not have minded; but she was
+rather frightened now, and began to strike across hither and thither in
+random courses.
+
+Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind-voices, and still no
+recognizable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any sound of the
+Hintocks floated near, though she had wandered probably between one and
+two hours, and began to be weary.  She was vexed at her foolishness,
+since the ground she had covered, if in a straight line, must
+inevitably have taken her out of the wood to some remote village or
+other; but she had wasted her forces in countermarches; and now, in
+much alarm, wondered if she would have to pass the night here.  She
+stood still to meditate, and fancied that between the soughing of the
+wind she heard shuffling footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of
+rabbits or hares. Though fearing at first to meet anybody on the chance
+of his being a friend, she decided that the fellow night-rambler, even
+if a poacher, would not injure her, and that he might possibly be some
+one sent to search for her.  She accordingly shouted a rather timid
+"Hoi!"
+
+The cry was immediately returned by the other person; and Grace running
+at once in the direction whence it came beheld an indistinct figure
+hastening up to her as rapidly.  They were almost in each other's arms
+when she recognized in her vis-a-vis the outline and white veil of her
+whom she had parted from an hour and a half before--Mrs. Charmond.
+
+"I have lost my way, I have lost my way," cried that lady.  "Oh--is it
+indeed you? I am so glad to meet you or anybody.  I have been wandering
+up and down ever since we parted, and am nearly dead with terror and
+misery and fatigue!"
+
+"So am I," said Grace.  "What shall we, shall we do?"
+
+"You won't go away from me?" asked her companion, anxiously.
+
+"No, indeed.  Are you very tired?"
+
+"I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the ankles."
+
+Grace reflected.  "Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the best thing for
+us to do would be to sit down for half an hour, and then start again
+when we have thoroughly rested.  By walking straight we must come to a
+track leading somewhere before the morning."
+
+They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from the
+wind, and sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp and dry,
+that remained from the previous season forming a sort of nest for them.
+But it was cold, nevertheless, on this March night, particularly for
+Grace, who with the sanguine prematureness of youth in matters of
+dress, had considered it spring-time, and hence was not so warmly clad
+as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore her winter fur.  But after sitting a
+while the latter lady shivered no less than Grace as the warmth
+imparted by her hasty walking began to go off, and they felt the cold
+air drawing through the holly leaves which scratched their backs and
+shoulders.  Moreover, they could hear some drops of rain falling on the
+trees, though none reached the nook in which they had ensconced
+themselves.
+
+"If we were to cling close together," said Mrs. Charmond, "we should
+keep each other warm.  But," she added, in an uneven voice, "I suppose
+you won't come near me for the world!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because--well, you know."
+
+"Yes.  I will--I don't hate you at all."
+
+They consequently crept up to one another, and being in the dark,
+lonely and weary, did what neither had dreamed of doing beforehand,
+clasped each other closely, Mrs. Charmond's furs consoling Grace's cold
+face, and each one's body as she breathed alternately heaving against
+that of her companion.
+
+When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond said, "I am so
+wretched!" in a heavy, emotional whisper.
+
+"You are frightened," said Grace, kindly.  "But there is nothing to
+fear; I know these woods well."
+
+"I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other things."
+
+Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the younger
+woman could feel her neighbor's breathings grow deeper and more
+spasmodic, as though uncontrollable feelings were germinating.
+
+"After I had left you," she went on, "I regretted something I had said.
+I have to make a confession--I must make it!" she whispered, brokenly,
+the instinct to indulge in warmth of sentiment which had led this woman
+of passions to respond to Fitzpiers in the first place leading her now
+to find luxurious comfort in opening her heart to his wife.  "I said to
+you I could give him up without pain or deprivation--that he had only
+been my pastime.  That was untrue--it was said to deceive you.  I could
+not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I cannot give
+him up--even if I would--of myself alone."
+
+"Why? Because you love him, you mean."
+
+Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement.
+
+"I knew I was right!" said Grace, exaltedly.  "But that should not
+deter you," she presently added, in a moral tone.  "Oh, do struggle
+against it, and you will conquer!"
+
+"You are so simple, so simple!" cried Felice.  "You think, because you
+guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you know the
+extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good deal more may
+have been going on than you have fathomed with all your insight.  I
+CANNOT give him up until he chooses to give up me."
+
+"But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and the
+cut must come from you."
+
+"Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I must! I
+shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after meeting you like
+this and finding how guileless you are." She thereupon whispered a few
+words in the girl's ear, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing.
+
+Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang to
+her feet.
+
+"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation transcending
+her utmost suspicion.  "Can it be--can it be!"
+
+She turned as if to hasten away.  But Felice Charmond's sobs came to
+her ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees rocked and
+chanted their diriges and placebos around her, and she did not know
+which way to go.  After a moment of energy she felt mild again, and
+turned to the motionless woman at her feet.
+
+"Are you rested?" she asked, in what seemed something like her own
+voice grown ten years older.
+
+Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose.
+
+"You mean to betray me!" she said from the bitterest depths of her
+soul.  "Oh fool, fool I!"
+
+"No," said Grace, shortly.  "I mean no such thing.  But let us be quick
+now.  We have a serious undertaking before us.  Think of nothing but
+going straight on."
+
+They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now growing
+wet, and treading down woodbine, but still keeping a pretty straight
+course.  Grace began to be thoroughly worn out, and her companion too,
+when, on a sudden, they broke into the deserted highway at the hill-top
+on which the Sherton man had waited for Mrs. Dollery's van.  Grace
+recognized the spot as soon as she looked around her.
+
+"How we have got here I cannot tell," she said, with cold civility.
+"We have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. The hazel copse is
+quite on the other side.  Now we have only to follow the road."
+
+They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the track
+to Little Hintock, and so reached the park.
+
+"Here I turn back," said Grace, in the same passionless voice. "You are
+quite near home."
+
+Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission.
+
+"I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to
+unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as the
+grave," she said.  "I cannot help it now.  Is it to be a secret--or do
+you mean war?"
+
+"A secret, certainly," said Grace, mournfully.  "How can you expect war
+from such a helpless, wretched being as I!"
+
+"And I'll do my best not to see him.  I am his slave; but I'll try."
+
+Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small dagger
+now.
+
+"Pray don't distress yourself," she said, with exquisitely fine scorn.
+"You may keep him--for me." Had she been wounded instead of mortified
+she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers's hold upon her heart
+was slight.
+
+They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward. Passing
+Marty's cottage she observed through the window that the girl was
+writing instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what her
+correspondence could be.  Directly afterwards she met people in search
+of her, and reached the house to find all in serious alarm.  She soon
+explained that she had lost her way, and her general depression was
+attributed to exhaustion on that account.
+
+Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been
+surprised.
+
+The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the
+young girl, and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that
+Mrs. Charmond wore her hair.  It was poor Marty's only card, and she
+played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and thinking her revelation a
+fatal one for a lover.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between
+Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just returned from
+London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired
+carriage.  In his eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his
+refined face showed a vague disquietude.  He appeared now like one of
+those who impress the beholder as having suffered wrong in being born.
+
+His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it
+seemed even gloomier than it was.  His practice had been slowly
+dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the
+irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's very
+door.  Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of
+his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of
+his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first--a
+letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her again.  To
+bring about their severance still more effectually, she added, she had
+decided during his absence upon almost immediate departure for the
+Continent.
+
+The time was that dull interval in a woodlander's life which coincides
+with great activity in the life of the woodland itself--a period
+following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and preceding the
+barking season, when the saps are just beginning to heave with the
+force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of the forest.
+
+Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were
+deserted.  It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the nightingales
+would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and "the Mother of the Months"
+was in her most attenuated phase--starved and bent to a mere bowed
+skeleton, which glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitzpiers's
+company.
+
+When he reached home he went straight up to his wife's sitting-room.
+He found it deserted, and without a fire.  He had mentioned no day for
+his return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not there waiting to
+receive him.  On descending to the other wing of the house and
+inquiring of Mrs. Melbury, he learned with much surprise that Grace had
+gone on a visit to an acquaintance at Shottsford-Forum three days
+earlier; that tidings had on this morning reached her father of her
+being very unwell there, in consequence of which he had ridden over to
+see her.
+
+Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now
+lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by the
+entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she threw on
+the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled about the
+fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable. Fitzpiers
+considered that Grace ought to have let him know her plans more
+accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went
+desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down,
+and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of
+smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson's chimney, signifying that the
+young woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper.
+
+He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite side of
+the court.  Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to the sawyers,
+and was telling them in a loud voice news in which the name of Mrs.
+Charmond soon arrested his ears.
+
+"Grammer, don't make so much noise with that grate," said the surgeon;
+at which Grammer reared herself upon her knees and held the fuel
+suspended in her hand, while Fitzpiers half opened the casement.
+
+"She is off to foreign lands again at last--hev made up her mind quite
+sudden-like--and it is thoughted she'll leave in a day or two.  She's
+been all as if her mind were low for some days past--with a sort of
+sorrow in her face, as if she reproached her own soul.  She's the wrong
+sort of woman for Hintock--hardly knowing a beech from a woak--that I
+own.  But I don't care who the man is, she's been a very kind friend to
+me.
+
+"Well, the day after to-morrow is the Sabbath day, and without charity
+we are but tinkling simples; but this I do say, that her going will be
+a blessed thing for a certain married couple who remain."
+
+The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of it, restless
+as the last leaf upon a tree.  "A sort of sorrow in her face, as if she
+reproached her own soul." Poor Felice.  How Felice's frame must be
+pulsing under the conditions of which he had just heard the caricature;
+how her fair temples must ache; what a mood of wretchedness she must be
+in! But for the mixing up of his name with hers, and her determination
+to sunder their too close acquaintance on that account, she would
+probably have sent for him professionally. She was now sitting alone,
+suffering, perhaps wishing that she had not forbidden him to come again.
+
+Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to wait for the
+meal which was in course of preparation, he made himself ready for
+riding, descended to the yard, stood by the stable-door while Darling
+was being saddled, and rode off down the lane.  He would have preferred
+walking, but was weary with his day's travel.
+
+As he approached the door of Marty South's cottage, which it was
+necessary to pass on his way, she came from the porch as if she had
+been awaiting him, and met him in the middle of the road, holding up a
+letter.  Fitzpiers took it without stopping, and asked over his
+shoulder from whom it came.
+
+Marty hesitated.  "From me," she said, shyly, though with noticeable
+firmness.
+
+This letter contained, in fact, Marty's declaration that she was the
+original owner of Mrs. Charmond's supplementary locks, and enclosed a
+sample from the native stock, which had grown considerably by this
+time.  It was her long contemplated apple of discord, and much her hand
+trembled as she handed the document up to him.
+
+But it was impossible on account of the gloom for Fitzpiers to read it
+then, while he had the curiosity to do so, and he put it in his pocket.
+His imagination having already centred itself on Hintock House, in his
+pocket the letter remained unopened and forgotten, all the while that
+Marty was hopefully picturing its excellent weaning effect upon him.
+
+He was not long in reaching the precincts of the Manor House.  He drew
+rein under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the front, and
+reflected a while.  His entry would not be altogether unnatural in the
+circumstances of her possible indisposition; but upon the whole he
+thought it best to avoid riding up to the door. By silently approaching
+he could retreat unobserved in the event of her not being alone.
+Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling to a stray bough hanging a
+little below the general browsing line of the trees, and proceeded to
+the door on foot.
+
+In the mean time Melbury had returned from Shottsford-Forum.  The great
+court or quadrangle of the timber-merchant's house, divided from the
+shady lane by an ivy-covered wall, was entered by two white gates, one
+standing near each extremity of the wall.  It so happened that at the
+moment when Fitzpiers was riding out at the lower gate on his way to
+the Manor House, Melbury was approaching the upper gate to enter it.
+Fitzpiers being in front of Melbury was seen by the latter, but the
+surgeon, never turning his head, did not observe his father-in-law,
+ambling slowly and silently along under the trees, though his horse too
+was a gray one.
+
+"How is Grace?" said his wife, as soon as he entered.
+
+Melbury looked gloomy.  "She is not at all well," he said.  "I don't
+like the looks of her at all.  I couldn't bear the notion of her biding
+away in a strange place any longer, and I begged her to let me get her
+home.  At last she agreed to it, but not till after much persuading.  I
+was then sorry that I rode over instead of driving; but I have hired a
+nice comfortable carriage--the easiest-going I could get--and she'll be
+here in a couple of hours or less.  I rode on ahead to tell you to get
+her room ready; but I see her husband has come back."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Melbury.  She expressed her concern that her husband
+had hired a carriage all the way from Shottsford.  "What it will cost!"
+she said.
+
+"I don't care what it costs!" he exclaimed, testily.  "I was determined
+to get her home.  Why she went away I can't think! She acts in a way
+that is not at all likely to mend matters as far as I can see." (Grace
+had not told her father of her interview with Mrs. Charmond, and the
+disclosure that had been whispered in her startled ear.) "Since Edgar
+is come," he continued, "he might have waited in till I got home, to
+ask me how she was, if only for a compliment.  I saw him go out; where
+is he gone?"
+
+Mrs. Melbury did not know positively; but she told her husband that
+there was not much doubt about the place of his first visit after an
+absence.  She had, in fact, seen Fitzpiers take the direction of the
+Manor House.
+
+Melbury said no more.  It was exasperating to him that just at this
+moment, when there was every reason for Fitzpiers to stay indoors, or
+at any rate to ride along the Shottsford road to meet his ailing wife,
+he should be doing despite to her by going elsewhere.  The old man went
+out-of-doors again; and his horse being hardly unsaddled as yet, he
+told Upjohn to retighten the girths, when he again mounted, and rode
+off at the heels of the surgeon.
+
+By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go any
+lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his daughter's
+husband.  He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means,
+rough or fair: in his view there could come of his interference nothing
+worse than what existed at present.  And yet to every bad there is a
+worse.
+
+He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the park on this
+side, and cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of
+Fitzpiers's horse, till he reached the clump of trees under which his
+precursor had halted.  The whitish object that was indistinctly visible
+here in the gloom of the boughs he found to be Darling, as left by
+Fitzpiers.
+
+"D--n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an honest way?" said
+Melbury.
+
+He profited by Fitzpiers's example; dismounting, he tied his horse
+under an adjoining tree, and went on to the house on foot, as the other
+had done.  He was no longer disposed to stick at trifles in his
+investigation, and did not hesitate to gently open the front door
+without ringing.
+
+The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and wainscot, was
+lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam.  Not a soul was visible.  He
+went into the corridor and listened at a door which he knew to be that
+of the drawing-room; there was no sound, and on turning the handle he
+found the room empty.  A fire burning low in the grate was the sole
+light of the apartment; its beams flashed mockingly on the somewhat
+showy Versaillese furniture and gilding here, in style as unlike that
+of the structural parts of the building as it was possible to be, and
+probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English gloom
+of the place.  Disappointed in his hope of confronting his son-in-law
+here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without light or fire,
+and pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified that she had not
+dined there that day.
+
+By this time Melbury's mood had a little mollified.  Everything here
+was so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no longer
+incited to provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with anybody.  The
+comparative stateliness of the apartments influenced him to an emotion,
+rather than to a belief, that where all was outwardly so good and
+proper there could not be quite that delinquency within which he had
+suspected.  It occurred to him, too, that even if his suspicion were
+justified, his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into the house might
+end in confounding its inhabitant at the expense of his daughter's
+dignity and his own. Any ill result would be pretty sure to hit Grace
+hardest in the long-run.  He would, after all, adopt the more rational
+course, and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs.
+Charmond.
+
+He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come.  Passing the door
+of the drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise within which
+was not the crackling of the fire.  Melbury gently reopened the door to
+a distance of a few inches, and saw at the opposite window two figures
+in the act of stepping out--a man and a woman--in whom he recognized
+the lady of the house and his son-in-law.  In a moment they had
+disappeared amid the gloom of the lawn.
+
+He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage-entrance
+door, coming round to the lawn front in time to see the two figures
+parting at the railing which divided the precincts of the house from
+the open park.  Mrs. Charmond turned to hasten back immediately that
+Fitzpiers had left her side, and he was speedily absorbed into the
+duskiness of the trees.
+
+Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the drawing-room, and
+then followed after Fitzpiers, thinking that he would allow the latter
+to mount and ride ahead a little way before overtaking him and giving
+him a piece of his mind.  His son-in-law might possibly see the second
+horse near his own; but that would do him no harm, and might prepare
+him for what he was to expect.
+
+The event, however, was different from the plan.  On plunging into the
+thick shade of the clump of oaks, he could not perceive his horse
+Blossom anywhere; but feeling his way carefully along, he by-and-by
+discerned Fitzpiers's mare Darling still standing as before under the
+adjoining tree.  For a moment Melbury thought that his own horse, being
+young and strong, had broken away from her fastening; but on listening
+intently he could hear her ambling comfortably along a little way
+ahead, and a creaking of the saddle which showed that she had a rider.
+Walking on as far as the small gate in the corner of the park, he met a
+laborer, who, in reply to Melbury's inquiry if he had seen any person
+on a gray horse, said that he had only met Dr. Fitzpiers.
+
+It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had mounted
+the mare which did not belong to him in mistake for his own--an
+oversight easily explicable, in a man ever unwitting in horse-flesh, by
+the darkness of the spot and the near similarity of the animals in
+appearance, though Melbury's was readily enough seen to be the grayer
+horse by day.  He hastened back, and did what seemed best in the
+circumstances--got upon old Darling, and rode rapidly after Fitzpiers.
+
+Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding along the cart-way
+which led through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mould with large ruts
+that were formed by the timber-wagons in fetching the spoil of the
+plantations, when all at once he descried in front, at a point where
+the road took a turning round a large chestnut-tree, the form of his
+own horse Blossom, at which Melbury quickened Darling's pace, thinking
+to come up with Fitzpiers.
+
+Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider.  At Melbury's
+approach it galloped friskily away under the trees in a homeward
+direction.  Thinking something was wrong, the timber-merchant
+dismounted as soon as he reached the chestnut, and after feeling about
+for a minute or two discovered Fitzpiers lying on the ground.
+
+"Here--help!" cried the latter as soon as he felt Melbury's touch; "I
+have been thrown off, but there's not much harm done, I think."
+
+Since Melbury could not now very well read the younger man the lecture
+he had intended, and as friendliness would be hypocrisy, his instinct
+was to speak not a single word to his son-in-law.  He raised Fitzpiers
+into a sitting posture, and found that he was a little stunned and
+stupefied, but, as he had said, not otherwise hurt.  How this fall had
+come about was readily conjecturable: Fitzpiers, imagining there was
+only old Darling under him, had been taken unawares by the younger
+horse's sprightliness.
+
+Melbury was a traveller of the old-fashioned sort; having just come
+from Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket the pilgrim's flask
+of rum which he always carried on journeys exceeding a dozen miles,
+though he seldom drank much of it.  He poured it down the surgeon's
+throat, with such effect that he quickly revived.  Melbury got him on
+his legs; but the question was what to do with him.  He could not walk
+more than a few steps, and the other horse had gone away.
+
+With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling,
+mounting himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist with one
+arm.  Darling being broad, straight-backed, and high in the withers,
+was well able to carry double, at any rate as far as Hintock, and at a
+gentle pace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the copse
+where Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil where the oaks
+grew; past Great Willy, the largest oak in the wood, and thence towards
+Nellcombe Bottom, intensely dark now with overgrowth, and popularly
+supposed to be haunted by the spirits of the fratricides exorcised from
+Hintock House.
+
+By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical strength.
+But he had eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast in London that
+morning, his anxiety about Felice having hurried him away from home
+before dining; as a consequence, the old rum administered by his
+father-in-law flew to the young man's head and loosened his tongue,
+without his ever having recognized who it was that had lent him a
+kindly hand.  He began to speak in desultory sentences, Melbury still
+supporting him.
+
+"I've come all the way from London to-day," said Fitzpiers.  "Ah,
+that's the place to meet your equals.  I live at Hintock--worse, at
+Little Hintock--and I am quite lost there.  There's not a man within
+ten miles of Hintock who can comprehend me.  I tell you, Farmer
+What's-your-name, that I'm a man of education.  I know several
+languages; the poets and I are familiar friends; I used to read more in
+metaphysics than anybody within fifty miles; and since I gave that up
+there's nobody can match me in the whole county of Wessex as a
+scientist.  Yet I an doomed to live with tradespeople in a miserable
+little hole like Hintock!"
+
+"Indeed!" muttered Melbury.
+
+Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared himself
+up suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held, thrusting his
+shoulders so violently against Melbury's breast as to make it difficult
+for the old man to keep a hold on the reins. "People don't appreciate
+me here!" the surgeon exclaimed; lowering his voice, he added, softly
+and slowly, "except one--except one!...A passionate soul, as warm as
+she is clever, as beautiful as she is warm, and as rich as she is
+beautiful.  I say, old fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather
+tight--rather like the eagle's, you know, that ate out the liver of
+Pro--Pre--the man on Mount Caucasus.  People don't appreciate me, I
+say, except HER. Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man!  She would have been
+mine, she would have taken my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so.
+I stooped to mate beneath me, and now I rue it."
+
+The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury, corporeally
+and mentally.  He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with his left arm,
+and he began to hate the contact.  He hardly knew what to do.  It was
+useless to remonstrate with Fitzpiers, in his intellectual confusion
+from the rum and from the fall.  He remained silent, his hold upon his
+companion, however, being stern rather than compassionate.
+
+"You hurt me a little, farmer--though I am much obliged to you for your
+kindness.  People don't appreciate me, I say.  Between ourselves, I am
+losing my practice here; and why?  Because I see matchless attraction
+where matchless attraction is, both in person and position.  I mention
+no names, so nobody will be the wiser. But I have lost her, in a
+legitimate sense, that is.  If I were a free man now, things have come
+to such a pass that she could not refuse me; while with her fortune
+(which I don't covet for itself) I should have a chance of satisfying
+an honorable ambition--a chance I have never had yet, and now never,
+never shall have, probably!"
+
+Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other's backbone, and his
+brain on fire with indignation, ventured to mutter huskily, "Why?"
+
+The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied, "Because I am
+tied and bound to another by law, as tightly as I am to you by your
+arm--not that I complain of your arm--I thank you for helping me.
+Well, where are we?  Not nearly home yet?...Home, say I.  It is a home!
+When I might have been at the other house over there."  In a stupefied
+way he flung his hand in the direction of the park.  "I was just two
+months too early in committing myself. Had I only seen the other
+first--"
+
+Here the old man's arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake.  "What are
+you doing?" continued the latter.  "Keep still, please, or put me down.
+I was saying that I lost her by a mere little two months! There is no
+chance for me now in this world, and it makes me reckless--reckless!
+Unless, indeed, anything should happen to the other one.  She is
+amiable enough; but if anything should happen to her--and I hear she is
+ill--well, if it should, I should be free--and my fame, my happiness,
+would be insured."
+
+These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in front
+of the timber-merchant.  Unable longer to master himself, Melbury, the
+skin of his face compressed, whipped away his spare arm from
+Fitzpiers's waist, and seized him by the collar.
+
+"You heartless villain--after all that we have done for ye!" he cried,
+with a quivering lip.  "And the money of hers that you've had, and the
+roof we've provided to shelter ye! It is to me, George Melbury, that
+you dare to talk like that!" The exclamation was accompanied by a
+powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung the young man head-long
+into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy thud upon the stumps of some
+undergrowth which had been cut during the winter preceding.  Darling
+continued her walk for a few paces farther and stopped.
+
+"God forgive me!" Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. "He
+tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I've murdered him!"
+
+He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which
+Fitzpiers had fallen.  To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon rise
+to his feet with a bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly under the
+trees.
+
+Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers's footsteps died away.
+"It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of Providence in
+providing leaves for his fall," he said to himself. And then his mind
+reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, and his indignation so mounted
+within him that he almost wished the fall had put an end to the young
+man there and then.
+
+He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing
+under some bushes.  Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went forward
+and easily caught the younger animal, now disheartened at its freak.
+He then made the pair of them fast to a tree, and turning back,
+endeavored to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully that,
+after all, he had gone further than he intended with the offender.
+
+But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes ploughing
+layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had once been
+leaves, he could not find him.  He stood still listening and looking
+round.  The breeze was oozing through the network of boughs as through
+a strainer; the trunks and larger branches stood against the light of
+the sky in the forms of writhing men, gigantic candelabra, pikes,
+halberds, lances, and whatever besides the fancy chose to make of them.
+Giving up the search, Melbury came back to the horses, and walked
+slowly homeward, leading one in each hand.
+
+
+It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been returning
+from Great to Little Hintock about the time of Fitzpiers's and
+Melbury's passage home along that route.  A horse-collar that had been
+left at the harness-mender's to be repaired was required for use at
+five o'clock next morning, and in consequence the boy had to fetch it
+overnight.  He put his head through the collar, and accompanied his
+walk by whistling the one tune he knew, as an antidote to fear.
+
+The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily along
+the track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect friend or foe,
+prudence suggested that he should cease his whistling and retreat among
+the trees till the horse and his rider had gone by; a course to which
+he was still more inclined when he found how noiselessly they
+approached, and saw that the horse looked pale, and remembered what he
+had read about Death in the Revelation.  He therefore deposited the
+collar by a tree, and hid himself behind it.  The horseman came on, and
+the youth, whose eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his great relief
+recognized the doctor.
+
+As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken Blossom for
+Darling, and he had not discovered his mistake when he came up opposite
+the boy, though he was somewhat surprised at the liveliness of his
+usually placid mare.  The only other pair of eyes on the spot whose
+vision was keen as the young carter's were those of the horse; and,
+with that strongly conservative objection to the unusual which animals
+show, Blossom, on eying the collar under the tree--quite invisible to
+Fitzpiers--exercised none of the patience of the older horse, but shied
+sufficiently to unseat so second-rate an equestrian as the surgeon.
+
+He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterwards found him. The
+boy ran away, salving his conscience for the desertion by thinking how
+vigorously he would spread the alarm of the accident when he got to
+Hintock--which he uncompromisingly did, incrusting the skeleton event
+with a load of dramatic horrors.
+
+Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, though not by her
+husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shottsford-Forum, had been paid for and
+dismissed.  The long drive had somewhat revived her, her illness being
+a feverish intermittent nervousness which had more to do with mind than
+body, and she walked about her sitting-room in something of a hopeful
+mood.  Mrs. Melbury had told her as soon as she arrived that her
+husband had returned from London.  He had gone out, she said, to see a
+patient, as she supposed, and he must soon be back, since he had had no
+dinner or tea.  Grace would not allow her mind to harbor any suspicion
+of his whereabouts, and her step-mother said nothing of Mrs. Charmond's
+rumored sorrows and plans of departure.
+
+So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently.  She had left
+Hintock in a turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs. Charmond,
+and had intended not to be at home when her husband returned.  But she
+had thought the matter over, and had allowed her father's influence to
+prevail and bring her back; and now somewhat regretted that Edgar's
+arrival had preceded hers.
+
+By-and-by Mrs. Melbury came up-stairs with a slight air of flurry and
+abruptness.
+
+"I have something to tell--some bad news," she said.  "But you must not
+be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been. Edgar has been
+thrown off his horse.  We don't think he is hurt much.  It happened in
+the wood the other side of Nellcombe Bottom, where 'tis said the ghosts
+of the brothers walk."
+
+She went on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the invented
+horrors that had been communicated by the boy.  "I thought it better to
+tell you at once," she added, "in case he should not be very well able
+to walk home, and somebody should bring him."
+
+Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than she represented,
+and Grace knew that she thought so.  She sat down dazed for a few
+minutes, returning a negative to her step-mother's inquiry if she could
+do anything for her.  "But please go into the bedroom," Grace said, on
+second thoughts, "and see if all is ready there--in case it is
+serious." Mrs. Melbury thereupon called Grammer, and they did as
+directed, supplying the room with everything they could think of for
+the accommodation of an injured man.
+
+Nobody was left in the lower part of the house.  Not many minutes
+passed when Grace heard a knock at the door--a single knock, not loud
+enough to reach the ears of those in the bedroom.  She went to the top
+of the stairs and said, faintly, "Come up," knowing that the door
+stood, as usual in such houses, wide open.
+
+Retreating into the gloom of the broad landing she saw rise up the
+stairs a woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice
+revealed her to be Suke Damson, in great fright and sorrow.  A streak
+of light from the partially closed door of Grace's room fell upon her
+face as she came forward, and it was drawn and pale.
+
+"Oh, Miss Melbury--I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers," she said, wringing her
+hands.  "This terrible news.  Is he dead? Is he hurted very bad? Tell
+me; I couldn't help coming; please forgive me, Miss Melbury--Mrs.
+Fitzpiers I would say!"
+
+Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the landing, and put
+her hands to her now flushed face and head.  Could she order Suke
+Damson down-stairs and out of the house? Her husband might be brought
+in at any moment, and what would happen? But could she order this
+genuinely grieved woman away?
+
+There was a dead silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said, "Why
+don't ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can't I see
+him--would it be so very wrong?"
+
+Before Grace had answered somebody else came to the door below--a
+foot-fall light as a roe's.  There was a hurried tapping upon the
+panel, as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner thought not
+whether a knocker were there or no.  Without a pause, and possibly
+guided by the stray beam of light on the landing, the newcomer ascended
+the staircase as the first had done.  Grace was sufficiently visible,
+and the lady, for a lady it was, came to her side.
+
+"I could make nobody hear down-stairs," said Felice Charmond, with lips
+whose dryness could almost be heard, and panting, as she stood like one
+ready to sink on the floor with distress.  "What is--the matter--tell
+me the worst! Can he live?" She looked at Grace imploringly, without
+perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at such a presence, had shrunk away
+into the shade.
+
+Mrs. Charmond's little feet were covered with mud; she was quite
+unconscious of her appearance now.  "I have heard such a dreadful
+report," she went on; "I came to ascertain the truth of it.  Is
+he--killed?"
+
+"She won't tell us--he's dying--he's in that room!" burst out Suke,
+regardless of consequences, as she heard the distant movements of Mrs.
+Melbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of the passage.
+
+"Where?" said Mrs. Charmond; and on Suke pointing out the direction,
+she made as if to go thither.
+
+Grace barred the way.  "He is not there," she said.  "I have not seen
+him any more than you.  I have heard a report only--not so bad as you
+think.  It must have been exaggerated to you."
+
+"Please do not conceal anything--let me know all!" said Felice,
+doubtingly.
+
+"You shall know all I know--you have a perfect right to know--who can
+have a better than either of you?" said Grace, with a delicate sting
+which was lost upon Felice Charmond now.  "I repeat, I have only heard
+a less alarming account than you have heard; how much it means, and how
+little, I cannot say.  I pray God that it means not much--in common
+humanity.  You probably pray the same--for other reasons."
+
+She regarded them both there in the dim light a while.
+
+They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not heeding
+her mood.  A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew.  It was well,
+very well, conventionally, to address either one of them in the wife's
+regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for
+losing their hearts to her husband.  But life, what was it, and who was
+she?  She had, like the singer of the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and
+chastened all the day long; but could she, by retributive words, in
+order to please herself--the individual--"offend against the
+generation," as he would not?
+
+"He is dying, perhaps," blubbered Suke Damson, putting her apron to her
+eyes.
+
+In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affection, agony of
+heart, all for a man who had wronged them--had never really behaved
+towards either of them anyhow but selfishly.  Neither one but would
+have wellnigh sacrificed half her life to him, even now. The tears
+which his possibly critical situation could not bring to her eyes
+surged over at the contemplation of these fellow-women. She turned to
+the balustrade, bent herself upon it, and wept.
+
+Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her handkerchief, and
+letting the tears run down silently.  While these three poor women
+stood together thus, pitying another though most to be pitied
+themselves, the pacing of a horse or horses became audible in the
+court, and in a moment Melbury's voice was heard calling to his
+stableman.  Grace at once started up, ran down the stairs and out into
+the quadrangle as her father crossed it towards the door.  "Father,
+what is the matter with him?" she cried.
+
+"Who--Edgar?" said Melbury, abruptly.  "Matter? Nothing.  What, my
+dear, and have you got home safe? Why, you are better already! But you
+ought not to be out in the air like this."
+
+"But he has been thrown off his horse!"
+
+"I know; I know.  I saw it.  He got up again, and walked off as well as
+ever.  A fall on the leaves didn't hurt a spry fellow like him.  He did
+not come this way," he added, significantly.  "I suppose he went to
+look for his horse.  I tried to find him, but could not.  But after
+seeing him go away under the trees I found the horse, and have led it
+home for safety.  So he must walk. Now, don't you stay out here in this
+night air."
+
+She returned to the house with her father.  When she had again ascended
+to the landing and to her own rooms beyond it was a great relief to her
+to find that both Petticoat the First and Petticoat the Second of her
+Bien-aime had silently disappeared.  They had, in all probability,
+heard the words of her father, and departed with their anxieties
+relieved.
+
+Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied themselves to see
+that she was comfortable.  Perceiving soon that she would prefer to be
+left alone they went away.
+
+Grace waited on.  The clock raised its voice now and then, but her
+husband did not return.  At her father's usual hour for retiring he
+again came in to see her.  "Do not stay up," she said, as soon as he
+entered.  "I am not at all tired.  I will sit up for him."
+
+"I think it will be useless, Grace," said Melbury, slowly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I have had a bitter quarrel with him; and on that account I hardly
+think he will return to-night."
+
+"A quarrel?  Was that after the fall seen by the boy?"
+
+Melbury nodded an affirmative, without taking his eyes off the candle.
+
+"Yes; it was as we were coming home together," he said.
+
+Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father was speaking.
+"How could you want to quarrel with him?" she cried, suddenly.  "Why
+could you not let him come home quietly if he were inclined to?  He is
+my husband; and now you have married me to him surely you need not
+provoke him unnecessarily.  First you induce me to accept him, and then
+you do things that divide us more than we should naturally be divided!"
+
+"How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?" said Melbury, with
+indignant sorrow.  "I divide you from your husband, indeed!  You little
+think--"
+
+He was inclined to say more--to tell her the whole story of the
+encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain entirely
+in hearing her despised.  But it would have greatly distressed her, and
+he forbore.  "You had better lie down.  You are tired," he said,
+soothingly.  "Good-night."
+
+The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling, broken
+only by the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury's stables.  Despite
+her father's advice Grace still waited up.  But nobody came.
+
+It was a critical time in Grace's emotional life that night.  She
+thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot
+Winterborne.
+
+"How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!" she said to herself.
+"How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he is
+attractive." The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these ideas
+might have been transformed into their corresponding emotions by a show
+of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers.  There was, in truth, a
+love-bird yearning to fly from her heart; and it wanted a lodging badly.
+
+But no husband came.  The fact was that Melbury had been much mistaken
+about the condition of Fitzpiers.  People do not fall headlong on
+stumps of underwood with impunity.  Had the old man been able to watch
+Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have observed that on rising and
+walking into the thicket he dropped blood as he went; that he had not
+proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs of being dizzy, and,
+raising his hands to his head, reeled and fell down.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock that
+night.  Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a customary
+hour; and over her drawing-room fire at the Manor House she sat as
+motionless and in as deep a reverie as Grace in her little apartment at
+the homestead.
+
+Having caught ear of Melbury's intelligence while she stood on the
+landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental distress,
+her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a rush.  She
+descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost, keeping close to
+the walls of the building till she got round to the gate of the
+quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed almost before Grace
+and her father had finished their discourse. Suke Damson had thought it
+well to imitate her superior in this respect, and, descending the back
+stairs as Felice descended the front, went out at the side door and
+home to her cottage.
+
+Once outside Melbury's gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed to
+the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and splitting
+her thin boots in her haste.  She entered her own dwelling, as she had
+emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. In other circumstances she
+would have felt some timidity at undertaking such an unpremeditated
+excursion alone; but her anxiety for another had cast out her fear for
+herself.
+
+Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it--the candles
+still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters gently pulled to,
+so as to hide the state of the window from the cursory glance of a
+servant entering the apartment.  She had been gone about three-quarters
+of an hour by the clock, and nobody seemed to have discovered her
+absence.  Tired in body but tense in mind, she sat down, palpitating,
+round-eyed, bewildered at what she had done.
+
+She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now that
+the emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief that
+Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. This was
+how she had set about doing her best to escape her passionate bondage
+to him! Somehow, in declaring to Grace and to herself the unseemliness
+of her infatuation, she had grown a convert to its irresistibility.  If
+Heaven would only give her strength; but Heaven never did! One thing
+was indispensable; she must go away from Hintock if she meant to
+withstand further temptation.  The struggle was too wearying, too
+hopeless, while she remained.  It was but a continual capitulation of
+conscience to what she dared not name.
+
+By degrees, as she sat, Felice's mind--helped perhaps by the anticlimax
+of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her fright about
+him--grew wondrously strong in wise resolve.  For the moment she was in
+a mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, "to run mad with
+discretion;" and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure that
+she wished to set about going that very minute.  Jumping up from her
+seat, she began to gather together some small personal knick-knacks
+scattered about the room, to feel that preparations were really in
+train.
+
+While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight noise
+out-of-doors, and stood still.  Surely it was a tapping at the window.
+A thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek.  He had come to that
+window before; yet was it possible that he should dare to do so now!
+All the servants were in bed, and in the ordinary course of affairs she
+would have retired also.  Then she remembered that on stepping in by
+the casement and closing it, she had not fastened the window-shutter,
+so that a streak of light from the interior of the room might have
+revealed her vigil to an observer on the lawn.  How all things
+conspired against her keeping faith with Grace!
+
+The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird; her
+illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back the
+shutter, determining, however, to shake her head at him and keep the
+casement securely closed.
+
+What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter than
+a helpless woman's at midnight.  In the centre of the lowest pane of
+the window, close to the glass, was a human face, which she barely
+recognized as the face of Fitzpiers.  It was surrounded with the
+darkness of the night without, corpse-like in its pallor, and covered
+with blood.  As disclosed in the square area of the pane it met her
+frightened eyes like a replica of the Sudarium of St. Veronica.
+
+He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly.  Her rapid mind
+pieced together in an instant a possible concatenation of events which
+might have led to this tragical issue.  She unlatched the casement with
+a terrified hand, and bending down to where he was crouching, pressed
+her face to his with passionate solicitude. She assisted him into the
+room without a word, to do which it was almost necessary to lift him
+bodily.  Quickly closing the window and fastening the shutters, she
+bent over him breathlessly.
+
+"Are you hurt much--much?" she cried, faintly.  "Oh, oh, how is this!"
+
+"Rather much--but don't be frightened," he answered in a difficult
+whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if possible.
+"A little water, please."
+
+She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and glass,
+from which he eagerly drank.  He could then speak much better, and with
+her help got upon the nearest couch.
+
+"Are you dying, Edgar?" she said.  "Do speak to me!"
+
+"I am half dead," said Fitzpiers.  "But perhaps I shall get over
+it....It is chiefly loss of blood."
+
+"But I thought your fall did not hurt you," said she.  "Who did this?"
+
+"Felice--my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a mile on
+my hands and knees--God, I thought I should never have got here!...I
+have come to you--be-cause you are the only friend--I have in the world
+now....I can never go back to Hintock--never--to the roof of the
+Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever medicine this bitter
+feud!...If I were only well again--"
+
+"Let me bind your head, now that you have rested."
+
+"Yes--but wait a moment--it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, or I
+should be a dead man before now.  While in the wood I managed to make a
+tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well as I could
+in the dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me till I am well?
+Whatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. My practice is nearly
+gone, you know--and after this I would not care to recover it if I
+could."
+
+By this time Felice's tears began to blind her.  Where were now her
+discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To administer to him
+in his pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her single thought.  The
+first step was to hide him, and she asked herself where.  A place
+occurred to her mind.
+
+She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him
+much.  Then she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now keep
+himself upright by leaning upon her on one side and a walking-stick on
+the other, they went thus in slow march out of the room and up the
+stairs.  At the top she took him along a gallery, pausing whenever he
+required rest, and thence up a smaller staircase to the least used part
+of the house, where she unlocked a door.  Within was a lumber-room,
+containing abandoned furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles
+which obscured the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks
+and lairs in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye
+gaze in at the door.  The articles were mainly those that had belonged
+to the previous owner of the house, and had been bought in by the late
+Mr. Charmond at the auction; but changing fashion, and the tastes of a
+young wife, had caused them to be relegated to this dungeon.
+
+Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had hauled
+out materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in one of the
+aforesaid nooks.  She obtained water and a basin, and washed the dried
+blood from his face and hands; and when he was comfortably reclining,
+fetched food from the larder.  While he ate her eyes lingered anxiously
+on his face, following its every movement with such loving-kindness as
+only a fond woman can show.
+
+He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with her.
+
+"What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage any
+man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his presence.  But
+I did not know him, and I was stupefied by what he had given me, so
+that I hardly was aware of what I said.  Well--the veil of that temple
+is rent in twain!...As I am not going to be seen again in Hintock, my
+first efforts must be directed to allay any alarm that may be felt at
+my absence, before I am able to get clear away.  Nobody must suspect
+that I have been hurt, or there will be a country talk about me.
+Felice, I must at once concoct a letter to check all search for me.  I
+think if you can bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do it now.
+I could rest better if it were done.  Poor thing! how I tire her with
+running up and down!"
+
+She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a
+support to his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal wife.
+
+"The animosity shown towards me by your father," he wrote, in this
+coldest of marital epistles, "is such that I cannot return again to a
+roof which is his, even though it shelters you.  A parting is
+unavoidable, as you are sure to be on his side in this division. I am
+starting on a journey which will take me a long way from Hintock, and
+you must not expect to see me there again for some time."
+
+He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional
+engagements and other practical matters, concluding without a hint of
+his destination, or a notion of when she would see him again. He
+offered to read the note to Felice before he closed it up, but she
+would not hear or see it; that side of his obligations distressed her
+beyond endurance.  She turned away from Fitzpiers, and sobbed bitterly.
+
+"If you can get this posted at a place some miles away," he whispered,
+exhausted by the effort of writing--"at Shottsford or Port-Bredy, or
+still better, Budmouth--it will divert all suspicion from this house as
+the place of my refuge."
+
+"I will drive to one or other of the places myself--anything to keep it
+unknown," she murmured, her voice weighted with vague foreboding, now
+that the excitement of helping him had passed away.
+
+Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to be done. "In
+creeping over the fence on to the lawn," he said, "I made the rail
+bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint--I could see it in
+the dark.  At all hazards it should be washed off. Could you do that
+also, Felice?"
+
+What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was she
+went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-floor,
+then to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid under her
+cloak; then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into the night.  The
+white railing stared out in the darkness at her approach, and a ray
+from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the blood--just where he had told
+her it would be found.  She shuddered.  It was almost too much to bear
+in one day--but with a shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and
+returned to the house.
+
+The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less than
+two hours.  When all was done, and she had smoothed his extemporized
+bed, and placed everything within his reach that she could think of,
+she took her leave of him, and locked him in.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon it the
+postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind that
+Fitzpiers was within a mile of her still.  She felt relieved that he
+did not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her father, whatever
+its nature might have been; but the general frigidity of his
+communication quenched in her the incipient spark that events had
+kindled so shortly before.
+
+From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that the
+doctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household was aware
+that he did not return on the night of his accident, no excitement
+manifested itself in the village.
+
+Thus the early days of May passed by.  None but the nocturnal birds and
+animals observed that late one evening, towards the middle of the
+month, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under one arm and a
+stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House across the lawn to the
+shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow and laborious walk to the
+nearest point of the turnpike-road.  The mysterious personage was so
+disguised that his own wife would hardly have known him.  Felice
+Charmond was a practised hand at make-ups, as well she might be; and
+she had done her utmost in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old
+materials of her art in the recesses of the lumber-room.
+
+In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed him to
+Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on the south
+coast, and immediately crossed the Channel.
+
+But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs.
+Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long term
+of travel and residence on the Continent.  She went off one morning as
+unostentatiously as could be, and took no maid with her, having, she
+said, engaged one to meet her at a point farther on in her route.
+After that, Hintock House, so frequently deserted, was again to be let.
+Spring had not merged in summer when a clinching rumor, founded on the
+best of evidence, reached the parish and neighborhood.  Mrs. Charmond
+and Fitzpiers had been seen together in Baden, in relations which set
+at rest the question that had agitated the little community ever since
+the winter.
+
+Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than Grace.
+His spirit seemed broken.
+
+But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here, as
+he was passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition expressed
+largely by his gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice formerly
+familiar.  He turned and saw a certain Fred Beaucock--once a promising
+lawyer's clerk and local dandy, who had been called the cleverest
+fellow in Sherton, without whose brains the firm of solicitors
+employing him would be nowhere.  But later on Beaucock had fallen into
+the mire.  He was invited out a good deal, sang songs at agricultural
+meetings and burgesses' dinners; in sum, victualled himself with
+spirits more frequently than was good for the clever brains or body
+either.  He lost his situation, and after an absence spent in trying
+his powers elsewhere, came back to his native town, where, at the time
+of the foregoing events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for
+astonishingly small fees--mostly carrying on his profession on
+public-house settles, in whose recesses he might often have been
+overheard making country-people's wills for half a crown; calling with
+a learned voice for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny sheet of paper, on
+which he drew up the testament while resting it in a little space wiped
+with his hand on the table amid the liquid circles formed by the cups
+and glasses.  An idea implanted early in life is difficult to uproot,
+and many elderly tradespeople still clung to the notion that Fred
+Beaucock knew a great deal of law.
+
+It was he who had called Melbury by name.  "You look very down, Mr.
+Melbury--very, if I may say as much," he observed, when the
+timber-merchant turned.  "But I know--I know.  A very sad case--very.
+I was bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally no stranger
+to such matters.  Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her remedy."
+
+"How--what--a remedy?" said Melbury.
+
+"Under the new law, sir.  A new court was established last year, and
+under the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap. eighty-five,
+unmarrying is as easy as marrying.  No more Acts of Parliament
+necessary; no longer one law for the rich and another for the poor.
+But come inside--I was just going to have a nibleykin of rum hot--I'll
+explain it all to you."
+
+The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. And
+though he was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no taste
+for entering a tavern with Fred Beaucock--nay, would have been quite
+uninfluenced by such a character on any other matter in the world--such
+fascination lay in the idea of delivering his poor girl from bondage,
+that it deprived him of the critical faculty. He could not resist the
+ex-lawyer's clerk, and entered the inn.
+
+Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter of
+course, Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal gravity which
+would hardly allow him to be conscious of the spirits before him,
+though they nevertheless disappeared with mysterious quickness.
+
+How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce laws
+which Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of ignorance,
+and how much of dupery, was never ascertained.  But he related such a
+plausible story of the ease with which Grace could become a free woman
+that her father was irradiated with the project; and though he scarcely
+wetted his lips, Melbury never knew how he came out of the inn, or when
+or where he mounted his gig to pursue his way homeward.  But home he
+found himself, his brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorously
+as a gong in the intensity of its stir.  Before he had seen Grace, he
+was accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if
+he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel.
+
+He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a heap of
+rendlewood--as barked oak was here called--which lay under a
+privet-hedge.
+
+"Giles," he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, "there's a new
+law in the land! Grace can be free quite easily.  I only knew it by the
+merest accident.  I might not have found it out for the next ten years.
+She can get rid of him--d'ye hear?--get rid of him.  Think of that, my
+friend Giles!"
+
+He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy.  A subdued
+tremulousness about the mouth was all the response that Winterborne
+made; and Melbury added, "My boy, you shall have her yet--if you want
+her." His feelings had gathered volume as he said this, and the
+articulate sound of the old idea drowned his sight in mist.
+
+"Are you sure--about this new law?" asked Winterborne, so disquieted by
+a gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with fearful doubt that
+he evaded the full acceptance of Melbury's last statement.
+
+Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk with
+Beaucock it had come into his mind that he had seen some time ago in
+the weekly paper an allusion to such a legal change; but, having no
+interest in those desperate remedies at the moment, he had passed it
+over.  "But I'm not going to let the matter rest doubtful for a single
+day," he continued.  "I am going to London. Beaucock will go with me,
+and we shall get the best advice as soon as we possibly can.  Beaucock
+is a thorough lawyer--nothing the matter with him but a fiery palate.
+I knew him as the stay and refuge of Sherton in knots of law at one
+time."
+
+Winterborne's replies were of the vaguest.  The new possibility was
+almost unthinkable by him at the moment.  He was what was called at
+Hintock "a solid-going fellow;" he maintained his abeyant mood, not
+from want of reciprocity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by life
+as he knew it.
+
+"But," continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two of
+anxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by time
+and care, "Grace is not at all well.  Nothing constitutional, you know;
+but she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that night of
+fright.  I don't doubt but that she will be all right soon....I wonder
+how she is this evening?" He rose with the words, as if he had too long
+forgotten her personality in the excitement of her previsioned career.
+
+They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden brown,
+and now went towards Melbury's house, Giles a few steps in the rear of
+his old friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm of the moment to
+outstep the ordinary walking of Winterborne.  He felt shy of entering
+Grace's presence as her reconstituted lover--which was how her
+father's manner would be sure to present him--before definite
+information as to her future state was forthcoming; it seemed too
+nearly like the act of those who rush in where angels fear to tread.
+
+A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was prompt
+enough in coming.  No sooner had he followed the timber-merchant in at
+the door than he heard Grammer inform him that Mrs. Fitzpiers was still
+more unwell than she had been in the morning. Old Dr. Jones being in
+the neighborhood they had called him in, and he had instantly directed
+them to get her to bed.  They were not, however, to consider her
+illness serious--a feverish, nervous attack the result of recent
+events, was what she was suffering from, and she would doubtless be
+well in a few days.
+
+Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her that
+evening was disappointed.  Even this aggravation of her morning
+condition did not greatly depress Melbury.  He knew, he said, that his
+daughter's constitution was sound enough.  It was only these domestic
+troubles that were pulling her down.  Once free she would be blooming
+again.  Melbury diagnosed rightly, as parents usually do.
+
+He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another visit
+and assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness, especially
+on an errand of that sort, which would the sooner put an end to her
+suspense.
+
+The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was told in
+Hintock that Mr. Fitzpiers's hat had been found in the wood.  Later on
+in the afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury, and, by a piece of
+ill-fortune, into Grace's presence.  It had doubtless lain in the wood
+ever since his fall from the horse, but it looked so clean and
+uninjured--the summer weather and leafy shelter having much favored its
+preservation--that Grace could not believe it had remained so long
+concealed.  A very little of fact was enough to set her fevered fancy
+at work at this juncture; she thought him still in the neighborhood;
+she feared his sudden appearance; and her nervous malady developed
+consequences so grave that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and the
+household was alarmed.
+
+It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the summer
+scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours during the
+night.  The bird's note, so familiar to her ears from infancy, was now
+absolute torture to the poor girl.  On the Friday following the
+Wednesday of Melbury's departure, and the day after the discovery of
+Fitzpiers's hat, the cuckoo began at two o'clock in the morning with a
+sudden cry from one of Melbury's apple-trees, not three yards from the
+window of Grace's room.
+
+"Oh, he is coming!" she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from the
+bed out upon the floor.
+
+These starts and frights continued till noon; and when the doctor had
+arrived and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he sat down
+and meditated.  That ever-present terror it was indispensable to remove
+from her mind at all hazards; and he thought how this might be done.
+
+Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the disquieted
+Winterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went home and wrote to
+Mr. Melbury at the London address he had obtained from his wife.  The
+gist of his communication was that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as
+soon as possible that steps were being taken to sever the bond which
+was becoming a torture to her; that she would soon be free, and was
+even then virtually so. "If you can say it AT ONCE it may be the means
+of averting much harm," he said.  "Write to herself; not to me."
+
+On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with mysterious
+pacifications that in a day or two she might expect to receive some
+assuring news.  So it turned out.  When Sunday morning came there was a
+letter for Grace from her father.  It arrived at seven o'clock, the
+usual time at which the toddling postman passed by Hintock; at eight
+Grace awoke, having slept an hour or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melbury
+brought up the letter.
+
+"Can you open it yourself?" said she.
+
+"Oh yes, yes!" said Grace, with feeble impatience.  She tore the
+envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush tinctured
+her white neck and cheek.
+
+Her father had exercised a bold discretion.  He informed her that she
+need have no further concern about Fitzpiers's return; that she would
+shortly be a free woman; and therefore, if she should desire to wed her
+old lover--which he trusted was the case, since it was his own deep
+wish--she would be in a position to do so.  In this Melbury had not
+written beyond his belief.  But he very much stretched the facts in
+adding that the legal formalities for dissolving her union were
+practically settled.  The truth was that on the arrival of the doctor's
+letter poor Melbury had been much agitated, and could with difficulty
+be prevented by Beaucock from returning to her bedside.  What was the
+use of his rushing back to Hintock? Beaucock had asked him.  The only
+thing that could do her any good was a breaking of the bond.  Though he
+had not as yet had an interview with the eminent solicitor they were
+about to consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case was
+clear enough.  Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm at
+her danger by the representations of his companion, and by the doctor's
+letter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly that she was
+virtually free.
+
+"And you'd better write also to the gentleman," suggested Beaucock,
+who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice in the case,
+wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to effect which he knew
+that nothing would be so potent as awakening the passion of Grace for
+Winterborne, so that her father might not have the heart to withdraw
+from his attempt to make her love legitimate when he discovered that
+there were difficulties in the way.
+
+The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of
+"starting them at once," as he called it.  To put his long-delayed
+reparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now.  He added
+to the letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting that she
+ought to begin to encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose him
+altogether; and he wrote to Giles that the path was virtually open for
+him at last.  Life was short, he declared; there were slips betwixt the
+cup and the lip; her interest in him should be reawakened at once, that
+all might be ready when the good time came for uniting them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was moved in
+heart.  The novelty of the avowal rendered what it carried with it
+inapprehensible by him in its entirety.
+
+Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this
+family--beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with
+the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the then
+popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his social
+boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded were hardly
+faded yet--he was now asked by that jealously guarding father of hers
+to take courage--to get himself ready for the day when he should be
+able to claim her.
+
+The old times came back to him in dim procession.  How he had been
+snubbed; how Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that sweet,
+coy Grace herself had looked down upon him and his household
+arrangements, and poor Creedle's contrivances!
+
+Well, he could not believe it.  Surely the adamantine barrier of
+marriage with another could not be pierced like this! It did violence
+to custom.  Yet a new law might do anything.  But was it at all within
+the bounds of probability that a woman who, over and above her own
+attainments, had been accustomed to those of a cultivated professional
+man, could ever be the wife of such as he?
+
+Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the
+reasonableness of that treatment.  He had said to himself again and
+again that her father was right; that the poor ceorl, Giles
+Winterborne, would never have been able to make such a dainty girl
+happy.  Yet, now that she had stood in a position farther removed from
+his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her. He was full
+of doubt.
+
+Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness.  To act so
+promptly as Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely wise,
+because of the uncertainty of events.  Giles knew nothing of legal
+procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace as a lover
+before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved was simply an
+extravagant dream of her father's overstrained mind. He pitied Melbury
+for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that the aging man must
+have suffered acutely to be weakened to this unreasoning desire.
+
+Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical conjecture
+that the timber-merchant, in his intense affection for Grace, was
+courting him now because that young lady, when disunited, would be left
+in an anomalous position, to escape which a bad husband was better than
+none.  He felt quite sure that his old friend was simply on tenterhooks
+of anxiety to repair the almost irreparable error of dividing two whom
+Nature had striven to join together in earlier days, and that in his
+ardor to do this he was oblivious of formalities. The cautious
+supervision of his past years had overleaped itself at last.  Hence,
+Winterborne perceived that, in this new beginning, the necessary care
+not to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised by
+himself.
+
+Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore.  There is no
+such thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more or loving
+less.  But Giles himself recognized no decline in his sense of her
+dearness.  If the flame did indeed burn lower now than when he had
+fetched her from Sherton at her last return from school, the marvel was
+small.  He had been laboring ever since his rejection and her marriage
+to reduce his former passion to a docile friendship, out of pure regard
+to its expediency; and their separation may have helped him to a
+partial success.
+
+A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury. But
+the effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon the
+elastic-nerved daughter of the woods had been much what the old surgeon
+Jones had surmised.  It had soothed her perturbed spirit better than
+all the opiates in the pharmacopoeia.  She had slept unbrokenly a whole
+night and a day.  The "new law" was to her a mysterious, beneficent,
+godlike entity, lately descended upon earth, that would make her as she
+once had been without trouble or annoyance.  Her position fretted her,
+its abstract features rousing an aversion which was even greater than
+her aversion to the personality of him who had caused it.  It was
+mortifying, productive of slights, undignified.  Him she could forget;
+her circumstances she had always with her.
+
+She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery; and
+perhaps on that account her fancy wove about him a more romantic tissue
+than it could have done if he had stood before her with all the specks
+and flaws inseparable from corporeity.  He rose upon her memory as the
+fruit-god and the wood-god in alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared
+with green lichen, as she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the
+plantations; sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair
+of his arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in
+White Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him.  In her secret
+heart she almost approximated to her father's enthusiasm in wishing to
+show Giles once for all how she still regarded him. The question
+whether the future would indeed bring them together for life was a
+standing wonder with her.  She knew that it could not with any
+propriety do so just yet.  But reverently believing in her father's
+sound judgment and knowledge, as good girls are wont to do, she
+remembered what he had written about her giving a hint to Winterborne
+lest there should be risk in delay, and her feelings were not averse to
+such a step, so far as it could be done without danger at this early
+stage of the proceedings.
+
+From being a frail phantom of her former equable self she returned in
+bounds to a condition of passable philosophy.  She bloomed again in the
+face in the course of a few days, and was well enough to go about as
+usual.  One day Mrs. Melbury proposed that for a change she should be
+driven in the gig to Sherton market, whither Melbury's man was going on
+other errands.  Grace had no business whatever in Sherton; but it
+crossed her mind that Winterborne would probably be there, and this
+made the thought of such a drive interesting.
+
+On the way she saw nothing of him; but when the horse was walking
+slowly through the obstructions of Sheep Street, she discerned the
+young man on the pavement.  She thought of that time when he had been
+standing under his apple-tree on her return from school, and of the
+tender opportunity then missed through her fastidiousness. Her heart
+rose in her throat.  She abjured all such fastidiousness now.  Nor did
+she forget the last occasion on which she had beheld him in that town,
+making cider in the court-yard of the Earl of Wessex Hotel, while she
+was figuring as a fine lady in the balcony above.
+
+Grace directed the man to set her down there in the midst, and
+immediately went up to her lover.  Giles had not before observed her,
+and his eyes now suppressedly looked his pleasure, without the
+embarrassment that had formerly marked him at such meetings.
+
+When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly, "I have nothing to
+do.  Perhaps you are deeply engaged?"
+
+"I?  Not a bit.  My business now at the best of times is small, I am
+sorry to say."
+
+"Well, then, I am going into the Abbey.  Come along with me."
+
+The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape from publicity,
+for many eyes were regarding her.  She had hoped that sufficient time
+had elapsed for the extinction of curiosity; but it was quite
+otherwise.  The people looked at her with tender interest as the
+deserted girl-wife--without obtrusiveness, and without vulgarity; but
+she was ill prepared for scrutiny in any shape.
+
+They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down.  Not a soul
+was in the building save themselves.  She regarded a stained window,
+with her head sideways, and tentatively asked him if he remembered the
+last time they were in that town alone.
+
+He remembered it perfectly, and remarked, "You were a proud miss then,
+and as dainty as you were high.  Perhaps you are now?"
+
+Grace slowly shook her head.  "Affliction has taken all that out of
+me," she answered, impressively.  "Perhaps I am too far the other way
+now." As there was something lurking in this that she could not
+explain, she added, so quickly as not to allow him time to think of it,
+"Has my father written to you at all?"
+
+"Yes," said Winterborne.
+
+She glanced ponderingly up at him.  "Not about me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had been
+bidden to take the hint as to the future which she had been bidden to
+give.  The unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation through Grace
+for the moment.  However, it was only Giles who stood there, of whom
+she had no fear; and her self-possession returned.
+
+"He said I was to sound you with a view to--what you will understand,
+if you care to," continued Winterborne, in a low voice.  Having been
+put on this track by herself, he was not disposed to abandon it in a
+hurry.
+
+They had been children together, and there was between them that
+familiarity as to personal affairs which only such acquaintanceship can
+give.  "You know, Giles," she answered, speaking in a very practical
+tone, "that that is all very well; but I am in a very anomalous
+position at present, and I cannot say anything to the point about such
+things as those."
+
+"No?" he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject.  He was
+looking at her with a curious consciousness of discovery.  He had not
+been imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her to him
+thus.  For the first time he realized an unexpectedness in her, which,
+after all, should not have been unexpected.  She before him was not the
+girl Grace Melbury whom he used to know. Of course, he might easily
+have prefigured as much; but it had never occurred to him.  She was a
+woman who had been married; she had moved on; and without having lost
+her girlish modesty, she had lost her girlish shyness.  The inevitable
+change, though known to him, had not been heeded; and it struck him
+into a momentary fixity.  The truth was that he had never come into
+close comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the
+brief exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met
+him with his cider apparatus; and that interview had been of too
+cursory a kind for insight.
+
+Winterborne had advanced, too.  He could criticise her.  Times had been
+when to criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have lain as
+far beyond his powers as to criticise a deity.  This thing was sure: it
+was a new woman in many ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of
+more ideas, more dignity, and, above all, more assurance, than the
+original Grace had been capable of.  He could not at first decide
+whether he were pleased or displeased at this. But upon the whole the
+novelty attracted him.
+
+She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence betokened
+something in his brain of the nature of an enemy to her. "What are you
+thinking of that makes those lines come in your forehead?" she asked.
+"I did not mean to offend you by speaking of the time being premature
+as yet."
+
+Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the foundation
+of these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his face aside, as
+he took her by the hand.  He was grieved that he had criticised her.
+
+"You are very good, dear Grace," he said, in a low voice.  "You are
+better, much better, than you used to be."
+
+"How?"
+
+He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an evasive smile,
+"You are prettier;" which was not what he really had meant. He then
+remained still holding her right hand in his own right, so that they
+faced in opposite ways; and as he did not let go, she ventured upon a
+tender remonstrance.
+
+"I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present--and far
+enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the same as ever. You see,
+Giles, my case is not settled yet, and if--Oh, suppose I NEVER get
+free!--there should be any hitch or informality!"
+
+She drew a catching breath, and turned pale.  The dialogue had been
+affectionate comedy up to this point.  The gloomy atmosphere of the
+past, and the still gloomy horizon of the present, had been for the
+interval forgotten.  Now the whole environment came back, the due
+balance of shade among the light was restored.
+
+"It is sure to be all right, I trust?" she resumed, in uneasy accents.
+"What did my father say the solicitor had told him?"
+
+"Oh--that all is sure enough.  The case is so clear--nothing could be
+clearer.  But the legal part is not yet quite done and finished, as is
+natural."
+
+"Oh no--of course not," she said, sunk in meek thought.  "But father
+said it was ALMOST--did he not? Do you know anything about the new law
+that makes these things so easy?"
+
+"Nothing--except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted husbands
+and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do without an Act of
+Parliament."
+
+"Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like
+that?"
+
+"Yes, I believe so."
+
+"How long has it been introduced?"
+
+"About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think."
+
+To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law would
+have made a humane person weep who should have known what a dangerous
+structure they were building up on their supposed knowledge.  They
+remained in thought, like children in the presence of the
+incomprehensible.
+
+"Giles," she said, at last, "it makes me quite weary when I think how
+serious my situation is, or has been.  Shall we not go out from here
+now, as it may seem rather fast of me--our being so long together, I
+mean--if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure," she added,
+uncertainly, "that I ought not to let you hold my hand yet, knowing
+that the documents--or whatever it may be--have not been signed; so
+that I--am still as married as ever--or almost. My dear father has
+forgotten himself.  Not that I feel morally bound to any one else,
+after what has taken place--no woman of spirit could--now, too, that
+several months have passed.  But I wish to keep the proprieties as well
+as I can."
+
+"Yes, yes.  Still, your father reminds us that life is short.  I myself
+feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in this that we
+have begun.  At times, dear Grace, since receiving your father's
+letter, I am as uneasy and fearful as a child at what he said.  If one
+of us were to die before the formal signing and sealing that is to
+release you have been done--if we should drop out of the world and
+never have made the most of this little, short, but real opportunity, I
+should think to myself as I sunk down dying, 'Would to my God that I
+had spoken out my whole heart--given her one poor little kiss when I
+had the chance to give it! But I never did, although she had promised
+to be mine some day; and now I never can.' That's what I should think."
+
+She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful
+regard, as though their passage were visible; but as he went on she
+dropped her glance.  "Yes," she said, "I have thought that, too.  And,
+because I have thought it, I by no means meant, in speaking of the
+proprieties, to be reserved and cold to you who loved me so long ago,
+or to hurt your heart as I used to do at that thoughtless time.  Oh,
+not at all, indeed! But--ought I to allow you?--oh, it is too
+quick--surely!"  Her eyes filled with tears of bewildered, alarmed
+emotion.
+
+Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further against
+her better judgment.  "Yes--I suppose it is," he said, repentantly.
+"I'll wait till all is settled.  What did your father say in that last
+letter?"
+
+He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking him,
+frankly spoke of the personal part.  "He said--what I have implied.
+Should I tell more plainly?"
+
+"Oh no--don't, if it is a secret."
+
+"Not at all.  I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you wish.
+He said I was to encourage you.  There.  But I cannot obey him further
+to-day.  Come, let us go now." She gently slid her hand from his, and
+went in front of him out of the Abbey.
+
+"I was thinking of getting some dinner," said Winterborne, changing to
+the prosaic, as they walked.  "And you, too, must require something.
+Do let me take you to a place I know."
+
+Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her father's
+house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no society; had
+sometimes, indeed, brought her deeper solitude and inconsideration than
+any she had ever known before.  Hence it was a treat to her to find
+herself again the object of thoughtful care.  But she questioned if to
+go publicly to dine with Giles Winterborne were not a proposal, due
+rather to his unsophistication than to his discretion.  She said gently
+that she would much prefer his ordering her lunch at some place and
+then coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in the Abbey
+porch.  Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly blind to
+propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she wished.
+
+He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he had
+left her.  "It will be quite ready by the time you get there," he said,
+and told her the name of the inn at which the meal had been ordered,
+which was one that she had never heard of.
+
+"I'll find it by inquiry," said Grace, setting out.
+
+"And shall I see you again?"
+
+"Oh yes--come to me there.  It will not be like going together.  I
+shall want you to find my father's man and the gig for me."
+
+He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he thought
+her lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage of her
+invitation to start her on her way home.  He went straight to The Three
+Tuns--a little tavern in a side street, scrupulously clean, but humble
+and inexpensive.  On his way he had an occasional misgiving as to
+whether the place had been elegant enough for her; and as soon as he
+entered it, and saw her ensconced there, he perceived that he had
+blundered.
+
+Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old hostelry
+could boast of, which was also a general parlor on market-days; a long,
+low apartment, with a sanded floor herring-boned with a broom; a wide,
+red-curtained window to the street, and another to the garden.  Grace
+had retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the latter, the
+front part being full of a mixed company which had dropped in since he
+was there.
+
+She was in a mood of the greatest depression.  On arriving, and seeing
+what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise; but having
+gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and sat down on the
+well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table with its knives and
+steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-cellars, and posters
+advertising the sale of bullocks against the wall.  The last time that
+she had taken any meal in a public place it had been with Fitzpiers at
+the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel in that town, after a two months'
+roaming and sojourning at the gigantic hotels of the Continent.  How
+could she have expected any other kind of accommodation in present
+circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared
+she was for this change! The tastes that she had acquired from
+Fitzpiers had been imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed
+them till confronted by this contrast.  The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact,
+at that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for
+the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever they
+drove to Sherton.  But such is social sentiment, that she had been
+quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions, while she felt
+humiliated by her present situation, which Winterborne had paid for
+honestly on the nail.
+
+He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and all
+his pleasure was gone.  It was the same susceptibility over again which
+had spoiled his Christmas party long ago.
+
+But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual result
+of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to learn in spite
+of it--a consequence of one of those sudden surprises which confront
+everybody bent upon turning over a new leaf.  She had finished her
+lunch, which he saw had been a very mincing performance; and he brought
+her out of the house as soon as he could.
+
+"Now," he said, with great sad eyes, "you have not finished at all
+well, I know.  Come round to the Earl of Wessex.  I'll order a tea
+there.  I did not remember that what was good enough for me was not
+good enough for you."
+
+Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what had
+happened.  "Oh no, Giles," she said, with extreme pathos; "certainly
+not.  Why do you--say that when you know better?  You EVER will
+misunderstand me."
+
+"Indeed, that's not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers.  Can you deny that you felt out
+of place at The Three Tuns?"
+
+"I don't know.  Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny it."
+
+"And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years.  Your husband
+used always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he not?"
+
+"Yes," she reluctantly admitted.  How could she explain in the street
+of a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory taste which
+had been offended, and not her nature or her affection? Fortunately, or
+unfortunately, at that moment they saw Melbury's man driving vacantly
+along the street in search of her, the hour having passed at which he
+had been told to take her up. Winterborne hailed him, and she was
+powerless then to prolong the discourse.  She entered the vehicle
+sadly, and the horse trotted away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of a
+pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself.  He feared anew
+that they could never be happy together, even should she be free to
+choose him.  She was accomplished; he was unrefined.  It was the
+original difficulty, which he was too sensitive to recklessly ignore,
+as some men would have done in his place.
+
+He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little from
+others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on that very
+account scrutinize those others' behavior too closely. He was not
+versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had once had its
+rise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly recurred, as in the
+breasts of more sanguine mortals.  He had once worshipped her, laid out
+his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her.  Though it was with
+almost the same zest, it was with not quite the same hope, that he had
+begun to tread the old tracks again, and allowed himself to be so
+charmed with her that day.
+
+Move another step towards her he would not.  He would even repulse
+her--as a tribute to conscience.  It would be sheer sin to let her
+prepare a pitfall for her happiness not much smaller than the first by
+inveigling her into a union with such as he.  Her poor father was now
+blind to these subtleties, which he had formerly beheld as in noontide
+light.  It was his own duty to declare them--for her dear sake.
+
+
+Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous
+embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another letter
+from her father was put into her hands.  Its tenor was an intenser
+strain of the one that had preceded it.  After stating how extremely
+glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to get out-of-doors,
+he went on:
+
+"This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see being
+out of town.  I do not know when I shall get home.  My great anxiety in
+this delay is still lest you should lose Giles Winterborne.  I cannot
+rest at night for thinking that while our business is hanging fire he
+may become estranged, or go away from the neighborhood.  I have set my
+heart upon seeing him your husband, if you ever have another.  Do,
+then, Grace, give him some temporary encouragement, even though it is
+over-early.  For when I consider the past I do think God will forgive
+me and you for being a little forward.  I have another reason for this,
+my dear.  I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have
+still further helped me that way.  And until this thing is done I
+cannot rest in peace."
+
+He added a postscript:
+
+"I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow.
+Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get this."
+
+
+The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet in
+forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving offence.
+While craving to be a country girl again just as her father requested;
+to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss--or rather
+madam--completely, her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpected
+vitality of that fastidiousness.  Her father on returning and seeing
+the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the same
+perversity which had led her to make difficulties about marrying
+Fitzpiers was now prompting her to blow hot and cold with poor
+Winterborne.
+
+If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops of
+her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to let her
+drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of her estranging
+education, he could not have acted more seductively than he did that
+day.  He chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a field
+opposite her windows.  She could not discover what he was doing, but
+she read his mood keenly and truly: she could see in his coming and
+going an air of determined abandonment of the whole landscape that lay
+in her direction.
+
+Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in the
+evening--which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would be in
+train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to be won
+again--how could she look him in the face if he should see them
+estranged thus?
+
+It was a fair green evening in June.  She was seated in the garden, in
+the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes--made of peeled
+oak-branches that came to Melbury's premises as refuse after
+barking-time.  The mass of full-juiced leafage on the heights around
+her was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which,
+even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter.  All day she
+had expected Giles to call--to inquire how she had got home, or
+something or other; but he had not come.  And he still tantalized her
+by going athwart and across that orchard opposite.  She could see him
+as she sat.
+
+A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a
+letter.  She knew from this that Creedle had just come from Sherton,
+and had called as usual at the post-office for anything that had
+arrived by the afternoon post, of which there was no delivery at
+Hintock.  She pondered on what the letter might contain--particularly
+whether it were a second refresher for Winterborne from her father,
+like her own of the morning.
+
+But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever.  Giles read
+its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in the hedge
+of the orchard--if that could be called a hedge which, owing to the
+drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank with a bush upon it
+here and there.  He entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that
+way homeward to the mysterious hut he occupied on the other side of the
+woodland.
+
+The sad sands were running swiftly through Time's glass; she had often
+felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it doubly now
+after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father's communication.
+Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might
+suddenly end--might end that very hour. Men were so strange.  The
+thought took away from her all her former reticence, and made her
+action bold.  She started from her seat.  If the little breach,
+quarrel, or whatever it might be called, of yesterday, was to be healed
+up it must be done by her on the instant.  She crossed into the
+orchard, and clambered through the gap after Giles, just as he was
+diminishing to a faun-like figure under the green canopy and over the
+brown floor.
+
+Grace had been wrong--very far wrong--in assuming that the letter had
+no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the wood
+after its perusal.  It was, sad to say, because the missive had so much
+reference to herself that he had thus turned away.  He feared that his
+grieved discomfiture might be observed.  The letter was from Beaucock,
+written a few hours later than Melbury's to his daughter.  It announced
+failure.
+
+Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was the
+moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. During
+his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had naturally
+heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family scheme of justice to
+Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne at the earliest
+possible moment that their attempt had failed, in order that the young
+man should not place himself in a false position towards Grace in the
+belief of its coming success. The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers's
+conduct had not been sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap
+the bond.  She was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the
+chapter.
+
+Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor girl
+under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her which the
+almost tragical information engendered.
+
+To renounce her forever--that was then the end of it for him, after
+all.  There was no longer any question about suitability, or room for
+tiffs on petty tastes.  The curtain had fallen again between them.  She
+could not be his.  The cruelty of their late revived hope was now
+terrible.  How could they all have been so simple as to suppose this
+thing could be done?
+
+It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he
+turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets.  He perceived in
+an instant that she did not know the blighting news.
+
+"Giles, why didn't you come across to me?" she asked, with arch
+reproach.  "Didn't you see me sitting there ever so long?"
+
+"Oh yes," he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her
+unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of behavior
+in the conjuncture.  His manner made her think that she had been too
+chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she
+resolved to soften it.
+
+"I have had another letter from my father," she hastened to continue.
+"He thinks he may come home this evening.  And--in view of his
+hopes--it will grieve him if there is any little difference between us,
+Giles."
+
+"There is none," he said, sadly regarding her from the face downward as
+he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.
+
+"Still--I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being
+uncomfortable at the inn."
+
+"I have, Grace, I'm sure."
+
+"But you speak in quite an unhappy way," she returned, coming up close
+to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that appertained
+to her.  "Don't you think you will ever be happy, Giles?"
+
+He did not reply for some instants.  "When the sun shines on the north
+front of Sherton Abbey--that's when my happiness will come to me!" said
+he, staring as it were into the earth.
+
+"But--then that means that there is something more than my offending
+you in not liking The Three Tuns.  If it is because I--did not like to
+let you kiss me in the Abbey--well, you know, Giles, that it was not on
+account of my cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then,
+think it was rather premature, in spite of my poor father.  That was
+the true reason--the sole one. But I do not want to be hard--God knows
+I do not," she said, her voice fluctuating.  "And perhaps--as I am on
+the verge of freedom--I am not right, after all, in thinking there is
+any harm in your kissing me."
+
+"Oh God!" said Winterborne within himself.  His head was turned askance
+as he still resolutely regarded the ground.  For the last several
+minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him in regular
+siege; and now it had come.  The wrong, the social sin, of now taking
+advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude, in the eyes of one
+whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by purest household laws, as
+Giles's, which can hardly be explained.
+
+"Did you say anything?" she asked, timidly.
+
+"Oh no--only that--"
+
+"You mean that it must BE settled, since my father is coming home?" she
+said, gladly.
+
+Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this
+while--though he would have protected Grace's good repute as the apple
+of his eye--was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not gods.  In
+face of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened
+school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he betrayed a
+man's weakness.  Since it was so--since it had come to this, that
+Grace, deeming herself free to do it, was virtually asking him to
+demonstrate that he loved her--since he could demonstrate it only too
+truly--since life was short and love was strong--he gave way to the
+temptation, notwithstanding that he perfectly well knew her to be
+wedded irrevocably to Fitzpiers.  Indeed, he cared for nothing past or
+future, simply accepting the present and what it brought, desiring once
+in his life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved so
+long.
+
+She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort of
+inspiration.  "Oh, I suppose," she stammered, "that I am really
+free?--that this is right? Is there REALLY a new law? Father cannot
+have been too sanguine in saying--"
+
+He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears in
+spite of herself.  "Oh, why does not my father come home and explain,"
+she sobbed, "and let me know clearly what I am? It is too trying, this,
+to ask me to--and then to leave me so long in so vague a state that I
+do not know what to do, and perhaps do wrong!"
+
+Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous sorrow.
+How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he knew.  He
+turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher and higher.
+How could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could hardly refrain from
+tears.  Surely nothing more pitiable had ever been known than the
+condition of this poor young thing, now as heretofore the victim of her
+father's well-meant but blundering policy.
+
+Even in the hour of Melbury's greatest assurance Winterborne had
+harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace's
+marriage without her appearance in public; though he was not
+sufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by his own
+words her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on her father's
+testimony, was going to be sufficient.  But he had never suspected the
+sad fact that the position was irremediable.
+
+Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much fluster
+for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he was.  "I am
+glad we are friends again anyhow," she said, smiling through her tears.
+"Giles, if you had only shown half the boldness before I married that
+you show now, you would have carried me off for your own first instead
+of second.  If we do marry, I hope you will never think badly of me for
+encouraging you a little, but my father is SO impatient, you know, as
+his years and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see us a
+little advanced when he comes.  That is my only excuse."
+
+To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet.  How could she so
+trust her father's conjectures? He did not know how to tell her the
+truth and shame himself.  And yet he felt that it must be done.  "We
+may have been wrong," he began, almost fearfully, "in supposing that it
+can all be carried out while we stay here at Hintock.  I am not sure
+but that people may have to appear in a public court even under the new
+Act; and if there should be any difficulty, and we cannot marry after
+all--"
+
+Her cheeks became slowly bloodless.  "Oh, Giles," she said, grasping
+his arm, "you have heard something! What--cannot my father conclude it
+there and now? Surely he has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don't deceive
+me.  What terrible position am I in?"
+
+He could not tell her, try as he would.  The sense of her implicit
+trust in his honor absolutely disabled him.  "I cannot inform you," he
+murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves underfoot.  "Your
+father will soon be here.  Then we shall know. I will take you home."
+
+Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with the
+most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, "I will take you, at any
+rate, into the drive."
+
+Thus they walked on together.  Grace vibrating between happiness and
+misgiving.  It was only a few minutes' walk to where the drive ran, and
+they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice behind them
+cry, "Take out that arm!"
+
+For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more loudly and
+hoarsely,
+
+"Take out that arm!"
+
+It was Melbury's.  He had returned sooner than they expected, and now
+came up to them.  Grace's hand had been withdrawn like lightning on her
+hearing the second command.  "I don't blame you--I don't blame you,"
+he said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourgings.  "But
+you two must walk together no more--I have been surprised--I have been
+cruelly deceived--Giles, don't say anything to me; but go away!"
+
+He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth before
+he brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with him then.
+When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter in-doors to the
+room he used as his office.  There he sat down, and bent over the slope
+of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed upon him.
+
+When Melbury had recovered a little he said, "You are now, as ever,
+Fitzpiers's wife.  I was deluded.  He has not done you ENOUGH harm.
+You are still subject to his beck and call."
+
+"Then let it be, and never mind, father," she said, with dignified
+sorrow.  "I can bear it.  It is your trouble that grieves me most." She
+stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which distressed
+Melbury still more.  "I don't mind at all what comes to me," Grace
+continued; "whose wife I am, or whose I am not.  I do love Giles; I
+cannot help that; and I have gone further with him than I should have
+done if I had known exactly how things were. But I do not reproach you."
+
+"Then Giles did not tell you?" said Melbury.
+
+"No," said she.  "He could not have known it.  His behavior to me
+proved that he did not know."
+
+Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude of
+her chamber.
+
+Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put aside the
+dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards Giles.  His
+love-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would he on reflection
+contemn her for forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to
+suppose she was in a position to behave as she had done! Thus she
+mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in the centre of her heart she
+blessed it a little for what it had momentarily brought her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be suppressed
+and hide-bound for a while.  Grace seldom showed herself outside the
+house, never outside the garden; for she feared she might encounter
+Giles Winterborne; and that she could not bear.
+
+This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun appeared
+likely to continue for an indefinite time.  She had learned that there
+was one possibility in which her formerly imagined position might
+become real, and only one; that her husband's absence should continue
+long enough to amount to positive desertion.  But she never allowed her
+mind to dwell much upon the thought; still less did she deliberately
+hope for such a result.  Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied
+by the shock which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that
+had little to do with living and doing.
+
+As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut.  A
+feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some time,
+the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to acquire
+virulence with the prostration of his hopes.  But not a soul knew of
+his languor, and he did not think the case serious enough to send for a
+medical man.  After a few days he was better again, and crept about his
+home in a great coat, attending to his simple wants as usual with his
+own hands.  So matters stood when the limpid inertion of Grace's
+pool-like existence was disturbed as by a geyser.  She received a
+letter from Fitzpiers.
+
+Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the
+gentlest language.  In his absence Grace had grown to regard him with
+toleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she had
+almost forgotten how trying his presence would be.  He wrote briefly
+and unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her that he was
+living quite alone, and had been led to think that they ought to be
+together, if she would make up her mind to forgive him.  He therefore
+purported to cross the Channel to Budmouth by the steamer on a day he
+named, which she found to be three days after the time of her present
+reading.
+
+He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons, which
+her father would understand even better than herself.  As the only
+alternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer when it
+arrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an hour before
+midnight, bringing with her any luggage she might require; join him
+there, and pass with him into the twin vessel, which left immediately
+the other entered the harbor; returning thus with him to his
+continental dwelling-place, which he did not name.  He had no intention
+of showing himself on land at all.
+
+The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now continued for
+long hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as if he thought it
+were winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside him, mostly untasted,
+and coated with a film of dust.  After reading it he looked up.
+
+"You sha'n't go," said he.
+
+"I had felt I would not," she answered.  "But I did not know what you
+would say."
+
+"If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a
+respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I'll
+oppose him in wishing it," muttered Melbury.  "I'd stint myself to keep
+you both in a genteel and seemly style.  But go abroad you never shall
+with my consent."
+
+There the question rested that day.  Grace was unable to reply to her
+husband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and the next
+day, and the evening on which he had requested her to meet him.
+Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four walls of her
+room.
+
+The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be impending,
+hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury household.  They spoke
+almost in whispers, and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next.  It was
+the hope of every one that, finding she did not arrive, he would return
+again to France; and as for Grace, she was willing to write to him on
+the most kindly terms if he would only keep away.
+
+The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her relatives,
+in great part, likewise.  When they met the next morning they were pale
+and anxious, though neither speaking of the subject which occupied all
+their thoughts.  The day passed as quietly as the previous ones, and
+she began to think that in the rank caprice of his moods he had
+abandoned the idea of getting her to join him as quickly as it was
+formed.  All on a sudden, some person who had just come from Sherton
+entered the house with the news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home
+to Hintock.  He had been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex
+Hotel.
+
+Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was
+announced.
+
+"Now," said Melbury, "we must make the best of what has been a very bad
+matter.  The man is repenting; the partner of his shame, I hear, is
+gone away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of his life is
+probably over.  If he chooses to make a home for ye I think you should
+not say him nay, Grace.  Certainly he cannot very well live at Hintock
+without a blow to his pride; but if he can bear that, and likes Hintock
+best, why, there's the empty wing of the house as it was before."
+
+"Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay.
+
+"Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. He
+was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her husband
+just now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction that he had
+treated him over-roughly in his anger.  "Surely it is the most
+respectable thing to do?" he continued.  "I don't like this state that
+you are in--neither married nor single.  It hurts me, and it hurts you,
+and it will always be remembered against us in Hintock.  There has
+never been any scandal like it in the family before."
+
+"He will be here in less than an hour," murmured Grace.  The twilight
+of the room prevented her father seeing the despondent misery of her
+face.  The one intolerable condition, the condition she had deprecated
+above all others, was that of Fitzpiers's reinstatement there.  "Oh, I
+won't, I won't see him," she said, sinking down.  She was almost
+hysterical.
+
+"Try if you cannot," he returned, moodily.
+
+"Oh yes, I will, I will," she went on, inconsequently.  "I'll try;" and
+jumping up suddenly, she left the room.
+
+In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could have
+been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a quick
+breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who combined
+modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by such
+coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take her
+scourgings to their exquisite extremity.
+
+The window was open.  On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever
+sound arose in so secluded a district--the chirp of a bird, a call from
+a voice, the turning of a wheel--extended over bush and tree to
+unwonted distances.  Very few sounds did arise.  But as Grace invisibly
+breathed in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise of
+light wheels came in to her, accompanied by the trot of a horse on the
+turnpike-road.  There seemed to be a sudden hitch or pause in the
+progress of the vehicle, which was what first drew her attention to it.
+She knew the point whence the sound proceeded--the hill-top over which
+travellers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas--the place
+at which she had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond.  Grace slid
+along the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening with
+open lips.  The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use
+exclamatory words.  Then another said, "What the devil is the matter
+with the horse?" She recognized the voice as her husband's.
+
+The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the carriage
+could be heard descending the hill on the Hintock side, soon to turn
+into the lane leading out of the highway, and then into the "drong"
+which led out of the lane to the house where she was.
+
+A spasm passed through Grace.  The Daphnean instinct, exceptionally
+strong in her as a girl, had been revived by her widowed seclusion; and
+it was not lessened by her affronted sentiments towards the comer, and
+her regard for another man.  She opened some little ivory tablets that
+lay on the dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, "I am
+gone to visit one of my school-friends," gathered a few toilet
+necessaries into a hand-bag, and not three minutes after that voice
+had been heard, her slim form, hastily wrapped up from observation,
+might have been seen passing out of the back door of Melbury's house.
+Thence she skimmed up the garden-path, through the gap in the hedge,
+and into the mossy cart-track under the trees which led into the depth
+of the woods.
+
+The leaves overhead were now in their latter green--so opaque, that it
+was darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-time, scarce a
+crevice existing by which a ray could get down to the ground.  But in
+open places she could see well enough.  Summer was ending: in the
+daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam; vegetation was heavy
+nightly with globes of dew; and after showers creeping damps and
+twilight chills came up from the hollows.  The plantations were always
+weird at this hour of eve--more spectral far than in the leafless
+season, when there were fewer masses and more minute lineality.  The
+smooth surfaces of glossy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes;
+there were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had
+somehow wandered into the canopied obscurity; while now and then low
+peeps of the sky between the trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on
+the tips of boughs sat faint cloven tongues.
+
+But Grace's fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and she
+heeded these impressions but little.  She went on as silently as she
+could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated, and
+stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts.  She paused breathlessly
+once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her
+strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning in at the
+gate of her father's premises.  She hastened on again.
+
+The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left behind,
+and those into which she next plunged were divided from the latter by a
+bank, from whose top the hedge had long ago perished--starved for want
+of sun.  It was with some caution that Grace now walked, though she was
+quite free from any of the commonplace timidities of her ordinary
+pilgrimages to such spots. She feared no lurking harms, but that her
+effort would be all in vain, and her return to the house rendered
+imperative.
+
+She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptive
+comfort and relief to wanderers in woods--a distant light--broke at
+last upon her searching eyes.  It was so very small as to be almost
+sinister to a stranger, but to her it was what she sought. She pushed
+forward, and the dim outline of a dwelling was disclosed.
+
+The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all sides
+to a chimney in the midst.  It had formerly been the home of a
+charcoal-burner, in times when that fuel was still used in the county
+houses.  Its only appurtenance was a paled enclosure, there being no
+garden, the shade of the trees preventing the growth of vegetables.
+She advanced to the window whence the rays of light proceeded, and the
+shutters being as yet unclosed, she could survey the whole interior
+through the panes.
+
+The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; the
+natural sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long treading,
+so that none of the furniture stood level, and the table slanted like a
+desk.  A fire burned on the hearth, in front of which revolved the
+skinned carcass of a rabbit, suspended by a string from a nail.
+Leaning with one arm on the mantle-shelf stood Winterborne, his eyes on
+the roasting animal, his face so rapt that speculation could build
+nothing on it concerning his thoughts, more than that they were not
+with the scene before him. She thought his features had changed a
+little since she saw them last.  The fire-light did not enable her to
+perceive that they were positively haggard.
+
+Grace's throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so nearly
+as she had hoped.  She went to the door and tapped lightly.
+
+He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers, squirrels, and
+such small creatures, for he took no notice of her tiny signal, and she
+knocked again.  This time he came and opened the door.  When the light
+of the room fell upon her face he started, and, hardly knowing what he
+did, crossed the threshold to her, placing his hands upon her two arms,
+while surprise, joy, alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns.  With
+Grace it was the same: even in this stress there was the fond fact that
+they had met again.  Thus they stood,
+
+    "Long tears upon their faces, waxen white
+         With extreme sad delight."
+
+
+He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, "Come in."
+
+"No, no, Giles!" she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther back
+from the door.  "I am passing by--and I have called on you--I won't
+enter.  Will you help me?  I am afraid.  I want to get by a roundabout
+way to Sherton, and so to Exbury.  I have a school-fellow there--but I
+cannot get to Sherton alone.  Oh, if you will only accompany me a
+little way! Don't condemn me, Giles, and be offended! I was obliged to
+come to you because--I have no other help here.  Three months ago you
+were my lover; now you are only my friend.  The law has stepped in, and
+forbidden what we thought of.  It must not be.  But we can act
+honestly, and yet you can be my friend for one little hour?  I have no
+other--"
+
+She could get no further.  Covering her eyes with one hand, by an
+effort of repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or sob.
+Winterborne took her other hand.  "What has happened?" he said.
+
+"He has come."
+
+There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, "You mean
+this, Grace--that I am to help you to get away?"
+
+"Yes," said she.  "Appearance is no matter, when the reality is right.
+I have said to myself I can trust you."
+
+Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery--if it
+could be called such--earlier in the summer, when they met for the last
+time as lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for that tender
+wrong, he determined to deserve her faith now at least, and so wipe out
+that reproach from his conscience.  "I'll come at once," he said.
+"I'll light a lantern."
+
+He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did not
+notice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream that in
+making this offer he was taxing a convalescence which could ill afford
+such self-sacrifice.  The lantern was lit, and they started.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees,
+whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain.  By the
+time that they emerged upon a glade it rained heavily.
+
+"This is awkward," said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern.
+
+Winterborne stopped.  "Grace," he said, preserving a strictly business
+manner which belied him, "you cannot go to Sherton to-night."
+
+"But I must!"
+
+"Why? It is nine miles from here.  It is almost an impossibility in
+this rain."
+
+"True--WHY?" she replied, mournfully, at the end of a silence. "What is
+reputation to me?"
+
+"Now hearken," said Giles.  "You won't--go back to your--"
+
+"No, no, no!  Don't make me!" she cried, piteously.
+
+"Then let us turn." They slowly retraced their steps, and again stood
+before his door.  "Now, this house from this moment is yours, and not
+mine," he said, deliberately.  "I have a place near by where I can stay
+very well."
+
+Her face had drooped.  "Oh!" she murmured, as she saw the dilemma.
+"What have I done!"
+
+There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked through
+the window.  The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a weak
+appetite was beginning to char.  "Please go in and attend to it," he
+said.  "Do what you like.  Now I leave.  You will find everything about
+the hut that is necessary."
+
+"But, Giles--your supper," she exclaimed.  "An out-house would do for
+me--anything--till to-morrow at day-break!"
+
+He signified a negative.  "I tell you to go in--you may catch agues out
+here in your delicate state.  You can give me my supper through the
+window, if you feel well enough.  I'll wait a while."
+
+He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he saw
+her within the room sitting down.  Without so much as crossing the
+threshold himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the key in
+the lock.  Tapping at the window, he signified that she should open the
+casement, and when she had done this he handed in the key to her.
+
+"You are locked in," he said; "and your own mistress."
+
+Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at his
+scrupulousness, as she took the door-key.
+
+"Do you feel better?" he went on.  "If so, and you wish to give me some
+of your supper, please do.  If not, it is of no importance. I can get
+some elsewhere."
+
+The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though she
+only knew half what that kindness really was.  At the end of some ten
+minutes she again came to the window, pushed it open, and said in a
+whisper, "Giles!"  He at once emerged from the shade, and saw that she
+was preparing to hand him his share of the meal upon a plate.
+
+"I don't like to treat you so hardly," she murmured, with deep regret
+in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. "But--I
+suppose it is best to arrange like this?"
+
+"Oh yes," he said, quickly.
+
+"I feel that I could never have reached Sherton."
+
+"It was impossible."
+
+"Are you sure you have a snug place out there?" (With renewed
+misgiving.)
+
+"Quite.  Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is rather
+rough accommodation."
+
+"Can I notice defects?  I have long passed that stage, and you know it,
+Giles, or you ought to."
+
+His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness
+modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too clearly
+to what a pitch she was strung.  If ever Winterborne's heart fretted
+his bosom it was at this sight of a perfectly defenceless creature
+conditioned by such circumstances.  He forgot his own agony in the
+satisfaction of having at least found her a shelter.  He took his plate
+and cup from her hands, saying, "Now I'll push the shutter to, and you
+will find an iron pin on the inside, which you must fix into the bolt.
+Do not stir in the morning till I come and call you."
+
+She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away.
+
+"Oh no--I shall be quite within hail," said Winterborne.
+
+She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated.  His snug place
+proved to be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind, formed of
+four hurdles thatched with brake-fern.  Underneath were dry sticks,
+hay, and other litter of the sort, upon which he sat down; and there in
+the dark tried to eat his meal.  But his appetite was quite gone.  He
+pushed the plate aside, and shook up the hay and sacks, so as to form a
+rude couch, on which he flung himself down to sleep, for it was getting
+late.
+
+But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least was
+thought of his charge.  He sat up, and looked towards the cot through
+the damp obscurity.  With all its external features the same as usual,
+he could scarcely believe that it contained the dear friend--he would
+not use a warmer name--who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, he
+could not help admitting, so rashly.
+
+He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position was
+pretty clear without them.  Though social law had negatived forever
+their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not without stoical
+pride that he accepted the present trying conjuncture.  There was one
+man on earth in whom she believed absolutely, and he was that man.
+That this crisis could end in nothing but sorrow was a view for a
+moment effaced by this triumphant thought of her trust in him; and the
+purity of the affection with which he responded to that trust rendered
+him more than proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation
+to her.
+
+The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by beginning
+to drop through the meagre screen that covered him.  He rose to attempt
+some remedy for this discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the
+throbbing of his pulse told him that in his weakness he was unable to
+fence against the storm, and he lay down to bear it as best he might.
+He was angry with himself for his feebleness--he who had been so
+strong.  It was imperative that she should know nothing of his present
+state, and to do that she must not see his face by daylight, for its
+color would inevitably betray him.
+
+The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose and
+dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her
+everything she could require for getting breakfast within.  On the
+bench outside the window-sill he placed water, wood, and other
+necessaries, writing with a piece of chalk beside them, "It is best
+that I should not see you.  Put my breakfast on the bench."
+
+At seven o'clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised,
+retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him.  But from
+his shelter under the boughs he could see her very well, when, in
+response to his signal, she opened the window and the light fell upon
+her face.  The languid largeness of her eyes showed that her sleep had
+been little more than his own, and the pinkness of their lids, that her
+waking hours had not been free from tears.
+
+She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took up the
+materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way off.  Giles
+waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her culture, knew what
+country life was, would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of
+their food.
+
+Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though Grace had
+slept much longer than he.  After the loneliness of the night, she
+would have been glad to see him; but appreciating his feeling when she
+read the writing, she made no attempt to recall him.  She found
+abundance of provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his
+buttery weekly, and this being the day after the victualling van had
+called from Sherton.  When the meal was ready, she put what he required
+outside, as she had done with the supper; and, notwithstanding her
+longing to see him, withdrew from the window promptly, and left him to
+himself.
+
+It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its fall.
+As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he had gone
+away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had promised to accompany
+her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, by
+force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she was.  The
+morning wore on; and in her doubt when to start, and how to travel, she
+lingered yet, keeping the door carefully bolted, lest an intruder
+should discover her.  Locked in this place, she was comparatively safe,
+at any rate, and doubted if she would be safe elsewhere.
+
+The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade and
+drip of the leafage.  Autumn, this year, was coming in with rains.
+Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of the
+living-room, she could see various small members of the animal
+community that lived unmolested there--creatures of hair, fluff, and
+scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures,
+jointed and ringed--circumambulating the hut, under the impression
+that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and eying it
+inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters.  Watching these
+neighbors, who knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a little from
+her trouble; and she managed to while away some portion of the
+afternoon by putting Giles's home in order and making little
+improvements which she deemed that he would value when she was gone.
+
+Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the trees,
+resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she concluded that
+it was a squirrel or a bird.
+
+At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for the
+evenings were chilly.  As soon as it was too dark--which was
+comparatively early--to discern the human countenance in this place of
+shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a tapping which
+she knew from its method to be Giles's.
+
+She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him, though
+she could only just perceive his outline.  He clasped her fingers, and
+she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness.
+
+"He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly," she thought.
+How could she know that he had just crawled out from the straw of the
+shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was feverishness?
+
+"My dear, good Giles!" she burst out, impulsively.
+
+"Anybody would have done it for you," replied Winterborne, with as much
+matter-of-fact as he could summon.
+
+"About my getting to Exbury?" she said.
+
+"I have been thinking," responded Giles, with tender deference, "that
+you had better stay where you are for the present, if you wish not to
+be caught.  I need not tell you that the place is yours as long as you
+like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away.
+At any rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist--such
+as make inquiries, or go a great way towards Sherton-Abbas with you;
+for the cider season will soon be coming on, and I want to run down to
+the Vale to see how the crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road.
+But for a day or two I am busy here."  He was hoping that by the time
+mentioned he would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her
+behalf. "I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a
+prisoner?"
+
+She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed.
+
+From long acquaintance they could read each other's heart-symptoms like
+books of large type.  "I fear you are sorry you came," said Giles, "and
+that you think I should have advised you more firmly than I did not to
+stay."
+
+"Oh no, dear, dear friend," answered Grace, with a heaving bosom.
+"Don't think that that is what I regret.  What I regret is my enforced
+treatment of you--dislodging you, excluding you from your own house.
+Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you--what I have
+felt for no other living man, what I shall never feel for a man again!
+But as I have vowed myself to somebody else than you, and cannot be
+released, I must behave as I do behave, and keep that vow.  I am not
+bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done; but I have
+promised, and I will pay."
+
+The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things as
+she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon, an
+occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic views
+of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. The only
+infringement--if infringement it could be called--of his predetermined
+bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of her hand to his lips
+when she put it through the casement to bid him good-night.  He knew
+she was weeping, though he could not see her tears.
+
+She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating the
+cottage.  But it would only be for a day or two more, she thought,
+since go she must.
+
+He replied, yearningly, "I--I don't like you to go away."
+
+"Oh, Giles," said she, "I know--I know! But--I am a woman, and you are
+a man.  I cannot speak more plainly.  'Whatsoever things are pure,
+whatsoever things are of good report'--you know what is in my mind,
+because you know me so well."
+
+"Yes, Grace, yes.  I do not at all mean that the question between us
+has not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out
+hopelessly unalterable.  I merely meant--well, a feeling no more."
+
+"In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed here:
+and I think that by law he could compel me to return to him."
+
+"Yes; perhaps you are right.  Go when you wish, dear Grace."
+
+His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might be
+well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon her life,
+if he found that his presence cost her so much pain. Then the window
+was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died
+away.
+
+No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began to
+rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by rain.
+The wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it was difficult
+to believe that no opaque body, but only an invisible colorless thing,
+was trampling and climbing over the roof, making branches creak,
+springing out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head into the
+flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every corner of the walls.  As
+in the old story, the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but
+not seen.  She had never before been so struck with the devilry of a
+gusty night in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in
+spirit as she was now.  She seemed almost to be apart from herself--a
+vacuous duplicate only.  The recent self of physical animation and
+clear intentions was not there.
+
+Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to smite
+the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth of an
+adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood from the
+wound.  To all this weather Giles must be more or less exposed; how
+much, she did not know.
+
+At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in
+relation to him.  Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had caused
+it; he vacated his house on account of her.  She was not worth such
+self-sacrifice; she should not have accepted it of him. And then, as
+her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there returned upon her
+mind some incidents of her late intercourse with him, which she had
+heeded but little at the time.  The look of his face--what had there
+been about his face which seemed different from its appearance as of
+yore?  Was it not thinner, less rich in hue, less like that of ripe
+autumn's brother to whom she had formerly compared him? And his voice;
+she had distinctly noticed a change in tone.  And his gait; surely it
+had been feebler, stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man.  That
+slight occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to
+squirrels, it might have been his cough after all.
+
+Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne was
+ill, or had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his condition
+from her that she might have no scruples about accepting a hospitality
+which by the nature of the case expelled her entertainer.
+
+"My own, own, true l----, my dear kind friend!" she cried to herself.
+"Oh, it shall not be--it shall not be!"
+
+She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which she
+entered the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. Setting
+down the candle on the table here, she went to the door with the key in
+her hand, and placed it in the lock.  Before turning it she paused, her
+fingers still clutching it; and pressing her other hand to her
+forehead, she fell into agitating thought.
+
+A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing against
+it, brought her indecision to a close.  She turned the key and opened
+the door.
+
+The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a substance.
+She only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had been and was; the
+dripping of the eaves splashed like a fountain. She stood listening
+with parted lips, and holding the door in one hand, till her eyes,
+growing accustomed to the obscurity, discerned the wild brandishing of
+their boughs by the adjoining trees.  At last she cried loudly with an
+effort, "Giles! you may come in!"
+
+There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her own
+temerity, Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood looking on
+the floor.  But it was not for long.  She again lifted the latch, and
+with far more determination than at first.
+
+"Giles, Giles!" she cried, with the full strength of her voice, and
+without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her first cry.
+"Oh, come in--come in!  Where are you?  I have been wicked.  I have
+thought too much of myself!  Do you hear?  I don't want to keep you out
+any longer.  I cannot bear that you should suffer so.  Gi-i-iles!"
+
+A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice reached
+her, floating upon the weather as though a part of it.
+
+"Here I am--all right.  Don't trouble about me."
+
+"Don't you want to come in? Are you not ill? I don't mind what they
+say, or what they think any more."
+
+"I am all right," he repeated.  "It is not necessary for me to come.
+Good-night! good-night!"
+
+Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly.  Could she have been
+mistaken about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had perceived a
+change in him because she had not seen him for so long.  Time sometimes
+did his ageing work in jerks, as she knew. Well, she had done all she
+could.  He would not come in.  She retired to rest again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+The next morning Grace was at the window early.  She felt determined to
+see him somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast eagerly.  Eight
+o'clock struck, and she had remembered that he had not come to arouse
+her by a knocking, as usual, her own anxiety having caused her to stir.
+
+The breakfast was set in its place without.  But he did not arrive to
+take it; and she waited on.  Nine o'clock arrived, and the breakfast
+was cold; and still there was no Giles.  A thrush, that had been
+repeating itself a good deal on an opposite bush for some time, came
+and took a morsel from the plate and bolted it, waited, looked around,
+and took another.  At ten o'clock she drew in the tray, and sat down to
+her own solitary meal.  He must have been called away on business
+early, the rain having cleared off.
+
+Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly exploring the
+precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its vicinity; but as the
+day was comparatively fine, the dread lest some stray passenger or
+woodman should encounter her in such a reconnoitre paralyzed her wish.
+The solitude was further accentuated to-day by the stopping of the
+clock for want of winding, and the fall into the chimney-corner of
+flakes of soot loosened by the rains.  At noon she heard a slight
+rustling outside the window, and found that it was caused by an eft
+which had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun-rays that
+would be worth having till the following May.
+
+She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see little.
+In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them some
+yellowish-green ones of this season that had been prematurely blown
+down by the gale.  Above stretched an old beech, with vast armpits, and
+great pocket-holes in its sides where branches had been amputated in
+past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. Dead boughs were
+scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, and beyond them were
+perishing woodbine stems resembling old ropes.
+
+From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed with
+lichen and stockinged with moss.  At their roots were stemless yellow
+fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than
+stool.  Next were more trees close together, wrestling for existence,
+their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their mutual
+rubbings and blows.  It was the struggle between these neighbors that
+she had heard in the night. Beneath them were the rotting stumps of
+those of the group that had been vanquished long ago, rising from their
+mossy setting like decayed teeth from green gums.  Farther on were
+other tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves--variety upon
+variety, dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like
+plush, like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss.
+
+The strain upon Grace's mind in various ways was so great on this the
+most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would be
+well-nigh impossible to spend another in such circumstances. The
+evening came at last; the sun, when its chin was on the earth, found an
+opening through which to pierce the shade, and stretched irradiated
+gauzes across the damp atmosphere, making the wet trunks shine, and
+throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the leaves beneath the beech
+that they were turned to gory hues.  When night at last arrived, and
+with it the time for his return, she was nearly broken down with
+suspense.
+
+The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace had
+prepared, stood waiting upon the hearth; and yet Giles did not come.
+It was now nearly twenty-four hours since she had seen him. As the room
+grew darker, and only the firelight broke against the gloom of the
+walls, she was convinced that it would be beyond her staying power to
+pass the night without hearing from him or from somebody.  Yet eight
+o'clock drew on, and his form at the window did not appear.
+
+The meal remained untasted.  Suddenly rising from before the hearth of
+smouldering embers, where she had been crouching with her hands clasped
+over her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked the door, and listened.
+Every breath of wind had ceased with the decline of day, but the rain
+had resumed the steady dripping of the night before.  Grace might have
+stood there five minutes when she fancied she heard that old sound, a
+cough, at no great distance; and it was presently repeated.  If it were
+Winterborne's, he must be near her; why, then, had he not visited her?
+
+A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of
+Grace, and she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was hanging
+above her head.  To light it and go in the direction of the sound would
+be the obvious way to solve the dread problem; but the conditions made
+her hesitate, and in a moment a cold sweat pervaded her at further
+sounds from the same quarter.
+
+They were low mutterings; at first like persons in conversation, but
+gradually resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. It was an
+endless monologue, like that we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in
+deep secret places where water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against
+stones; but by degrees she was convinced that the voice was
+Winterborne's.  Yet who could be his listener, so mute and patient; for
+though he argued so rapidly and persistently, nobody replied.
+
+A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace.  "Oh," she
+cried, in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go out, "how
+selfishly correct I am always--too, too correct! Cruel propriety is
+killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to her own."
+
+While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and hastening
+out without further thought, took the direction whence the mutterings
+had proceeded.  The course was marked by a little path, which ended at
+a distance of about forty yards in a small erection of hurdles, not
+much larger than a shock of corn, such as were frequent in the woods
+and copses when the cutting season was going on.  It was too slight
+even to be called a hovel, and was not high enough to stand upright in;
+appearing, in short, to be erected for the temporary shelter of fuel.
+The side towards Grace was open, and turning the light upon the
+interior, she beheld what her prescient fear had pictured in snatches
+all the way thither.
+
+Upon the straw within, Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she had
+seen him during the whole of her stay here, except that his hat was
+off, and his hair matted and wild.
+
+Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain.  His arms were
+flung over his head; his face was flushed to an unnatural crimson.  His
+eyes had a burning brightness, and though they met her own, she
+perceived that he did not recognize her.
+
+"Oh, my Giles," she cried, "what have I done to you!"
+
+But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself.  She saw that the
+first thing to be thought of was to get him indoors.
+
+How Grace performed that labor she never could have exactly explained.
+But by dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing him into a sitting
+posture, and straining her strength to the uttermost, she put him on
+one of the hurdles that was loose alongside, and taking the end of it
+in both her hands, dragged him along the path to the entrance of the
+hut, and, after a pause for breath, in at the door-way.
+
+It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state
+acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did.  But he never for a
+moment recognized her--continuing his rapid conversation to himself,
+and seeming to look upon her as some angel, or other supernatural
+creature of the visionary world in which he was mentally living.  The
+undertaking occupied her more than ten minutes; but by that time, to
+her great thankfulness, he was in the inner room, lying on the bed, his
+damp outer clothing removed.
+
+Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. There
+was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of his
+thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute.  He seemed to
+be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet--erratic,
+inapprehensible, untraceable.
+
+Grace's distraction was almost as great as his.  In a few moments she
+firmly believed he was dying.  Unable to withstand her impulse, she
+knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face and his hair,
+exclaiming, in a low voice, "How could I? How could I?"
+
+Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now,
+though she knew him so well.  The purity of his nature, his freedom
+from the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had never been
+fully understood by Grace till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely
+juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. The perception of it
+added something that was little short of reverence to the deep
+affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of Artemis than of
+Aphrodite in her constitution.
+
+All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to express
+her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer was, brought
+her mournful satisfaction.  She bathed his hot head, wiped his
+perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged
+his heated skin, and administered whatever she could find in the house
+that the imagination could conceive as likely to be in any way
+alleviating.  That she might have been the cause, or partially the
+cause, of all this, interfused misery with her sorrow.
+
+Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its mechanical
+parts, had been enacted at Hintock House.  It was between a pair of
+persons most intimately connected in their lives with these.  Outwardly
+like as it had been, it was yet infinite in spiritual difference,
+though a woman's devotion had been common to both.
+
+Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her energies,
+saw that something practical must immediately be done. Much as she
+would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to
+herself, medical assistance was necessary while there remained a
+possibility of preserving him alive.  Such assistance was fatal to her
+own concealment; but even had the chance of benefiting him been less
+than it was, she would have run the hazard for his sake.  The question
+was, where should she get a medical man, competent and near?
+
+There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance; a man
+who, if it were possible to save Winterborne's life, had the brain most
+likely to do it.  If human pressure could bring him, that man ought to
+be brought to the sick Giles's side.  The attempt should be made.
+
+Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past, and
+yet she postponed her departure.  At last, when it was after eleven
+o'clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it seemed to afford
+her an opportunity.
+
+She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her things,
+cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard, and having set
+it up, and placed it so that the light did not fall upon his eyes, she
+closed the door and started.
+
+The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish all
+sense of darkness from her mind.  The rains had imparted a
+phosphorescence to the pieces of touchwood and rotting leaves that lay
+about her path, which, as scattered by her feet, spread abroad like
+spilt milk.  She would not run the hazard of losing her way by plunging
+into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts of the
+woodland, but followed a more open course, which eventually brought her
+to the highway.  Once here, she ran along with great speed, animated by
+a devoted purpose which had much about it that was stoical; and it was
+with scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour's progress,
+she passed over Rubdown Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and
+that same house, out of which she had fled a few days before in
+irresistible alarm. But that had happened which, above all other things
+of chance and change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of
+flight and sink all regard of personal consequences.
+
+One speciality of Fitzpiers's was respected by Grace as much as
+ever--his professional skill.  In this she was right.  Had his
+persistence equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic and
+fitful thing it was, fame and fortune need never have remained a wish
+with him.  His freedom from conventional errors and crusted prejudices
+had, indeed, been such as to retard rather than accelerate his advance
+in Hintock and its neighborhood, where people could not believe that
+nature herself effected cures, and that the doctor's business was only
+to smooth the way.
+
+It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father's house,
+now again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he had already
+gone away.  Ever since her emergence from the denser plantations about
+Winterborne's residence a pervasive lightness had hung in the damp
+autumn sky, in spite of the vault of cloud, signifying that a moon of
+some age was shining above its arch. The two white gates were distinct,
+and the white balls on the pillars, and the puddles and damp ruts left
+by the recent rain, had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness.  She entered
+by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing wherein the
+apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate, till she
+stood under a window which, if her husband were in the house, gave
+light to his bedchamber.
+
+She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of
+herself.  Could she call to her presence the very cause of all her
+foregoing troubles? Alas!--old Jones was seven miles off; Giles was
+possibly dying--what else could she do?
+
+It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than by
+exercise, that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the panes, and
+waited to see the result.  The night-bell which had been fixed when
+Fitzpiers first took up his residence there still remained; but as it
+had fallen into disuse with the collapse of his practice, and his
+elopement, she did not venture to pull it now.
+
+Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. In
+half a minute the window was opened, and a voice said "Yes?"
+inquiringly.  Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. Her
+effort was now to disguise her own accents.
+
+"Doctor," she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command, "a man
+is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough, and you
+must go to him at once--in all mercy!"
+
+"I will, readily."
+
+The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed her
+for a moment.  But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief of a man
+who, having got back in a mood of contrition, from erratic abandonment
+to fearful joys, found the soothing routine of professional practice
+unexpectedly opening anew to him.  The highest desire of his soul just
+now was for a respectable life of painstaking.  If this, his first
+summons since his return, had been to attend upon a cat or dog, he
+would scarcely have refused it in the circumstances.
+
+"Do you know the way?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"One-chimney Hut," she repeated.  "And--immediately!"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Fitzpiers.
+
+Grace remained no longer.  She passed out of the white gate without
+slamming it, and hastened on her way back.  Her husband, then, had
+re-entered her father's house.  How he had been able to effect a
+reconciliation with the old man, what were the terms of the treaty
+between them, she could not so much as conjecture. Some sort of truce
+must have been entered into, that was all she could say.  But close as
+the question lay to her own life, there was a more urgent one which
+banished it; and she traced her steps quickly along the meandering
+track-ways.
+
+Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house.  The state of
+his mind, over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. At
+Grace's first remark he had not recognized or suspected her presence;
+but as she went on, he was awakened to the great resemblance of the
+speaker's voice to his wife's.  He had taken in such good faith the
+statement of the household on his arrival, that she had gone on a visit
+for a time because she could not at once bring her mind to be
+reconciled to him, that he could not quite actually believe this comer
+to be she.  It was one of the features of Fitzpiers's repentant humor
+at this date that, on receiving the explanation of her absence, he had
+made no attempt to outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody
+had informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his entry,
+and of all that might have been inferred from her precipitancy.
+
+Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to follow
+her either.  He sympathized with her flight, much as he deplored it;
+moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events that he had been a
+great means of creating checked his instinct to interfere.  He prayed
+and trusted that she had got into no danger on her way (as he supposed)
+to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if that were the place she had gone
+to, forbearing all inquiry which the strangeness of her departure would
+have made natural.  A few months before this time a performance by
+Grace of one-tenth the magnitude of this would have aroused him to
+unwonted investigation.
+
+It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to Fitzpiers's
+domicilation there.  The two men had not met face to face, but Mrs.
+Melbury had proposed herself as an intermediary, who made the surgeon's
+re-entrance comparatively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and
+nobody asked questions.  Fitzpiers had come in the performance of a
+plan of penitence, which had originated in circumstances hereafter to
+be explained; his self-humiliation to the very bass-string was
+deliberate; and as soon as a call reached him from the bedside of a
+dying man his desire was to set to work and do as much good as he could
+with the least possible fuss or show.  He therefore refrained from
+calling up a stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for
+One-chimney Hut on foot, as Grace had done.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and approached
+the sufferer.  He had begun anew those terrible mutterings, and his
+hands were cold.  As soon as she saw him there returned to her that
+agony of mind which the stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a
+time.
+
+Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all things
+but the fact that lying there before her was he who had loved her more
+than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred himself for her
+comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she had thought of
+caring.  This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps
+without; she knew whose footsteps they were.
+
+Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding Giles's
+hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay between herself
+and him.  He stood transfixed at first, noticing Grace only.  Slowly he
+dropped his glance and discerned who the prostrate man was.  Strangely
+enough, though Grace's distaste for her husband's company had amounted
+almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, at this moment her
+last and least feeling was personal.  Sensitive femininity was eclipsed
+by self-effacing purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was
+forgotten. The first look that possessed her face was relief;
+satisfaction at the presence of the physician obliterated thought of
+the man, which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that
+did not interfere with her words.
+
+"Is he dying--is there any hope?" she cried.
+
+"Grace!" said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper--more than
+invocating, if not quite deprecatory.
+
+He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic
+character--though that was striking enough to a man who called himself
+the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse--but in its character as
+the counterpart of one that had its hour many months before, in which
+he had figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Charmond.
+
+"Is he in great danger--can you save him?" she cried again.
+
+Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined
+Winterborne as he stood.  His inspection was concluded in a mere
+glance.  Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to the
+effect of his coming words.
+
+"He is dying," he said, with dry precision.
+
+"What?" said she.
+
+"Nothing can be done, by me or any other man.  It will soon be all
+over.  The extremities are dead already."  His eyes still remained
+fixed on her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end his
+interest, professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever.
+
+"But it cannot be!  He was well three days ago."
+
+"Not well, I suspect.  This seems like a secondary attack, which has
+followed some previous illness--possibly typhoid--it may have been
+months ago, or recently."
+
+"Ah--he was not well--you are right.  He was ill--he was ill when I
+came."
+
+There was nothing more to do or say.  She crouched down at the side of
+the bed, and Fitzpiers took a seat.  Thus they remained in silence, and
+long as it lasted she never turned her eyes, or apparently her
+thoughts, at all to her husband.  He occasionally murmured, with
+automatic authority, some slight directions for alleviating the pain of
+the dying man, which she mechanically obeyed, bending over him during
+the intervals in silent tears.
+
+Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing; and that
+he was going became soon perceptible also to her.  In less than an hour
+the delirium ceased; then there was an interval of somnolent
+painlessness and soft breathing, at the end of which Winterborne passed
+quietly away.
+
+
+Then Fitzpiers broke the silence.  "Have you lived here long?" said he.
+
+Grace was wild with sorrow--with all that had befallen her--with the
+cruelties that had attacked her--with life--with Heaven.  She answered
+at random.  "Yes.  By what right do you ask?"
+
+"Don't think I claim any right," said Fitzpiers, sadly.  "It is for you
+to do and say what you choose.  I admit, quite as much as you feel,
+that I am a vagabond--a brute--not worthy to possess the smallest
+fragment of you.  But here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient
+interest in you to make that inquiry."
+
+"He is everything to me!" said Grace, hardly heeding her husband, and
+laying her hand reverently on the dead man's eyelids, where she kept it
+a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle touches, as if she
+were stroking a little bird.
+
+He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where his
+eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that she had brought.
+
+"Grace--if I may call you so," he said, "I have been already humiliated
+almost to the depths.  I have come back since you refused to join me
+elsewhere--I have entered your father's house, and borne all that that
+cost me without flinching, because I have felt that I deserved
+humiliation.  But is there a yet greater humiliation in store for me?
+You say you have been living here--that he is everything to you.  Am I
+to draw from that the obvious, the extremest inference?"
+
+Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women--especially the latter.
+It was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for the cruel
+contumely which she had borne at his hands so docilely.
+
+"Yes," she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded nature
+which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so.
+
+Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she half
+repented.  Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind him.  It
+seemed as if all that remained to him of life and spirit had been
+abstracted at a stroke.  Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at
+self-control closed his mouth together as a vice.  His determination
+was fairly successful, though she saw how very much greater than she
+had expected her triumph had been.  Presently he looked across at
+Winterborne.
+
+"Would it startle you to hear," he said, as if he hardly had breath to
+utter the words, "that she who was to me what he was to you is dead
+also?"
+
+"Dead--SHE dead?" exclaimed Grace.
+
+"Yes.  Felice Charmond is where this young man is."
+
+"Never!" said Grace, vehemently.
+
+He went on without heeding the insinuation: "And I came back to try to
+make it up with you--but--"
+
+Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking downward
+with the droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy, if not
+despair.  In going round the door his eye fell upon her once more.  She
+was still bending over the body of Winterborne, her face close to the
+young man's.
+
+"Have you been kissing him during his illness?" asked her husband.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Since his fevered state set in?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"On his lips?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as soon as
+possible." He drew a small phial from his pocket and returned to offer
+it to her.
+
+Grace shook her head.
+
+"If you don't do as I tell you you may soon be like him."
+
+"I don't care.  I wish to die."
+
+"I'll put it here," said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a ledge
+beside him.  "The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my head
+at any rate, among my other sins.  I am now going, and I will send
+somebody to you.  Your father does not know that you are here, so I
+suppose I shall be bound to tell him?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon immersed in
+the silence that pervaded the spot.  Grace remained kneeling and
+weeping, she hardly knew how long, and then she sat up, covered poor
+Giles's features, and went towards the door where her husband had
+stood.  No sign of any other comer greeted her ear, the only
+perceptible sounds being the tiny cracklings of the dead leaves, which,
+like a feather-bed, had not yet done rising to their normal level where
+indented by the pressure of her husband's receding footsteps.  It
+reminded her that she had been struck with the change in his aspect;
+the extremely intellectual look that had always been in his face was
+wrought to a finer phase by thinness, and a care-worn dignity had been
+superadded.  She returned to Winterborne's side, and during her
+meditations another tread drew near the door, entered the outer room,
+and halted at the entrance of the chamber where Grace was.
+
+"What--Marty!" said Grace.
+
+"Yes.  I have heard," said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its
+girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have
+bruised her.
+
+"He died for me!" murmured Grace, heavily.
+
+Marty did not fully comprehend; and she answered, "He belongs to
+neither of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him than my
+plainness.  I have come to help you, ma'am.  He never cared for me, and
+he cared much for you; but he cares for us both alike now."
+
+"Oh don't, don't, Marty!"
+
+Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from the other side.
+
+"Did you meet my hus--Mr. Fitzpiers?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then what brought you here?"
+
+"I come this way sometimes.  I have got to go to the farther side of
+the wood this time of the year, and am obliged to get there before four
+o'clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for the early baking.
+I have passed by here often at this time."
+
+Grace looked at her quickly.  "Then did you know I was here?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Did you tell anybody?"
+
+"No.  I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up to ye, and
+lodged out himself."
+
+"Did you know where he lodged?"
+
+"No.  That I couldn't find out.  Was it at Delborough?"
+
+"No.  It was not there, Marty.  Would it had been! It would have
+saved--saved--" To check her tears she turned, and seeing a book on the
+window-bench, took it up.  "Look, Marty, this is a Psalter. He was not
+an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect in his heart.
+Shall we read a psalm over him?"
+
+"Oh yes--we will--with all my heart!"
+
+Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at hand
+mainly for the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its leather
+covers.  She began to read in that rich, devotional voice peculiar to
+women only on such occasions.  When it was over, Marty said, "I should
+like to pray for his soul."
+
+"So should I," said her companion.  "But we must not."
+
+"Why? Nobody would know."
+
+Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the sense
+of making amends for having neglected him in the body; and their tender
+voices united and filled the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that
+a Calvinist might have envied.  They had hardly ended when now and more
+numerous foot-falls were audible, also persons in conversation, one of
+whom Grace recognized as her father.
+
+She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only such
+light as beamed from the inner one.  Melbury and Mrs. Melbury were
+standing there.
+
+"I don't reproach you, Grace," said her father, with an estranged
+manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice.  "What has come
+upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and beyond wailing.
+Perhaps I drove you to it.  But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am
+astonished.  In the face of this there is nothing to be said."
+
+Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner chamber.
+"Marty," she said, quickly, "I cannot look my father in the face until
+he knows the true circumstances of my life here. Go and tell him--what
+you have told me--what you saw--that he gave up his house to me."
+
+She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and after a
+short absence returned.  Then Grace rose, and going out asked her
+father if he had met her husband.
+
+"Yes," said Melbury.
+
+"And you know all that has happened?"
+
+"I do.  Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than rashness--I
+ought to know ye better.  Are you coming with me to what was once your
+home?"
+
+"No.  I stay here with HIM.  Take no account of me any more."
+
+The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had stood to
+Winterborne quite lately--brought about by Melbury's own
+contrivance--could not fail to soften the natural anger of a parent at
+her more recent doings.  "My daughter, things are bad," he rejoined.
+"But why do you persevere to make 'em worse? What good can you do to
+Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions.  I don't
+inquire why you decided to come here, or anything as to what your
+course would have been if he had not died, though I know there's no
+deliberate harm in ye.  As for me, I have lost all claim upon you, and
+I make no complaint.  But I do say that by coming back with me now you
+will show no less kindness to him, and escape any sound of shame.
+
+"But I don't wish to escape it."
+
+"If you don't on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and hers?
+Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. Then why
+should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my gray hairs with
+sorrow to the grave?"
+
+"If it were not for my husband--" she began, moved by his words. "But
+how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere man's
+creature join him after what has taken place?"
+
+"He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house."
+
+"How do you know that, father?"
+
+"We met him on our way here, and he told us so," said Mrs. Melbury.
+"He had said something like it before.  He seems very much upset
+altogether."
+
+"He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait for
+time and devotion to bring about his forgiveness," said her husband.
+"That was it, wasn't it, Lucy?"
+
+"Yes.  That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave him
+absolute permission," Mrs. Melbury added.
+
+This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to Grace as
+it was unexpected; and though she did not desire his presence, she was
+sorry that by her retaliatory fiction she had given him a different
+reason for avoiding her.  She made no further objections to
+accompanying her parents, taking them into the inner room to give
+Winterborne a last look, and gathering up the two or three things that
+belonged to her.  While she was doing this the two women came who had
+been called by Melbury, and at their heels poor Creedle.
+
+"Forgive me, but I can't rule my mourning nohow as a man should, Mr.
+Melbury," he said.  "I ha'n't seen him since Thursday se'night, and
+have wondered for days and days where he's been keeping.  There was I
+expecting him to come and tell me to wash out the cider-barrels against
+the making, and here was he-- Well, I've knowed him from table-high; I
+knowed his father--used to bide about upon two sticks in the sun afore
+he died!--and now I've seen the end of the family, which we can ill
+afford to lose, wi' such a scanty lot of good folk in Hintock as we've
+got.  And now Robert Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards 'a
+b'lieve; and noboby will glutch down a sigh for he!"
+
+They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind.  For a time
+Grace and her father walked side by side without speaking. It was just
+in the blue of the dawn, and the chilling tone of the sky was reflected
+in her cold, wet face.  The whole wood seemed to be a house of death,
+pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and breadth.  Winterborne was
+gone, and the copses seemed to show the want of him; those young trees,
+so many of which he had planted, and of which he had spoken so truly
+when he said that he should fall before they fell, were at that very
+moment sending out their roots in the direction that he had given them
+with his subtle hand.
+
+"One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come back
+to the house," said Melbury at last--"the death of Mrs. Charmond."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection, "he told
+me so."
+
+"Did he tell you how she died?  It was no such death as Giles's. She
+was shot--by a disappointed lover.  It occurred in Germany. The
+unfortunate man shot himself afterwards.  He was that South Carolina
+gentleman of very passionate nature who used to haunt this place to
+force her to an interview, and followed her about everywhere.  So ends
+the brilliant Felice Charmond--once a good friend to me--but no friend
+to you."
+
+"I can forgive her," said Grace, absently.  "Did Edgar tell you of
+this?"
+
+"No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account of it, on the
+hall table, folded in such a way that we should see it.  It will be in
+the Sherton paper this week, no doubt.  To make the event more solemn
+still to him, he had just before had sharp words with her, and left
+her.  He told Lucy this, as nothing about him appears in the newspaper.
+And the cause of the quarrel was, of all people, she we've left behind
+us."
+
+"Do you mean Marty?" Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily. For,
+pertinent and pointed as Melbury's story was, she had no heart for it
+now.
+
+"Yes.  Marty South."  Melbury persisted in his narrative, to divert her
+from her present grief, if possible.  "Before he went away she wrote
+him a letter, which he kept in his, pocket a long while before reading.
+He chanced to pull it out in Mrs. Charmond's, presence, and read it out
+loud.  It contained something which teased her very much, and that led
+to the rupture. She was following him to make it up when she met with
+her terrible death."
+
+Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident, which was
+that Marty South's letter had been concerning a certain personal
+adornment common to herself and Mrs. Charmond.  Her bullet reached its
+billet at last.  The scene between Fitzpiers and Felice had been sharp,
+as only a scene can be which arises out of the mortification of one
+woman by another in the presence of a lover.  True, Marty had not
+effected it by word of mouth; the charge about the locks of hair was
+made simply by Fitzpiers reading her letter to him aloud to Felice in
+the playfully ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of
+his situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George
+Herbert, a "flat delight."  He had stroked those false tresses with his
+hand many a time without knowing them to be transplanted, and it was
+impossible when the discovery was so abruptly made to avoid being
+finely satirical, despite her generous disposition.
+
+That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end.  On his abrupt
+departure she had followed him to the station but the train was gone;
+and in travelling to Baden in search of him she had met his rival,
+whose reproaches led to an altercation, and the death of both.  Of that
+precipitate scene of passion and crime Fitzpiers had known nothing till
+he saw an account of it in the papers, where, fortunately for himself,
+no mention was made of his prior acquaintance with the unhappy lady;
+nor was there any allusion to him in the subsequent inquiry, the double
+death being attributed to some gambling losses, though, in point of
+fact, neither one of them had visited the tables.
+
+Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but one
+living thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up its tree,
+but, dropping the sweet chestnut which it carried, cried
+chut-chut-chut, and stamped with its hind legs on the ground. When the
+roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to emerge from the screen of
+boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her abstracted advance.
+
+"You clearly understand," she said to her step-mother some of her old
+misgiving returning, "that I am coming back only on condition of his
+leaving as he promised?  Will you let him know this, that there may be
+no mistake?"
+
+Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers, assured
+Grace that she need have no doubts on that point, and that he would
+probably be gone by the evening.  Grace then entered with them into
+Melbury's wing of the house, and sat down listlessly in the parlor,
+while her step-mother went to Fitzpiers.
+
+The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon showed did honor
+to him, if anything could.  Before Mrs. Melbury had returned to the
+room Grace, who was sitting on the parlor window-bench, saw her husband
+go from the door under the increasing light of morning, with a bag in
+his hand.  While passing through the gate he turned his head.  The
+firelight of the room she sat in threw her figure into dark relief
+against the window as she looked through the panes, and he must have
+seen her distinctly.  In a moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he
+disappeared.  At the hut she had declared that another had displaced
+him; and now she had banished him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. The
+next day she kept her room.  Old Jones was called in; he murmured some
+statements in which the words "feverish symptoms" occurred.  Grace
+heard them, and guessed the means by which she had brought this
+visitation upon herself.
+
+One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing, wondering
+if she were really going to join him who had gone before, Grammer
+Oliver came to her bedside.  "I don't know whe'r this is meant for you
+to take, ma'am," she said, "but I have found it on the table.  It was
+left by Marty, I think, when she came this morning."
+
+Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up.  It was the phial
+left at the hut by her husband when he had begged her to take some
+drops of its contents if she wished to preserve herself from falling a
+victim to the malady which had pulled down Winterborne.  She examined
+it as well as she could.  The liquid was of an opaline hue, and bore a
+label with an inscription in Italian.  He had probably got it in his
+wanderings abroad.  She knew but little Italian, but could understand
+that the cordial was a febrifuge of some sort.  Her father, her mother,
+and all the household were anxious for her recovery, and she resolved
+to obey her husband's directions.  Whatever the risk, if any, she was
+prepared to run it.  A glass of water was brought, and the drops
+dropped in.
+
+The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable.  In less than an
+hour she felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect--less inclined to
+fret and chafe and wear herself away.  She took a few drops more.  From
+that time the fever retreated, and went out like a damped conflagration.
+
+"How clever he is!" she said, regretfully.  "Why could he not have had
+more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good account?
+Perhaps he has saved my useless life.  But he doesn't know it, and
+doesn't care whether he has saved it or not; and on that account will
+never be told by me! Probably he only gave it to me in the arrogance of
+his skill, to show the greatness of his resources beside mine, as
+Elijah drew down fire from heaven."
+
+As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon her
+life, Grace went to Marty South's cottage.  The current of her being
+had again set towards the lost Giles Winterborne.
+
+"Marty," she said, "we both loved him.  We will go to his grave
+together."
+
+Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the village, and could
+be reached without passing through the street.  In the dusk of the late
+September day they went thither by secret ways, walking mostly in
+silence side by side, each busied with her own thoughts.  Grace had a
+trouble exceeding Marty's--that haunting sense of having put out the
+light of his life by her own hasty doings.  She had tried to persuade
+herself that he might have died of his illness, even if she had not
+taken possession of his house. Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt;
+sometimes she did not.
+
+They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone down,
+they could see over the woodland for miles, and down to the vale in
+which he had been accustomed to descend every year, with his portable
+mill and press, to make cider about this time.
+
+Perhaps Grace's first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he
+could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this, the
+second.  On Marty's part there was the same consideration; never would
+she have been his.  As no anticipation of gratified affection had been
+in existence while he was with them, there was none to be disappointed
+now that he had gone.
+
+Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she had never
+understood Giles as Marty had done.  Marty South alone, of all the
+women in Hintock and the world, had approximated to Winterborne's level
+of intelligent intercourse with nature.  In that respect she had formed
+the complement to him in the other sex, had lived as his counterpart,
+had subjoined her thought to his as a corollary.
+
+The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that
+wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been with
+these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze.  They had been possessed of
+its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had been able to read
+its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the sights and sounds of
+night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, which had to Grace
+a touch of the uncanny, and even the supernatural, were simple
+occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they foreknew.  They
+had planted together, and together they had felled; together they had,
+with the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and
+symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together
+made an alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces,
+when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the
+species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the
+wind's murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its sort
+afar off.  They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or
+tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its upper twigs, the
+stratum that had been reached by its roots.  The artifices of the
+seasons were seen by them from the conjuror's own point of view, and
+not from that of the spectator's.
+
+"He ought to have married YOU, Marty, and nobody else in the world!"
+said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above
+strain.
+
+Marty shook her head.  "In all our out-door days and years together,
+ma'am," she replied, "the one thing he never spoke of to me was love;
+nor I to him."
+
+"Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew--not even
+my father, though he came nearest knowing--the tongue of the trees and
+fruits and flowers themselves."
+
+She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the hard
+core to her grief--which Marty's had not--remained.  Had she been sure
+that Giles's death resulted entirely from his exposure, it would have
+driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was always that bare
+possibility that his exposure had only precipitated what was
+inevitable.  She longed to believe that it had not done even this.
+
+There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she would be
+at all disposed to trust.  Her husband was that man.  Yet to ask him it
+would be necessary to detail the true conditions in which she and
+Winterborne had lived during these three or four critical days that
+followed her flight; and in withdrawing her original defiant
+announcement on that point, there seemed a weakness she did not care to
+show.  She never doubted that Fitzpiers would believe her if she made a
+clean confession of the actual situation; but to volunteer the
+correction would seem like signalling for a truce, and that, in her
+present frame of mind, was what she did not feel the need of.
+
+
+It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has been
+already declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace's fidelity could
+not keep faithful was stung into passionate throbs of interest
+concerning her by her avowal of the contrary.
+
+He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously full
+compass if she were capable of such a reprisal; and, melancholy as it
+may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and regret engendered a
+smouldering admiration of her.
+
+He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to which
+he had retired--quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could she have
+known of it, would have been inclined to inflict upon any living
+creature, how much soever he might have wronged her.  Then a sudden
+hope dawned upon him; he wondered if her affirmation were true.  He
+asked himself whether it were not the act of a woman whose natural
+purity and innocence had blinded her to the contingencies of such an
+announcement.  His wide experience of the sex had taught him that, in
+many cases, women who ventured on hazardous matters did so because they
+lacked an imagination sensuous enough to feel their full force.  In
+this light Grace's bold avowal might merely have denoted the
+desperation of one who was a child to the realities of obliquity.
+
+Fitzpiers's mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take a
+melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock; and here he
+hovered for hours around the scene of the purest emotional experiences
+that he had ever known in his life.  He walked about the woods that
+surrounded Melbury's house, keeping out of sight like a criminal.  It
+was a fine evening, and on his way homeward he passed near Marty
+South's cottage.  As usual she had lighted her candle without closing
+her shutters; he saw her within as he had seen her many times before.
+
+She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show himself,
+he could not resist speaking in to her through the half-open door.
+"What are you doing that for, Marty?"
+
+"Because I want to clean them.  They are not mine." He could see,
+indeed, that they were not hers, for one was a spade, large and heavy,
+and another was a bill-hook which she could only have used with both
+hands.  The spade, though not a new one, had been so completely
+burnished that it was bright as silver.
+
+Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborne's, and he
+put the question to her.
+
+She replied in the affirmative.  "I am going to keep 'em," she said,
+"but I can't get his apple-mill and press.  I wish could; it is going
+to be sold, they say."
+
+"Then I will buy it for you," said Fitzpiers.  "That will be making you
+a return for a kindness you did me."  His glance fell upon the girl's
+rare-colored hair, which had grown again.  "Oh, Marty, those locks of
+yours--and that letter! But it was a kindness to send it,
+nevertheless," he added, musingly.
+
+After this there was confidence between them--such confidence as there
+had never been before.  Marty was shy, indeed, of speaking about the
+letter, and her motives in writing it; but she thanked him warmly for
+his promise of the cider-press.  She would travel with it in the autumn
+season, as he had done, she said.  She would be quite strong enough,
+with old Creedle as an assistant.
+
+"Ah! there was one nearer to him than you," said Fitzpiers, referring
+to Winterborne.  "One who lived where he lived, and was with him when
+he died."
+
+Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true circumstances,
+from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were living apart, told
+him of Giles's generosity to Grace in giving up his house to her at the
+risk, and possibly the sacrifice, of his own life.  When the surgeon
+heard it he almost envied Giles his chivalrous character.  He expressed
+a wish to Marty that his visit to her should be kept secret, and went
+home thoughtful, feeling that in more that one sense his journey to
+Hintock had not been in vain.
+
+He would have given much to win Grace's forgiveness then.  But whatever
+he dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was nothing to be
+done yet, while Giles Winterborne's memory was green.  To wait was
+imperative.  A little time might melt her frozen thoughts, and lead her
+to look on him with toleration, if not with love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by Grace
+in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she and Marty had
+devoted themselves.  Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great
+Hintock, and, like the two mourners in Cymbeline, sweetened his sad
+grave with their flowers and their tears.  Sometimes Grace thought that
+it was a pity neither one of them had been his wife for a little while,
+and given the world a copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes.
+Nothing ever had brought home to her with such force as this death how
+little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal
+character. While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with
+the lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at having
+had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement.
+
+Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and decay of
+the leaf.  Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death of Mrs.
+Charmond abroad had waxed and waned.  Fitzpiers had had a marvellous
+escape from being dragged into the inquiry which followed it, through
+the accident of their having parted just before under the influence of
+Marty South's letter--the tiny instrument of a cause deep in nature.
+
+Her body was not brought home.  It seemed to accord well with the
+fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life that she should not have
+found a native grave.  She had enjoyed but a life-interest in the
+estate, which, after her death, passed to a relative of her
+husband's--one who knew not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to
+blot out every vestige of her.
+
+On a certain day in February--the cheerful day of St. Valentine, in
+fact--a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally promised
+her for that particular day a long time before.
+
+It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where he
+had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local medical
+man, whose curative principles were all wrong, though he dared not set
+them right.  He had thought fit to communicate with her on that day of
+tender traditions to inquire if, in the event of his obtaining a
+substantial practice that he had in view elsewhere, she could forget
+the past and bring herself to join him.
+
+There the practical part ended; he then went on--
+
+
+"My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear Grace
+and dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued.  You may be
+absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have never
+loved any woman alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor you at this
+present moment.  What you told me in the pride and haughtiness of your
+heart I never believed [this, by the way, was not strictly true]; but
+even if I had believed it, it could never have estranged me from you.
+Is there any use in telling you--no, there is not--that I dream of your
+ripe lips more frequently than I say my prayers; that the old familiar
+rustle of your dress often returns upon my mind till it distracts me?
+If you could condescend even only to see me again you would be
+breathing life into a corpse.  My pure, pure Grace, modest as a
+turtledove, how came I ever to possess you? For the sake of being
+present in your mind on this lovers' day, I think I would almost rather
+have you hate me a little than not think of me at all.  You may call my
+fancies whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that 'nature is one
+in love, and where 'tis fine it sends some instance of itself.'  I will
+not intrude upon you further now.  Make me a little bit happy by
+sending back one line to say that you will consent, at any rate, to a
+short interview.  I will meet you and leave you as a mere acquaintance,
+if you will only afford me this slight means of making a few
+explanations, and of putting my position before you. Believe me, in
+spite of all you may do or feel,
+
+Your lover always (once your husband),
+
+                                               "E."
+
+
+It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on which
+Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his courtship having
+taken place under conditions which rendered letter-writing unnecessary.
+Its perusal, therefore, had a certain novelty for her.  She thought
+that, upon the whole, he wrote love-letters very well.  But the chief
+rational interest of the letter to the reflective Grace lay in the
+chance that such a meeting as he proposed would afford her of setting
+her doubts at rest, one way or the other, on her actual share in
+Winterborne's death.  The relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one
+professional man who had seen Giles at that time, would be immense.  As
+for that statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which
+at the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to
+admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging herself
+as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was a far more
+serious thing, wronged Winterborne's memory.
+
+Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of it,
+Grace replied to the letter.  She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on two
+conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting should be
+the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not object to Marty
+South accompanying her.
+
+Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers's
+so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the bursting
+of spring when her brief reply came.  It was one of the few pleasures
+that he had experienced of late years at all resembling those of his
+early youth.  He promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and
+named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot she mentioned.
+
+A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing the
+well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical movements
+in their lives during his residence at Hintock.
+
+The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the regret
+that seldom left him now.  Whatever paths might lie open to his future,
+the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him forever as a
+permanent dwelling-place.
+
+He longed for the society of Grace.  But to lay offerings on her
+slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was
+complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him.  The least
+reparation that he could make, in a case where he would gladly have
+made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely free to choose
+between living with him and without him.
+
+Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses
+strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die just
+at present.  To show any forwardness in suggesting a modus vivendi to
+Grace would be to put an end to these exotics.  To be the vassal of her
+sweet will for a time, he demanded no more, and found solace in the
+contemplation of the soft miseries she caused him.
+
+Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions, Fitzpiers
+discerned a gay procession of people coming over the crest, and was not
+long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party.
+
+Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the
+flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of pattern.
+Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as
+to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost one centre of
+gravity.  In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no other than Suke
+Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess; the small husband
+beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs.
+
+Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all the
+beauties of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was the chief.
+But he put the best face on the matter that he could and came on, the
+approaching company evidently discussing him and his separation from
+Mrs. Fitzpiers.  As the couples closed upon him he expressed his
+congratulations.
+
+"We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit," said
+Tim.  "First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to here, and
+from here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round by the
+cross-roads home.  Home says I, but it won't be that long! We be off
+next month."
+
+"Indeed.  Where to?"
+
+Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand.  Not but that he
+would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was ambitious and
+wanted to leave, so he had given way.
+
+"Then good-by," said Fitzpiers; "I may not see you again." He shook
+hands with Tim and turned to the bride.  "Good-by, Suke," he said,
+taking her hand also.  "I wish you and your husband prosperity in the
+country you have chosen."  With this he left them, and hastened on to
+his appointment.
+
+The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise.  But in
+restoring his arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming
+countenance had undergone a change.  "Holloa! me dear--what's the
+matter?" said Tim.
+
+"Nothing to speak o'," said she.  But to give the lie to her assertion
+she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon produced a dribbling
+face.
+
+"How--what the devil's this about!" exclaimed the bridegroom.
+
+"She's a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!" said the first
+bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke's eyes.
+
+"I never did like parting from people!" said Suke, as soon as she could
+speak.
+
+"Why him in particular?"
+
+"Well--he's such a clever doctor, that 'tis a thousand pities we
+sha'n't see him any more! There'll be no such clever doctor as he in
+New Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought o't got the
+better of my feelings!"
+
+They walked on, but Tim's face had grown rigid and pale, for he
+recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their
+occurrence.  The former boisterous laughter of the wedding-party at the
+groomsman's jokes was heard ringing through the woods no more.
+
+By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the hill,
+where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right hand.
+These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who had evidently
+come there by a short and secret path through the wood.  Grace was
+muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had never
+looked so seductive as at this moment, in the noontide bright but
+heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the purplish-gray masses of
+brushwood around.
+
+Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their
+glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a tangent
+and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, while with
+courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in a large arc.
+Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out his hand, Grace
+touched it with her fingers.
+
+"I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you something
+important," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation modulating in a
+direction that she had not quite wished it to take.
+
+"I am most attentive," said her husband.  "Shall we take to the wood
+for privacy?"
+
+Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public road.
+
+At any rate she would take his arm?  This also was gravely negatived,
+the refusal being audible to Marty.
+
+"Why not?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers--how can you ask?"
+
+"Right, right," said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up.
+
+As they walked on she returned to her inquiry.  "It is about a matter
+that may perhaps be unpleasant to you.  But I think I need not consider
+that too carefully."
+
+"Not at all," said Fitzpiers, heroically.
+
+She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's death, and
+related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness had come
+upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to which he had
+betaken himself, his concealment from her of the hardships that he was
+undergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done for her
+in his scrupulous considerateness.  The retrospect brought her to tears
+as she asked him if he thought that the sin of having driven him to his
+death was upon her.
+
+Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her
+narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an escapade
+with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing, looked so
+grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that harmlessness had
+been the result of aim or of accident.  With regard to her question, he
+declared that in his judgment no human being could answer it.  He
+thought that upon the whole the balance of probabilities turned in her
+favor.  Winterborne's apparent strength, during the last months of his
+life, must have been delusive.  It had often occurred that after a
+first attack of that insidious disease a person's apparent recovery was
+a physiological mendacity.
+
+The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her
+knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the
+assurances Fitzpiers gave her.  "Well, then, to put this case before
+you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why I consented
+to come here to-day," said she, when he had reached the aforesaid
+conclusion.
+
+"For no other reason at all?" he asked, ruefully.
+
+"It was nearly the whole."
+
+They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings feeding
+in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in a low voice,
+"And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my life."
+
+Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her delicate
+lips as if to keep them in subjection.
+
+"It is a different kind of love altogether," said he.  "Less
+passionate; more profound.  It has nothing to do with the material
+conditions of the object at all; much to do with her character and
+goodness, as revealed by closer observation.  'Love talks with better
+knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.'"
+
+"That's out of 'Measure for Measure,'" said she, slyly.
+
+"Oh yes--I meant it as a citation," blandly replied Fitzpiers. "Well,
+then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart again?"
+
+The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood recalled
+the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness of
+Winterborne.  "Don't ask it! My heart is in the grave with Giles," she
+replied, stanchly.
+
+"Mine is with you--in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to that."
+
+"I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped."
+
+"How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the grave?"
+
+"Oh no--that's not so," returned Grace, quickly, and moved to go away
+from him.
+
+"But, dearest Grace," said he, "you have condescended to come; and I
+thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long state of
+probation you would be generous.  But if there can be no hope of our
+getting completely reconciled, treat me gently--wretch though I am."
+
+"I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so."
+
+"But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear you
+think so."
+
+Grace's heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the fear
+that she might mislead him.  "I cannot look contemptuous unless I feel
+contempt," she said, evasively.  "And all I feel is lovelessness."
+
+"I have been very bad, I know," he returned.  "But unless you can
+really love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you forever.
+I don't want you to receive me again for duty's sake, or anything of
+that sort.  If I had not cared more for your affection and forgiveness
+than my own personal comfort, I should never have come back here.  I
+could have obtained a practice at a distance, and have lived my own
+life without coldness or reproach.  But I have chosen to return to the
+one spot on earth where my name is tarnished--to enter the house of a
+man from whom I have had worse treatment than from any other man
+alive--all for you!"
+
+This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who began
+to look as if she thought she had been shockingly severe.
+
+"Before you go," he continued, "I want to know your pleasure about
+me--what you wish me to do, or not to do."
+
+"You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. Far be
+it from me to advise.  But I will think it over.  I rather need advice
+myself than stand in a position to give it."
+
+"YOU don't need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever lived.  If you
+did--"
+
+"Would you give it to me?"
+
+"Would you act upon what I gave?"
+
+"That's not a fair inquiry," said she, smiling despite her gravity.  "I
+don't mind hearing it--what you do really think the most correct and
+proper course for me."
+
+"It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be
+provoking you to remonstrances."
+
+Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press him
+further, and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him, when he
+interrupted her with, "Oh, one moment, dear Grace--you will meet me
+again?"
+
+She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight.  Fitzpiers
+expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness with
+which she entreated him not to come sooner made him say hastily that he
+submitted to her will--that he would regard her as a friend only,
+anxious for his reform and well-being, till such time as she might
+allow him to exceed that privilege.
+
+All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not won
+her confidence yet.  It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all his
+deductions from previous experience, to find that this girl, though she
+had been married to him, could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain
+fascination that it carried with it, his reflections were sombre as he
+went homeward; he saw how deep had been his offence to produce so great
+a wariness in a gentle and once unsuspicious soul.
+
+He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her.  To be an object
+of misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was what he
+could not endure the thought of.  Life as it stood was more tolerable.
+
+When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers.  She would fain have
+consulted Marty on the question of Platonic relations with her former
+husband, as she preferred to regard him.  But Marty showed no great
+interest in their affairs, so Grace said nothing. They came onward, and
+saw Melbury standing at the scene of the felling which had been audible
+to them, when, telling Marty that she wished her meeting with Mr.
+Fitzpiers to be kept private, she left the girl to join her father.  At
+any rate, she would consult him on the expediency of occasionally
+seeing her husband.
+
+Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in
+earlier days.  "I was thinking of you when you came up," he said. "I
+have considered that what has happened is for the best.  Since your
+husband is gone away, and seems not to wish to trouble you, why, let
+him go, and drop out of your life.  Many women are worse off.  You can
+live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate, or do what he likes
+for his good.  I wouldn't mind sending him the further sum of money he
+might naturally expect to come to him, so that you may not be bothered
+with him any more.  He could hardly have gone on living here without
+speaking to me, or meeting me; and that would have been very unpleasant
+on both sides."
+
+These remarks checked her intention.  There was a sense of weakness in
+following them by saying that she had just met her husband by
+appointment.  "Then you would advise me not to communicate with him?"
+she observed.
+
+"I shall never advise ye again.  You are your own mistress--do as you
+like.  But my opinion is that if you don't live with him, you had
+better live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and playing
+bopeep.  You sent him away; and now he's gone.  Very well; trouble him
+no more."
+
+Grace felt a guiltiness--she hardly knew why--and made no confession.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great deal.
+She became quite a student, reading more than she had done since her
+marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the periodical visit
+to Winterborne's grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious
+strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops, primroses, and other
+vernal flowers thereon as they came.
+
+One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father's
+garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted into
+the wood.  A slight foot-path led along here, forming a secret way to
+either of the houses by getting through its boundary hedge.  Grace was
+just about to adopt this mode of entry when a figure approached along
+the path, and held up his hand to detain her.  It was her husband.
+
+"I am delighted," he said, coming up out of breath; and there seemed no
+reason to doubt his words.  "I saw you some way off--I was afraid you
+would go in before I could reach you."
+
+"It is a week before the time," said she, reproachfully.  "I said a
+fortnight from the last meeting."
+
+"My dear, you don't suppose I could wait a fortnight without trying to
+get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to meet me! Would it
+make you angry to know that I have been along this path at dusk three
+or four times since our last meeting? Well, how are you?"
+
+She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain it a
+moment longer than mere formality required, she made it smaller, so
+that it slipped away from him, with again that same alarmed look which
+always followed his attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not
+yet out of the elusive mood; not yet to be treated presumingly; and he
+was correspondingly careful to tranquillize her.
+
+His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat.  "I had no idea you
+came so often," she said.  "How far do you come from?"
+
+"From Exbury.  I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire, people
+will know that I come; and my success with you so far has not been
+great enough to justify such overtness.  Now, my dear one--as I MUST
+call you--I put it to you: will you see me a little oftener as the
+spring advances?"
+
+Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question, said,
+"I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give up those
+strange studies that used to distract you so much.  I am sure you would
+get on."
+
+"It is the very thing I am doing.  I was going to ask you to burn--or,
+at least, get rid of--all my philosophical literature.  It is in the
+bookcases in your rooms.  The fact is, I never cared much for abstruse
+studies."
+
+"I am so glad to hear you say that.  And those other books--those piles
+of old plays--what good are they to a medical man?"
+
+"None whatever!" he replied, cheerfully.  "Sell them at Sherton for
+what they will fetch."
+
+"And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid spellings of
+'filz' and 'ung' and 'ilz' and 'mary' and 'ma foy?'"
+
+"You haven't been reading them, Grace?"
+
+"Oh no--I just looked into them, that was all."
+
+"Make a bonfire of 'em directly you get home.  I meant to do it myself.
+I can't think what possessed me ever to collect them.  I have only a
+few professional hand-books now, and am quite a practical man.  I am in
+hopes of having some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think
+you could--come to me again?"
+
+"I would rather you did not press me on that just now," she replied,
+with some feeling.  "You have said you mean to lead a new, useful,
+effectual life; but I should like to see you put it in practice for a
+little while before you address that query to me.  Besides--I could not
+live with you."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Grace was silent a few instants.  "I go with Marty to Giles's grave.
+We swore we would show him that devotion.  And I mean to keep it up."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't mind that at all.  I have no right to expect anything
+else, and I will not wish you to keep away.  I liked the man as well as
+any I ever knew.  In short, I would accompany you a part of the way to
+the place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while I waited till you came
+back."
+
+"Then you haven't given up smoking?"
+
+"Well--ahem--no.  I have thought of doing so, but--"
+
+His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the question
+about smoking had been to effect a diversion.  Presently she said,
+firmly, and with a moisture in her eye that he could not see, as her
+mind returned to poor Giles's "frustrate ghost,"  "I don't like you--to
+speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak lightly.  To be frank
+with you--quite frank--I think of him as my betrothed lover still.  I
+cannot help it.  So that it would be wrong for me to join you."
+
+Fitzpiers was now uneasy.  "You say your betrothed lover still," he
+rejoined.  "When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged, as we
+common people say?"
+
+"When you were away."
+
+"How could that be?"
+
+Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. "It
+was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you was about
+to be annulled, and that he could then marry me.  So I encouraged him
+to love me."
+
+Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right in
+telling it.  Indeed, his perception that she was right in her absolute
+sincerity kept up his affectionate admiration for her under the pain of
+the rebuff.  Time had been when the avowal that Grace had deliberately
+taken steps to replace him would have brought him no sorrow.  But she
+so far dominated him now that he could not bear to hear her words,
+although the object of her high regard was no more.
+
+"It is rough upon me--that!" he said, bitterly.  "Oh, Grace--I did not
+know you--tried to get rid of me!  I suppose it is of no use, but I
+ask, cannot you hope to--find a little love in your heart for me again?"
+
+"If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!" she replied, with
+illogical ruefulness.  "And I don't see why you should mind my having
+had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have had so many."
+
+"But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of them
+put together, and that's what you will not tell me!"
+
+"I am sorry; but I fear I cannot," she said, sighing again.
+
+"I wonder if you ever will?" He looked musingly into her indistinct
+face, as if he would read the future there.  "Now have pity, and tell
+me: will you try?"
+
+"To love you again?"
+
+"Yes; if you can."
+
+"I don't know how to reply," she answered, her embarrassment proving
+her truth.  "Will you promise to leave me quite free as to seeing you
+or not seeing you?"
+
+"Certainly.  Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first promise
+in that respect?"
+
+She was obliged to admit that he had not.
+
+"Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave," said
+he, with playful sadness.  "It has been there a long time."
+
+She faintly shook her head, but said, "I'll try to think of you
+more--if I can."
+
+With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked her
+when she would meet him again.
+
+"As we arranged--in a fortnight."
+
+"If it must be a fortnight it must!"
+
+"This time at least.  I'll consider by the day I see you again if I can
+shorten the interval."
+
+"Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to look at
+your window."
+
+"You must do as you like about that.  Good-night."
+
+"Say 'husband.'"
+
+She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but exclaiming, "No,
+no; I cannot," slipped through the garden-hedge and disappeared.
+
+
+Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt the
+precincts of the dwelling.  But his persistence in this course did not
+result in his seeing her much oftener than at the fortnightly interval
+which she had herself marked out as proper. At these times, however,
+she punctually appeared, and as the spring wore on the meetings were
+kept up, though their character changed but little with the increase in
+their number.
+
+The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs family--father,
+son, and now son's wife--aligned with the larger one of the
+timber-dealer at its upper end; and when young Tim, after leaving work
+at Melbury's, stood at dusk in the little bower at the corner of his
+enclosure to smoke a pipe, he frequently observed the surgeon pass
+along the outside track before-mentioned.  Fitzpiers always walked
+loiteringly, pensively, looking with a sharp eye into the gardens one
+after another as he proceeded; for Fitzpiers did not wish to leave the
+now absorbing spot too quickly, after travelling so far to reach it;
+hoping always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately desired to take
+to his arms anew.
+
+Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along the
+garden boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they boded.  It
+was, naturally, quite out of his power to divine the singular,
+sentimental revival in Fitzpiers's heart; the fineness of tissue which
+could take a deep, emotional--almost also an artistic--pleasure in
+being the yearning inamorato of a woman he once had deserted, would
+have seemed an absurdity to the young sawyer.  Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers
+were separated; therefore the question of affection as between them was
+settled.  But his Suke had, since that meeting on their marriage-day,
+repentantly admitted, to the urgency of his questioning, a good deal
+concerning her past levities.  Putting all things together, he could
+hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers's mysterious visits to this spot with
+Suke's residence under his roof.  But he made himself fairly easy: the
+vessel in which they were about to emigrate sailed that month; and then
+Suke would be out of Fitzpiers's way forever.
+
+The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure arrived.
+They were pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to them by Tim's
+father, after a busy day of preparation, which left them weary.  In a
+corner stood their boxes, crammed and corded, their large case for the
+hold having already been sent away.  The firelight shone upon Suke's
+fine face and form as she stood looking into it, and upon the face of
+Tim seated in a corner, and upon the walls of his father's house, which
+he was beholding that night almost for the last time.
+
+Tim Tangs was not happy.  This scheme of emigration was dividing him
+from his father--for old Tangs would on no account leave Hintock--and
+had it not been for Suke's reputation and his own dignity, Tim would at
+the last moment have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back part
+of the room he regarded her moodily, and the fire and the boxes.  One
+thing he had particularly noticed this evening--she was very restless;
+fitful in her actions, unable to remain seated, and in a marked degree
+depressed.
+
+"Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?" he said.
+
+She sighed involuntarily.  "I don't know but that I be," she answered.
+"'Tis natural, isn't it, when one is going away?"
+
+"But you wasn't born here as I was."
+
+"No."
+
+"There's folk left behind that you'd fain have with 'ee, I reckon?"
+
+"Why do you think that?"
+
+"I've seen things and I've heard things; and, Suke, I say 'twill be a
+good move for me to get 'ee away.  I don't mind his leavings abroad,
+but I do mind 'em at home."
+
+Suke's face was not changed from its aspect of listless indifference by
+the words.  She answered nothing; and shortly after he went out for his
+customary pipe of tobacco at the top of the garden.
+
+The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to the gentleman
+of Tim's suspicions, but in a different--and it must be added in
+justice to her--more innocent sense than he supposed, judging from
+former doings.  She had accidentally discovered that Fitzpiers was in
+the habit of coming secretly once or twice a week to Hintock, and knew
+that this evening was a favorite one of the seven for his journey.  As
+she was going next day to leave the country, Suke thought there could
+be no great harm in giving way to a little sentimentality by obtaining
+a glimpse of him quite unknown to himself or to anybody, and thus
+taking a silent last farewell.  Aware that Fitzpiers's time for passing
+was at hand she thus betrayed her feeling.  No sooner, therefore, had
+Tim left the room than she let herself noiselessly out of the house,
+and hastened to the corner of the garden, whence she could witness the
+surgeon's transit across the scene--if he had not already gone by.
+
+Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim lounging in the arbor of the
+opposite corner, though he was hidden from her.  He saw her stealthily
+climb into the hedge, and so ensconce herself there that nobody could
+have the least doubt her purpose was to watch unseen for a passer-by.
+
+He went across to the spot and stood behind her.  Suke started, having
+in her blundering way forgotten that he might be near.  She at once
+descended from the hedge.
+
+"So he's coming to-night," said Tim, laconically.  "And we be always
+anxious to see our dears."
+
+"He IS coming to-night," she replied, with defiance.  "And we BE
+anxious for our dears."
+
+"Then will you step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine 'ee? We've
+to mouster by half-past three to-morrow, and if we don't get to bed by
+eight at latest our faces will be as long as clock-cases all day."
+
+She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly down
+the garden to the house, where he heard the door-latch click behind her.
+
+Tim was incensed beyond measure.  His marriage had so far been a total
+failure, a source of bitter regret; and the only course for improving
+his case, that of leaving the country, was a sorry, and possibly might
+not be a very effectual one.  Do what he would, his domestic sky was
+likely to be overcast to the end of the day. Thus he brooded, and his
+resentment gathered force.  He craved a means of striking one blow back
+at the cause of his cheerless plight, while he was still on the scene
+of his discomfiture.  For some minutes no method suggested itself, and
+then he had an idea.
+
+Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and
+entered the one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly been
+the dwelling of a game-keeper.  Tim descended the path to the back of
+the house, where only an old woman lived at present, and reaching the
+wall he stopped.  Owing to the slope of the ground the roof-eaves of
+the linhay were here within touch, and he thrust his arm up under them,
+feeling about in the space on the top of the wall-plate.
+
+"Ah, I thought my memory didn't deceive me!" he lipped silently.
+
+With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object curiously framed in
+iron, which clanked as he moved it.  It was about three feet in length
+and half as wide.  Tim contemplated it as well as he could in the dying
+light of day, and raked off the cobwebs with his hand.
+
+"That will spoil his pretty shins for'n, I reckon!" he said.
+
+It was a man-trap.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to the
+excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic torture, the
+creator of the man-trap would occupy a very respectable if not a very
+high place.
+
+It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular form
+of man-trap of which this found in the keeper's out-house was a
+specimen.  For there were other shapes and other sizes, instruments
+which, if placed in a row beside one of the type disinterred by Tim,
+would have worn the subordinate aspect of the bears, wild boars, or
+wolves in a travelling menagerie, as compared with the leading lion or
+tiger.  In short, though many varieties had been in use during those
+centuries which we are accustomed to look back upon as the true and
+only period of merry England--in the rural districts more
+especially--and onward down to the third decade of the nineteenth
+century, this model had borne the palm, and had been most usually
+followed when the orchards and estates required new ones.
+
+There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted
+landlords--quite contemptible in their clemency.  The jaws of these
+resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left nothing but
+gums.  There were also the intermediate or half-toothed sorts,
+probably devised by the middle-natured squires, or those under the
+influence of their wives: two inches of mercy, two inches of cruelty,
+two inches of mere nip, two inches of probe, and so on, through the
+whole extent of the jaws.  There were also, as a class apart, the
+bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh, but only crushed the bone.
+
+The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid impression
+that it was endowed with life.  It exhibited the combined aspects of a
+shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion.  Each tooth was in the form of a
+tapering spine, two and a quarter inches long, which, when the jaws
+were closed, stood in alternation from this side and from that.  When
+they were open, the two halves formed a complete circle between two and
+three feet in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being
+about a foot square, while from beneath extended in opposite directions
+the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, each one being of a
+stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight of the body
+when forcing it down.
+
+There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered when
+the gin and others like it were in use.  Tim Tangs's great-uncle had
+endured a night of six hours in this very trap, which lamed him for
+life.  Once a keeper of Hintock woods set it on the track of a poacher,
+and afterwards, coming back that way, forgetful of what he had done,
+walked into it himself.  The wound brought on lockjaw, of which he
+died.  This event occurred during the thirties, and by the year 1840
+the use of such implements was well-nigh discontinued in the
+neighborhood.  But being made entirely of iron, they by no means
+disappeared, and in almost every village one could be found in some
+nook or corner as readily as this was found by Tim.  It had, indeed,
+been a fearful amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads--especially
+those who had a dim sense of becoming renowned poachers when they
+reached their prime--to drag out this trap from its hiding, set it, and
+throw it with billets of wood, which were penetrated by the teeth to
+the depth of near an inch.
+
+As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the hinges and
+springs were still perfect, he shouldered it without more ado, and
+returned with his burden to his own garden, passing on through the
+hedge to the path immediately outside the boundary.  Here, by the help
+of a stout stake, he set the trap, and laid it carefully behind a bush
+while he went forward to reconnoitre.  As has been stated, nobody
+passed this way for days together sometimes; but there was just a
+possibility that some other pedestrian than the one in request might
+arrive, and it behooved Tim to be careful as to the identity of his
+victim.
+
+Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to the right, he
+reached a ridge whereon a large and thick holly grew.  Beyond this for
+some distance the wood was more open, and the course which Fitzpiers
+must pursue to reach the point, if he came to-night, was visible a
+long way forward.
+
+For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody.  Then there
+shaped itself a spot out of the dim mid-distance, between the masses of
+brushwood on either hand.  And it enlarged, and Tim could hear the
+brushing of feet over the tufts of sour-grass.  The airy gait revealed
+Fitzpiers even before his exact outline could be seen.
+
+Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side of the hill,
+till he was again at the head of his own garden.  It was the work of a
+few moments to drag out the man-trap, very gently--that the plate might
+not be disturbed sufficiently to throw it--to a space between a pair of
+young oaks which, rooted in contiguity, grew apart upward, forming a
+V-shaped opening between; and, being backed up by bushes, left this as
+the only course for a foot-passenger.  In it he laid the trap with the
+same gentleness of handling, locked the chain round one of the trees,
+and finally slid back the guard which was placed to keep the gin from
+accidentally catching the arms of him who set it, or, to use the local
+and better word, "toiled" it.
+
+Having completed these arrangements, Tim sprang through the adjoining
+hedge of his father's garden, ran down the path, and softly entered the
+house.
+
+Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon as he had
+bolted the door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his boots at the foot of
+the stairs, and retired likewise, without lighting a candle. His object
+seemed to be to undress as soon as possible.  Before, however, he had
+completed the operation, a long cry resounded without--penetrating, but
+indescribable.
+
+"What's that?" said Suke, starting up in bed.
+
+"Sounds as if somebody had caught a hare in his gin."
+
+"Oh no," said she.  "It was not a hare, 'twas louder.  Hark!"
+
+"Do 'ee get to sleep," said Tim.  "How be you going to wake at
+half-past three else?"
+
+She lay down and was silent.  Tim stealthily opened the window and
+listened.  Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation of
+the various species of trees around the premises he could hear the
+twitching of a chain from the spot whereon he had set the man-trap.
+But further human sound there was none.
+
+Tim was puzzled.  In the haste of his project he had not calculated
+upon a cry; but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to essay an
+answer, for Hintock was dead to him already.  In half a dozen hours he
+would be out of its precincts for life, on his way to the antipodes.
+He closed the window and lay down.
+
+
+The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had been
+operating actively elsewhere.  Awaiting in her father's house the
+minute of her appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers deliberated
+on many things.  Should she inform her father before going out that the
+estrangement of herself and Edgar was not so complete as he had
+imagined, and deemed desirable for her happiness? If she did so she
+must in some measure become the apologist of her husband, and she was
+not prepared to go so far.
+
+As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity.  He certainly
+had changed.  He had at his worst times always been gentle in his
+manner towards her.  Could it be that she might make of him a true and
+worthy husband yet?  She had married him; there was no getting over
+that; and ought she any longer to keep him at a distance?  His suave
+deference to her lightest whim on the question of his comings and
+goings, when as her lawful husband he might show a little independence,
+was a trait in his character as unexpected as it was engaging.  If she
+had been his empress, and he her thrall, he could not have exhibited a
+more sensitive care to avoid intruding upon her against her will.
+
+Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned to the
+marriage-service.  Reading it slowly through, she became quite appalled
+at her recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered what awfully solemn
+promises she had made him at those chancel steps not so very long ago.
+
+She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person's conscience
+might be bound by vows made without at the time a full recognition of
+their force.  That particular sentence, beginning "Whom God hath joined
+together," was a staggerer for a gentlewoman of strong devotional
+sentiment.  She wondered whether God really did join them together.
+Before she had done deliberating the time of her engagement drew near,
+and she went out of the house almost at the moment that Tim Tangs
+retired to his own.
+
+The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as follows.
+
+Two hundred yards to the right of the upper end of Tangs's garden
+Fitzpiers was still advancing, having now nearly reached the summit of
+the wood-clothed ridge, the path being the actual one which further on
+passed between the two young oaks.  Thus far it was according to Tim's
+conjecture.  But about two hundred yards to the left, or rather less,
+was arising a condition which he had not divined, the emergence of
+Grace as aforesaid from the upper corner of her father's garden, with
+the view of meeting Tim's intended victim.  Midway between husband and
+wife was the diabolical trap, silent, open, ready.
+
+Fitzpiers's walk that night had been cheerful, for he was convinced
+that the slow and gentle method he had adopted was promising success.
+The very restraint that he was obliged to exercise upon himself, so as
+not to kill the delicate bud of returning confidence, fed his flame.
+He walked so much more rapidly than Grace that, if they continued
+advancing as they had begun, he would reach the trap a good half-minute
+before she could reach the same spot.
+
+But here a new circumstance came in; to escape the unpleasantness of
+being watched or listened to by lurkers--naturally curious by reason of
+their strained relations--they had arranged that their meeting for
+to-night should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above named.  So soon,
+accordingly, as Fitzpiers reached the tree he stood still to await her.
+
+He had not paused under the prickly foliage more than two minutes when
+he thought he heard a scream from the other side of the ridge.
+Fitzpiers wondered what it could mean; but such wind as there was just
+now blew in an adverse direction, and his mood was light.  He set down
+the origin of the sound to one of the superstitious freaks or
+frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts that still survived in
+Hintock from old-English times; and waited on where he stood till ten
+minutes had passed.  Feeling then a little uneasy, his mind reverted to
+the scream; and he went forward over the summit and down the embowered
+incline, till he reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow
+opening between them.
+
+Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell.  Stretching down his hand to
+ascertain the obstruction, it came in contact with a confused mass of
+silken drapery and iron-work that conveyed absolutely no explanatory
+idea to his mind at all.  It was but the work of a moment to strike a
+match; and then he saw a sight which congealed his blood.
+
+The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part of a woman's
+clothing--a patterned silk skirt--gripped with such violence that the
+iron teeth had passed through it, skewering its tissue in a score of
+places.  He immediately recognized the skirt as that of one of his
+wife's gowns--the gown that she had worn when she met him on the very
+last occasion.
+
+Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when
+examining the collection at Hintock House, and the conception instantly
+flashed through him that Grace had been caught, taken out mangled by
+some chance passer, and carried home, some of her clothes being left
+behind in the difficulty of getting her free. The shock of this
+conviction, striking into the very current of high hope, was so great
+that he cried out like one in corporal agony, and in his misery bowed
+himself down to the ground.
+
+Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had
+undergone since his sins against Grace first began, not any even
+approximated in intensity to this.
+
+"Oh, my own--my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven--it is too much, this!" he
+cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessaries of her
+he deplored.
+
+The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to any
+one who might have been there to hear it; and one there was. Right and
+left of the narrow pass between the oaks were dense bushes; and now
+from behind these a female figure glided, whose appearance even in the
+gloom was, though graceful in outline, noticeably strange.
+
+She was in white up to the waist, and figured above.  She was, in
+short, Grace, his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the gin
+retained.
+
+"Don't be grieved about me--don't, dear Edgar!" she exclaimed, rushing
+up and bending over him.  "I am not hurt a bit! I was coming on to find
+you after I had released myself, but I heard footsteps; and I hid away,
+because I was without some of my clothing, and I did not know who the
+person might be."
+
+Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less
+unpremeditated by him than it was irresistible by her, and would have
+been so by any woman not of Amazonian strength.  He clasped his arms
+completely round, pressed her to his breast, and kissed her
+passionately.
+
+"You are not dead!--you are not hurt! Thank God--thank God!" he said,
+almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror of his
+apprehension.  "Grace, my wife, my love, how is this--what has
+happened?"
+
+"I was coming on to you," she said as distinctly as she could in the
+half-smothered state of her face against his.  "I was trying to be as
+punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late I ran along
+the path very swiftly--fortunately for myself.  Just when I had passed
+between these trees I felt something clutch at my dress from behind
+with a noise, and the next moment I was pulled backward by it, and fell
+to the ground.  I screamed with terror, thinking it was a man lying
+down there to murder me, but the next moment I discovered it was iron,
+and that my clothes were caught in a trap.  I pulled this way and that,
+but the thing would not let go, drag it as I would, and I did not know
+what to do.  I did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as I wished
+nobody to know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no other
+plan than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a
+strange accident had happened to me.  But when I had just freed myself
+by leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being sure it was
+you, I did not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I hid away."
+
+"It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs would
+have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace."
+
+"Or yours, if you had got here first," said she, beginning to realize
+the whole ghastliness of the possibility.  "Oh, Edgar, there has been
+an Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be thankful indeed!"
+
+He continued to press his face to hers.  "You are mine--mine again now."
+
+She gently owned that she supposed she was.  "I heard what you said
+when you thought I was injured," she went on, shyly, "and I know that a
+man who could suffer as you were suffering must have a tender regard
+for me.  But how does this awful thing come here?"
+
+"I suppose it has something to do with poachers." Fitzpiers was still
+so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to sit awhile,
+and it was not until Grace said, "If I could only get my skirt out
+nobody would know anything about it," that he bestirred himself.
+
+By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of the
+trap, they pressed them down sufficiently to insert across the jaws a
+billet which they dragged from a faggot near at hand; and it was then
+possible to extract the silk mouthful from the monster's bite, creased
+and pierced with many holes, but not torn. Fitzpiers assisted her to
+put it on again; and when her customary contours were thus restored
+they walked on together, Grace taking his arm, till he effected an
+improvement by clasping it round her waist.
+
+The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no
+further attempt at reserve.  "I would ask you to come into the house,"
+she said, "but my meetings with you have been kept secret from my
+father, and I should like to prepare him."
+
+"Never mind, dearest.  I could not very well have accepted the
+invitation.  I shall never live here again--as much for your sake as
+for mine.  I have news to tell you on this very point, but my alarm had
+put it out of my head.  I have bought a practice, or rather a
+partnership, in the Midlands, and I must go there in a week to take up
+permanent residence.  My poor old great-aunt died about eight months
+ago, and left me enough to do this.  I have taken a little furnished
+house for a time, till we can get one of our own."
+
+He described the place, and the surroundings, and the view from the
+windows, and Grace became much interested.  "But why are you not there
+now?" she said.
+
+"Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have your promise.
+Now, darling, you will accompany me there--will you not? To-night has
+settled that."
+
+Grace's tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay.  They went on
+together.
+
+The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the reunion which that
+event had forced on, combined to render Grace oblivious of the
+direction of their desultory ramble, till she noticed they were in an
+encircled glade in the densest part of the wood, whereon the moon, that
+had imperceptibly added its rays to the scene, shone almost vertically.
+It was an exceptionally soft, balmy evening for the time of year, which
+was just that transient period in the May month when beech-trees have
+suddenly unfolded large limp young leaves of the softness of
+butterflies' wings. Boughs bearing such leaves hung low around, and
+completely enclosed them, so that it was as if they were in a great
+green vase, which had moss for its bottom and leaf sides.
+
+The clouds having been packed in the west that evening so as to retain
+the departing glare a long while, the hour had seemed much earlier than
+it was.  But suddenly the question of time occurred to her.
+
+"I must go back," she said; and without further delay they set their
+faces towards Hintock.  As they walked he examined his watch by the aid
+of the now strong moonlight.
+
+"By the gods, I think I have lost my train!" said Fitzpiers.
+
+"Dear me--whereabouts are we?" said she.
+
+"Two miles in the direction of Sherton."
+
+"Then do you hasten on, Edgar.  I am not in the least afraid.  I
+recognize now the part of the wood we are in and I can find my way back
+quite easily.  I'll tell my father that we have made it up. I wish I
+had not kept our meetings so private, for it may vex him a little to
+know I have been seeing you.  He is getting old and irritable, that was
+why I did not.  Good-by."
+
+"But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I cannot
+possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let me
+take care of you."
+
+"But what will my father think has become of me? He does not know in
+the least where I am--he thinks I only went into the garden for a few
+minutes."
+
+"He will surely guess--somebody has seen me for certain.  I'll go all
+the way back with you to-morrow."
+
+"But that newly done-up place--the Earl of Wessex!"
+
+"If you are so very particular about the publicity I will stay at the
+Three Tuns."
+
+"Oh no--it is not that I am particular--but I haven't a brush or comb
+or anything!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, "I wonder
+where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days did I know
+her bide out like this!  She surely said she was going into the garden
+to get some parsley."
+
+Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but
+could find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the cottages
+of such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding Tangs's because
+he knew the young people were to rise early to leave.  In these
+inquiries one of the men's wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact
+that she had heard a scream in the wood, though from which direction
+she could not say.
+
+This set Melbury's fears on end.  He told the men to light lanterns,
+and headed by himself they started, Creedle following at the last
+moment with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which he could not be
+persuaded to leave behind, and the company being joined by the
+hollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house as they went along.
+
+They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time lighted
+upon the man-trap.  Its discovery simply added an item of fact without
+helping their conjectures; but Melbury's indefinite alarm was greatly
+increased when, holding a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of
+the instrument some frayings from Grace's clothing.  No intelligence of
+any kind was gained till they met a woodman of Delborough, who said
+that he had seen a lady answering to the description her father gave of
+Grace, walking through the wood on a gentleman's arm in the direction
+of Sherton.
+
+"Was he clutching her tight?" said Melbury.
+
+"Well--rather," said the man.
+
+"Did she walk lame?"
+
+"Well, 'tis true her head hung over towards him a bit."
+
+Creedle groaned tragically.
+
+Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this account
+with the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand what it all
+meant; but the sinister event of the trap made him follow on.
+Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting as they went,
+and in due course emerged upon the highway.
+
+Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by other
+strollers, though the gentleman's supporting arm had disappeared from
+these later accounts.  At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury
+informed his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag them
+farther at so late an hour, since he could go on alone and inquire if
+the woman who had been seen were really Grace.  But they would not
+leave him alone in his anxiety, and trudged onward till the lamplight
+from the town began to illuminate their fronts.  At the entrance to the
+High Street they got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with the
+new condition that the lady in the costume described had been going up
+the street alone.
+
+"Faith!--I believe she's mesmerized, or walking in her sleep," said
+Melbury.
+
+However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means certain;
+but they plodded along the street.  Percombe, the hair-dresser, who
+had despoiled Marty of her tresses, was standing at his door, and they
+duly put inquiries to him.
+
+"Ah--how's Little Hintock folk by now?" he said, before replying.
+"Never have I been over there since one winter night some three year
+ago--and then I lost myself finding it.  How can ye live in such a
+one-eyed place?  Great Hintock is bad enough--hut Little Hintock--the
+bats and owls would drive me melancholy-mad! It took two days to raise
+my sperrits to their true pitch again after that night I went there.
+Mr. Melbury, sir, as a man's that put by money, why not retire and live
+here, and see something of the world?"
+
+The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to the
+building that offered the best accommodation in Sherton--having been
+enlarged contemporaneously with the construction of the
+railway--namely, the Earl of Wessex Hotel.
+
+Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here.  His
+alarm was lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he
+received a brief reply that such a lady was in the house.
+
+"Do you know if it is my daughter?" asked Melbury.
+
+The waiter did not.
+
+"Do you know the lady's name?"
+
+Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been taken
+by brand-new people from a distance.  They knew the gentleman very well
+by sight, and had not thought it necessary to ask him to enter his name.
+
+"Oh, the gentleman appears again now," said Melbury to himself. "Well,
+I want to see the lady," he declared.
+
+A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace
+appeared descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as if she
+lived there, but in other respects rather guilty and frightened.
+
+"Why--what the name--" began her father.  "I thought you went out to
+get parsley!"
+
+"Oh, yes--I did--but it is all right," said Grace, in a flurried
+whisper.  "I am not alone here.  I am here with Edgar.  It is entirely
+owing to an accident, father."
+
+"Edgar! An accident! How does he come here?  I thought he was two
+hundred mile off."
+
+"Yes, so he is--I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred
+miles off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to him.
+But he travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-trap, and
+that's how it is I am here.  We were just thinking of sending a
+messenger to let you know."
+
+Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this explanation.
+
+"You were caught in a man-trap?"
+
+"Yes; my dress was.  That's how it arose.  Edgar is up-stairs in his
+own sitting-room," she went on.  "He would not mind seeing you, I am
+sure."
+
+"Oh, faith, I don't want to see him! I have seen him too often a'ready.
+I'll see him another time, perhaps, if 'tis to oblige 'ee."
+
+"He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large
+partnership I speak of, as it is very promising."
+
+"Oh, I am glad to hear it," said Melbury, dryly.
+
+A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown
+clothes of Melbury's companions appeared in the door-way.
+
+"Then bain't you coming home with us?" he asked.
+
+"I--I think not," said Grace, blushing.
+
+"H'm--very well--you are your own mistress," he returned, in tones
+which seemed to assert otherwise.  "Good-night;" and Melbury retreated
+towards the door.
+
+"Don't be angry, father," she said, following him a few steps.  "I have
+done it for the best."
+
+"I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in this.
+However, good-night.  I must get home along."
+
+He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of
+strangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed him
+much.  His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having rushed
+to the task of investigation--some in their shirt sleeves, others in
+their leather aprons, and all much stained--just as they had come from
+their work of barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while
+Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending tragedy, had
+added melancholy to gawkiness.
+
+"Now, neighbors," said Melbury, on joining them, "as it is getting
+late, we'll leg it home again as fast as we can.  I ought to tell you
+that there has been some mistake--some arrangement entered into between
+Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn't quite understand--an important
+practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it
+necessary for her to join him to-night--so she says.  That's all it
+was--and I'm sorry I dragged you out."
+
+"Well," said the hollow-turner, "here be we six mile from home, and
+night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to our name.
+I say, we'll have a mossel and a drop o' summat to strengthen our
+nerves afore we vamp all the way back again?  My throat's as dry as a
+kex.  What d'ye say so's?"
+
+They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to the
+antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of the Three
+Tuns was the only radiant object.  As soon as they had stumbled down
+into the room Melbury ordered them to be served, when they made
+themselves comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs
+upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, restless as
+usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, and looked up and
+down the street.
+
+"I'd gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go out
+in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that have got to
+get up at five o'clock to morrow," said a bark-ripper; who, not working
+regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in strong opinions.
+
+"I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner, "but if 'tis
+right for couples to make a country talk about their separating, and
+excite the neighbors, and then make fools of 'em like this, why, I
+haven't stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty year."
+
+All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in these
+enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and Creedle chimed
+in with, "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these days! Why couldn't she
+ha' bode with her father, and been faithful?" Poor Creedle was thinking
+of his old employer.
+
+"But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony," said
+Farmer Bawtree.  "I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't mind owning,
+as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my own
+relations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear the poker
+and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee across the house
+with the movements of their vengeance; and the next hour you'd hear 'em
+singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two holy twins;
+yes--and very good voices they had, and would strike in like
+professional ballet-singers to one another's support in the high notes."
+
+"And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away for
+four-and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper.  "And one night he came home
+when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down himself on
+the other side of the chimney-corner.  'Well,' says she, 'have ye got
+any news?'  'Don't know as I have,' says he; 'have you?'  'No,' says
+she, 'except that my daughter by my second husband was married last
+month, which was a year after I was made a widow by him.'  'Oh!
+Anything else?' he says.  'No,' says she. And there they sat, one on
+each side of that chimney-corner, and were found by their neighbors
+sound asleep in their chairs, not having known what to talk about at
+all."
+
+"Well, I don't care who the man is," said Creedle, "they required a
+good deal to talk about, and that's true.  It won't be the same with
+these."
+
+"No.  He is such a projick, you see.  And she is a wonderful scholar
+too!"
+
+"What women do know nowadays!" observed the hollow-turner.  "You can't
+deceive 'em as you could in my time."
+
+"What they knowed then was not small," said John Upjohn.  "Always a
+good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is
+now, the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty
+side as she walked was beyond all belief.  Perhaps you've noticed that
+she's got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?"
+
+"I can't say I've noticed it particular much," said the hollow-turner,
+blandly.
+
+"Well," continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, "she has.  All women under
+the sun be prettier one side than t'other.  And, as I was saying, the
+pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending!
+I warrant that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun,
+uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always
+towards the hedge, and that dimple towards me.  There was I, too simple
+to see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful, though two years
+younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram;
+for that was in the third climate of our courtship.  No; I don't think
+the women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise."
+
+"How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?" inquired a
+youth--the same who had assisted at Winterborne's Christmas party.
+
+"Five--from the coolest to the hottest--leastwise there was five in
+mine."
+
+"Can ye give us the chronicle of 'em, Mr. Upjohn?"
+
+"Yes--I could.  I could certainly.  But 'tis quite unnecessary. They'll
+come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good."
+
+"At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis'ess could
+lead you," the hollow-turner remarked.  "She's got him quite tame.  But
+how long 'twill last I can't say.  I happened to be setting a wire on
+the top of my garden one night when he met her on the other side of the
+hedge; and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor
+feller at a distance, was enough to freeze yer blood.  I should never
+have supposed it of such a girl."
+
+Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared
+themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey, which
+was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. Having to
+walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather shorter than
+the highway, though difficult except to those who knew the country
+well.  This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing the
+church-yard they observed, as they talked, a motionless figure standing
+by the gate.
+
+"I think it was Marty South," said the hollow-turner, parenthetically.
+
+"I think 'twas; 'a was always a lonely maid," said Upjohn.  And they
+passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more.
+
+It was Marty, as they had supposed.  That evening had been the
+particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been
+accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles's grave, and this was
+the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on which
+Grace had failed to keep her appointment.  Marty had waited in the road
+just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been wont to
+join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking that Grace had
+missed her and gone on alone, she followed the way to Great Hintock,
+but saw no Grace in front of her.  It got later, and Marty continued
+her walk till she reached the church-yard gate; but still no Grace.
+Yet her sense of comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave
+alone, and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood
+there with her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her
+feet chilled by the damp ground, till more than two hours had passed.
+
+She then heard the footsteps of Melbury's men, who presently passed on
+their return from the search.  In the silence of the night Marty could
+not help hearing fragments of their conversation, from which she
+acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers
+then was.
+
+Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-yard,
+going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the
+unadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne.  As this
+solitary and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a straight slim
+figure, clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so
+undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and
+toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and
+looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference the
+attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism.  She
+stooped down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and
+herself had laid there the previous week, and put her fresh ones in
+their place.
+
+"Now, my own, own love," she whispered, "you are mine, and on'y mine;
+for she has forgot 'ee at last, although for her you died. But
+I--whenever I get up I'll think of 'ee, and whenever I lie down I'll
+think of 'ee.  Whenever I plant the young larches I'll think that none
+can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever I
+turn the cider-wring, I'll say none could do it like you.  If ever I
+forget your name, let me forget home and Heaven!--But no, no, my love,
+I never can forget 'ee; for you was a GOOD man, and did good things!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy
+#7 in our series by Thomas Hardy
+
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+The Woodlanders
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+April, 1996  [Etext #482]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy
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+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WOODLANDERS
+by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, should
+trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a meridional line
+from Bristol to the south shore of England, would find himself
+during the latter half of his journey in the vicinity of some
+extensive woodlands, interspersed with apple-orchards.  Here the
+trees, timber or fruit-bearing, as the case may be, make the way-
+side hedges ragged by their drip and shade, stretching over the
+road with easeful horizontality, as if they found the
+unsubstantial air an adequate support for their limbs.  At one
+place, where a hill is crossed, the largest of the woods shows
+itself bisected by the high-way, as the head of thick hair is
+bisected by the white line of its parting.  The spot is lonely.
+
+The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a
+degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a
+tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. 
+The contrast of what is with what might be probably accounts for
+this.  To step, for instance, at the place under notice, from the
+hedge of the plantation into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and
+pause amid its emptiness for a moment, was to exchange by the act
+of a single stride the simple absence of human companionship for
+an incubus of the forlorn.
+
+At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone winter's day,
+there stood a man who had entered upon the scene much in the
+aforesaid manner.  Alighting into the road from a stile hard by,
+he, though by no means a "chosen vessel" for impressions, was
+temporarily influenced by some such feeling of being suddenly more
+alone than before he had emerged upon the highway.
+
+It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of dress
+that he did not belong to the country proper; and from his air,
+after a while, that though there might be a sombre beauty in the
+scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan procession of coaching
+ghosts in the sentiment of this old turnpike-road, he was mainly
+puzzled about the way.  The dead men's work that had been expended
+in climbing that hill, the blistered soles that had trodden it,
+and the tears that had wetted it, were not his concern; for fate
+had given him no time for any but practical things.
+
+He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the ground
+with his walking-stick.  A closer glance at his face corroborated
+the testimony of his clothes.  It was self-complacent, yet there
+was small apparent ground for such complacence.  Nothing
+irradiated it; to the eye of the magician in character, if not to
+the ordinary observer, the expression enthroned there was absolute
+submission to and belief in a little assortment of forms and
+habitudes.
+
+At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as he
+desired, or seemed likely to appear that night.  But presently a
+slight noise of laboring wheels and the steady dig of a horse's
+shoe-tips became audible; and there loomed in the notch of the
+hill and plantation that the road formed here at the summit a
+carrier's van drawn by a single horse.  When it got nearer, he
+said, with some relief to himself, "'Tis Mrs. Dollery's--this will
+help me."
+
+The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women.  He held up
+his stick at its approach, and the woman who was driving drew
+rein.
+
+"I've been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock this last
+half-hour, Mrs. Dollery," he said.  "But though I've been to Great
+Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen times I am at fault about
+the small village.  You can help me, I dare say?"
+
+She assured him that she could--that as she went to Great Hintock
+her van passed near it--that it was only up the lane that branched
+out of the lane into which she was about to turn--just ahead. 
+"Though," continued Mrs. Dollery, "'tis such a little small place
+that, as a town gentleman, you'd need have a candle and lantern to
+find it if ye don't know where 'tis.  Bedad! I wouldn't live there
+if they'd pay me to.  Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a
+bit."
+
+He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, where they
+were ever and anon brushed over by the horse's tail.
+
+This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather a movable
+attachment of the roadway than an extraneous object, to those who
+knew it well.  The old horse, whose hair was of the roughness and
+color of heather, whose leg-joints, shoulders, and hoofs were
+distorted by harness and drudgery from colthood--though if all had
+their rights, he ought, symmetrical in outline, to have been
+picking the herbage of some Eastern plain instead of tugging here--
+had trodden this road almost daily for twenty years.  Even his
+subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the harness
+being too short, his tail was not drawn through the crupper, so
+that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one side.  He knew every
+subtle incline of the seven or eight miles of ground between
+Hintock and Sherton Abbas--the market-town to which he journeyed--
+as accurately as any surveyor could have learned it by a Dumpy
+level.
+
+The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the motion
+of the wheels, and at a point in it over the driver's head was a
+hook to which the reins were hitched at times, when they formed a
+catenary curve from the horse's shoulders.  Somewhere about the
+axles was a loose chain, whose only known purpose was to clink as
+it went.  Mrs. Dollery, having to hop up and down many times in
+the service of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather,
+short leggings under her gown for modesty's sake, and instead of a
+bonnet a felt hat tied down with a handkerchief, to guard against
+an earache to which she was frequently subject.  In the rear of
+the van was a glass window, which she cleaned with her pocket-
+handkerchief every market-day before starting.  Looking at the van
+from the back, the spectator could thus see through its interior a
+square piece of the same sky and landscape that he saw without,
+but intruded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, as
+they rumbled onward, their lips moving and heads nodding in
+animated private converse, remained in happy unconsciousness that
+their mannerisms and facial peculiarities were sharply defined to
+the public eye.
+
+This hour of coming home from market was the happy one, if not the
+happiest, of the week for them.  Snugly ensconced under the tilt,
+they could forget the sorrows of the world without, and survey
+life and recapitulate the incidents of the day with placid smiles.
+
+The passengers in the back part formed a group to themselves, and
+while the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a
+confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise
+of the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting
+forward.
+
+"'Tis Barber Percombe--he that's got the waxen woman in his window
+at the top of Abbey Street," said one.  "What business can bring
+him from his shop out here at this time and not a journeyman hair-
+cutter, but a master-barber that's left off his pole because 'tis
+not genteel!"
+
+They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, though he had
+nodded and spoken genially, seemed indisposed to gratify the
+curiosity which he had aroused; and the unrestrained flow of ideas
+which had animated the inside of the van before his arrival was
+checked thenceforward.
+
+Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible little
+lane, whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, could be
+discerned in the dusk, about half a mile to the right, gardens and
+orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it were, snipped out of the
+woodland.  From this self-contained place rose in stealthy silence
+tall stems of smoke, which the eye of imagination could trace
+downward to their root on quiet hearth-stones festooned overhead
+with hams and flitches.  It was one of those sequestered spots
+outside the gates of the world where may usually be found more
+meditation than action, and more passivity than meditation; where
+reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results in inferences
+wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to time, no less than in
+other places, dramas of a grandeur and unity truly Sophoclean are
+enacted in the real, by virtue of the concentrated passions and
+closely knit interdependence of the lives therein.
+
+This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber's search. 
+The coming night gradually obscured the smoke of the chimneys, but
+the position of the sequestered little world could still be
+distinguished by a few faint lights, winking more or less
+ineffectually through the leafless boughs, and the undiscerned
+songsters they bore, in the form of balls of feathers, at roost
+among them.
+
+Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller lane,
+at the corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dollery's van
+going on to the larger village, whose superiority to the despised
+smaller one as an exemplar of the world's movements was not
+particularly apparent in its means of approach.
+
+"A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, is in
+league with the devil, lives in the place you be going to--not
+because there's anybody for'n to cure there, but because 'tis the
+middle of his district."
+
+The observation was flung at the barber by one of the women at
+parting, as a last attempt to get at his errand that way.
+
+But he made no reply, and without further pause the pedestrian
+plunged towards the umbrageous nook, and paced cautiously over the
+dead leaves which nearly buried the road or street of the hamlet. 
+As very few people except themselves passed this way after dark, a
+majority of the denizens of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains
+unnecessary; and on this account Mr. Percombe made it his business
+to stop opposite the casements of each cottage that he came to,
+with a demeanor which showed that he was endeavoring to
+conjecture, from the persons and things he observed within, the
+whereabouts of somebody or other who resided here.
+
+Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two houses,
+whose size, antiquity, and rambling appurtenances signified that
+notwithstanding their remoteness they must formerly have been, if
+they were not still, inhabited by people of a certain social
+standing, being neglected by him entirely.  Smells of pomace, and
+the hiss of fermenting cider, which reached him from the back
+quarters of other tenements, revealed the recent occupation of
+some of the inhabitants, and joined with the scent of decay from
+the perishing leaves underfoot.
+
+Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result.  The next,
+which stood opposite a tall tree, was in an exceptional state of
+radiance, the flickering brightness from the inside shining up the
+chimney and making a luminous mist of the emerging smoke.  The
+interior, as seen through the window, caused him to draw up with a
+terminative air and watch.  The house was rather large for a
+cottage, and the door, which opened immediately into the living-
+room, stood ajar, so that a ribbon of light fell through the
+opening into the dark atmosphere without.  Every now and then a
+moth, decrepit from the late season, would flit for a moment
+across the out-coming rays and disappear again into the night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded, he beheld a
+girl seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied by the light of
+the fire, which was ample and of wood.  With a bill-hook in one
+hand and a leather glove, much too large for her, on the other,
+she was making spars, such as are used by thatchers, with great
+rapidity.  She wore a leather apron for this purpose, which was
+also much too large for her figure.  On her left hand lay a bundle
+of the straight, smooth sticks called spar-gads--the raw material
+of her manufacture; on her right, a heap of chips and ends--the
+refuse--with which the fire was maintained; in front, a pile of
+the finished articles.  To produce them she took up each gad,
+looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to length, split
+it into four, and sharpened each of the quarters with dexterous
+blows, which brought it to a triangular point precisely resembling
+that of a bayonet.
+
+Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass
+candlestick stood on a little round table, curiously formed of an
+old coffin-stool, with a deal top nailed on, the white surface of
+the latter contrasting oddly with the black carved oak of the
+substructure.  The social position of the household in the past
+was almost as definitively shown by the presence of this article
+as that of an esquire or nobleman by his old helmets or shields. 
+It had been customary for every well-to-do villager, whose tenure
+was by copy of court-roll, or in any way more permanent than that
+of the mere cotter, to keep a pair of these stools for the use of
+his own dead; but for the last generation or two a feeling of cui
+bono had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and the stools
+were frequently made use of in the manner described.
+
+The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment and examined
+the palm of her right hand, which, unlike the other, was ungloved,
+and showed little hardness or roughness about it.  The palm was
+red and blistering, as if this present occupation were not
+frequent enough with her to subdue it to what it worked in.  As
+with so many right hands born to manual labor, there was nothing
+in its fundamental shape to bear out the physiological
+conventionalism that gradations of birth, gentle or mean, show
+themselves primarily in the form of this member.  Nothing but a
+cast of the die of destiny had decided that the girl should handle
+the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft might
+have skilfully guided the pencil or swept the string, had they
+only been set to do it in good time.
+
+Her face had the usual fulness of expression which is developed by
+a life of solitude.  Where the eyes of a multitude beat like waves
+upon a countenance they seem to wear away its individuality; but
+in the still water of privacy every tentacle of feeling and
+sentiment shoots out in visible luxuriance, to be interpreted as
+readily as a child's look by an intruder.  In years she was no
+more than nineteen or twenty, but the necessity of taking thought
+at a too early period of life had forced the provisional curves of
+her childhood's face to a premature finality.  Thus she had but
+little pretension to beauty, save in one prominent particular--her
+hair.  Its abundance made it almost unmanageable; its color was,
+roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, brown, but
+careful notice, or an observation by day, would have revealed that
+its true shade was a rare and beautiful approximation to chestnut.
+
+On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim of his
+now before us the new-comer's eyes were fixed; meanwhile the
+fingers of his right hand mechanically played over something
+sticking up from his waistcoat-pocket--the bows of a pair of
+scissors, whose polish made them feebly responsive to the light
+within.  In her present beholder's mind the scene formed by the
+girlish spar-maker composed itself into a post-Raffaelite picture
+of extremest quality, wherein the girl's hair alone, as the focus
+of observation, was depicted with intensity and distinctness, and
+her face, shoulders, hands, and figure in general, being a blurred
+mass of unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity.
+
+He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and entered.  The
+young woman turned at the crunch of his boots on the sanded floor,
+and exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Percombe, how you frightened me!" quite
+lost her color for a moment.
+
+He replied, "You should shut your door--then you'd hear folk open
+it."
+
+"I can't," she said; "the chimney smokes so.  Mr. Percombe, you
+look as unnatural out of your shop as a canary in a thorn-hedge. 
+Surely you have not come out here on my account--for--"
+
+"Yes--to have your answer about this." He touched her head with
+his cane, and she winced.  "Do you agree?" he continued.  "It is
+necessary that I should know at once, as the lady is soon going
+away, and it takes time to make up."
+
+"Don't press me--it worries me.  I was in hopes you had thought no
+more of it.  I can NOT part with it--so there!"
+
+"Now, look here, Marty," said the barber, sitting down on the
+coffin-stool table.  "How much do you get for making these spars?"
+
+"Hush--father's up-stairs awake, and he don't know that I am doing
+his work."
+
+"Well, now tell me," said the man, more softly.  "How much do you
+get?"
+
+"Eighteenpence a thousand," she said, reluctantly.
+
+"Who are you making them for?"
+
+"Mr. Melbury, the timber-dealer, just below here."
+
+"And how many can you make in a day?"
+
+"In a day and half the night, three bundles--that's a thousand and
+a half."
+
+"Two and threepence." The barber paused.  "Well, look here," he
+continued, with the remains of a calculation in his tone, which
+calculation had been the reduction to figures of the probable
+monetary magnetism necessary to overpower the resistant force of
+her present purse and the woman's love of comeliness, "here's a
+sovereign--a gold sovereign, almost new." He held it out between
+his finger and thumb.  "That's as much as you'd earn in a week and
+a half at that rough man's work, and it's yours for just letting
+me snip off what you've got too much of."
+
+The girl's bosom moved a very little.  "Why can't the lady send to
+some other girl who don't value her hair--not to me?" she
+exclaimed.
+
+"Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her own, and
+'tis a shade you can't match by dyeing.  But you are not going to
+refuse me now I've come all the way from Sherton o' purpose?"
+
+"I say I won't sell it--to you or anybody."
+
+"Now listen," and he drew up a little closer beside her.  "The
+lady is very rich, and won't be particular to a few shillings; so
+I will advance to this on my own responsibility--I'll make the one
+sovereign two, rather than go back empty-handed."
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried, beginning to be much agitated.  "You are
+a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe.  You go on like the Devil to Dr.
+Faustus in the penny book.  But I don't want your money, and won't
+agree.  Why did you come? I said when you got me into your shop
+and urged me so much, that I didn't mean to sell my hair!" The
+speaker was hot and stern.
+
+"Marty, now hearken.  The lady that wants it wants it badly.  And,
+between you and me, you'd better let her have it.  'Twill be bad
+for you if you don't."
+
+"Bad for me? Who is she, then?"
+
+The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the question.
+
+"I am not at liberty to tell you.  And as she is going abroad soon
+it makes no difference who she is at all."
+
+"She wants it to go abroad wi'?"
+
+Percombe assented by a nod.  The girl regarded him reflectively. 
+"Barber Percombe," she said, "I know who 'tis.  'Tis she at the
+House--Mrs. Charmond!"
+
+"That's my secret.  However, if you agree to let me have it, I'll
+tell you in confidence."
+
+"I'll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the truth. 
+It is Mrs. Charmond."
+
+The barber dropped his voice.  "Well--it is.  You sat in front of
+her in church the other day, and she noticed how exactly your hair
+matched her own.  Ever since then she's been hankering for it, and
+at last decided to get it.  As she won't wear it till she goes off
+abroad, she knows nobody will recognize the change.  I'm
+commissioned to get it for her, and then it is to be made up.  I
+shouldn't have vamped all these miles for any less important
+employer.  Now, mind--'tis as much as my business with her is
+worth if it should be known that I've let out her name; but honor
+between us two, Marty, and you'll say nothing that would injure
+me?"
+
+"I don't wish to tell upon her," said Marty, coolly.  "But my hair
+is my own, and I'm going to keep it."
+
+"Now, that's not fair, after what I've told you," said the nettled
+barber.  "You see, Marty, as you are in the same parish, and in
+one of her cottages, and your father is ill, and wouldn't like to
+turn out, it would be as well to oblige her.  I say that as a
+friend.  But I won't press you to make up your mind to-night. 
+You'll be coming to market to-morrow, I dare say, and you can call
+then.  If you think it over you'll be inclined to bring what I
+want, I know."
+
+"I've nothing more to say," she answered.
+
+Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless to urge her
+further by speech.  "As you are a trusty young woman," he said,
+"I'll put these sovereigns up here for ornament, that you may see
+how handsome they are.  Bring the hair to-morrow, or return the
+sovereigns." He stuck them edgewise into the frame of a small
+mantle looking-glass.  "I hope you'll bring it, for your sake and
+mine.  I should have thought she could have suited herself
+elsewhere; but as it's her fancy it must be indulged if possible. 
+If you cut it off yourself, mind how you do it so as to keep all
+the locks one way." He showed her how this was to be done.
+
+"But I sha'nt," she replied, with laconic indifference.  "I value
+my looks too much to spoil 'em.  She wants my hair to get another
+lover with; though if stories are true she's broke the heart of
+many a noble gentleman already."
+
+"Lord, it's wonderful how you guess things, Marty," said the
+barber.  "I've had it from them that know that there certainly is
+some foreign gentleman in her eye.  However, mind what I ask."
+
+"She's not going to get him through me."
+
+Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, planted his
+cane on the coffin-stool, and looked her in the face.  "Marty
+South," he said, with deliberate emphasis, "YOU'VE GOT A LOVER
+YOURSELF, and that's why you won't let it go!"
+
+She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that suffices
+to heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather glove on one hand,
+took up the hook with the other, and sat down doggedly to her work
+without turning her face to him again.  He regarded her head for a
+moment, went to the door, and with one look back at her, departed
+on his way homeward.
+
+Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then suddenly
+laying down the bill-hook, she jumped up and went to the back of
+the room, where she opened a door which disclosed a staircase so
+whitely scrubbed that the grain of the wood was wellnigh sodden
+away by such cleansing.  At the top she gently approached a
+bedroom, and without entering, said, "Father, do you want
+anything?"
+
+A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, "I should be
+all right by to-morrow if it were not for the tree!"
+
+"The tree again--always the tree! Oh, father, don't worry so about
+that.  You know it can do you no harm."
+
+"Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?"
+
+"A Sherton man called--nothing to trouble about," she said,
+soothingly.  "Father," she went on, "can Mrs. Charmond turn us out
+of our house if she's minded to?"
+
+"Turn us out? No.  Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is
+turned out of my body.  'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose
+Winterborne's.  But when my life drops 'twill be hers--not till
+then." His words on this subject so far had been rational and firm
+enough.  But now he lapsed into his moaning strain: "And the tree
+will do it--that tree will soon be the death of me."
+
+"Nonsense, you know better.  How can it be?" She refrained from
+further speech, and descended to the ground-floor again.
+
+"Thank Heaven, then," she said to herself, "what belongs to me I
+keep."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The lights in the village went out, house after house, till there
+only remained two in the darkness.  One of these came from a
+residence on the hill-side, of which there is nothing to say at
+present; the other shone from the window of Marty South. 
+Precisely the same outward effect was produced here, however, by
+her rising when the clock struck ten and hanging up a thick cloth
+curtain.  The door it was necessary to keep ajar in hers, as in
+most cottages, because of the smoke; but she obviated the effect
+of the ribbon of light through the chink by hanging a cloth over
+that also.  She was one of those people who, if they have to work
+harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a secret
+as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of wood-
+splintering which came from within, no wayfarer would have
+perceived that here the cottager did not sleep as elsewhere.
+
+Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck; the heap of spars grew higher,
+and the pile of chips and ends more bulky.  Even the light on the
+hill had now been extinguished; but still she worked on.  When the
+temperature of the night without had fallen so low as to make her
+chilly, she opened a large blue umbrella to ward off the draught
+from the door.  The two sovereigns confronted her from the
+looking-glass in such a manner as to suggest a pair of jaundiced
+eyes on the watch for an opportunity.  Whenever she sighed for
+weariness she lifted her gaze towards them, but withdrew it
+quickly, stroking her tresses with her fingers for a moment, as if
+to assure herself that they were still secure.  When the clock
+struck three she arose and tied up the spars she had last made in
+a bundle resembling those that lay against the wall.
+
+She wrapped round her a long red woollen cravat and opened the
+door.  The night in all its fulness met her flatly on the
+threshold, like the very brink of an absolute void, or the
+antemundane Ginnung-Gap believed in by her Teuton forefathers. 
+For her eyes were fresh from the blaze, and here there was no
+street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly transition between the
+inner glare and the outer dark.  A lingering wind brought to her
+ear the creaking sound of two over-crowded branches in the
+neighboring wood which were rubbing each other into wounds, and
+other vocalized sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of
+owls, and the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon ill-
+balanced on its roosting-bough.
+
+But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she could see
+well enough for her purpose.  Taking a bundle of spars under each
+arm, and guided by the serrated line of tree-tops against the sky,
+she went some hundred yards or more down the lane till she reached
+a long open shed, carpeted around with the dead leaves that lay
+about everywhere.  Night, that strange personality, which within
+walls brings ominous introspectiveness and self-distrust, but
+under the open sky banishes such subjective anxieties as too
+trivial for thought, inspired Marty South with a less perturbed
+and brisker manner now.  She laid the spars on the ground within
+the shed and returned for more, going to and fro till her whole
+manufactured stock were deposited here.
+
+This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of business
+hereabout, Mr. George Melbury, the timber, bark, and copse-ware
+merchant for whom Marty's father did work of this sort by the
+piece.  It formed one of the many rambling out-houses which
+surrounded his dwelling, an equally irregular block of building,
+whose immense chimneys could just be discerned even now.  The four
+huge wagons under the shed were built on those ancient lines whose
+proportions have been ousted by modern patterns, their shapes
+bulging and curving at the base and ends like Trafalgar line-of-
+battle ships, with which venerable hulks, indeed, these vehicles
+evidenced a constructed spirit curiously in harmony.  One was
+laden with sheep-cribs, another with hurdles, another with ash
+poles, and the fourth, at the foot of which she had placed her
+thatching-spars was half full of similar bundles.
+
+She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of accomplishment
+which follows work done that has been a hard struggle in the
+doing, when she heard a woman's voice on the other side of the
+hedge say, anxiously, "George!" In a moment the name was repeated,
+with "Do come indoors! What are you doing there?"
+
+The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty had moved she
+saw enter the latter from the timber-merchant's back door an
+elderly woman sheltering a candle with her hand, the light from
+which cast a moving thorn-pattern of shade on Marty's face.  Its
+rays soon fell upon a man whose clothes were roughly thrown on,
+standing in advance of the speaker.  He was a thin, slightly
+stooping figure, with a small nervous mouth and a face cleanly
+shaven; and he walked along the path with his eyes bent on the
+ground.  In the pair Marty South recognized her employer Melbury
+and his wife.  She was the second Mrs. Melbury, the first having
+died shortly after the birth of the timber-merchant's only child.
+
+"'Tis no use to stay in bed," he said, as soon as she came up to
+where he was pacing restlessly about.  "I can't sleep--I keep
+thinking of things, and worrying about the girl, till I'm quite in
+a fever of anxiety."  He went on to say that he could not think
+why "she (Marty knew he was speaking of his daughter) did not
+answer his letter.  She must be ill--she must, certainly," he
+said.
+
+"No, no.  'Tis all right, George," said his wife; and she assured
+him that such things always did appear so gloomy in the night-
+time, if people allowed their minds to run on them; that when
+morning came it was seen that such fears were nothing but shadows. 
+"Grace is as well as you or I," she declared.
+
+But he persisted that she did not see all--that she did not see as
+much as he.  His daughter's not writing was only one part of his
+worry.  On account of her he was anxious concerning money affairs,
+which he would never alarm his mind about otherwise.  The reason
+he gave was that, as she had nobody to depend upon for a provision
+but himself, he wished her, when he was gone, to be securely out
+of risk of poverty.
+
+To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure to marry
+well, and that hence a hundred pounds more or less from him would
+not make much difference.
+
+Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, naturally
+thought; but there she was wrong, and in that lay the source of
+his trouble.  "I have a plan in my head about her," he said; "and
+according to my plan she won't marry a rich man."
+
+"A plan for her not to marry well?" said his wife, surprised.
+
+"Well, in one sense it is that," replied Melbury.  "It is a plan
+for her to marry a particular person, and as he has not so much
+money as she might expect, it might be called as you call it.  I
+may not be able to carry it out; and even if I do, it may not be a
+good thing for her.  I want her to marry Giles Winterborne."
+
+His companion repeated the name.  "Well, it is all right," she
+said, presently.  "He adores the very ground she walks on; only
+he's close, and won't show it much."
+
+Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself away.
+
+Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well enough. 
+Winterborne had been interested in his daughter for years; that
+was what had led him into the notion of their union.  And he knew
+that she used to have no objection to him.  But it was not any
+difficulty about that which embarrassed him.  It was that, since
+he had educated her so well, and so long, and so far above the
+level of daughters thereabout, it was "wasting her" to give her to
+a man of no higher standing than the young man in question.
+
+"That's what I have been thinking," said Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Well, then, Lucy, now you've hit it," answered the timber-
+merchant, with feeling.  "There lies my trouble.  I vowed to let
+her marry him, and to make her as valuable as I could to him by
+schooling her as many years and as thoroughly as possible.  I mean
+to keep my vow.  I made it because I did his father a terrible
+wrong; and it was a weight on my conscience ever since that time
+till this scheme of making amends occurred to me through seeing
+that Giles liked her."
+
+"Wronged his father?" asked Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Yes, grievously wronged him," said her husband.
+
+"Well, don't think of it to-night," she urged.  "Come indoors."
+
+"No, no, the air cools my head.  I shall not stay long." He was
+silent a while; then he told her, as nearly as Marty could gather,
+that his first wife, his daughter Grace's mother, was first the
+sweetheart of Winterborne's father, who loved her tenderly, till
+he, the speaker, won her away from him by a trick, because he
+wanted to marry her himself.  He sadly went on to say that the
+other man's happiness was ruined by it; that though he married
+Winterborne's mother, it was but a half-hearted business with him. 
+Melbury added that he was afterwards very miserable at what he had
+done; but that as time went on, and the children grew up, and
+seemed to be attached to each other, he determined to do all he
+could to right the wrong by letting his daughter marry the lad;
+not only that, but to give her the best education he could afford,
+so as to make the gift as valuable a one as it lay in his power to
+bestow.  "I still mean to do it," said Melbury.
+
+"Then do," said she.
+
+"But all these things trouble me," said he; "for I feel I am
+sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and often come
+down here and look at this."
+
+"Look at what?" asked his wife.
+
+He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, and
+removed a tile which lay in the garden-path.  "'Tis the track of
+her shoe that she made when she ran down here the day before she
+went away all those months ago.  I covered it up when she was
+gone; and when I come here and look at it, I ask myself again, why
+should she be sacrificed to a poor man?"
+
+"It is not altogether a sacrifice," said the woman.  "He is in
+love with her, and he's honest and upright.  If she encourages
+him, what can you wish for more?"
+
+"I wish for nothing definite.  But there's a lot of things
+possible for her.  Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some refined
+young lady, I hear, to go abroad with her--as companion or
+something of the kind.  She'd jump at Grace."
+
+"That's all uncertain.  Better stick to what's sure."
+
+"True, true," said Melbury; "and I hope it will be for the best. 
+Yes, let me get 'em married up as soon as I can, so as to have it
+over and done with." He continued looking at the imprint, while he
+added, "Suppose she should be dying, and never make a track on
+this path any more?"
+
+"She'll write soon, depend upon't.  Come, 'tis wrong to stay here
+and brood so."
+
+He admitted it, but said he could not help it.  "Whether she write
+or no, I shall fetch her in a few days." And thus speaking, he
+covered the track, and preceded his wife indoors.
+
+Melbury, perhaps, was an unlucky man in having within him the
+sentiment which could indulge in this foolish fondness about the
+imprint of a daughter's footstep.  Nature does not carry on her
+government with a view to such feelings, and when advancing years
+render the open hearts of those who possess them less dexterous
+than formerly in shutting against the blast, they must suffer
+"buffeting at will by rain and storm" no less than Little
+Celandines.
+
+But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury's, was the centre of
+Marty's consciousness, and it was in relation to this that the
+matter struck her as she slowly withdrew.
+
+"That, then, is the secret of it all," she said.  "And Giles
+Winterborne is not for me, and the less I think of him the
+better."
+
+She returned to her cottage.  The sovereigns were staring at her
+from the looking-glass as she had left them.  With a preoccupied
+countenance, and with tears in her eyes, she got a pair of
+scissors, and began mercilessly cutting off the long locks of her
+hair, arranging and tying them with their points all one way, as
+the barber had directed.  Upon the pale scrubbed deal of the
+coffin-stool table they stretched like waving and ropy weeds over
+the washed gravel-bed of a clear stream.
+
+She would not turn again to the little looking-glass, out of
+humanity to herself, knowing what a deflowered visage would look
+back at her, and almost break her heart; she dreaded it as much as
+did her own ancestral goddess Sif the reflection in the pool after
+the rape of her locks by Loke the malicious.  She steadily stuck
+to business, wrapped the hair in a parcel, and sealed it up, after
+which she raked out the fire and went to bed, having first set up
+an alarum made of a candle and piece of thread, with a stone
+attached.
+
+But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night.  Having tossed till
+about five o'clock, Marty heard the sparrows walking down their
+long holes in the thatch above her sloping ceiling to their
+orifice at the eaves; whereupon she also arose, and descended to
+the ground-floor again.
+
+It was still dark, but she began moving about the house in those
+automatic initiatory acts and touches which represent among
+housewives the installation of another day.  While thus engaged
+she heard the rumbling of Mr. Melbury's wagons, and knew that
+there, too, the day's toil had begun.
+
+An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused them to
+blaze up cheerfully and bring her diminished head-gear into sudden
+prominence as a shadow.  At this a step approached the door.
+
+"Are folk astir here yet?" inquired a voice she knew well.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Winterborne," said Marty, throwing on a tilt bonnet,
+which completely hid the recent ravages of the scissors.  "Come
+in!"
+
+The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the mat a man
+not particularly young for a lover, nor particularly mature for a
+person of affairs.  There was reserve in his glance, and restraint
+upon his mouth.  He carried a horn lantern which hung upon a
+swivel, and wheeling as it dangled marked grotesque shapes upon
+the shadier part of the walls.
+
+He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that
+they did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was
+not well.  Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would
+go their journey with a short load that day.
+
+"They are done," said Marty, "and lying in the cart-house."
+
+"Done!" he repeated.  "Your father has not been too ill to work
+after all, then?"
+
+She made some evasive reply.  "I'll show you where they be, if you
+are going down," she added.
+
+They went out and walked together, the pattern of the air-holes in
+the top of the lantern being thrown upon the mist overhead, where
+they appeared of giant size, as if reaching the tent-shaped sky. 
+They had no remarks to make to each other, and they uttered none. 
+Hardly anything could be more isolated or more self-contained than
+the lives of these two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour,
+when gray shades, material and mental, are so very gray.  And yet,
+looked at in a certain way, their lonely courses formed no
+detached design at all, but were part of the pattern in the great
+web of human doings then weaving in both hemispheres, from the
+White Sea to Cape Horn.
+
+The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars.  Winterborne
+regarded them silently, then looked at her.
+
+"Now, Marty, I believe--" he said, and shook his head.
+
+"What?"
+
+"That you've done the work yourself."
+
+"Don't you tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?" she pleaded,
+by way of answer.  "Because I am afraid Mr. Melbury may refuse my
+work if he knows it is mine."
+
+"But how could you learn to do it? 'Tis a trade."
+
+"Trade!" said she.  "I'd be bound to learn it in two hours."
+
+"Oh no, you wouldn't, Mrs. Marty." Winterborne held down his
+lantern, and examined the cleanly split hazels as they lay. 
+"Marty," he said, with dry admiration, "your father with his forty
+years of practice never made a spar better than that.  They are
+too good for the thatching of houses--they are good enough for the
+furniture.  But I won't tell.  Let me look at your hands--your
+poor hands!"
+
+He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and when she
+seemed reluctant to show her hands, he took hold of one and
+examined it as if it were his own.  Her fingers were blistered.
+
+"They'll get harder in time," she said.  "For if father continues
+ill, I shall have to go on wi' it.  Now I'll help put 'em up in
+wagon."
+
+Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, lifted her as
+she was about to stoop over the bundles, placed her behind him,
+and began throwing up the bundles himself.  "Rather than you
+should do it I will," he said.  "But the men will be here
+directly.  Why, Marty!--whatever has happened to your head? Lord,
+it has shrunk to nothing--it looks an apple upon a gate-post!"
+
+Her heart swelled, and she could not speak.  At length she managed
+to groan, looking on the ground, "I've made myself ugly--and
+hateful--that's what I've done!"
+
+"No, no," he answered.  "You've only cut your hair--I see now.
+
+"Then why must you needs say that about apples and gate-posts?"
+
+"Let me see."
+
+"No, no!" She ran off into the gloom of the sluggish dawn.  He did
+not attempt to follow her.  When she reached her father's door she
+stood on the step and looked back.  Mr. Melbury's men had arrived,
+and were loading up the spars, and their lanterns appeared from
+the distance at which she stood to have wan circles round them,
+like eyes weary with watching.  She observed them for a few
+seconds as they set about harnessing the horses, and then went
+indoors.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and
+presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged
+like a dead-born child.  The villagers everywhere had already
+bestirred themselves, rising at this time of the year at the far
+less dreary hour of absolute darkness.  It had been above an hour
+earlier, before a single bird had untucked his head, that twenty
+lights were struck in as many bedrooms, twenty pairs of shutters
+opened, and twenty pairs of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast
+the weather for the day.
+
+Owls that had been catching mice in the out-houses, rabbits that
+had been eating the wintergreens in the gardens, and stoats that
+had been sucking the blood of the rabbits, discerning that their
+human neighbors were on the move, discreetly withdrew from
+publicity, and were seen and heard no more that day.
+
+The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury's homestead, of
+which the wagon-sheds had been an outlying erection.  It formed
+three sides of an open quadrangle, and consisted of all sorts of
+buildings, the largest and central one being the dwelling itself. 
+The fourth side of the quadrangle was the public road.
+
+It was a dwelling-house of respectable, roomy, almost dignified
+aspect; which, taken with the fact that there were the remains of
+other such buildings thereabout, indicated that Little Hintock had
+at some time or other been of greater importance than now, as its
+old name of Hintock St. Osmond also testified.  The house was of
+no marked antiquity, yet of well-advanced age; older than a stale
+novelty, but no canonized antique; faded, not hoary; looking at
+you from the still distinct middle-distance of the early Georgian
+time, and awakening on that account the instincts of reminiscence
+more decidedly than the remoter and far grander memorials which
+have to speak from the misty reaches of mediaevalism.  The faces,
+dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenues of the great-great-
+grandfathers and grandmothers who had been the first to gaze from
+those rectangular windows, and had stood under that key-stoned
+doorway, could be divined and measured by homely standards of to-
+day.  It was a house in whose reverberations queer old personal
+tales were yet audible if properly listened for; and not, as with
+those of the castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility of
+echo.
+
+The garden-front remained much as it had always been, and there
+was a porch and entrance that way.  But the principal house-door
+opened on the square yard or quadrangle towards the road, formerly
+a regular carriage entrance, though the middle of the area was now
+made use of for stacking timber, fagots, bundles, and other
+products of the wood.  It was divided from the lane by a lichen-
+coated wall, in which hung a pair of gates, flanked by piers out
+of the perpendicular, with a round white ball on the top of each.
+
+The building on the left of the enclosure was a long-backed
+erection, now used for spar-making, sawing, crib-framing, and
+copse-ware manufacture in general.  Opposite were the wagon-sheds
+where Marty had deposited her spars.
+
+Here Winterborne had remained after the girl's abrupt departure,
+to see that the wagon-loads were properly made up.  Winterborne
+was connected with the Melbury family in various ways.  In
+addition to the sentimental relationship which arose from his
+father having been the first Mrs. Melbury's lover, Winterborne's
+aunt had married and emigrated with the brother of the timber-
+merchant many years before--an alliance that was sufficient to
+place Winterborne, though the poorer, on a footing of social
+intimacy with the Melburys.  As in most villages so secluded as
+this, intermarriages were of Hapsburgian frequency among the
+inhabitants, and there were hardly two houses in Little Hintock
+unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other.
+
+For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed between
+Melbury and the younger man--a partnership based upon an unwritten
+code, by which each acted in the way he thought fair towards the
+other, on a give-and-take principle.  Melbury, with his timber and
+copse-ware business, found that the weight of his labor came in
+winter and spring.  Winterborne was in the apple and cider trade,
+and his requirements in cartage and other work came in the autumn
+of each year.  Hence horses, wagons, and in some degree men, were
+handed over to him when the apples began to fall; he, in return,
+lending his assistance to Melbury in the busiest wood-cutting
+season, as now.
+
+Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to ask him
+to remain till Mr. Melbury had seen him.  Winterborne thereupon
+crossed over to the spar-house where two or three men were already
+at work, two of them being travelling spar-makers from White-hart
+Lane, who, when this kind of work began, made their appearance
+regularly, and when it was over disappeared in silence till the
+season came again.
+
+Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock; and a blaze
+of gad-cuds made the outhouse gay with its light, which vied with
+that of the day as yet.  In the hollow shades of the roof could be
+seen dangling etiolated arms of ivy which had crept through the
+joints of the tiles and were groping in vain for some support,
+their leaves being dwarfed and sickly for want of sunlight; others
+were pushing in with such force at the eaves as to lift from their
+supports the shelves that were fixed there.
+
+Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also present John
+Upjohn, engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, who lived hard by;
+old Timothy Tangs and young Timothy Tangs, top and bottom sawyers,
+at work in Mr. Melbury's pit outside; Farmer Bawtree, who kept the
+cider-house, and Robert Creedle, an old man who worked for
+Winterborne, and stood warming his hands; these latter being
+enticed in by the ruddy blaze, though they had no particular
+business there.  None of them call for any remark except, perhaps,
+Creedle.  To have completely described him it would have been
+necessary to write a military memoir, for he wore under his smock-
+frock a cast-off soldier's jacket that had seen hot service, its
+collar showing just above the flap of the frock; also a hunting
+memoir, to include the top-boots that he had picked up by chance;
+also chronicles of voyaging and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife
+had been given him by a weather-beaten sailor.  But Creedle
+carried about with him on his uneventful rounds these silent
+testimonies of war, sport, and adventure, and thought nothing of
+their associations or their stories.
+
+Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which the
+secondary intelligence of the hands and arms could carry on
+without requiring the sovereign attention of the head, the minds
+of its professors wandered considerably from the objects before
+them; hence the tales, chronicles, and ramifications of family
+history which were recounted here were of a very exhaustive kind,
+and sometimes so interminable as to defy description.
+
+Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped back
+again outside the door; and the conversation interrupted by his
+momentary presence flowed anew, reaching his ears as an
+accompaniment to the regular dripping of the fog from the
+plantation boughs around.
+
+The topic at present handled was a highly popular and frequent
+one--the personal character of Mrs. Charmond, the owner of the
+surrounding woods and groves.
+
+"My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to doubt it,"
+said Creedle, "that she'd sit down to her dinner with a frock
+hardly higher than her elbows.  'Oh, you wicked woman!' he said to
+himself when he first see her, 'you go to your church, and sit,
+and kneel, as if your knee-jints were greased with very saint's
+anointment, and tell off your Hear-us-good-Lords like a business
+man counting money; and yet you can eat your victuals such a
+figure as that!' Whether she's a reformed character by this time I
+can't say; but I don't care who the man is, that's how she went on
+when my brother-in-law lived there."
+
+"Did she do it in her husband's time?"
+
+"That I don't know--hardly, I should think, considering his
+temper.  Ah!" Here Creedle threw grieved remembrance into physical
+form by slowly resigning his head to obliquity and letting his
+eyes water.  "That man! 'Not if the angels of heaven come down,
+Creedle,' he said, 'shall you do another day's work for me!' Yes--
+he'd say anything--anything; and would as soon take a winged
+creature's name in vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must get
+these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God, I must see about
+using 'em."
+
+An old woman now entered upon the scene.  She was Mr. Melbury's
+servant, and passed a great part of her time in crossing the yard
+between the house-door and the spar-shed, whither she had come now
+for fuel.  She had two facial aspects--one, of a soft and flexible
+kind, she used indoors when assisting about the parlor or up-
+stairs; the other, with stiff lines and corners, when she was
+bustling among the men in the spar-house or out-of-doors.
+
+"Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn, "it do do my heart good to
+see a old woman like you so dapper and stirring, when I bear in
+mind that after fifty one year counts as two did afore! But your
+smoke didn't rise this morning till twenty minutes past seven by
+my beater; and that's late, Grammer Oliver."
+
+"If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take notice of
+your scornful meanings.  But your growing up was such a scrimped
+and scanty business that really a woman couldn't feel hurt if you
+were to spit fire and brimstone itself at her.  Here," she added,
+holding out a spar-gad to one of the workmen, from which dangled a
+long black-pudding--"here's something for thy breakfast, and if
+you want tea you must fetch it from in-doors."
+
+"Mr. Melbury is late this morning," said the bottom-sawyer.
+
+"Yes.  'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs. Oliver.  "Even when I opened
+the door, so late as I was, you couldn't have told poor men from
+gentlemen, or John from a reasonable-sized object.  And I don't
+think maister's slept at all well to-night.  He's anxious about
+his daughter; and I know what that is, for I've cried bucketfuls
+for my own."
+
+When the old woman had gone Creedle said,
+
+"He'll fret his gizzard green if he don't soon hear from that maid
+of his.  Well, learning is better than houses and lands.  But to
+keep a maid at school till she is taller out of pattens than her
+mother was in 'em--'tis tempting Providence."
+
+"It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl," said
+young Timothy Tangs.
+
+"I can mind her mother," said the hollow-turner.  "Always a teuny,
+delicate piece; her touch upon your hand was as soft and cool as
+wind.  She was inoculated for the small-pox and had it beautifully
+fine, just about the time that I was out of my apprenticeship--ay,
+and a long apprenticeship 'twas.  I served that master of mine six
+years and three hundred and fourteen days."
+
+The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, as if,
+considering their number, they were a rather more remarkable fact
+than the years.
+
+"Mr. Winterborne's father walked with her at one time," said old
+Timothy Tangs.  "But Mr. Melbury won her.  She was a child of a
+woman, and would cry like rain if so be he huffed her.  Whenever
+she and her husband came to a puddle in their walks together he'd
+take her up like a half-penny doll and put her over without
+dirting her a speck.  And if he keeps the daughter so long at
+boarding-school, he'll make her as nesh as her mother was.  But
+here he comes."
+
+Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury crossing the
+court from his door.  He was carrying an open letter in his hand,
+and came straight to Winterborne.  His gloom of the preceding
+night had quite gone.
+
+"I'd no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see why Grace
+didn't come or write than I get a letter from her--'Clifton:
+Wednesday.  My dear father,' says she, 'I'm coming home to-morrow'
+(that's to-day), 'but I didn't think it worth while to write long
+beforehand.' The little rascal, and didn't she! Now, Giles, as you
+are going to Sherton market to-day with your apple-trees, why not
+join me and Grace there, and we'll drive home all together?"
+
+He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hardly the same
+man as the man of the small dark hours.  Ever it happens that even
+among the moodiest the tendency to be cheered is stronger than the
+tendency to be cast down; and a soul's specific gravity stands
+permanently less than that of the sea of troubles into which it is
+thrown.
+
+Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this suggestion
+with something like alacrity.  There was not much doubt that
+Marty's grounds for cutting off her hair were substantial enough,
+if Ambrose's eyes had been a reason for keeping it on.  As for the
+timber-merchant, it was plain that his invitation had been given
+solely in pursuance of his scheme for uniting the pair.  He had
+made up his mind to the course as a duty, and was strenuously bent
+upon following it out.
+
+Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned towards the door of the
+spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the men as aforesaid.
+
+"Well, John, and Lot," he said, nodding as he entered.  "A rimy
+morning."
+
+"'Tis, sir!" said Creedle, energetically; for, not having as yet
+been able to summon force sufficient to go away and begin work, he
+felt the necessity of throwing some into his speech.  "I don't
+care who the man is, 'tis the rimiest morning we've had this
+fall."
+
+"I heard you wondering why I've kept my daughter so long at
+boarding-school," resumed Mr. Melbury, looking up from the letter
+which he was reading anew by the fire, and turning to them with
+the suddenness that was a trait in him.  "Hey?" he asked, with
+affected shrewdness.  "But you did, you know.  Well, now, though
+it is my own business more than anybody else's, I'll tell ye. 
+When I was a boy, another boy--the pa'son's son--along with a lot
+of others, asked me 'Who dragged Whom round the walls of What?'
+and I said, 'Sam Barrett, who dragged his wife in a chair round
+the tower corner when she went to be churched.' They laughed at me
+with such torrents of scorn that I went home ashamed, and couldn't
+sleep for shame; and I cried that night till my pillow was wet:
+till at last I thought to myself there and then--'They may laugh
+at me for my ignorance, but that was father's fault, and none o'
+my making, and I must bear it.  But they shall never laugh at my
+children, if I have any: I'll starve first!' Thank God, I've been
+able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and her scholarship
+is such that she stayed on as governess for a time.  Let 'em laugh
+now if they can: Mrs. Charmond herself is not better informed than
+my girl Grace."
+
+There was something between high indifference and humble emotion
+in his delivery, which made it difficult for them to reply. 
+Winterborne's interest was of a kind which did not show itself in
+words; listening, he stood by the fire, mechanically stirring the
+embers with a spar-gad.
+
+"You'll be, then, ready, Giles?" Melbury continued, awaking from a
+reverie.  "Well, what was the latest news at Shottsford yesterday,
+Mr. Bawtree?"
+
+"Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still--you can't victual your
+carcass there unless you've got money; and you can't buy a cup of
+genuine there, whether or no....But as the saying is, 'Go abroad
+and you'll hear news of home.' It seems that our new neighbor,
+this young Dr. What's-his-name, is a strange, deep, perusing
+gentleman; and there's good reason for supposing he has sold his
+soul to the wicked one."
+
+"'Od name it all," murmured the timber-merchant, unimpressed by
+the news, but reminded of other things by the subject of it; "I've
+got to meet a gentleman this very morning? and yet I've planned to
+go to Sherton Abbas for the maid."
+
+"I won't praise the doctor's wisdom till I hear what sort of
+bargain he's made," said the top-sawyer.
+
+"'Tis only an old woman's tale," said Bawtree.  "But it seems that
+he wanted certain books on some mysterious science or black-art,
+and in order that the people hereabout should not know anything
+about his dark readings, he ordered 'em direct from London, and
+not from the Sherton book-seller.  The parcel was delivered by
+mistake at the pa'son's, and he wasn't at home; so his wife opened
+it, and went into hysterics when she read 'em, thinking her
+husband had turned heathen, and 'twould be the ruin of the
+children.  But when he came he said he knew no more about 'em than
+she; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpier's property.  So he
+wrote 'Beware!' outside, and sent 'em on by the sexton."
+
+"He must be a curious young man," mused the hollow-turner.
+
+"He must," said Timothy Tangs.
+
+"Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, "he's only a
+gentleman fond of science and philosophy and poetry, and, in fact,
+every kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, he passes his time
+in making such matters his hobby."
+
+"Well," said old Timothy, "'tis a strange thing about doctors that
+the worse they be the better they be.  I mean that if you hear
+anything of this sort about 'em, ten to one they can cure ye as
+nobody else can."
+
+"True," said Bawtree, emphatically.  "And for my part I shall take
+my custom from old Jones and go to this one directly I've anything
+the matter with me.  That last medicine old Jones gave me had no
+taste in it at all."
+
+Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not listen to
+these recitals, being moreover preoccupied with the business
+appointment which had come into his head.  He walked up and down,
+looking on the floor--his usual custom when undecided.  That
+stiffness about the arm, hip, and knee-joint which was apparent
+when he walked was the net product of the divers sprains and over-
+exertions that had been required of him in handling trees and
+timber when a young man, for he was of the sort called self-made,
+and had worked hard.  He knew the origin of every one of these
+cramps: that in his left shoulder had come of carrying a pollard,
+unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that in one leg was caused
+by the crash of an elm against it when they were felling; that in
+the other was from lifting a bole.  On many a morrow after
+wearying himself by these prodigious muscular efforts, he had
+risen from his bed fresh as usual; his lassitude had departed,
+apparently forever; and confident in the recuperative power of his
+youth, he had repeated the strains anew.  But treacherous Time had
+been only hiding ill results when they could be guarded against,
+for greater accumulation when they could not.  In his declining
+years the store had been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms,
+pricks, and spasms, in every one of which Melbury recognized some
+act which, had its consequence been contemporaneously made known,
+he would wisely have abstained from repeating.
+
+On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed. 
+Reaching the kitchen, where the family breakfasted in winter to
+save house-labor, he sat down by the fire, and looked a long time
+at the pair of dancing shadows cast by each fire-iron and dog-knob
+on the whitewashed chimney-corner--a yellow one from the window,
+and a blue one from the fire.
+
+"I don't quite know what to do to-day," he said to his wife at
+last.  "I've recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. Charmond's
+steward in Round Wood at twelve o'clock, and yet I want to go for
+Grace."
+
+"Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? 'Twill bring 'em together
+all the quicker."
+
+"I could do that--but I should like to go myself.  I always have
+gone, without fail, every time hitherto.  It has been a great
+pleasure to drive into Sherton, and wait and see her arrive; and
+perhaps she'll be disappointed if I stay away."
+
+"Yon may be disappointed, but I don't think she will, if you send
+Giles," said Mrs. Melbury, dryly.
+
+"Very well--I'll send him."
+
+Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife's words
+when strenuous argument would have had no effect.  This second
+Mrs. Melbury was a placid woman, who had been nurse to his child
+Grace before her mother's death.  After that melancholy event
+little Grace had clung to the nurse with much affection; and
+ultimately Melbury, in dread lest the only woman who cared for the
+girl should be induced to leave her, persuaded the mild Lucy to
+marry him.  The arrangement--for it was little more--had worked
+satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and Melbury had not
+repented.
+
+He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at hand, to
+whom he explained the change of plan.  "As she won't arrive till
+five o'clock, you can get your business very well over in time to
+receive her," said Melbury.  "The green gig will do for her;
+you'll spin along quicker with that, and won't be late upon the
+road.  Her boxes can be called for by one of the wagons."
+
+Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant's restitutory
+aims, quietly thought all this to be a kindly chance.  Wishing
+even more than her father to despatch his apple-tree business in
+the market before Grace's arrival, he prepared to start at once.
+
+Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly.  The gig-
+wheels, for instance, were not always washed during winter-time
+before a journey, the muddy roads rendering that labor useless;
+but they were washed to-day.  The harness was blacked, and when
+the rather elderly white horse had been put in, and Winterborne
+was in his seat ready to start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a
+blacking-brush, and with his own hands touched over the yellow
+hoofs of the animal.
+
+"You see, Giles," he said, as he blacked, "coming from a
+fashionable school, she might feel shocked at the homeliness of
+home; and 'tis these little things that catch a dainty woman's eye
+if they are neglected.  We, living here alone, don't notice how
+the whitey-brown creeps out of the earth over us; but she, fresh
+from a city--why, she'll notice everything!"
+
+"That she will," said Giles.
+
+"And scorn us if we don't mind."
+
+"Not scorn us."
+
+"No, no, no--that's only words.  She's too good a girl to do that. 
+But when we consider what she knows, and what she has seen since
+she last saw us, 'tis as well to meet her views as nearly as
+possible.  Why, 'tis a year since she was in this old place, owing
+to her going abroad in the summer, which I agreed to, thinking it
+best for her; and naturally we shall look small, just at first--I
+only say just at first."
+
+Mr. Melbury's tone evinced a certain exultation in the very sense
+of that inferiority he affected to deplore; for this advanced and
+refined being, was she not his own all the time?  Not so Giles; he
+felt doubtful--perhaps a trifle cynical--for that strand was wound
+into him with the rest.  He looked at his clothes with misgiving,
+then with indifference.
+
+It was his custom during the planting season to carry a specimen
+apple-tree to market with him as an advertisement of what he dealt
+in.  This had been tied across the gig; and as it would be left
+behind in the town, it would cause no inconvenience to Miss Grace
+Melbury coming home.
+
+He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the horse; and
+Melbury went in-doors.  Before the gig had passed out of sight,
+Mr. Melbury reappeared and shouted after--
+
+"Here, Giles, "he said, breathlessly following with some wraps,
+"it may be very chilly to-night, and she may want something extra
+about her.  And, Giles," he added, when the young man, having
+taken the articles, put the horse in motion once more, "tell her
+that I should have come myself, but I had particular business with
+Mrs. Charmond's agent, which prevented me.  Don't forget."
+
+He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk--a shape
+into which emotion with him often resolved itself--"There, now, I
+hope the two will bring it to a point and have done with it! 'Tis
+a pity to let such a girl throw herself away upon him--a thousand
+pities!...And yet 'tis my duty for his father's sake."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without elation and
+without discomposure.  Had he regarded his inner self
+spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more wont to do, he might
+have felt pride in the discernment of a somewhat rare power in
+him--that of keeping not only judgment but emotion suspended in
+difficult cases.  But he noted it not.  Neither did he observe
+what was also the fact, that though he cherished a true and warm
+feeling towards Grace Melbury, he was not altogether her fool just
+now.  It must be remembered that he had not seen her for a year.
+
+Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had taken the
+spirit out of many a pedestrian in times when, with the majority,
+to travel meant to walk, he saw before him the trim figure of a
+young woman in pattens, journeying with that steadfast
+concentration which means purpose and not pleasure.  He was soon
+near enough to see that she was Marty South.  Click, click, click 
+went the pattens; and she did not turn her head.
+
+She had, however, become aware before this that the driver of the
+approaching gig was Giles.  She had shrunk from being overtaken by
+him thus; but as it was inevitable, she had braced herself up for
+his inspection by closing her lips so as to make her mouth quite
+unemotional, and by throwing an additional firmness into her
+tread.
+
+"Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is clean enough,
+although the lanes are muddy."
+
+"They save my boots."
+
+"But twelve miles in pattens--'twill twist your feet off.  Come,
+get up and ride with me."
+
+She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel out of them
+against the wheel, and mounted in front of the nodding specimen
+apple-tree.  She had so arranged her bonnet with a full border and
+trimmings that her lack of long hair did not much injure her
+appearance; though Giles, of course, saw that it was gone, and may
+have guessed her motive in parting with it, such sales, though
+infrequent, being not unheard of in that locality.
+
+But nature's adornment was still hard by--in fact, within two feet
+of him, though he did not know it.  In Marty's basket was a brown
+paper packet, and in the packet the chestnut locks, which, by
+reason of the barber's request for secrecy, she had not ventured
+to intrust to other hands.
+
+Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was getting on.
+
+He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a day or two;
+he would be quite well but for his craze about the tree falling on
+him.
+
+"You know why I don't ask for him so often as I might, I suppose?"
+said Winterborne.  "Or don't you know?"
+
+"I think I do."
+
+"Because of the houses?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Yes.  I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about those
+houses, which I should lose by his death, more than about him. 
+Marty, I do feel anxious about the houses, since half my income
+depends upon them; but I do likewise care for him; and it almost
+seems wrong that houses should be leased for lives, so as to lead
+to such mixed feelings."
+
+"After father's death they will be Mrs. Charmond's?"
+
+"They'll be hers."
+
+"They are going to keep company with my hair," she thought.
+
+Thus talking, they reached the town.  By no pressure would she
+ride up the street with him.  "That's the right of another woman,"
+she said, with playful malice, as she put on her pattens.  "I
+wonder what you are thinking of! Thank you for the lift in that
+handsome gig.  Good-by."
+
+He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on ahead
+into the streets--the churches, the abbey, and other buildings on
+this clear bright morning having the liny distinctness of
+architectural drawings, as if the original dream and vision of the
+conceiving master-mason, some mediaeval Vilars or other unknown to
+fame, were for a few minutes flashed down through the centuries to
+an unappreciative age.  Giles saw their eloquent look on this day
+of transparency, but could not construe it.  He turned into the
+inn-yard.
+
+Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to the hair-
+dresser's, Mr. Percombe's.  Percombe was the chief of his trade in
+Sherton Abbas.  He had the patronage of such county offshoots as
+had been obliged to seek the shelter of small houses in that
+ancient town, of the local clergy, and so on, for some of whom he
+had made wigs, while others among them had compensated for
+neglecting him in their lifetime by patronizing him when they were
+dead, and letting him shave their corpses.  On the strength of all
+this he had taken down his pole, and called himself "Perruquier to
+the aristocracy."
+
+Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his
+children's mouths, and they had to be filled.  So, behind his
+house there was a little yard, reached by a passage from the back
+street, and in that yard was a pole, and under the pole a shop of
+quite another description than the ornamental one in the front
+street.  Here on Saturday nights from seven till ten he took an
+almost innumerable succession of twopences from the farm laborers
+who flocked thither in crowds from the country.  And thus he
+lived.
+
+Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed her packet to
+him silently.  "Thank you," said the barber, quite joyfully.  "I
+hardly expected it after what you said last night."
+
+She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in each eye at
+this reminder.
+
+"Nothing of what I told you," he whispered, there being others in
+the shop.  "But I can trust you, I see."
+
+She had now reached the end of this distressing business, and went
+listlessly along the street to attend to other errands.  These
+occupied her till four o'clock, at which time she recrossed the
+market-place.  It was impossible to avoid rediscovering
+Winterborne every time she passed that way, for standing, as he
+always did at this season of the year, with his specimen apple-
+tree in the midst, the boughs rose above the heads of the crowd,
+and brought a delightful suggestion of orchards among the crowded
+buildings there.  When her eye fell upon him for the last time he
+was standing somewhat apart, holding the tree like an ensign, and
+looking on the ground instead of pushing his produce as he ought
+to have been doing.  He was, in fact, not a very successful seller
+either of his trees or of his cider, his habit of speaking his
+mind, when he spoke at all, militating against this branch of his
+business.
+
+While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a direction
+away from Marty, his face simultaneously kindling with recognition
+and surprise.  She followed his gaze, and saw walking across to
+him a flexible young creature in whom she perceived the features
+of her she had known as Miss Grace Melbury, but now looking
+glorified and refined above her former level.  Winterborne, being
+fixed to the spot by his apple-tree, could not advance to meet
+her; he held out his spare hand with his hat in it, and with some
+embarrassment beheld her coming on tiptoe through the mud to the
+middle of the square where he stood.
+
+Miss Melbury's arrival so early was, as Marty could see,
+unexpected by Giles, which accounted for his not being ready to
+receive her.  Indeed, her father had named five o'clock as her
+probable time, for which reason that hour had been looming out all
+the day in his forward perspective, like an important edifice on a
+plain.  Now here she was come, he knew not how, and his arranged
+welcome stultified.
+
+His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping into the
+road, and more still at the little look of embarrassment which
+appeared on hers at having to perform the meeting with him under
+an apple-tree ten feet high in the middle of the market-place. 
+Having had occasion to take off the new gloves she had bought to
+come home in, she held out to him a hand graduating from pink at
+the tips of the fingers to white at the palm; and the reception
+formed a scene, with the tree over their heads, which was not by 
+any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas streets.
+
+Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of a
+restrained type, which perhaps was not unnatural.  For true it was
+that Giles Winterborne, well-attired and well-mannered as he was
+for a yeoman, looked rough beside her.  It had sometimes dimly
+occurred to him, in his ruminating silence at Little Hintock, that
+external phenomena--such as the lowness or height or color of a
+hat, the fold of a coat, the make of a boot, or the chance 
+attitude or occupation of a limb at the instant of view--may have
+a great influence upon feminine opinion of a man's worth--so
+frequently founded on non-essentials; but a certain causticity of
+mental tone towards himself and the world in general had prevented
+to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on the strength of that
+reflection; and her momentary instinct of reserve at first sight
+of him was the penalty he paid for his laxness.
+
+He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he could find
+one who would accept the cumbersome gift, and the twain moved on
+towards the inn at which he had put up.  Marty made as if to step
+forward for the pleasure of being recognized by Miss Melbury; but
+abruptly checking herself, she glided behind a carrier's van,
+saying, dryly, "No; I baint wanted there," and critically regarded
+Winterborne's companion.
+
+It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Melbury with
+precision, either now or at any time.  Nay, from the highest point
+of view, to precisely describe a human being, the focus of a
+universe--how impossible! But, apart from transcendentalism, there
+never probably lived a person who was in herself more completely a
+reductio ad absurdum of attempts to appraise a woman, even
+externally, by items of face and figure.  Speaking generally, it
+may be said that she was sometimes beautiful, at other times not
+beautiful, according to the state of her health and spirits.
+
+In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and clear
+complexion, rather pale than pink, slim in build and elastic in
+movement.  Her look expressed a tendency to wait for others'
+thoughts before uttering her own; possibly also to wait for
+others' deeds before her own doing.  In her small, delicate mouth,
+which had perhaps hardly settled down to its matured curves, there
+was a gentleness that might hinder sufficient self-assertion for
+her own good.  She had well-formed eyebrows which, had her
+portrait been painted, would probably have been done in Prout's or
+Vandyke brown.
+
+There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, beyond a
+natural fitness and a style that was recent for the streets of
+Sherton.  But, indeed, had it been the reverse, and quite
+striking, it would have meant just as little.  For there can be
+hardly anything less connected with a woman's personality than
+drapery which she has neither designed, manufactured, cut, sewed,
+or even seen, except by a glance of approval when told that such
+and such a shape and color must be had because it has been decided
+by others as imperative at that particular time.
+
+What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursory view was very
+little; in truth, mainly something that was not she.  The woman
+herself was a shadowy, conjectural creature who had little to do
+with the outlines presented to Sherton eyes; a shape in the gloom,
+whose true description could only be approximated by putting
+together a movement now and a glance then, in that patient and
+long-continued attentiveness which nothing but watchful loving-
+kindness ever troubles to give.
+
+
+
+There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, and
+Marty South took advantage of it to hasten forward, with the view
+of escaping them on the way, lest they should feel compelled to
+spoil their tete-a-tete by asking her to ride.  She walked fast,
+and one-third of the journey was done, and the evening rapidly
+darkening, before she perceived any sign of them behind her. 
+Then, while ascending a hill, she dimly saw their vehicle drawing
+near the lowest part of the incline, their heads slightly bent
+towards each other; drawn together, no doubt, by their souls, as
+the heads of a pair of horses well in hand are drawn in by the
+rein.  She walked still faster.
+
+But between these and herself there was a carriage, apparently a
+brougham, coming in the same direction, with lighted lamps.  When
+it overtook her--which was not soon, on account of her pace--the
+scene was much darker, and the lights glared in her eyes
+sufficiently to hide the details of the equipage.
+
+It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind this carriage
+and so keep along with it, to save herself the mortification of
+being overtaken and picked up for pity's sake by the coming pair. 
+Accordingly, as the carriage drew abreast of her in climbing the
+long ascent, she walked close to the wheels, the rays of the
+nearest lamp penetrating her very pores.  She had only just
+dropped behind when the carriage stopped, and to her surprise the
+coachman asked her, over his shoulder, if she would ride.  What
+made the question more surprising was that it came in obedience to
+an order from the interior of the vehicle.
+
+Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, after
+working all night and keeping afoot all day.  She mounted beside
+the coachman, wondering why this good-fortune had happened to her. 
+He was rather a great man in aspect, and she did not like to
+inquire of him for some time.
+
+At last she said, "Who has been so kind as to ask me to ride?"
+
+"Mrs. Charmond," replied her statuesque companion.
+
+Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with her last
+night's experiences.  "Is this her carriage?" she whispered.
+
+"Yes; she's inside."
+
+Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must have
+recognized her plodding up the hill under the blaze of the lamp;
+recognized, probably, her stubbly poll (since she had kept away
+her face), and thought that those stubbles were the result of her
+own desire.
+
+Marty South was not so very far wrong.  Inside the carriage a pair
+of bright eyes looked from a ripely handsome face, and though
+behind those bright eyes was a mind of unfathomed mysteries,
+beneath them there beat a heart capable of quick extempore warmth--
+a heart which could, indeed, be passionately and imprudently warm
+on certain occasions.  At present, after recognizing the girl, she
+had acted on a mere impulse, possibly feeling gratified at the
+denuded appearance which signified the success of her agent in
+obtaining what she had required.
+
+"'Tis wonderful that she should ask ye," observed the magisterial
+coachman, presently.  "I have never known her do it before, for as
+a rule she takes no interest in the village folk at all."
+
+Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to see if she
+could get a glimpse of the Olympian creature who as the coachman
+had truly observed, hardly ever descended from her clouds into the
+Tempe of the parishioners.  But she could discern nothing of the
+lady.  She also looked for Miss Melbury and Winterborne.  The nose
+of their horse sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs.
+Charmond's carriage.  But they never attempted to pass it till the
+latter conveyance turned towards the park gate, when they sped by. 
+Here the carriage drew up that the gate might be opened, and in
+the momentary silence Marty heard a gentle oral sound, soft as a
+breeze.
+
+"What's that?" she whispered.
+
+"Mis'ess yawning."
+
+"Why should she yawn?"
+
+"Oh, because she's been used to such wonderfully good life, and
+finds it dull here.  She'll soon be off again on account of it."
+
+"So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!" the girl murmured. 
+"Then things don't fay with she any more than with we!"
+
+Marty now alighted; the lamp again shone upon her, and as the
+carriage rolled on, a soft voice said to her from the interior,
+"Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, ma'am," said Marty.  But she had not been able to see
+the woman who began so greatly to interest her--the second person
+of her own sex who had operated strongly on her mind that day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also undergone their
+little experiences of the same homeward journey.
+
+As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of people
+fell upon them, the younger thinking that Mr. Winterborne was in a
+pleasant place, and wondering in what relation he stood towards
+her.  Winterborne himself was unconscious of this.  Occupied
+solely with the idea of having her in charge, he did not notice
+much with outward eye, neither observing how she was dressed, nor
+the effect of the picture they together composed in the landscape.
+
+Their conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, Grace
+being somewhat disconcerted, through not having understood till
+they were about to start that Giles was to be her sole conductor
+in place of her father.  When they were in the open country he
+spoke.
+
+"Don't Brownley's farm-buildings look strange to you, now they
+have been moved bodily from the hollow where the old ones stood to
+the top of the hill?"
+
+She admitted that they did, though she should not have seen any
+difference in them if he had not pointed it out.
+
+"They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn't grind them
+all" (nodding towards an orchard where some heaps of apples had
+been left lying ever since the ingathering).
+
+She said "Yes," but looking at another orchard.
+
+"Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know bitter-sweets--
+you used to well enough!"
+
+"I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark to
+distinguish."
+
+Winterborne did not continue.  It seemed as if the knowledge and
+interest which had formerly moved Grace's mind had quite died away
+from her.  He wondered whether the special attributes of his image
+in the past had evaporated like these other things.
+
+However that might be, the fact at present was merely this, that
+where he was seeing John-apples and farm-buildings she was
+beholding a far remoter scene--a scene no less innocent and
+simple, indeed, but much contrasting--a broad lawn in the
+fashionable suburb of a fast city, the evergreen leaves shining in
+the evening sun, amid which bounding girls, gracefully clad in
+artistic arrangements of blue, brown, red, black, and white, were
+playing at games, with laughter and chat, in all the pride of
+life, the notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from the
+open windows adjoining.  Moreover, they were girls--and this was a
+fact which Grace Melbury's delicate femininity could not lose
+sight of--whose parents Giles would have addressed with a
+deferential Sir or Madam.  Beside this visioned scene the homely
+farmsteads did not quite hold their own from her present twenty-
+year point of survey.  For all his woodland sequestration, Giles
+knew the primitive simplicity of the subject he had started, and
+now sounded a deeper note.
+
+"'Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago; I often
+think of it.  I mean our saying that if we still liked each other
+when you were twenty and I twenty-five, we'd--"
+
+"It was child's tattle."
+
+"H'm!" said Giles, suddenly.
+
+"I mean we were young," said she, more considerately.  That gruff
+manner of his in making inquiries reminded her that he was
+unaltered in much.
+
+"Yes....I beg your pardon, Miss Melbury; your father SENT me to
+meet you to-day."
+
+"I know it, and I am glad of it."
+
+He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At that time you
+were sitting beside me at the back of your father's covered car,
+when we were coming home from gypsying, all the party being
+squeezed in together as tight as sheep in an auction-pen.  It got
+darker and darker, and I said--I forget the exact words--but I put
+my arm round your waist and there you let it stay till your
+father, sitting in front suddenly stopped telling his story to
+Farmer Bollen, to light his pipe.  The flash shone into the car,
+and showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist like
+lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of 'em had seen, and
+laughed at us.  Yet your father, to our amazement, instead of
+being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed quite pleased.  Have you
+forgot all that, or haven't you?"
+
+She owned that she remembered it very well, now that he mentioned
+the circumstances.  "But, goodness! I must have been in short
+frocks," she said.
+
+"Come now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, indeed! You
+know better, as well as I."
+
+Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with an old
+friend she valued so highly as she valued him, saying the words
+with the easy elusiveness that will be polite at all costs.  It
+might possibly be true, she added, that she was getting on in
+girlhood when that event took place; but if it were so, then she
+was virtually no less than an old woman now, so far did the time
+seem removed from her present.  "Do you ever look at things
+philosophically instead of personally?" she asked.
+
+"I can't say that I do," answered Giles, his eyes lingering far
+ahead upon a dark spot, which proved to be a brougham.
+
+"I think you may, sometimes, with advantage," said she.  "Look at
+yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream with other pitchers,
+and consider what contrivances are most desirable for avoiding
+cracks in general, and not only for saving your poor one.  Shall I
+tell you all about Bath or Cheltenham, or places on the Continent
+that I visited last summer?"
+
+"With all my heart."
+
+She then described places and persons in such terms as might have
+been used for that purpose by any woman to any man within the four
+seas, so entirely absent from that description was everything
+specially appertaining to her own existence.  When she had done
+she said, gayly, "Now do you tell me in return what has happened
+in Hintock since I have been away."
+
+"Anything to keep the conversation away from her and me," said
+Giles within him.
+
+It was true cultivation had so far advanced in the soil of Miss
+Melbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of anything save of
+that she knew well, and had the greatest interest in developing--
+that is to say, herself.
+
+He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narration when
+they drew near the carriage that had been preceding them for some
+time.  Miss Melbury inquired if he knew whose carriage it was.
+
+Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it into
+account.  On examination, he said it was Mrs. Charmond's.
+
+Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed to feel
+more nearly akin to it than to the one she was in.
+
+"Pooh! We can polish off the mileage as well as they, come to
+that," said Winterborne, reading her mind; and rising to emulation
+at what it bespoke, he whipped on the horse.  This it was which
+had brought the nose of Mr. Melbury's old gray close to the back
+of Mrs. Charmond's much-eclipsing vehicle.
+
+"There's Marty South Sitting up with the coachman," said he,
+discerning her by her dress.
+
+"Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me this very
+evening.  How does she happen to be riding there?"
+
+"I don't know.  It is very singular."
+
+Thus these people with converging destinies went along the road
+together, till Winterborne, leaving the track of the carriage,
+turned into Little Hintock, where almost the first house was the
+timber-merchant's.  Pencils of dancing light streamed out of the
+windows sufficiently to show the white laurestinus flowers, and
+glance over the polished leaves of laurel.  The interior of the
+rooms could be seen distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames,
+which in the parlor were reflected from the glass of the pictures
+and bookcase, and in the kitchen from the utensils and ware.
+
+"Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we call them,"
+she said.
+
+In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Melbury dined at
+one o'clock at other times, to-day the meal had been kept back for
+Grace.  A rickety old spit was in motion, its end being fixed in
+the fire-dog, and the whole kept going by means of a cord conveyed
+over pulleys along the ceiling to a large stone suspended in a
+corner of the room.  Old Grammer Oliver came and wound it up with
+a rattle like that of a mill.
+
+In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury's head fell on the
+wall and ceiling; but before the girl had regarded this room many
+moments their presence was discovered, and her father and step-
+mother came out to welcome her.
+
+The character of the Melbury family was of that kind which evinces
+some shyness in showing strong emotion among each other: a trait
+frequent in rural households, and one which stands in curiously
+inverse relation to most of the peculiarities distinguishing
+villagers from the people of towns.  Thus hiding their warmer
+feelings under commonplace talk all round, Grace's reception
+produced no extraordinary demonstrations.  But that more was felt
+than was enacted appeared from the fact that her father, in taking
+her in-doors, quite forgot the presence of Giles without, as did
+also Grace herself.  He said nothing, but took the gig round to
+the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who
+particularly attended to these matters when there was no
+conversation to draw him off among the copse-workers inside. 
+Winterborne then returned to the door with the intention of
+entering the house.
+
+The family had gone into the parlor, and were still absorbed in
+themselves.  The fire was, as before, the only light, and it
+irradiated Grace's face and hands so as to make them look
+wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the two elders; shining
+also through the loose hair about her temples as sunlight through
+a brake.  Her father was surveying her in a dazed conjecture, so
+much had she developed and progressed in manner and stature since
+he last had set eyes on her.
+
+Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious by the door,
+mechanically tracing with his fingers certain time-worn letters
+carved in the jambs--initials of by-gone generations of
+householders who had lived and died there.
+
+No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join the
+family; they had forgotten him, and it was enough for to-day that
+he had brought her home.  Still, he was a little surprised that
+her father's eagerness to send him for Grace should have resulted
+in such an anticlimax as this.
+
+He walked softly away into the lane towards his own house, looking
+back when he reached the turning, from which he could get a last
+glimpse of the timber-merchant's roof.  He hazarded guesses as to
+what Grace was saying just at that moment, and murmured, with some
+self-derision, "nothing about me!" He looked also in the other
+direction, and saw against the sky the thatched hip and solitary
+chimney of Marty's cottage, and thought of her too, struggling
+bravely along under that humble shelter, among her spar-gads and
+pots and skimmers.
+
+At the timber-merchant's, in the mean time, the conversation
+flowed; and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly enough deemed, on
+subjects in which he had no share.  Among the excluding matters
+there was, for one, the effect upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly
+mien and manners of his daughter, which took him so much unawares
+that, though it did not make him absolutely forget the existence
+of her conductor homeward, thrust Giles's image back into quite
+the obscurest cellarage of his brain.  Another was his interview
+with Mrs. Charmond's agent that morning, at which the lady herself
+had been present for a few minutes.  Melbury had purchased some
+standing timber from her a long time before, and now that the date
+had come for felling it he was left to pursue almost his own
+course.  This was what the household were actually talking of
+during Giles's cogitation without; and Melbury's satisfaction with
+the clear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and the deity
+of the groves which enclosed his residence was the cause of a
+counterbalancing mistiness on the side towards Winterborne.
+
+"So thoroughly does she trust me," said Melbury, "that I might
+fell, top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' timber
+whatever in her wood, and fix the price o't, and settle the
+matter.  But, name it all! I wouldn't do such a thing.  However,
+it may be useful to have this good understanding with her....I
+wish she took more interest in the place, and stayed here all the
+year round."
+
+"I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, but her dislike of
+Hintock, that makes her so easy about the trees," said Mrs.
+Melbury.
+
+When dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began to ramble
+pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, from which she had
+latterly become wellnigh an alien.  Each nook and each object
+revived a memory, and simultaneously modified it.  The chambers
+seemed lower than they had appeared on any previous occasion of
+her return, the surfaces of both walls and ceilings standing in
+such relations to the eye that it could not avoid taking
+microscopic note of their irregularities and old fashion.  Her own
+bedroom wore at once a look more familiar than when she had left
+it, and yet a face estranged.  The world of little things therein
+gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they had tried
+and been unable to make any progress without her presence.  Over
+the place where her candle had been accustomed to stand, when she
+had used to read in bed till the midnight hour, there was still
+the brown spot of smoke.  She did not know that her father had
+taken especial care to keep it from being cleaned off.
+
+Having concluded her perambulation of this now uselessly
+commodious edifice, Grace began to feel that she had come a long
+journey since the morning; and when her father had been up
+himself, as well as his wife, to see that her room was comfortable
+and the fire burning, she prepared to retire for the night.  No
+sooner, however, was she in bed than her momentary sleepiness took
+itself off, and she wished she had stayed up longer.  She amused
+herself by listening to the old familiar noises that she could
+hear to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking towards the
+window as she lay.  The blind had been drawn up, as she used to
+have it when a girl, and she could just discern the dim tree-tops
+against the sky on the neighboring hill.  Beneath this meeting-
+line of light and shade nothing was visible save one solitary
+point of light, which blinked as the tree-twigs waved to and fro
+before its beams.  From its position it seemed to radiate from the
+window of a house on the hill-side.  The house had been empty when
+she was last at home, and she wondered who inhabited the place
+now.
+
+Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she
+was watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed
+color, and at length shone blue as sapphire.  Thus it remained
+several minutes, and then it passed through violet to red.
+
+Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she
+sat up in bed, and stared steadily at the shine.  An appearance of
+this sort, sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less
+than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet.  Almost
+every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland place had
+hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll
+which produced the season's changes; but here was something
+dissociated from these normal sequences, and foreign to local
+habit and knowledge.
+
+It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below
+preparing to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding
+being that of her father bolting the doors.  Then the stairs
+creaked, and her father and mother passed her chamber.  The last
+to come was Grammer Oliver.
+
+Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting the latch,
+said, "I am not asleep, Grammer.  Come in and talk to me."
+
+Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again under the
+bedclothes.  Grammer set down her candlestick, and seated herself
+on the edge of Miss Melbury's coverlet.
+
+"I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the hill-side,"
+said Grace.
+
+Mrs. Oliver looked across.  "Oh, that," she said, "is from the
+doctor's.  He's often doing things of that sort.  Perhaps you
+don't know that we've a doctor living here now--Mr. Fitzpiers by
+name?"
+
+Grace admitted that she had not heard of him.
+
+"Well, then, miss, he's come here to get up a practice.  I know
+him very well, through going there to help 'em scrub sometimes,
+which your father said I might do, if I wanted to, in my spare
+time.  Being a bachelor-man, he've only a lad in the house.  Oh
+yes, I know him very well.  Sometimes he'll talk to me as if I
+were his own mother."
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"Yes.  'Grammer,' he said one day, when I asked him why he came
+here where there's hardly anybody living, 'I'll tell you why I
+came here.  I took a map, and I marked on it where Dr. Jones's
+practice ends to the north of this district, and where Mr.
+Taylor's ends on the south, and little Jimmy Green's on the east,
+and somebody else's to the west.  Then I took a pair of compasses,
+and found the exact middle of the country that was left between
+these bounds, and that middle was Little Hintock; so here I
+am....'  But, Lord, there: poor young man!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He said, 'Grammer Oliver, I've been here three months, and
+although there are a good many people in the Hintocks and the
+villages round, and a scattered practice is often a very good one,
+I don't seem to get many patients.  And there's no society at all;
+and I'm pretty near melancholy mad,' he said, with a great yawn. 
+'I should be quite if it were not for my books, and my lab--
+laboratory, and what not.  Grammer, I was made for higher things.'
+And then he'd yawn and yawn again."
+
+"Was he really made for higher things, do you think? I mean, is he
+clever?"
+
+"Well, no.  How can he be clever? He may be able to jine up a
+broken man or woman after a fashion, and put his finger upon an
+ache if you tell him nearly where 'tis; but these young men--they
+should live to my time of life, and then they'd see how clever
+they were at five-and-twenty! And yet he's a projick, a real
+projick, and says the oddest of rozums.  'Ah, Grammer,' he said,
+at another time, 'let me tell you that Everything is Nothing. 
+There's only Me and not Me in the whole world.' And he told me
+that no man's hands could help what they did, any more than the
+hands of a clock....Yes, he's a man of strange meditations, and
+his eyes seem to see as far as the north star."
+
+"He will soon go away, no doubt."
+
+"I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Grammer
+hesitated.  At last she went on: "Don't tell your father or
+mother, miss, if I let you know a secret."
+
+Grace gave the required promise.
+
+"Well, he talks of buying me; so he won't go away just yet."
+
+"Buying you!--how?"
+
+"Not my soul--my body, when I'm dead.  One day when I was there
+cleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large brain--a very large
+organ of brain,' he said.  'A woman's is usually four ounces less
+than a man's; but yours is man's size.' Well, then--hee, hee!--
+after he'd flattered me a bit like that, he said he'd give me ten
+pounds to have me as a natomy after my death.  Well, knowing I'd
+no chick nor chiel left, and nobody with any interest in me, I
+thought, faith, if I can be of any use to my fellow-creatures
+after I'm gone they are welcome to my services; so I said I'd
+think it over, and would most likely agree and take the ten
+pounds.  Now this is a secret, miss, between us two.  The money
+would be very useful to me; and I see no harm in it."
+
+"Of course there's no harm.  But oh, Grammer, how can you think to
+do it?  I wish you hadn't told me."
+
+"I wish I hadn't--if you don't like to know it, miss.  But you
+needn't mind.  Lord--hee, hee!--I shall keep him waiting many a
+year yet, bless ye!"
+
+"I hope you will, I am sure."
+
+The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that
+conversation languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her candle,
+wished Miss Melbury good-night.  The latter's eyes rested on the
+distant glimmer, around which she allowed her reasoning fancy to
+play in vague eddies that shaped the doings of the philosopher
+behind that light on the lines of intelligence just received.  It
+was strange to her to come back from the world to Little Hintock
+and find in one of its nooks, like a tropical plant in a hedge-
+row, a nucleus of advanced ideas and practices which had nothing
+in common with the life around.  Chemical experiments, anatomical
+projects, and metaphysical conceptions had found a strange home
+here.
+
+Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of the man
+behind the light intermingling with conjectural sketches of his
+personality, till her eyes fell together with their own heaviness,
+and she slept.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, Grammer
+Oliver's skeleton, and the face of Giles Winterborne, brought
+Grace Melbury to the morning of the next day.  It was fine.  A
+north wind was blowing--that not unacceptable compromise between
+the atmospheric cutlery of the eastern blast and the spongy gales
+of the west quarter.  She looked from her window in the direction
+of the light of the previous evening, and could just discern
+through the trees the shape of the surgeon's house.  Somehow, in
+the broad, practical daylight, that unknown and lonely gentleman
+seemed to be shorn of much of the interest which had invested his
+personality and pursuits in the hours of darkness, and as Grace's
+dressing proceeded he faded from her mind.
+
+Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her father's favor,
+was rendered a little restless by Miss Melbury's behavior. 
+Despite his dry self-control, he could not help looking
+continually from his own door towards the timber-merchant's, in
+the probability of somebody's emergence therefrom.  His attention
+was at length justified by the appearance of two figures, that of
+Mr. Melbury himself, and Grace beside him.  They stepped out in a
+direction towards the densest quarter of the wood, and Winterborne
+walked contemplatively behind them, till all three were soon under
+the trees.
+
+Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there were
+sheltered hollows amid the Hintock plantations and copses in which
+a more tardy leave-taking than on windy summits was the rule with
+the foliage.  This caused here and there an apparent mixture of
+the seasons; so that in some of the dells that they passed by
+holly-berries in full red were found growing beside oak and hazel
+whose leaves were as yet not far removed from green, and brambles
+whose verdure was rich and deep as in the month of August.  To
+Grace these well-known peculiarities were as an old painting
+restored.
+
+Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to the curious
+which the features of a wood undergo at the ingress of the winter
+months.  Angles were taking the place of curves, and reticulations
+of surfaces--a change constituting a sudden lapse from the ornate
+to the primitive on Nature's canvas, and comparable to a
+retrogressive step from the art of an advanced school of painting
+to that of the Pacific Islander.
+
+Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two figures as
+they threaded their way through these sylvan phenomena.  Mr.
+Melbury's long legs, and gaiters drawn in to the bone at the
+ankles, his slight stoop, his habit of getting lost in thought and
+arousing himself with an exclamation of "Hah!" accompanied with an
+upward jerk of the head, composed a personage recognizable by his
+neighbors as far as he could be seen.  It seemed as if the
+squirrels and birds knew him.  One of the former would
+occasionally run from the path to hide behind the arm of some
+tree, which the little animal carefully edged round pari passu
+with Melbury and his daughters movement onward, assuming a mock
+manner, as though he were saying, "Ho, ho; you are only a timber-
+merchant, and carry no gun!"
+
+They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled through
+interspersed tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with spreading
+roots, whose mossed rinds made them like hands wearing green
+gloves; elbowed old elms and ashes with great forks, in which
+stood pools of water that overflowed on rainy days, and ran down
+their stems in green cascades.  On older trees still than these,
+huge lobes of fungi grew like lungs.  Here, as everywhere, the
+Unfulfilled Intention, which makes life what it is, was as obvious
+as it could be among the depraved crowds of a city slum.  The leaf
+was deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was interrupted;
+the lichen eat the vigor of the stalk, and the ivy slowly
+strangled to death the promising sapling.
+
+They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the younger
+boughs still retaining their hectic leaves, that rustled in the
+breeze with a sound almost metallic, like the sheet-iron foliage
+of the fabled Jarnvid wood.  Some flecks of white in Grace's
+drapery had enabled Giles to keep her and her father in view till
+this time; but now he lost sight of them, and was obliged to
+follow by ear--no difficult matter, for on the line of their
+course every wood-pigeon rose from its perch with a continued
+clash, dashing its wings against the branches with wellnigh force
+enough to break every quill.  By taking the track of this noise he
+soon came to a stile.
+
+Was it worth while to go farther? He examined the doughy soil at
+the foot of the stile, and saw among the large sole-and-heel
+tracks an impression of a slighter kind from a boot that was
+obviously not local, for Winterborne knew all the cobblers'
+patterns in that district, because they were very few to know. 
+The mud-picture was enough to make him swing himself over and
+proceed.
+
+The character of the woodland now changed.  The bases of the
+smaller trees were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at divers points
+heaps of fresh-made chips, and the newly-cut stool of a tree,
+stared white through the undergrowth.  There had been a large fall
+of timber this year, which explained the meaning of some sounds
+that soon reached him.
+
+A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human bark, which
+reminded Giles that there was a sale of trees and fagots that very
+day.  Melbury would naturally be present.  Thereupon Winterborne
+remembered that he himself wanted a few fagots, and entered upon
+the scene.
+
+A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or followed
+him when, between his pauses, he wandered on from one lot of
+plantation produce to another, like some philosopher of the
+Peripatetic school delivering his lectures in the shady groves of
+the Lyceum.  His companions were timber-dealers, yeomen, farmers,
+villagers, and others; mostly woodland men, who on that account
+could afford to be curious in their walking-sticks, which
+consequently exhibited various monstrosities of vegetation, the
+chief being cork-screw shapes in black and white thorn, brought to
+that pattern by the slow torture of an encircling woodbine during
+their growth, as the Chinese have been said to mould human beings
+into grotesque toys by continued compression in infancy.  Two
+women, wearing men's jackets on their gowns, conducted in the rear
+of the halting procession a pony-cart containing a tapped barrel
+of beer, from which they drew and replenished horns that were
+handed round, with bread-and-cheese from a basket.
+
+The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using his
+walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot on any
+convenient object that took his fancy, such as the crown of a
+little boy's head, or the shoulders of a by-stander who had no
+business there except to taste the brew; a proceeding which would
+have been deemed humorous but for the air of stern rigidity which
+that auctioneer's face preserved, tending to show that the
+eccentricity was a result of that absence of mind which is
+engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy at all.
+
+Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the
+Peripatetics, and Grace beside him, clinging closely to his arm,
+her modern attire looking almost odd where everything else was
+old-fashioned, and throwing over the familiar garniture of the
+trees a homeliness that seemed to demand improvement by the
+addition of a few contemporary novelties also.  Grace seemed to
+regard the selling with the interest which attaches to memories
+revived after an interval of obliviousness.
+
+Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber-merchant
+spoke, and continued his buying; Grace merely smiled.  To justify
+his presence there Winterborne began bidding for timber and fagots
+that he did not want, pursuing the occupation in an abstracted
+mood, in which the auctioneer's voice seemed to become one of the
+natural sounds of the woodland.  A few flakes of snow descended,
+at the sight of which a robin, alarmed at these signs of imminent
+winter, and seeing that no offence was meant by the human
+invasion, came and perched on the tip of the fagots that were
+being sold, and looked into the auctioneer's face, while waiting
+for some chance crumb from the bread-basket.  Standing a little
+behind Grace, Winterborne observed how one flake would sail
+downward and settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would
+choose her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which
+took up so much of his attention that his biddings proceeded
+incoherently; and when the auctioneer said, every now and then,
+with a nod towards him, "Yours, Mr. Winterborne," he had no idea
+whether he had bought fagots, poles, or logwood.
+
+He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her father
+should show such inequalities of temperament as to keep Grace
+tightly on his arm to-day, when he had quite lately seemed anxious
+to recognize their betrothal as a fact.  And thus musing, and
+joining in no conversation with other buyers except when directly
+addressed, he followed the assemblage hither and thither till the
+end of the auction, when Giles for the first time realized what
+his purchases had been.  Hundreds of fagots, and divers lots of
+timber, had been set down to him, when all he had required had
+been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert Creedle's use
+in baking and lighting fires.
+
+Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber merchant. 
+But Melbury's manner was short and distant; and Grace, too, looked
+vexed and reproachful.  Winterborne then discovered that he had
+been unwittingly bidding against her father, and picking up his
+favorite lots in spite of him.  With a very few words they left
+the spot and pursued their way homeward.
+
+Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and remained
+standing under the trees, all the other men having strayed
+silently away.  He saw Melbury and his daughter pass down a glade
+without looking back.  While they moved slowly through it a lady
+appeared on horseback in the middle distance, the line of her
+progress converging upon that of Melbury's.  They met, Melbury
+took off his hat, and she reined in her horse.  A conversation was
+evidently in progress between Grace and her father and this
+equestrian, in whom he was almost sure that he recognized Mrs.
+Charmond, less by her outline than by the livery of the groom who
+had halted some yards off.
+
+The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause,
+during which much seemed to be said.  When Melbury and Grace
+resumed their walk it was with something of a lighter tread than
+before.
+
+Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward.  He was
+unwilling to let coldness grow up between himself and the Melburys
+for any trivial reason, and in the evening he went to their house. 
+On drawing near the gate his attention was attracted by the sight
+of one of the bedrooms blinking into a state of illumination.  In
+it stood Grace lighting several candles, her right hand elevating
+the taper, her left hand on her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed
+on each wick as it kindled, as if she saw in every flame's growth
+the rise of a life to maturity.  He wondered what such unusual
+brilliancy could mean to-night.  On getting in-doors he found her
+father and step-mother in a state of suppressed excitement, which
+at first he could not comprehend.
+
+"I am sorry about my biddings to-day," said Giles.  "I don't know
+what I was doing.  I have come to say that any of the lots you may
+require are yours."
+
+"Oh, never mind--never mind," replied the timber-merchant, with a
+slight wave of his hand, "I have so much else to think of that I
+nearly had forgot it.  Just now, too, there are matters of a
+different kind from trade to attend to, so don't let it concern
+ye."
+
+As the timber-merchant spoke, as it were, down to him from a
+higher moral plane than his own, Giles turned to Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Grace is going to the House to-morrow," she said, quietly.  "She
+is looking out her things now.  I dare say she is wanting me this
+minute to assist her." Thereupon Mrs. Melbury left the room.
+
+Nothing is more remarkable than the independent personality of the
+tongue now and then.  Mr. Melbury knew that his words had been a
+sort of boast.  He decried boasting, particularly to Giles; yet
+whenever the subject was Grace, his judgment resigned the ministry
+of speech in spite of him.
+
+Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little
+apprehension at the news.  He repeated Mrs. Melbury's words.
+
+"Yes," said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged out of him
+what he could not in any circumstances have kept in.  "Coming home
+from the woods this afternoon we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. 
+She spoke to me on a little matter of business, and then got
+acquainted with Grace.  'Twas wonderful how she took to Grace in a
+few minutes; that freemasonry of education made 'em close at once. 
+Naturally enough she was amazed that such an article--ha, ha!--
+could come out of my house.  At last it led on to Mis'ess Grace
+being asked to the House.  So she's busy hunting up her frills and
+furbelows to go in."  As Giles remained in thought without
+responding, Melbury continued: "But I'll call her down-stairs."
+
+"No, no; don't do that, since she's busy," said Winterborne.
+
+Melbury, feeling from the young man's manner that his own talk had
+been too much at Giles and too little to him, repented at once. 
+His face changed, and he said, in lower tones, with an effort,
+"She's yours, Giles, as far as I am concerned."
+
+"Thanks--my best thanks....But I think, since it is all right
+between us about the biddings, that I'll not interrupt her now. 
+I'll step homeward, and call another time."
+
+On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again.  Grace,
+surrounded by a sufficient number of candles to answer all
+purposes of self-criticism, was standing before a cheval-glass
+that her father had lately bought expressly for her use; she was
+bonneted, cloaked, and gloved, and glanced over her shoulder into
+the mirror, estimating her aspect.  Her face was lit with the
+natural elation of a young girl hoping to inaugurate on the morrow
+an intimate acquaintance with a new, interesting, and powerful
+friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Melbury to indulge
+in a six-candle illumination for the arrangement of her attire,
+carried her over the ground the next morning with a springy tread. 
+Her sense of being properly appreciated on her own native soil
+seemed to brighten the atmosphere and herbage around her, as the
+glowworm's lamp irradiates the grass.  Thus she moved along, a
+vessel of emotion going to empty itself on she knew not what.
+
+Twenty minutes' walking through copses, over a stile, and along an
+upland lawn brought her to the verge of a deep glen, at the bottom
+of which Hintock House appeared immediately beneath her eye.  To
+describe it as standing in a hollow would not express the
+situation of the manor-house; it stood in a hole, notwithstanding
+that the hole was full of beauty.  From the spot which Grace had
+reached a stone could easily have been thrown over or into, the
+birds'-nested chimneys of the mansion.  Its walls were surmounted
+by a battlemented parapet; but the gray lead roofs were quite
+visible behind it, with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights,
+together with incised letterings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers
+thereon.
+
+The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial presentation
+of Elizabethan windows, mullioned and hooded, worked in rich
+snuff-colored freestone from local quarries.  The ashlar of the
+walls, where not overgrown with ivy and other creepers, was coated
+with lichen of every shade, intensifying its luxuriance with its
+nearness to the ground, till, below the plinth, it merged in moss.
+
+Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the roots of
+whose trees were above the level of the chimneys.  The
+corresponding high ground on which Grace stood was richly grassed,
+with only an old tree here and there.  A few sheep lay about,
+which, as they ruminated, looked quietly into the bedroom windows. 
+The situation of the house, prejudicial to humanity, was a
+stimulus to vegetation, on which account an endless shearing of
+the heavy-armed ivy was necessary, and a continual lopping of
+trees and shrubs.  It was an edifice built in times when human
+constitutions were damp-proof, when shelter from the boisterous
+was all that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, the
+insidious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an
+ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the
+fragility to which these have declined.  The highest architectural
+cunning could have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and
+salubrious; and ruthless ignorance could have done little to make
+it unpicturesque.  It was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to
+inspire the painter and poet of still life--if they did not suffer
+too much from the relaxing atmosphere--and to draw groans from the
+gregariously disposed.  Grace descended the green escarpment by a
+zigzag path into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope. 
+The exterior of the house had been familiar to her from her
+childhood, but she had never been inside, and the approach to
+knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively experience.  It was
+with a little flutter that she was shown in; but she recollected
+that Mrs. Charmond would probably be alone.  Up to a few days
+before this time that lady had been accompanied in her comings,
+stayings, and goings by a relative believed to be her aunt;
+latterly, however, these two ladies had separated, owing, it was
+supposed, to a quarrel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. 
+Being presumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this
+deprivation might possibly account for her sudden interest in
+Grace.
+
+Mrs. Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from the hall
+when Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her through the glass
+doors between them.  She came forward with a smile on her face,
+and told the young girl it was good of her to come.
+
+"Ah! you have noticed those," she said, seeing that Grace's eyes
+were attracted by some curious objects against the walls.  "They
+are man-traps.  My husband was a connoisseur in man-traps and
+spring-guns and such articles, collecting them from all his
+neighbors.  He knew the histories of all these--which gin had
+broken a man's leg, which gun had killed a man.  That one, I
+remember his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of
+a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had done,
+went that way himself, received the charge in the lower part of
+his body, and died of the wound.  I don't like them here, but I've
+never yet given directions for them to be taken away." She added,
+playfully, "Man-traps are of rather ominous significance where a
+person of our sex lives, are they not?"
+
+Grace was bound to smile; but that side of womanliness was one
+which her inexperience had no great zest in contemplating.
+
+"They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous time
+happily past," she said, looking thoughtfully at the varied
+designs of these instruments of torture--some with semi-circular
+jaws, some with rectangular; most of them with long, sharp teeth,
+but a few with none, so that their jaws looked like the blank gums
+of old age.
+
+"Well, we must not take them too seriously," said Mrs. Charmond,
+with an indolent turn of her head, and they moved on inward.  When
+she had shown her visitor different articles in cabinets that she
+deemed likely to interest her, some tapestries, wood-carvings,
+ivories, miniatures, and so on--always with a mien of listlessness
+which might either have been constitutional, or partly owing to
+the situation of the place--they sat down to an early cup of tea.
+
+"Will you pour it out, please? Do," she said, leaning back in her
+chair, and placing her hand above her forehead, while her almond
+eyes--those long eyes so common to the angelic legions of early
+Italian art--became longer, and her voice more languishing.  She
+showed that oblique-mannered softness which is perhaps most
+frequent in women of darker complexion and more lymphatic
+temperament than Mrs. Charmond's was; who lingeringly smile their
+meanings to men rather than speak them, who inveigle rather than
+prompt, and take advantage of currents rather than steer.
+
+"I am the most inactive woman when I am here," she said.  "I think
+sometimes I was born to live and do nothing, nothing, nothing but
+float about, as we fancy we do sometimes in dreams.  But that
+cannot be really my destiny, and I must struggle against such
+fancies."
+
+"I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion--it is quite sad! I wish
+I could tend you and make you very happy."
+
+There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in the sound
+of Grace's voice, that it impelled people to play havoc with their
+customary reservations in talking to her.  "It is tender and kind
+of you to feel that," said Mrs. Charmond.  "Perhaps I have given
+you the notion that my languor is more than it really is.  But
+this place oppresses me, and I have a plan of going abroad a good
+deal.  I used to go with a relative, but that arrangement has
+dropped through." Regarding Grace with a final glance of
+criticism, she seemed to make up her mind to consider the young
+girl satisfactory, and continued: "Now I am often impelled to
+record my impressions of times and places.  I have often thought
+of writing a 'New Sentimental Journey.'  But I cannot find energy
+enough to do it alone.  When I am at different places in the south
+of Europe I feel a crowd of ideas and fancies thronging upon me
+continually, but to unfold writing-materials, take up a cold steel
+pen, and put these impressions down systematically on cold, smooth
+paper--that I cannot do.  So I have thought that if I always could
+have somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, I might
+dictate any ideas that come into my head.  And directly I had made
+your acquaintance the other day it struck me that you would suit
+me so well.  Would you like to undertake it?  You might read to
+me, too, if desirable.  Will you think it over, and ask your
+parents if they are willing?"
+
+"Oh yes," said Grace.  "I am almost sure they would be very glad."
+
+"You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite honored by
+such intellectual company."
+
+Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea.
+
+"Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?"
+
+"Oh no.  Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hintock; but they
+are not carried on by me."
+
+"What--another student in that retreat?"
+
+"There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that he reads a
+great deal--I see his light sometimes through the trees late at
+night."
+
+"Oh yes--a doctor--I believe I was told of him.  It is a strange
+place for him to settle in."
+
+"It is a convenient centre for a practice, they say.  But he does
+not confine his studies to medicine, it seems.  He investigates
+theology and metaphysics and all sorts of subjects."
+
+"What is his name?"
+
+"Fitzpiers.  He represents a very old family, I believe, the
+Fitzpierses of Buckbury-Fitzpiers--not a great many miles from
+here."
+
+"I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the family.  I
+was never in the county till my husband brought me here." Mrs.
+Charmond did not care to pursue this line of investigation. 
+Whatever mysterious merit might attach to family antiquity, it was
+one which, though she herself could claim it, her adaptable,
+wandering weltburgerliche nature had grown tired of caring about--
+a peculiarity that made her a contrast to her neighbors.  "It is
+of rather more importance to know what the man is himself than
+what his family is," she said, "if he is going to practise upon us
+as a surgeon.  Have you seen him?"
+
+Grace had not.  "I think he is not a very old man," she added.
+
+"Has he a wife?"
+
+"I am not aware that he has."
+
+"Well, I hope he will be useful here.  I must get to know him when
+I come back.  It will be very convenient to have a medical man--if
+he is clever--in one's own parish.  I get dreadfully nervous
+sometimes, living in such an outlandish place; and Sherton is so
+far to send to.  No doubt you feel Hintock to be a great change
+after watering-place life."
+
+"I do.  But it is home.  It has its advantages and its
+disadvantages." Grace was thinking less of the solitude than of
+the attendant circumstances.
+
+They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at her ease
+by her entertainer.  Mrs. Charmond was far too well-practised a
+woman not to know that to show a marked patronage to a sensitive
+young girl who would probably be very quick to discern it, was to
+demolish her dignity rather than to establish it in that young
+girl's eyes.  So, being violently possessed with her idea of
+making use of this gentle acquaintance, ready and waiting at her
+own door, she took great pains to win her confidence at starting.
+
+Just before Grace's departure the two chanced to pause before a
+mirror which reflected their faces in immediate juxtaposition, so
+as to bring into prominence their resemblances and their
+contrasts.  Both looked attractive as glassed back by the faithful
+reflector; but Grace's countenance had the effect of making Mrs.
+Charmond appear more than her full age.  There are complexions
+which set off each other to great advantage, and there are those
+which antagonize, the one killing or damaging its neighbor
+unmercifully.  This was unhappily the case here.  Mrs. Charmond
+fell into a meditation, and replied abstractedly to a cursory
+remark of her companion's.  However, she parted from her young
+friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her know
+as soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement she had
+suggested.
+
+When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoining slope
+she looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond still stood at the
+door, meditatively regarding her.
+
+
+
+Often during the previous night, after his call on the Melburys,
+Winterborne's thoughts ran upon Grace's announced visit to Hintock
+House.  Why could he not have proposed to walk with her part of
+the way? Something told him that she might not, on such an
+occasion, care for his company.
+
+He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his garden
+next day, he saw her go past on the journey with such a pretty
+pride in the event.  He wondered if her father's ambition, which
+had purchased for her the means of intellectual light and culture
+far beyond those of any other native of the village, would conduce
+to the flight of her future interests above and away from the
+local life which was once to her the movement of the world.
+
+Nevertheless, he had her father's permission to win her if he
+could; and to this end it became desirable to bring matters soon
+to a crisis, if he ever hoped to do so.  If she should think
+herself too good for him, he could let her go and make the best of
+his loss; but until he had really tested her he could not say that
+she despised his suit.  The question was how to quicken events
+towards an issue.
+
+He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good a way as
+any would be to give a Christmas party, and ask Grace and her
+parents to come as chief guests.
+
+These ruminations were occupying him when there became audible a
+slight knocking at his front door.  He descended the path and
+looked out, and beheld Marty South, dressed for out-door work.
+
+"Why didn't you come, Mr. Winterborne?" she said.  "I've been
+waiting there hours and hours, and at last I thought I must try to
+find you."
+
+"Bless my soul, I'd quite forgot," said Giles.
+
+What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand young fir-
+trees to be planted in a neighboring spot which had been cleared
+by the wood-cutters, and that he had arranged to plant them with
+his own hands.  He had a marvellous power of making trees grow. 
+Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly,
+there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or
+beech that he was operating on, so that the roots took hold of the
+soil in a few days.  When, on the other hand, any of the
+journeymen planted, although they seemed to go through an
+identically similar process, one quarter of the trees would die
+away during the ensuing August.
+
+Hence Winterborne found delight in the work even when, as at 
+present, he contracted to do it on portions of the woodland in
+which he had no personal interest.  Marty, who turned her hand to
+anything, was usually the one who performed the part of keeping
+the trees in a perpendicular position while he threw in the mould.
+
+He accompanied her towards the spot, being stimulated yet further
+to proceed with the work by the knowledge that the ground was
+close to the way-side along which Grace must pass on her return
+from Hintock House.
+
+"You've a cold in the head, Marty," he said, as they walked. 
+"That comes of cutting off your hair."
+
+"I suppose it do.  Yes; I've three headaches going on in my head
+at the same time."
+
+"Three headaches!"
+
+"Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick headache over my
+eyes, and a misery headache in the middle of my brain.  However, I
+came out, for I thought you might be waiting and grumbling like
+anything if I was not there."
+
+The holes were already dug, and they set to work.  Winterborne's
+fingers were endowed with a gentle conjuror's touch in spreading
+the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress,
+under which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their
+proper directions for growth.  He put most of these roots towards
+the south-west; for, he said, in forty years' time, when some
+great gale is blowing from that quarter, the trees will require
+the strongest holdfast on that side to stand against it and not
+fall.
+
+"How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though while they are
+lying down they don't sigh at all," said Marty.
+
+"Do they?" said Giles.  "I've never noticed it."
+
+She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her
+finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not
+to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled--
+probably long after the two planters should be felled themselves.
+
+"It seems to me," the girl continued, "as if they sigh because
+they are very sorry to begin life in earnest--just as we be."
+
+"Just as we be?" He looked critically at her.  "You ought not to
+feel like that, Marty."
+
+Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and they
+planted on through a great part of the day, almost without another
+word.  Winterborne's mind ran on his contemplated evening-party,
+his abstraction being such that he hardly was conscious of Marty's
+presence beside him.  From the nature of their employment, in
+which he handled the spade and she merely held the tree, it
+followed that he got good exercise and she got none.  But she was
+an heroic girl, and though her out-stretched hand was chill as a
+stone, and her cheeks blue, and her cold worse than ever, she
+would not complain while he was disposed to continue work.  But
+when he paused she said, "Mr. Winterborne, can I run down the lane
+and back to warm my feet?"
+
+"Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening anew to her existence. 
+"Though I was just thinking what a mild day it is for the season. 
+Now I warrant that cold of yours is twice as bad as it was.  You
+had no business to chop that hair off, Marty; it serves you almost
+right.  Look here, cut off home at once."
+
+"A run down the lane will be quite enough."
+
+"No, it won't.  You ought not to have come out to-day at all."
+
+"But I should like to finish the--"
+
+"Marty, I tell you to go home," said he, peremptorily.  "I can
+manage to keep the rest of them upright with a stick or
+something."
+
+She went away without saying any more.  When she had gone down the
+orchard a little distance she looked back.  Giles suddenly went
+after her.
+
+"Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you know.  But warm
+yourself in your own way, I don't care."
+
+When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman's dress
+through the holly-bushes which divided the coppice from the road. 
+It was Grace at last, on her way back from the interview with Mrs.
+Charmond.  He threw down the tree he was planting, and was about
+to break through the belt of holly when he suddenly became aware
+of the presence of another man, who was looking over the hedge on
+the opposite side of the way upon the figure of the unconscious
+Grace.  He appeared as a handsome and gentlemanly personage of six
+or eight and twenty, and was quizzing her through an eye-glass. 
+Seeing that Winterborne was noticing him, he let his glass drop
+with a click upon the rail which protected the hedge, and walked
+away in the opposite direction.  Giles knew in a moment that this
+must be Mr. Fitzpiers.  When he was gone, Winterborne pushed
+through the hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting
+object of their contemplation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+"I heard the bushes move long before I saw you," she began.  "I
+said first, 'it is some terrible beast;' next, 'it is a poacher;'
+next, 'it is a friend!'"
+
+He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her speech, but
+the question whether he should tell her that she had been watched. 
+He decided in the negative.
+
+"You have been to the house?" he said.  "But I need not ask." The
+fact was that there shone upon Miss Melbury's face a species of
+exaltation, which saw no environing details nor his own
+occupation; nothing more than his bare presence.
+
+"Why need you not ask?"
+
+"Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down from the
+Mount."
+
+She reddened a little and said, "How can you be so profane, Giles
+Winterborne?"
+
+"How can you think so much of that class of people? Well, I beg
+pardon; I didn't mean to speak so freely.  How do you like her
+house and her?"
+
+"Exceedingly.  I had not been inside the walls since I was a
+child, when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. Charmond's
+late husband bought the property.  She is SO nice!" And Grace fell
+into such an abstracted gaze at the imaginary image of Mrs.
+Charmond and her niceness that it almost conjured up a vision of
+that lady in mid-air before them.
+
+"She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and cannot stay
+much longer, because she finds it so lonely and damp in winter. 
+She is going abroad.  Only think, she would like me to go with
+her."
+
+Giles's features stiffened a little at the news.  "Indeed; what
+for? But I won't keep you standing here.  Hoi, Robert!" he cried
+to a swaying collection of clothes in the distance, which was the
+figure of Creedle his man.  "Go on filling in there till I come
+back."
+
+"I'm a-coming, sir; I'm a-coming."
+
+"Well, the reason is this," continued she, as they went on
+together--" Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her character--
+a desire to record her impressions of travel, like Alexandre
+Dumas, and Mery, and Sterne, and others.  But she cannot find
+energy enough to do it herself." And Grace proceeded to explain
+Mrs. Charmond's proposal at large.  "My notion is that Mery's
+style will suit her best, because he writes in that soft,
+emotional, luxurious way she has," Grace said, musingly.
+
+"Indeed!" said Winterborne, with mock awe.  "Suppose you talk over
+my head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't mean it!" she said, repentantly, looking into his
+eyes.  "And as for myself, I hate French books.  And I love dear
+old Hintock, AND THE PEOPLE IN IT, fifty times better than all the
+Continent.  But the scheme; I think it an enchanting notion, don't
+you, Giles?"
+
+"It is well enough in one sense, but it will take yon away," said
+he, mollified.
+
+"Only for a short time.  We should return in May."
+
+"Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father."
+
+Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house.  He had awaited
+her coming, mainly with the view of mentioning to her his proposal
+to have a Christmas party; but homely Christmas gatherings in the
+venerable and jovial Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth
+beside the lofty matters of her converse and thought that he
+refrained.
+
+As soon as she was gone he turned back towards the scene of his
+planting, and could not help saying to himself as he walked, that
+this engagement of his was a very unpromising business.  Her
+outing to-day had not improved it.  A woman who could go to
+Hintock House and be friendly with its mistress, enter into the
+views of its mistress, talk like her, and dress not much unlike
+her, why, she would hardly be contented with him, a yeoman, now
+immersed in tree-planting, even though he planted them well.  "And
+yet she's a true-hearted girl," he said, thinking of her words
+about Hintock.  "I must bring matters to a point, and there's an
+end of it."
+
+When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had come back,
+and dismissing Creedle, he went on planting silently with the girl
+as before.
+
+"Suppose, Marty," he said, after a while, looking at her extended
+arm, upon which old scratches from briers showed themselves purple
+in the cold wind--"suppose you know a person, and want to bring
+that person to a good understanding with you, do you think a
+Christmas party of some sort is a warming-up thing, and likely to
+be useful in hastening on the matter?"
+
+"Is there to be dancing?"
+
+"There might be, certainly."
+
+"Will He dance with She?"
+
+"Well, yes."
+
+"Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the other; I
+won't be the one to say which."
+
+"It shall be done," said Winterborne, not to her, though he spoke
+the words quite loudly.  And as the day was nearly ended, he
+added, "Here, Marty, I'll send up a man to plant the rest to-
+morrow.  I've other things to think of just now."
+
+She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen him
+walking with Grace Melbury.  She looked towards the western sky,
+which was now aglow like some vast foundery wherein new worlds
+were being cast.  Across it the bare bough of a tree stretched
+horizontally, revealing every twig against the red, and showing in
+dark profile every beck and movement of three pheasants that were
+settling themselves down on it in a row to roost.
+
+"It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty, observing them with the
+vermilion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, "for they
+are a-croupied down nearly at the end of the bough.  If it were
+going to be stormy they'd squeeze close to the trunk.  The weather
+is almost all they have to think of, isn't it, Mr. Winterborne?
+and so they must be lighter-hearted than we."
+
+"I dare say they are," said Winterborne.
+
+
+
+Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winterborne, with
+no great hopes, went across that evening to the timber-merchant's
+to ascertain if Grace and her parents would honor him with their
+presence.  Having first to set his nightly gins in the garden, to
+catch the rabbits that ate his winter-greens, his call was delayed
+till just after the rising of the moon, whose rays reached the
+Hintock houses but fitfully as yet, on account of the trees. 
+Melbury was crossing his yard on his way to call on some one at
+the larger village, but he readily turned and walked up and down
+the path with the young man.
+
+Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much smaller
+scale than the Melburys did, would not for the world imply that
+his invitation was to a gathering of any importance.  So he put it
+in the mild form of "Can you come in for an hour, when you have
+done business, the day after to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury,
+if they have nothing more pressing to do?"
+
+Melbury would give no answer at once.  "No, I can't tell you to-
+day," he said.  "I must talk it over with the women.  As far as I
+am concerned, my dear Giles, you know I'll come with pleasure. 
+But how do I know what Grace's notions may be?  You see, she has
+been away among cultivated folks a good while; and now this
+acquaintance with Mrs. Charmond--Well, I'll ask her.  I can say no
+more."
+
+When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went on his way.  He
+knew very well that Grace, whatever her own feelings, would either
+go or not go, according as he suggested; and his instinct was, for
+the moment, to suggest the negative.  His errand took him past the
+church, and the way to his destination was either across the
+church-yard or along-side it, the distances being the same.  For
+some reason or other he chose the former way.
+
+The moon was faintly lighting up the gravestones, and the path,
+and the front of the building.  Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused,
+turned ill upon the grass, and approached a particular headstone,
+where he read, "In memory of John Winterborne," with the subjoined
+date and age.  It was the grave of Giles's father.
+
+The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and was
+humanized.  "Jack, my wronged friend!" he said.  "I'll be faithful
+to my plan of making amends to 'ee."
+
+When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace and Mrs.
+Melbury, who were working at a little table by the fire,
+
+"Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with him the day
+after to-morrow; and I'm thinking, that as 'tis Giles who asks us,
+we'll go."
+
+They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber-merchant
+sent Giles the next morning an answer in the affirmative.
+
+
+
+Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had mentioned no
+particular hour in his invitation; and accordingly Mr. Melbury and
+his family, expecting no other guests, chose their own time, which
+chanced to be rather early in the afternoon, by reason of the
+somewhat quicker despatch than usual of the timber-merchant's
+business that day.  To show their sense of the unimportance of the
+occasion, they walked quite slowly to the house, as if they were
+merely out for a ramble, and going to nothing special at all; or
+at most intending to pay a casual call and take a cup of tea.
+
+At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of
+Winterborne's domicile from cellar to apple-loft.  He had planned
+an elaborate high tea for six o'clock or thereabouts, and a good
+roaring supper to come on about eleven.  Being a bachelor of
+rather retiring habits, the whole of the preparations devolved
+upon himself and his trusty man and familiar, Robert Creedle, who
+did everything that required doing, from making Giles's bed to
+catching moles in his field.  He was a survival from the days when
+Giles's father held the homestead, and Giles was a playing boy.
+
+These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which appertained to
+both, were now in the heat of preparation in the bake-house,
+expecting nobody before six o'clock.  Winterborne was standing
+before the brick oven in his shirt-sleeves, tossing in thorn
+sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass with a long-handled,
+three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, the heat shining out upon
+his streaming face and making his eyes like furnaces, the thorns
+crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having ranged the pastry
+dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be ready, was
+pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a rolling-pin.  A
+great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door of the
+back kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the
+snuffers and scouring the candlesticks, a row of the latter
+standing upside down on the hob to melt out the grease
+
+Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the window
+first the timber-merchant, in his second-best suit, Mrs. Melbury
+in her best silk, and Grace in the fashionable attire which, in
+part brought home with her from the Continent, she had worn on her
+visit to Mrs. Charmond's.  The eyes of the three had been
+attracted to the proceedings within by the fierce illumination
+which the oven threw out upon the operators and their utensils.
+
+"Lord, Lord! if they baint come a'ready!" said Creedle.
+
+"No--hey?" said Giles, looking round aghast; while the boy in the
+background waved a reeking candlestick in his delight.  As there
+was no help for it, Winterborne went to meet them in the door-way.
+
+"My dear Giles, I see we have made a mistake in the time," said
+the timber-merchant's wife, her face lengthening with concern.
+
+"Oh, it is not much difference.  I hope you'll come in."
+
+"But this means a regular randyvoo!" said Mr. Melbury, accusingly,
+glancing round and pointing towards the bake-house with his stick.
+
+"Well, yes," said Giles.
+
+"And--not Great Hintock band, and dancing, surely?"
+
+"I told three of 'em they might drop in if they'd nothing else to
+do," Giles mildly admitted.
+
+"Now, why the name didn't ye tell us 'twas going to be a serious
+kind of thing before? How should I know what folk mean if they
+don't say? Now, shall we come in, or shall we go home and come
+back along in a couple of hours?"
+
+"I hope you'll stay, if you'll be so good as not to mind, now you
+are here.  I shall have it all right and tidy in a very little
+time.  I ought not to have been so backward." Giles spoke quite
+anxiously for one of his undemonstrative temperament; for he
+feared that if the Melburys once were back in their own house they
+would not be disposed to turn out again.
+
+"'Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that's what 'tis,"
+said Mr. Melbury, testily.  "Don't keep us here in the sitting-
+room; lead on to the bakehouse, man.  Now we are here we'll help
+ye get ready for the rest.  Here, mis'ess, take off your things,
+and help him out in his baking, or he won't get done to-night. 
+I'll finish heating the oven, and set you free to go and skiver up
+them ducks." His eye had passed with pitiless directness of
+criticism into yet remote recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly
+built premises, where the aforesaid birds were hanging.
+
+"And I'll help finish the tarts," said Grace, cheerfully.
+
+"I don't know about that," said her father.  "'Tisn't quite so
+much in your line as it is in your mother-law's and mine."
+
+"Of course I couldn't let you, Grace!" said Giles, with some
+distress.
+
+"I'll do it, of course," said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her silk
+train, hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back her
+sleeves, pinning them to her shoulders, and stripping Giles of his
+apron for her own use.
+
+So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife helped
+on the preparations.  A kindly pity of his household management,
+which Winterborne saw in her eyes whenever he caught them,
+depressed him much more than her contempt would have done.
+
+Creedle met Giles at the pump after a while, when each of the
+others was absorbed in the difficulties of a cuisine based on
+utensils, cupboards, and provisions that were strange to them.  He
+groaned to the young man in a whisper, "This is a bruckle het,
+maister, I'm much afeared!  Who'd ha' thought they'd ha' come so
+soon?"
+
+The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look adumbrated the
+misgivings he did not care to express.  "Have you got the celery
+ready?" he asked, quickly.
+
+"Now that's a thing I never could mind; no, not if you'd paid me
+in silver and gold.  And I don't care who the man is, I says that
+a stick of celery that isn't scrubbed with the scrubbing-brush is
+not clean."
+
+"Very well, very well!  I'll attend to it.  You go and get 'em
+comfortable in-doors."
+
+He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing the stalks
+to Creedle, who was still in a tragic mood.  "If ye'd ha' married,
+d'ye see, maister," he said, "this caddle couldn't have happened
+to us."
+
+Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all done
+that could insure the supper turning up ready at some time or
+other, Giles and his friends entered the parlor, where the
+Melburys again dropped into position as guests, though the room
+was not nearly so warm and cheerful as the blazing bakehouse. 
+Others now arrived, among them Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-
+turner, and tea went off very well.
+
+Grace's disposition to make the best of everything, and to wink at
+deficiencies in Winterborne's menage, was so uniform and
+persistent that he suspected her of seeing even more deficiencies
+than he was aware of.  That suppressed sympathy which had showed
+in her face ever since her arrival told him as much too plainly.
+
+"This muddling style of house-keeping is what you've not lately
+been used to, I suppose?" he said, when they were a little apart.
+
+"No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that everything
+here in dear old Hintock is just as it used to be.  The oil is--
+not quite nice; but everything else is."
+
+"The oil?"
+
+"On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one's dress.  Still,
+mine is not a new one."
+
+Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look bright,
+had smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of furniture-polish,
+and refrained from rubbing it dry in order not to diminish the 
+mirror-like effect that the mixture produced as laid on.  Giles
+apologized and called Creedle; but he felt that the Fates were
+against him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked from the oven, laid on
+a snowy cloth fresh from the press, and reticulated with folds, as
+in Flemish "Last Suppers."  Creedle and the boy fetched and
+carried with amazing alacrity, the latter, to mollify his superior
+and make things pleasant, expressing his admiration of Creedle's
+cleverness when they were alone.
+
+"I s'pose the time when you learned all these knowing things, Mr.
+Creedle, was when you was in the militia?"
+
+"Well, yes.  I seed the world at that time somewhat, certainly,
+and many ways of strange dashing life.  Not but that Giles has
+worked hard in helping me to bring things to such perfection to-
+day.  'Giles,' says I, though he's maister.  Not that I should
+call'n maister by rights, for his father growed up side by side
+with me, as if one mother had twinned us and been our nourishing."
+
+"I s'pose your memory can reach a long way back into history, Mr.
+Creedle?"
+
+"Oh yes.  Ancient days, when there was battles and famines and
+hang-fairs and other pomps, seem to me as yesterday.  Ah, many's
+the patriarch I've seed come and go in this parish! There, he's
+calling for more plates.  Lord, why can't 'em turn their plates
+bottom upward for pudding, as they used to do in former days?"
+
+Meanwhile, in the adjoining room Giles was presiding in a half-
+unconscious state.  He could not get over the initial failures in
+his scheme for advancing his suit, and hence he did not know that
+he was eating mouthfuls of bread and nothing else, and continually
+snuffing the two candles next him till he had reduced them to mere
+glimmers drowned in their own grease.  Creedle now appeared with a
+specially prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little
+three-legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into
+a dish, exclaiming, simultaneously, "Draw back, gentlemen and
+ladies, please!"
+
+A splash followed.  Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod and blink,
+and put her handkerchief to her face.
+
+"Good heavens! what did you do that for, Creedle?" said Giles,
+sternly, and jumping up.
+
+"'Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister," mildly
+expostulated Creedle, in an aside audible to all the company.
+
+"Well, yes--but--" replied Giles.  He went over to Grace, and
+hoped none of it had gone into her eye.
+
+"Oh no," she said.  "Only a sprinkle on my face.  It was nothing."
+
+"Kiss it and make it well," gallantly observed Mr. Bawtree.
+
+Miss Melbury blushed.
+
+The timber-merchant said, quickly, "Oh, it is nothing! She must
+bear these little mishaps." But there could be discerned in his
+face something which said "I ought to have foreseen this."
+
+Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, had not
+quite liked to see Grace present.  He wished he had not asked such
+people as Bawtree and the hollow-turner.  He had done it, in
+dearth of other friends, that the room might not appear empty.  In
+his mind's eye, before the event, they had been the mere
+background or padding of the scene, but somehow in reality they
+were the most prominent personages there.
+
+After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow-turner
+monopolizing the new packs for an interminable game, in which a
+lump of chalk was incessantly used--a game those two always played
+wherever they were, taking a solitary candle and going to a
+private table in a corner with the mien of persons bent on weighty
+matters.  The rest of the company on this account were obliged to
+put up with old packs for their round game, that had been lying by
+in a drawer ever since the time that Gliles's grandmother was
+alive.  Each card had a great stain in the middle of its back,
+produced by the touch of generations of damp and excited thumbs
+now fleshless in the grave; and the kings and queens wore a
+decayed expression of feature, as if they were rather an
+impecunious dethroned race of monarchs hiding in obscure slums
+than real regal characters.  Every now and then the comparatively
+few remarks of the players at the round game were harshly intruded
+on by the measured jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner
+from the back of the room:
+
+
+    "And I' will hold' a wa'-ger with you'
+     That all' these marks' are thirt'-y two!"
+
+
+accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table; then
+an exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; then the
+commencement of the rhymes anew.
+
+The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with a
+satisfied sense of weight in his words, and by praising the party
+in a patronizing tone, when Winterborne expressed his fear that he
+and his were not enjoying themselves.
+
+"Oh yes, yes; pretty much.  What handsome glasses those are!  I
+didn't know you had such glasses in the house.  Now, Lucy" (to his
+wife), "you ought to get some like them for ourselves." And when
+they had abandoned cards, and Winterborne was talking to Melbury
+by the fire, it was the timber-merchant who stood with his back to
+the mantle in a proprietary attitude, from which post of vantage
+he critically regarded Giles's person, rather as a superficies
+than as a solid with ideas and feelings inside it, saying, "What a
+splendid coat that one is you have on, Giles! I can't get such
+coats.  You dress better than I."
+
+After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great Hintock
+having arrived some time before.  Grace had been away from home so
+long that she had forgotten the old figures, and hence did not
+join in the movement.  Then Giles felt that all was over.  As for
+her, she was thinking, as she watched the gyrations, of a very
+different measure that she had been accustomed to tread with a
+bevy of sylph-like creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a
+large house, most of whom were now moving in scenes widely removed
+from this, both as regarded place and character.
+
+A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her fortune with
+the abandoned cards.  Grace assented to the proposal, and the
+woman told her tale unskilfully, for want of practice, as she
+declared.
+
+Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, "Tell
+her fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science--
+what do you call 'em? Phrenologists.  You can't teach her anything
+new.  She's been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at
+anything she can hear among us folks in Hintock."
+
+At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family
+being the earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing
+their game doggedly in the corner, where they had completely
+covered Giles's mahogany table with chalk scratches.  The three
+walked home, the distance being short and the night clear.
+
+"Well, Giles is a very good fellow," said Mr. Melbury, as they
+struck down the lane under boughs which formed a black filigree in
+which the stars seemed set.
+
+"Certainly he is, said Grace, quickly, and in such a tone as to
+show that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard than he
+had stood before.
+
+When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the
+doctor's house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his
+rooms, although it was now about two o'clock.
+
+"The doctor is not abed yet," said Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Hard study, no doubt," said her husband.
+
+"One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about
+here by day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night. 
+'Tis astonishing how little we see of him."
+
+Melbury's mind seemed to turn with much relief to the
+contemplation of Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the evening. 
+"It is natural enough," he replied.  "What can a man of that sort
+find to interest him in Hintock?  I don't expect he'll stay here
+long."
+
+His mind reverted to Giles's party, and when they were nearly home
+he spoke again, his daughter being a few steps in advance: "It is
+hardly the line of life for a girl like Grace, after what she's
+been accustomed to.  I didn't foresee that in sending her to
+boarding-school and letting her travel, and what not, to make her
+a good bargain for Giles, I should be really spoiling her for him. 
+Ah, 'tis a thousand pities! But he ought to have her--he ought!"
+
+At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, having at last
+really finished their play, could be heard coming along in the
+rear, vociferously singing a song to march-time, and keeping
+vigorous step to the same in far-reaching strides--
+
+
+     "She may go, oh!
+      She may go, oh!
+      She may go to the d---- for me!"
+
+
+The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Melbury.  "That's
+the sort of society we've been asked to meet," he said.  "For us
+old folk it didn't matter; but for Grace--Giles should have known
+better!"
+
+
+
+Meanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests had just
+cleared out, the subject of their discourse was walking from room
+to room surveying the general displacement of furniture with no
+ecstatic feeling; rather the reverse, indeed.  At last he entered
+the bakehouse, and found there Robert Creedle sitting over the
+embers, also lost in contemplation.  Winterborne sat down beside
+him.
+
+"Well, Robert, you must be tired.  You'd better get on to bed."
+
+"Ay, ay, Giles--what do I call ye? Maister, I would say.  But 'tis
+well to think the day IS done, when 'tis done."
+
+Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with a wrinkled
+forehead was ploughing abroad the wood-embers on the broad hearth,
+till it was like a vast scorching Sahara, with red-hot bowlders
+lying about everywhere.  "Do you think it went off well, Creedle?"
+he asked.
+
+"The victuals did; that I know.  And the drink did; that I
+steadfastly believe, from the holler sound of the barrels.  Good,
+honest drink 'twere, the headiest mead I ever brewed; and the best
+wine that berries could rise to; and the briskest Horner-and-
+Cleeves cider ever wrung down, leaving out the spice and sperrits
+I put into it, while that egg-flip would ha' passed through
+muslin, so little curdled 'twere.  'Twas good enough to make any
+king's heart merry--ay, to make his whole carcass smile.  Still, I
+don't deny I'm afeared some things didn't go well with He and
+his." Creedle nodded in a direction which signified where the
+Melburys lived.
+
+"I'm afraid, too, that it was a failure there!"
+
+"If so, 'twere doomed to be so.  Not but what that snail might as
+well have come upon anybody else's plate as hers."
+
+"What snail?"
+
+"Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of her plate
+when I brought it out; and so it must have been in her few leaves
+of wintergreen."
+
+"How the deuce did a snail get there?"
+
+"That I don't know no more than the dead; but there my gentleman
+was."
+
+"But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn't have
+been!"
+
+"Well, 'twas his native home, come to that; and where else could
+we expect him to be? I don't care who the man is, snails and
+caterpillars always will lurk in close to the stump of cabbages in
+that tantalizing way."
+
+"He wasn't alive, I suppose?" said Giles, with a shudder on
+Grace's account.
+
+"Oh no.  He was well boiled.  I warrant him well boiled.  God
+forbid that a LIVE snail should be seed on any plate of victuals
+that's served by Robert Creedle....But Lord, there; I don't mind
+'em myself--them small ones, for they were born on cabbage, and
+they've lived on cabbage, so they must be made of cabbage.  But
+she, the close-mouthed little lady, she didn't say a word about
+it; though 'twould have made good small conversation as to the
+nater of such creatures; especially as wit ran short among us
+sometimes."
+
+"Oh yes--'tis all over!" murmured Giles to himself, shaking his
+head over the glooming plain of embers, and lining his forehead
+more than ever.  "Do you know, Robert," he said, "that she's been
+accustomed to servants and everything superfine these many years?
+How, then, could she stand our ways?"
+
+"Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and-nob
+elsewhere.  They shouldn't have schooled her so monstrous high, or
+else bachelor men shouldn't give randys, or if they do give 'em,
+only to their own race."
+
+"Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne, rising and yawning a
+sigh.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+"'Tis a pity--a thousand pities!" her father kept saying next
+morning at breakfast, Grace being still in her bedroom.
+
+But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winterborne's
+suit at this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored to
+promote--was, indeed, mechanically promoting at this moment?  A
+crisis was approaching, mainly as a result of his contrivances,
+and it would have to be met.
+
+But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: since seeing
+what an immense change her last twelve months of absence had
+produced in his daughter, after the heavy sum per annum that he
+had been spending for several years upon her education, he was
+reluctant to let her marry Giles Winterborne, indefinitely
+occupied as woodsman, cider-merchant, apple-farmer, and what not,
+even were she willing to marry him herself.
+
+"She will be his wife if you don't upset her notion that she's
+bound to accept him as an understood thing," said Mrs. Melbury. 
+"Bless ye, she'll soon shake down here in Hintock, and be content
+with Giles's way of living, which he'll improve with what money
+she'll have from you.  'Tis the strangeness after her genteel life
+that makes her feel uncomfortable at first.  Why, when I saw
+Hintock the first time I thought I never could like it.  But
+things gradually get familiar, and stone floors seem not so very
+cold and hard, and the hooting of the owls not so very dreadful,
+and loneliness not so very lonely, after a while."
+
+"Yes, I believe ye.  That's just it.  I KNOW Grace will gradually
+sink down to our level again, and catch our manners and way of
+speaking, and feel a drowsy content in being Giles's wife.  But I
+can't bear the thought of dragging down to that old level as
+promising a piece of maidenhood as ever lived--fit to ornament a
+palace wi'--that I've taken so much trouble to lift up.  Fancy her
+white hands getting redder every day, and her tongue losing its
+pretty up-country curl in talking, and her bounding walk becoming
+the regular Hintock shail and wamble!"
+
+"She may shail, but she'll never wamble," replied his wife,
+decisively.
+
+When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her lying in bed so 
+late; not so much moved by a particular objection to that form of
+indulgence as discomposed by these other reflections.
+
+The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down.  "You used
+to complain with justice when I was a girl," she said.  "But I am
+a woman now, and can judge for myself....But it is not that; it is
+something else!" Instead of sitting down she went outside the
+door.
+
+He was sorry.  The petulance that relatives show towards each
+other is in truth directed against that intangible Causality which
+has shaped the situation no less for the offenders than the
+offended, but is too elusive to be discerned and cornered by poor
+humanity in irritated mood.  Melbury followed her.  She had
+rambled on to the paddock, where the white frost lay, and where
+starlings in flocks of twenties and thirties were walking about,
+watched by a comfortable family of sparrows perched in a line
+along the string-course of the chimney, preening themselves in the
+rays of the sun.
+
+"Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said.  "And as to Giles, use
+your own mind.  Whatever pleases you will please me."
+
+"I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help thinking that in
+honor I ought to marry him, whenever I do marry."
+
+He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom of her
+heart there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling favorable to
+Giles, though it had become overlaid with implanted tastes.  But
+he would not distinctly express his views on the promise.  "Very
+well," he said.  "But I hope I sha'n't lose you yet.  Come in to
+breakfast.  What did you think of the inside of Hintock House the
+other day?"
+
+"I liked it much."
+
+"Different from friend Winterborne's?"
+
+She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that she meant by
+her silence to reproach him with drawing cruel comparisons.
+
+"Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again--when, did you say?"
+
+"She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before to let me know
+if it suited her." And with this subject upon their lips they
+entered to breakfast.
+
+Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond.  Nor was there
+any on Wednesday.  In brief, a fortnight slipped by without a
+sign, and it looked suspiciously as if Mrs. Charmond were not
+going further in the direction of "taking up" Grace at present.
+
+Her father reasoned thereon.  Immediately after his daughter's two
+indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond--the interview in the
+wood and a visit to the House--she had attended Winterborne's
+party.  No doubt the out-and-out joviality of that gathering had
+made it a topic in the neighborhood, and that every one present as
+guests had been widely spoken of--Grace, with her exceptional
+qualities, above all.  What, then, so natural as that Mrs.
+Charmond should have heard the village news, and become quite
+disappointed in her expectations of Grace at finding she kept such
+company?
+
+Full of this post hoc argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked the
+infinite throng of other possible reasons and unreasons for a
+woman changing her mind.  For instance, while knowing that his
+Grace was attractive, he quite forgot that Mrs. Charmond had also
+great pretensions to beauty.  In his simple estimate, an
+attractive woman attracted all around.
+
+So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling with the
+villagers at the unlucky Winterborne's was the cause of her most
+grievous loss, as he deemed it, in the direction of Hintock House.
+
+"'Tis a thousand pities!" he would repeat to himself.  "I am 
+ruining her for conscience' sake!"
+
+It was one morning later on, while these things were agitating his
+mind, that, curiously enough, something darkened the window just
+as they finished breakfast.  Looking up, they saw Giles in person
+mounted on horseback, and straining his neck forward, as he had
+been doing for some time, to catch their attention through the
+window.  Grace had been the first to see him, and involuntarily
+exclaimed, "There he is--and a new horse!"
+
+On their faces as they regarded Giles were written their suspended
+thoughts and compound feelings concerning him, could he have read
+them through those old panes.  But he saw nothing: his features
+just now were, for a wonder, lit up with a red smile at some other
+idea.  So they rose from breakfast and went to the door, Grace
+with an anxious, wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs.
+Melbury placid and inquiring.  "We have come out to look at your
+horse," she said.
+
+It could be seen that he was pleased at their attention, and
+explained that he had ridden a mile or two to try the animal's
+paces.  "I bought her," he added, with warmth so severely
+repressed as to seem indifference, "because she has been used to
+carry a lady."
+
+Still Mr. Melbury did not brighten.  Mrs. Melbury said, "And is
+she quiet?"
+
+Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it.  "I took
+care of that.  She's five-and-twenty, and very clever for her
+age."
+
+"Well, get off and come in," said Melbury, brusquely; and Giles
+dismounted accordingly.
+
+This event was the concrete result of Winterborne's thoughts
+during the past week or two.  The want of success with his evening
+party he had accepted in as philosophic a mood as he was capable
+of; but there had been enthusiasm enough left in him one day at
+Sherton Abbas market to purchase this old mare, which had belonged
+to a neighboring parson with several daughters, and was offered
+him to carry either a gentleman or a lady, and to do odd jobs of
+carting and agriculture at a pinch.  This obliging quadruped
+seemed to furnish Giles with a means of reinstating himself in
+Melbury's good opinion as a man of considerateness by throwing out
+future possibilities to Grace.
+
+The latter looked at him with intensified interest this morning,
+in the mood which is altogether peculiar to woman's nature, and
+which, when reduced into plain words, seems as impossible as the
+penetrability of matter--that of entertaining a tender pity for
+the object of her own unnecessary coldness.  The imperturbable
+poise which marked Winterborne in general was enlivened now by a
+freshness and animation that set a brightness in his eye and on
+his cheek.  Mrs. Melbury asked him to have some breakfast, and he
+pleasurably replied that he would join them, with his usual lack
+of tactical observation, not perceiving that they had all finished
+the meal, that the hour was inconveniently late, and that the note
+piped by the kettle denoted it to be nearly empty; so that fresh
+water had to be brought in, trouble taken to make it boil, and a
+general renovation of the table carried out.  Neither did he know,
+so full was he of his tender ulterior object in buying that horse,
+how many cups of tea he was gulping down one after another, nor
+how the morning was slipping, nor how he was keeping the family
+from dispersing about their duties.
+
+Then he told throughout the humorous story of the horse's
+purchase,looking particularly grim at some fixed object in the
+room, a way he always looked when he narrated anything that amused
+him.  While he was still thinking of the scene he had described,
+Grace rose and said, "I have to go and help my mother now, Mr.
+Winterborne."
+
+"H'm!" he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon her.
+
+She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkwardness;
+whereupon Giles, becoming suddenly conscious, too conscious,
+jumped up, saying, "To be sure, to be sure!" wished them quickly
+good-morning, and bolted out of the house.
+
+Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his position,
+with her at least.  Time, too, was on his side, for (as her father
+saw with some regret) already the homeliness of Hintock life was
+fast becoming effaced from her observation as a singularity; just
+as the first strangeness of a face from which we have for years
+been separated insensibly passes off with renewed intercourse, and
+tones itself down into simple identity with the lineaments of the
+past.
+
+Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled to the
+sacrifice of the gem he had been at such pains in mounting.  He
+fain could hope, in the secret nether chamber of his mind, that
+something would happen, before the balance of her feeling had
+quite turned in Winterborne's favor, to relieve his conscience and
+preserve her on her elevated plane.
+
+He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently abandoned
+all interest in his daughter as suddenly as she had conceived it,
+and was as firmly convinced as ever that the comradeship which
+Grace had shown with Giles and his crew by attending his party had
+been the cause.
+
+Matters lingered on thus.  And then, as a hoop by gentle knocks on
+this side and on that is made to travel in specific directions,
+the little touches of circumstance in the life of this young girl
+shaped the curves of her career.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+It was a day of rather bright weather for the season.  Miss
+Melbury went out for a morning walk, and her ever-regardful
+father, having an hour's leisure, offered to walk with her.  The
+breeze was fresh and quite steady, filtering itself through the
+denuded mass of twigs without swaying them, but making the point
+of each ivy-leaf on the trunks scratch its underlying neighbor
+restlessly.  Grace's lips sucked in this native air of hers like
+milk.  They soon reached a place where the wood ran down into a
+corner, and went outside it towards comparatively open ground. 
+Having looked round about, they were intending to re-enter the
+copse when a fox quietly emerged with a dragging brush, trotted
+past them tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some dead
+fern.  They walked on, her father merely observing, after watching
+the animal, "They are hunting somewhere near."
+
+Farther up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds running hither
+and thither, as if there were little or no scent that day.  Soon
+divers members of the hunt appeared on the scene, and it was
+evident from their movements that the chase had been stultified by
+general puzzle-headedness as to the whereabouts of the intended
+victim.  In a minute a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians,
+panting with acteonic excitement, and Grace being a few steps in
+advance, he addressed her, asking if she had seen the fox.
+
+"Yes," said she.  "We saw him some time ago--just out there."
+
+"Did you cry Halloo?"
+
+"We said nothing."
+
+"Then why the d--- didn't you, or get the old buffer to do it for
+you?" said the man, as he cantered away.
+
+She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observing her
+father's face, saw that it was quite red.
+
+"He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!" said the old man,
+in the tone of one whose heart was bruised, though it was not by
+the epithet applied to himself.  "And he wouldn't if he had been a
+gentleman.  'Twas not the language to use to a woman of any
+niceness.  You, so well read and cultivated--how could he expect
+ye to know what tom-boy field-folk are in the habit of doing? If
+so be you had just come from trimming swedes or mangolds--joking
+with the rough work-folk and all that--I could have stood it.  But
+hasn't it cost me near a hundred a year to lift you out of all
+that, so as to show an example to the neighborhood of what a woman
+can be? Grace, shall I tell you the secret of it? 'Twas because I
+was in your company.  If a black-coated squire or pa'son had been
+walking with you instead of me he wouldn't have spoken so."
+
+"No, no, father; there's nothing in you rough or ill-mannered!"
+
+"I tell you it is that! I've noticed, and I've noticed it many
+times, that a woman takes her color from the man she's walking
+with.  The woman who looks an unquestionable lady when she's with
+a polished-up fellow, looks a mere tawdry imitation article when
+she's hobbing and nobbing with a homely blade.  You sha'n't be
+treated like that for long, or at least your children sha'n't. 
+You shall have somebody to walk with you who looks more of a dandy
+than I--please God you shall!"
+
+"But, my dear father," she said, much distressed, "I don't mind at
+all.  I don't wish for more honor than I already have!"
+
+"A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter," according to
+Menander or some old Greek poet, and to nobody was one ever more
+so than to Melbury, by reason of her very dearness to him.  As for
+Grace, she began to feel troubled; she did not perhaps wish there
+and then to unambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne,
+but she was conscious of more and more uneasiness at the
+possibility of being the social hope of the family.
+
+"You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?" asked her
+father, in continuation of the subject.
+
+Despite her feeling she assented to this.  His reasoning had not
+been without its weight upon her.
+
+"Grace," he said, just before they had reached the house, "if it
+costs me my life you shall marry well! To-day has shown me that
+whatever a young woman's niceness, she stands for nothing alone. 
+You shall marry well."
+
+He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up by the
+breeze, which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance.
+
+She looked calmly at him.  "And how about Mr. Winterborne?" she
+asked.  "I mention it, father, not as a matter of sentiment, but
+as a question of keeping faith."
+
+The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a moment.  "I don't know--I
+don't know," he said.  "'Tis a trying strait.  Well, well; there's
+no hurry.  We'll wait and see how he gets on."
+
+That evening he called her into his room, a snug little apartment
+behind the large parlor.  It had at one time been part of the
+bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven in the wall; but Mr.
+Melbury, in turning it into an office, had built into the cavity
+an iron safe, which he used for holding his private papers.  The
+door of the safe was now open, and his keys were hanging from it.
+
+"Sit down, Grace, and keep me company," he said.  "You may amuse
+yourself by looking over these." He threw out a heap of papers
+before her.
+
+"What are they?" she asked.
+
+"Securities of various sorts." He unfolded them one by one. 
+"Papers worth so much money each.  Now here's a lot of turnpike
+bonds for one thing.  Would you think that each of these pieces of
+paper is worth two hundred pounds?"
+
+"No, indeed, if you didn't say so."
+
+"'Tis so, then.  Now here are papers of another sort.  They are
+for different sums in the three-per-cents.  Now these are Port
+Breedy Harbor bonds.  We have a great stake in that harbor, you
+know, because I send off timber there.  Open the rest at your
+pleasure.  They'll interest ye."
+
+"Yes, I will, some day," said she, rising.
+
+"Nonsense, open them now.  You ought to learn a little of such
+matters.  A young lady of education should not be ignorant of
+money affairs altogether.  Suppose you should be left a widow some
+day, with your husband's title-deeds and investments thrown upon
+your hands--"
+
+"Don't say that, father--title-deeds; it sounds so vain!"
+
+"It does not.  Come to that, I have title-deeds myself.  There,
+that piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton Abbas."
+
+"Yes, but--" She hesitated, looked at the fire, and went on in a
+low voice: "If what has been arranged about me should come to
+anything, my sphere will be quite a middling one."
+
+"Your sphere ought not to be middling," he exclaimed, not in
+passion, but in earnest conviction.  "You said you never felt more
+at home, more in your element, anywhere than you did that
+afternoon with Mrs. Charmond, when she showed you her house and
+all her knick-knacks, and made you stay to tea so nicely in her
+drawing-room--surely you did!"
+
+"Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace.
+
+"Was it true?"
+
+"Yes, I felt so at the time.  The feeling is less strong now,
+perhaps."
+
+"Ah! Now, though you don't see it, your feeling at the time was
+the right one, because your mind and body were just in full and
+fresh cultivation, so that going there with her was like meeting
+like.  Since then you've been biding with us, and have fallen back
+a little, and so you don't feel your place so strongly.  Now, do
+as I tell ye, and look over these papers and see what you'll be
+worth some day.  For they'll all be yours, you know; who have I
+got to leave 'em to but you?  Perhaps when your education is
+backed up by what these papers represent, and that backed up by
+another such a set and their owner, men such as that fellow was
+this morning may think you a little more than a buffer's girl."
+
+So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded
+representatives of hard cash that her father put before her.  To
+sow in her heart cravings for social position was obviously his
+strong desire, though in direct antagonism to a better feeling
+which had hitherto prevailed with him, and had, indeed, only
+succumbed that morning during the ramble.
+
+She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the responsibility
+of such a position was too great.  She had made it for herself
+mainly by her appearance and attractive behavior to him since her
+return.  "If I had only come home in a shabby dress, and tried to
+speak roughly, this might not have happened," she thought.  She
+deplored less the fact than the sad possibilities that might lie
+hidden therein.
+
+Her father then insisted upon her looking over his checkbook and
+reading the counterfoils.  This, also, she obediently did, and at
+last came to two or three which had been drawn to defray some of
+the late expenses of her clothes, board, and education.
+
+"I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and corn,"
+she said, looking up sorrily.
+
+"I didn't want you to look at those; I merely meant to give you an
+idea of my investment transactions.  But if you do cost as much as
+they, never mind.  You'll yield a better return."
+
+"Don't think of me like that!" she begged.  "A mere chattel."
+
+"A what? Oh, a dictionary word.  Well, as that's in your line I
+don't forbid it, even if it tells against me," he said, good-
+humoredly.  And he looked her proudly up and down.
+
+A few minutes later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that supper
+was ready, and in giving the information she added, incidentally,
+"So we shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock House for some
+time, I hear, Maister Melbury.  Yes, she's going off to foreign
+parts to-morrow, for the rest of the winter months; and be-chok'd
+if I don't wish I could do the same, for my wynd-pipe is furred
+like a flue."
+
+When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned to his
+daughter and said, "So, Grace, you've lost your new friend, and
+your chance of keeping her company and writing her travels is
+quite gone from ye!"
+
+Grace said nothing.
+
+"Now," he went on, emphatically, "'tis Winterborne's affair has
+done this.  Oh yes, 'tis.  So let me say one word.  Promise me
+that you will not meet him again without my knowledge."
+
+"I never do meet him, father, either without your knowledge or
+with it."
+
+"So much the better.  I don't like the look of this at all.  And I
+say it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but out of
+tenderness to you.  For how could a woman, brought up delicately
+as you have been, bear the roughness of a life with him?"
+
+She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, complicated by a
+sense of the intractability of circumstances.
+
+
+
+At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there was a
+conversation about Winterborne in progress in the village street,
+opposite Mr. Melbury's gates, where Timothy Tangs the elder and
+Robert Creedle had accidentally met.
+
+The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was all over
+the parish, the skin of his face being drawn two ways on the
+matter--towards brightness in respect of it as news, and towards
+concern in respect of it as circumstance.
+
+"Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is likely to
+lose her father.  He was almost well, but is much worse again.  A
+man all skin and grief he ever were, and if he leave Little
+Hintock for a better land, won't it make some difference to your
+Maister Winterborne, neighbor Creedle?"
+
+"Can I be a prophet in Israel?" said Creedle.  "Won't it! I was
+only shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, long-seeing
+way, and all the work of the house upon my one shoulders! You know
+what it means? It is upon John South's life that all Mr.
+Winterborne's houses hang.  If so be South die, and so make his
+decease, thereupon the law is that the houses fall without the
+least chance of absolution into HER hands at the House.  I told
+him so; but the words of the faithful be only as wind!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The news was true.  The life--the one fragile life--that had been
+used as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in danger of being
+frayed away.  It was the last of a group of lives which had served
+this purpose, at the end of whose breathings the small homestead
+occupied by South himself, the larger one of Giles Winterborne,
+and half a dozen others that had been in the possession of various
+Hintock village families for the previous hundred years, and were
+now Winterborne's, would fall in and become part of the
+encompassing estate.
+
+Yet a short two months earlier Marty's father, aged fifty-five
+years, though something of a fidgety, anxious being, would have
+been looked on as a man whose existence was so far removed from
+hazardous as any in the parish, and as bidding fair to be
+prolonged for another quarter of a century.
+
+Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day thinking of the
+contingency.  The sense that the paths he was pacing, the cabbage-
+plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, cider-cellar, wring-house,
+stables, and weathercock, were all slipping away over his head and
+beneath his feet, as if they were painted on a magic-lantern
+slide, was curious.  In spite of John South's late indisposition
+he had not anticipated danger.  To inquire concerning his health
+had been to show less sympathy than to remain silent, considering
+the material interest he possessed in the woodman's life, and he
+had, accordingly, made a point of avoiding Marty's house.
+
+While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch him.  It
+was Marty herself, and she showed her distress by her
+unconsciousness of a cropped poll.
+
+"Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that tree,"
+she said.  "You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winterborne? the tall
+one in front of the house, that he thinks will blow down and kill
+us.  Can you come and see if you can persuade him out of his
+notion? I can do nothing."
+
+He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted him up-
+stairs.  John South was pillowed up in a chair between the bed and
+the window exactly opposite the latter, towards which his face was
+turned.
+
+"Ah, neighbor Winterborne," he said.  "I wouldn't have minded if
+my life had only been my own to lose; I don't vallie it in much of
+itself, and can let it go if 'tis required of me.  But to think
+what 'tis worth to you, a young man rising in life, that do
+trouble me! It seems a trick of dishonesty towards ye to go off at
+fifty-five! I could bear up, I know I could, if it were not for
+the tree--yes, the tree, 'tis that's killing me.  There he stands,
+threatening my life every minute that the wind do blow.  He'll
+come down upon us and squat us dead; and what will ye do when the
+life on your property is taken away?"
+
+"Never you mind me--that's of no consequence," said Giles.  "Think
+of yourself alone."
+
+He looked out of the window in the direction of the woodman's
+gaze.  The tree was a tall elm, familiar to him from childhood,
+which stood at a distance of two-thirds its own height from the
+front of South's dwelling.  Whenever the wind blew, as it did now,
+the tree rocked, naturally enough; and the sight of its motion and
+sound of its sighs had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in
+the woodman's mind that it would descend and kill him.  Thus he
+would sit all day, in spite of persuasion, watching its every
+sway, and listening to the melancholy Gregorian melodies which the
+air wrung out of it.  This fear it apparently was, rather than any
+organic disease which was eating away the health of John South.
+
+As the tree waved, South waved his head, making it his flugel-man
+with abject obedience.  "Ah, when it was quite a small tree," he
+said, "and I was a little boy, I thought one day of chopping it
+off with my hook to make a clothes-line prop with.  But I put off
+doing it, and then I again thought that I would; but I forgot it,
+and didn't.  And at last it got too big, and now 'tis my enemy,
+and will be the death o' me.  Little did I think, when I let that
+sapling stay, that a time would come when it would torment me, and
+dash me into my grave."
+
+"No, no," said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly.  But they
+thought it possible that it might hasten him into his grave,
+though in another way than by falling.
+
+"I tell you what," added Winterborne, "I'll climb up this
+afternoon and shroud off the lower boughs, and then it won't be so
+heavy, and the wind won't affect it so."
+
+"She won't allow it--a strange woman come from nobody knows where--
+she won't have it done."
+
+"You mean Mrs. Charmond?  Oh, she doesn't know there's such a tree
+on her estate.  Besides, shrouding is not felling, and I'll risk
+that much."
+
+He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took a billhook
+from the woodman's shed, and with a ladder climbed into the lower
+part of the tree, where he began lopping off--"shrouding," as they
+called it at Hintock--the lowest boughs.  Each of these quivered
+under his attack, bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge.  Having
+cut away the lowest tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a few
+steps higher, and attacked those at the next level.  Thus he
+ascended with the progress of his work far above the top of the
+ladder, cutting away his perches as he went, and leaving nothing
+but a bare stem below him.
+
+The work was troublesome, for the tree was large.  The afternoon
+wore on, turning dark and misty about four o'clock.  From time to
+time Giles cast his eyes across towards the bedroom window of
+South, where, by the flickering fire in the chamber, he could see
+the old man watching him, sitting motionless with a hand upon each
+arm of the chair.  Beside him sat Marty, also straining her eyes
+towards the skyey field of his operations.
+
+A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, and he
+stopped his chopping.  He was operating on another person's
+property to prolong the years of a lease by whose termination that
+person would considerably benefit.  In that aspect of the case he
+doubted if he ought to go on.  On the other hand he was working to
+save a man's life, and this seemed to empower him to adopt
+arbitrary measures.
+
+The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was weighing the
+circumstances he saw coming along the road through the increasing
+mist a figure which, indistinct as it was, he knew well.  It was
+Grace Melbury, on her way out from the house, probably for a short
+evening walk before dark.  He arranged himself for a greeting from
+her, since she could hardly avoid passing immediately beneath the
+tree.
+
+But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just at that time
+too full of the words of her father to give him any encouragement. 
+The years-long regard that she had had for him was not kindled by
+her return into a flame of sufficient brilliancy to make her
+rebellious.  Thinking that she might not see him, he cried, "Miss
+Melbury, here I am."
+
+She looked up again.  She was near enough to see the expression of
+his face, and the nails in his soles, silver-bright with constant
+walking.  But she did not reply; and dropping her glance again,
+went on.
+
+Winterborne's face grew strange; he mused, and proceeded
+automatically with his work.  Grace meanwhile had not gone far. 
+She had reached a gate, whereon she had leaned sadly, and
+whispered to herself, "What shall I do?"
+
+A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, passing under
+the tree again on her return.  Again he addressed her.  "Grace,"
+he said, when she was close to the trunk, "speak to me." She shook
+her head without stopping, and went on to a little distance, where
+she stood observing him from behind the hedge.
+
+Her coldness had been kindly meant.  If it was to be done, she had
+said to herself, it should be begun at once.  While she stood out
+of observation Giles seemed to recognize her meaning; with a
+sudden start he worked on, climbing higher, and cutting himself
+off more and more from all intercourse with the sublunary world. 
+At last he had worked himself so high up the elm, and the mist had
+so thickened, that he could only just be discerned as a dark-gray
+spot on the light-gray sky: he would have been altogether out of
+notice but for the stroke of his billhook and the flight of a
+bough downward, and its crash upon the hedge at intervals.
+
+It was not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were
+best.  She went back a third time; he did not see her now, and she
+lingeringly gazed up at his unconscious figure, loath to put an
+end to any kind of hope that might live on in him still.  "Giles--
+Mr. Winterborne," she said.
+
+He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear.  "Mr.
+Winterborne!" she cried again, and this time he stopped, looked
+down, and replied.
+
+"My silence just now was not accident," she said, in an unequal
+voice.  "My father says it is best not to think too much of that--
+engagement, or understanding between us, that you know of.  I,
+too, think that upon the whole he is right.  But we are friends,
+you know, Giles, and almost relations."
+
+"Very well," he answered, as if without surprise, in a voice which
+barely reached down the tree.  "I have nothing to say in
+objection--I cannot say anything till I've thought a while."
+
+She added, with emotion in her tone, "For myself, I would have
+married you--some day--I think.  But I give way, for I see it
+would be unwise."
+
+He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his elbow in a
+fork, and rested his head upon his hand.  Thus he remained till
+the fog and the night had completely enclosed him from her view.
+
+Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, and moved
+onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big and heavy, and her
+eyes wet.  Had Giles, instead of remaining still, immediately come
+down from the tree to her, would she have continued in that filial
+acquiescent frame of mind which she had announced to him as final? 
+If it be true, as women themselves have declared, that one of
+their sex is never so much inclined to throw in her lot with a man
+for good and all as five minutes after she has told him such a
+thing cannot be, the probabilities are that something might have
+been done by the appearance of Winterborne on the ground beside
+Grace. But he continued motionless and silent in that gloomy
+Niflheim or fog-land which involved him, and she proceeded on her
+way.
+
+The spot seemed now to be quite deserted.  The light from South's
+window made rays on the fog, but did not reach the tree.  A
+quarter of an hour passed, and all was blackness overhead.  Giles
+had not yet come down.
+
+Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a movement
+was audible, and Winterborne dropped almost noiselessly to the
+ground.  He had thought the matter out, and having returned the
+ladder and billhook to their places, pursued his way homeward.  He
+would not allow this incident to affect his outer conduct any more
+than the danger to his leaseholds had done, and went to bed as
+usual.  Two simultaneous troubles do not always make a double
+trouble; and thus it came to pass that Giles's practical anxiety
+about his houses, which would have been enough to keep him awake
+half the night at any other time, was displaced and not reinforced
+by his sentimental trouble about Grace Melbury.  This severance
+was in truth more like a burial of her than a rupture with her;
+but he did not realize so much at present; even when he arose in
+the morning he felt quite moody and stern: as yet the second note
+in the gamut of such emotions, a tender regret for his loss, had
+not made itself heard.
+
+A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning to a builder
+whose works were in a town many miles off.  The proud trunks were
+taken up from the silent spot which had known them through the
+buddings and sheddings of their growth for the foregoing hundred
+years; chained down like slaves to a heavy timber carriage with
+enormous red wheels, and four of the most powerful of Melbury's
+horses were harnessed in front to draw them.
+
+The horses wore their bells that day.  There were sixteen to the
+team, carried on a frame above each animal's shoulders, and tuned
+to scale, so as to form two octaves, running from the highest note
+on the right or off-side of the leader to the lowest on the left
+or near-side of the shaft-horse.  Melbury was among the last to
+retain horse-bells in that neighborhood; for, living at Little
+Hintock, where the lanes yet remained as narrow as before the days
+of turnpike roads, these sound-signals were still as useful to him
+and his neighbors as they had ever been in former times.  Much
+backing was saved in the course of a year by the warning notes
+they cast ahead; moreover, the tones of all the teams in the
+district being known to the carters of each, they could tell a
+long way off on a dark night whether they were about to encounter
+friends or strangers.
+
+The fog of the previous evening still lingered so heavily over the
+woods that the morning could not penetrate the trees till long
+after its time.  The load being a ponderous one, the lane crooked,
+and the air so thick, Winterborne set out, as he often did, to
+accompany the team as far as the corner, where it would turn into
+a wider road.
+
+So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the roadside
+cottages by the weight of their progress, the sixteen bells
+chiming harmoniously over all, till they had risen out of the 
+valley and were descending towards the more open route, the sparks
+rising from their creaking skid and nearly setting fire to the
+dead leaves alongside.
+
+Then occurred one of the very incidents against which the bells
+were an endeavor to guard.  Suddenly there beamed into their eyes,
+quite close to them, the two lamps of a carriage, shorn of rays by
+the fog.  Its approach had been quite unheard, by reason of their
+own noise.  The carriage was a covered one, while behind it could
+be discerned another vehicle laden with luggage.
+
+Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the coachman
+telling the carter that he must turn back.  The carter declared
+that this was impossible.
+
+"You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses," said the
+coachman.
+
+"It is much easier for you to turn than for us," said Winterborne. 
+"We've five tons of timber on these wheels if we've an ounce."
+
+"But I've another carriage with luggage at my back."
+
+Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument.  "But even with
+that," he said, "you can back better than we.  And you ought to,
+for you could hear our bells half a mile off."
+
+"And you could see our lights."
+
+"We couldn't, because of the fog."
+
+"Well, our time's precious," said the coachman, haughtily.  "You
+are only going to some trumpery little village or other in the
+neighborhood, while we are going straight to Italy."
+
+"Driving all the way, I suppose," said Winterborne, sarcastically.
+
+The argument continued in these terms till a voice from the
+interior of the carriage inquired what was the matter.  It was a
+lady's.
+
+She was briefly informed of the timber people's obstinacy; and
+then Giles could hear her telling the footman to direct the timber
+people to turn their horses' heads.
+
+The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the bearer back to
+say that he begged the lady's pardon, but that he could not do as
+she requested; that though he would not assert it to be
+impossible, it was impossible by comparison with the slight
+difficulty to her party to back their light carriages.  As fate
+would have it, the incident with Grace Melbury on the previous day
+made Giles less gentle than he might otherwise have shown himself,
+his confidence in the sex being rudely shaken.
+
+In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were compelled
+to back till they reached one of the sidings or turnouts
+constructed in the bank for the purpose.  Then the team came on
+ponderously, and the clanging of its sixteen bells as it passed
+the discomfited carriages, tilted up against the bank, lent a
+particularly triumphant tone to the team's progress--a tone which,
+in point of fact, did not at all attach to its conductor's
+feelings.
+
+Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got past the
+yet stationary carriages he heard a soft voice say, "Who is that
+rude man? Not Melbury?" The sex of the speaker was so prominent in
+the voice that Winterborne felt a pang of regret.
+
+"No, ma'am.  A younger man, in a smaller way of business in Little
+Hintock.  Winterborne is his name."
+
+Thus they parted company.  "Why, Mr. Winterborne," said the
+wagoner, when they were out of hearing, "that was She--Mrs.
+Charmond! Who'd ha' thought it? What in the world can a woman that
+does nothing be cock-watching out here at this time o' day for?
+Oh, going to Italy--yes to be sure, I heard she was going abroad,
+she can't endure the winter here."
+
+Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that he knew
+Mr. Melbury, in his adoration of Hintock House, would be the first
+to blame him if it became known.  But saying no more, he
+accompanied the load to the end of the lane, and then turned back
+with an intention to call at South's to learn the result of the
+experiment of the preceding evening.
+
+It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace Melbury, who
+now rose soon enough to breakfast with her father, in spite of the
+unwontedness of the hour, had been commissioned by him to make the
+same inquiry at South's.  Marty had been standing at the door when
+Miss Melbury arrived.  Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs.
+Charmond's carriages, released from the obstruction up the lane,
+came bowling along, and the two girls turned to regard the
+spectacle.
+
+Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient light for
+them to discern her outline between the carriage windows.  A
+noticeable feature in her tournure was a magnificent mass of
+braided locks.
+
+"How well she looks this morning!" said Grace, forgetting Mrs.
+Charmond's slight in her generous admiration.  "Her hair so
+becomes her worn that way.  I have never seen any more beautiful!"
+
+"Nor have I, miss," said Marty, dryly, unconsciously stroking her
+crown.
+
+Grace watched the carriages with lingering regret till they were
+out of sight.  She then learned of Marty that South was no better. 
+Before she had come away Winterborne approached the house, but
+seeing that one of the two girls standing on the door-step was 
+Grace, he suddenly turned back again and sought the shelter of his
+own home till she should have gone away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon Winterborne's
+mind the image of Mrs. Charmond, his thoughts by a natural channel
+went from her to the fact that several cottages and other houses
+in the two Hintocks, now his own, would fall into her possession
+in the event of South's death.  He marvelled what people could
+have been thinking about in the past to invent such precarious
+tenures as these; still more, what could have induced his
+ancestors at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange their
+old copyholds for life-leases.  But having naturally succeeded to
+these properties through his father, he had done his best to keep
+them in order, though he was much struck with his father's
+negligence in not insuring South's life.
+
+After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he went up-
+stairs, turned over his bed, and drew out a flat canvas bag which
+lay between the mattress and the sacking.  In this he kept his
+leases, which had remained there unopened ever since his father's
+death.  It was the usual hiding-place among rural lifeholders for
+such documents.  Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them
+over.  They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member
+of the South family, some fifty years before this time, had
+accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of certain copyholds and
+other rights, in consideration of having the dilapidated houses
+rebuilt by said lord.  They had come into his father's possession
+chiefly through his mother, who was a South.
+
+Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a letter,
+which Winterborne had never seen before.  It bore a remote date,
+the handwriting being that of some solicitor or agent, and the
+signature the landholder's.  It was to the effect that at any time
+before the last of the stated lives should drop, Mr. Giles
+Winterborne, senior, or his representative, should have the
+privilege of adding his own and his son's life to the life
+remaining on payment of a merely nominal sum; the concession being
+in consequence of the elder Winterborne's consent to demolish one
+of the houses and relinquish its site, which stood at an awkward
+corner of the lane and impeded the way.
+
+The house had been pulled down years before.  Why Giles's father
+had not taken advantage of his privilege to insert his own and his
+son's lives it was impossible to say.  The likelihood was that
+death alone had hindered him in the execution of his project, as
+it surely was, the elder Winterborne having been a man who took
+much pleasure in dealing with house property in his small way.
+
+Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not much doubt
+that Giles could do what his father had left undone, as far as his
+own life was concerned.  This possibility cheered him much, for by
+those houses hung many things.  Melbury's doubt of the young man's
+fitness to be the husband of Grace had been based not a little on
+the precariousness of his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. 
+He resolved to attend to the business at once, the fine for
+renewal being a sum that he could easily muster.  His scheme,
+however, could not be carried out in a day; and meanwhile he would
+run up to South's, as he had intended to do, to learn the result
+of the experiment with the tree.
+
+Marty met him at the door.  "Well, Marty," he said; and was
+surprised to read in her face that the case was not so hopeful as
+he had imagined.
+
+"I am sorry for your labor," she said.  "It is all lost.  He says
+the tree seems taller than ever."
+
+Winterborne looked round at it.  Taller the tree certainly did
+seem, the gauntness of its now naked stem being more marked than
+before.
+
+"It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had done to it
+this morning," she added.  "He declares it will come down upon us
+and cleave us, like 'the sword of the Lord and of Gideon.'"
+
+"Well; can I do anything else?" asked he.
+
+"The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down."
+
+"Oh--you've had the doctor?"
+
+"I didn't send for him Mrs. Charmond, before she left, heard that
+father was ill, and told him to attend him at her expense."
+
+"That was very good of her.  And he says it ought to be cut down. 
+We mustn't cut it down without her knowledge, I suppose."
+
+He went up-stairs.  There the old man sat, staring at the now
+gaunt tree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk.  Unluckily
+the tree waved afresh by this time, a wind having sprung up and
+blown the fog away, and his eyes turned with its wavings.
+
+They heard footsteps--a man's, but of a lighter type than usual. 
+"There is Doctor Fitzpiers again," she said, and descended. 
+Presently his tread was heard on the naked stairs.
+
+Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor is more or
+less wont to do on such occasions, and pre-eminently when the room
+is that of a humble cottager, looking round towards the patient
+with that preoccupied gaze which so plainly reveals that he has
+wellnigh forgotten all about the case and the whole circumstances
+since he dismissed them from his mind at his last exit from the
+same apartment.  He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was
+already a little acquainted, recalled the case to his thoughts,
+and went leisurely on to where South sat.
+
+Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome man.  His
+eyes were dark and impressive, and beamed with the light either of
+energy or of susceptivity--it was difficult to say which; it might
+have been a little of both.  That quick, glittering, practical
+eye, sharp for the surface of things and for nothing beneath it,
+he had not.  But whether his apparent depth of vision was real, or
+only an artistic accident of his corporeal moulding, nothing but
+his deeds could reveal.
+
+His face was rather soft than stern, charming than grand, pale
+than flushed; his nose--if a sketch of his features be de rigueur
+for a person of his pretensions--was artistically beautiful enough
+to have been worth doing in marble by any sculptor not over-busy,
+and was hence devoid of those knotty irregularities which often
+mean power; while the double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth
+was not without a looseness in its close.  Nevertheless, either
+from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective manner, or
+the instinct towards profound things which was said to possess
+him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather than the dandy or
+macaroni--an effect which was helped by the absence of trinkets or
+other trivialities from his attire, though this was more finished
+and up to date than is usually the case among rural practitioners.
+
+Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a little
+about him by report, might have said that he seemed likely to err
+rather in the possession of too many ideas than too few; to be a
+dreamy 'ist of some sort, or too deeply steeped in some false kind
+of 'ism.  However this may be, it will be seen that he was
+undoubtedly a somewhat rare kind of gentleman and doctor to have
+descended, as from the clouds, upon Little Hintock.
+
+"This is an extraordinary case," he said at last to Winterborne,
+after examining South by conversation, look, and touch, and
+learning that the craze about the elm was stronger than ever. 
+"Come down-stairs, and I'll tell you what I think."
+
+They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued, "The tree
+must be cut down, or I won't answer for his life."
+
+"'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree, and I suppose we must get permission?"
+said Giles.  "If so, as she is gone away, I must speak to her
+agent."
+
+"Oh--never mind whose tree it is--what's a tree beside a life! Cut
+it down.  I have not the honor of knowing Mrs. Charmond as yet,
+but I am disposed to risk that much with her."
+
+"'Tis timber," rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he would have
+been had not his own interests stood so closely involved. 
+"They'll never fell a stick about here without it being marked
+first, either by her or the agent."
+
+"Then we'll inaugurate a new era forthwith.  How long has he
+complained of the tree?" asked the doctor of Marty.
+
+"Weeks and weeks, sir.  The shape of it seems to haunt him like an
+evil spirit.  He says that it is exactly his own age, that it has
+got human sense, and sprouted up when he was born on purpose to
+rule him, and keep him as its slave.  Others have been like it
+afore in Hintock."
+
+They could hear South's voice up-stairs "Oh, he's rocking this
+way; he must come! And then my poor life, that's worth houses upon
+houses, will be squashed out o' me.  Oh! oh!"
+
+"That's how he goes on," she added.  "And he'll never look
+anywhere else but out of the window, and scarcely have the
+curtains drawn."
+
+"Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond," said Mr. Fitzpiers. 
+"The best plan will be to wait till the evening, when it is dark,
+or early in the morning before he is awake, so that he doesn't see
+it fall, for that would terrify him worse than ever.  Keep the
+blind down till I come, and then I'll assure him, and show him
+that his trouble is over."
+
+The doctor then departed, and they waited till the evening.  When
+it was dusk, and the curtains drawn, Winterborne directed a couple
+of woodmen to bring a crosscut-saw, and the tall, threatening tree
+was soon nearly off at its base.  He would not fell it completely
+then, on account of the possible crash, but next morning, before
+South was awake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a
+direction away from the cottage.  It was a business difficult to
+do quite silently; but it was done at last, and the elm of the
+same birth-year as the woodman's lay stretched upon the ground. 
+The weakest idler that passed could now set foot on marks formerly
+made in the upper forks by the shoes of adventurous climbers only;
+once inaccessible nests could be examined microscopically; and on
+swaying extremities where birds alone had perched, the by-standers
+sat down.
+
+As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and Winterborne
+entered the house with him.  Marty said that her father was
+wrapped up and ready, as usual, to be put into his chair.  They
+ascended the stairs, and soon seated him.  He began at once to
+complain of the tree, and the danger to his life and Winterborne's
+house-property in consequence.
+
+The doctor signalled to Giles, who went and drew back the printed
+cotton curtains.  "'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitzpiers.
+
+As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in place of the
+branched column so familiar to his gaze, he sprang up, speechless,
+his eyes rose from their hollows till the whites showed all round;
+he fell back, and a bluish whiteness overspread him.
+
+Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed.  As soon as he came a
+little out of his fit, he gasped, "Oh, it is gone!--where?--
+where?"
+
+His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement.  They were
+thunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did all they
+could.  Nothing seemed to avail.  Giles and Fitzpiers went and
+came, but uselessly.  He lingered through the day, and died that
+evening as the sun went down.
+
+"D--d if my remedy hasn't killed him!" murmured the doctor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed much moved, and
+walked thoughtfully about the premises.  On South's own account he
+was genuinely sorry; and on Winterborne's he was the more grieved
+in that this catastrophe had so closely followed the somewhat
+harsh dismissal of Giles as the betrothed of his daughter.
+
+He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly inflicting
+on Giles a second trouble when the needful one inflicted by
+himself was all that the proper order of events demanded.  "I told
+Giles's father when he came into those houses not to spend too
+much money on lifehold property held neither for his own life nor
+his son's," he exclaimed.  "But he wouldn't listen to me.  And now
+Giles has to suffer for it."
+
+"Poor Giles!" murmured Grace.
+
+"Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remarkable.  It is
+almost as if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your
+escape, though I am sincerely sorry for Giles.  Had we not
+dismissed him already, we could hardly have found it in our hearts
+to dismiss him now.  So I say, be thankful.  I'll do all I can for
+him as a friend; but as a pretender to the position of my son-in
+law, that can never be thought of more."
+
+And yet at that very moment the impracticability to which poor
+Winterborne's suit had been reduced was touching Grace's heart to
+a warmer sentiment on his behalf than she had felt for years
+concerning him.
+
+He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar house
+which had ceased to be his, taking a calm if somewhat dismal
+survey of affairs.  The pendulum of the clock bumped every now and
+then against one side of the case in which it swung, as the
+muffled drum to his worldly march.  Looking out of the window he
+could perceive that a paralysis had come over Creedle's occupation
+of manuring the garden, owing, obviously, to a conviction that
+they might not be living there long enough to profit by next
+season's crop.
+
+He looked at the leases again and the letter attached.  There was
+no doubt that he had lost his houses by an accident which might
+easily have been circumvented if he had known the true conditions
+of his holding.  The time for performance had now lapsed in strict
+law; but might not the intention be considered by the landholder
+when she became aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to
+retain the holdings for the term of his life be conceded?
+
+His heart sank within him when he perceived that despite all the
+legal reciprocities and safeguards prepared and written, the
+upshot of the matter amounted to this, that it depended upon the
+mere caprice--good or ill--of the woman he had met the day before
+in such an unfortunate way, whether he was to possess his houses
+for life or no.
+
+While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the door, and
+Melbury appeared, looking very sorry for his position. 
+Winterborne welcomed him by a word and a look, and went on with
+his examination of the parchments.  His visitor sat down.
+
+"Giles," he said, "this is very awkward, and I am sorry for it. 
+What are you going to do?"
+
+Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how barely he
+had missed availing himself of his chance of renewal.
+
+"What a misfortune! Why was this neglected?  Well, the best thing
+you can do is to write and tell her all about it, and throw
+yourself upon her generosity."
+
+"I would rather not," murmured Giles.
+
+"But you must," said Melbury.
+
+In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed himself to be
+persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was written and sent to
+Hintock House, whence, as he knew, it would at once be forwarded
+to her.
+
+Melbury feeling that he had done so good an action in coming as
+almost to extenuate his previous arbitrary conduct to nothing,
+went home; and Giles was left alone to the suspense of waiting for
+a reply from the divinity who shaped the ends of the Hintock
+population.  By this time all the villagers knew of the
+circumstances, and being wellnigh like one family, a keen interest
+was the result all round.
+
+Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty.  Had any of
+them looked in upon her during those moonlight nights which
+preceded the burial of her father, they would have seen the girl
+absolutely alone in the house with the dead man.  Her own chamber
+being nearest the stairs, the coffin had been placed there for
+convenience; and at a certain hour of the night, when the moon
+arrived opposite the window, its beams streamed across the still
+profile of South, sublimed by the august presence of death, and
+onward a few feet farther upon the face of his daughter, lying in
+her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost as dignified as
+that of her companion--the repose of a guileless soul that had
+nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which she did
+not overvalue.
+
+South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne watched for a
+reply from Mrs. Charmond.  Melbury was very sanguine as to its
+tenor; but Winterborne had not told him of the encounter with her
+carriage, when, if ever he had heard an affronted tone on a
+woman's lips, he had heard it on hers.
+
+The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's men had
+assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, who when not busy on
+his own account would lend assistance there, used to go out into
+the lane every morning and meet the post-man at the end of one of
+the green rides through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch
+of which his laden figure could be seen a long way off.  Grace
+also was very anxious; more anxious than her father; more,
+perhaps, than Winterborne himself.  This anxiety led her into the
+spar-house on some pretext or other almost every morning while
+they were awaiting the reply.
+
+Fitzpiers too, though he did not personally appear, was much
+interested, and not altogether easy in his mind; for he had been
+informed by an authority of what he had himself conjectured, that
+if the tree had been allowed to stand, the old man would have gone
+on complaining, but might have lived for twenty years.
+
+Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the ride, and
+looked up its long straight slope through the wet grays of winter
+dawn.  But though the postman's bowed figure loomed in view pretty
+regularly, he brought nothing for Giles.  On the twelfth day the
+man of missives, while yet in the extreme distance, held up his
+hand, and Winterborne saw a letter in it.  He took it into the
+spar-house before he broke the seal, and those who were there
+gathered round him while he read, Grace looking in at the door.
+
+The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her agent at
+Sherton.  Winterborne glanced it over and looked up.
+
+"It's all over," he said.
+
+"Ah!" said they altogether.
+
+"Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond sees no reason
+for disturbing the natural course of things, particularly as she
+contemplates pulling the houses down," he said, quietly.
+
+"Only think of that!" said several.
+
+Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to himself, "Then
+let her pull 'em down, and be d--d to her!"
+
+Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, saying, "Ah,
+'twas that sperrit that lost 'em for ye, maister!"
+
+Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, whatever
+they were, kept them entirely to himself.  There could be no doubt
+that, up to this last moment, he had nourished a feeble hope of
+regaining Grace in the event of this negotiation turning out a
+success.  Not being aware of the fact that her father could have
+settled upon her a fortune sufficient to enable both to live in
+comfort, he deemed it now an absurdity to dream any longer of such
+a vanity as making her his wife, and sank into silence forthwith.
+
+Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among strangers, it
+is apt to express more than talkativeness when he dwells among
+friends.  The countryman who is obliged to judge the time of day
+from changes in external nature sees a thousand successive tints
+and traits in the landscape which are never discerned by him who
+hears the regular chime of a clock, because they are never in
+request.  In like manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn
+comrade.  The infinitesimal movement of muscle, curve, hair, and
+wrinkle, which when accompanied by a voice goes unregarded, is
+watched and translated in the lack of it, till virtually the whole
+surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the reserved one's
+moods and meanings.
+
+This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne and his
+neighbors after his stroke of ill-luck.  He held his tongue; and
+they observed him, and knew that he was discomposed.
+
+Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the matter than
+any one else, except his daughter.  Had Winterborne been going on
+in the old fashion, Grace's father could have alluded to his
+disapproval of the alliance every day with the greatest frankness;
+but to speak any further on the subject he could not find it in
+his heart to do now.  He hoped that Giles would of his own accord
+make some final announcement that he entirely withdrew his
+pretensions to Grace, and so get the thing past and done with. 
+For though Giles had in a measure acquiesced in the wish of her
+family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose to work upon
+Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the young man approaching along
+the road one day, he kept friendliness and frigidity exactly
+balanced in his eye till he could see whether Giles's manner was
+presumptive or not.
+
+His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims.  "I am glad
+to meet ye, Mr. Melbury," he said, in a low voice, whose quality
+he endeavored to make as practical as possible.  "I am afraid I
+shall not be able to keep that mare I bought, and as I don't care
+to sell her, I should like--if you don't object--to give her to
+Miss Melbury.  The horse is very quiet, and would be quite safe
+for her."
+
+Mr. Melbury was rather affected at this.  "You sha'n't hurt your
+pocket like that on our account, Giles.  Grace shall have the
+horse, but I'll pay you what you gave for her, and any expense you
+may have been put to for her keep."
+
+He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was arranged.  
+They were now opposite Melbury's house, and the timber-merchant
+pressed Winterborne to enter, Grace being out of the way.
+
+"Pull round the settle, Giles," said the timber-merchant, as soon
+as they were within.  "I should like to have a serious talk with
+you."
+
+Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and in quite a
+friendly way.  He declared that he did not like to be hard on a
+man when he was in difficulty; but he really did not see how
+Winterborne could marry his daughter now, without even a house to
+take her to.
+
+Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situation.  But
+from a momentary feeling that he would like to know Grace's mind
+from her own lips, he did not speak out positively there and then. 
+He accordingly departed somewhat abruptly, and went home to
+consider whether he would seek to bring about a meeting with her.
+
+In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied that he
+heard a scraping on the wall outside his house.  The boughs of a
+monthly rose which grew there made such a noise sometimes, but as
+no wind was stirring he knew that it could not be the rose-tree. 
+He took up the candle and went out.  Nobody was near.  As he
+turned, the light flickered on the whitewashed rough case of the
+front, and he saw words written thereon in charcoal, which he read
+as follows:
+
+
+    "O Giles, you've lost your dwelling-place,
+     And therefore, Giles, you'll lose your Grace."
+
+
+Giles went in-doors.  He had his suspicions as to the scrawler of
+those lines, but he could not be sure.  What suddenly filled his
+heart far more than curiosity about their authorship was a
+terrible belief that they were turning out to be true, try to see
+Grace as he might.  They decided the question for him.  He sat
+down and wrote a formal note to Melbury, in which he briefly
+stated that he was placed in such a position as to make him share
+to the full Melbury's view of his own and his daughter's promise,
+made some years before; to wish that it should be considered as
+cancelled, and they themselves quite released from any obligation
+on account of it.
+
+Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he determined to
+get it out of his hands and have done with it; to which end he
+went off to Melbury's at once.  It was now so late that the family
+had all retired;  he crept up to the house, thrust the note under
+the door, and stole away as silently as he had come.
+
+Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, and when
+he had read the letter his relief was great.  "Very honorable of
+Giles, very honorable," he kept saying to himself.  "I shall not
+forget him.  Now to keep her up to her own true level."
+
+It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble that morning,
+passing through the door and gate while her father was in the
+spar-house.  To go in her customary direction she could not avoid
+passing Winterborne's house.  The morning sun was shining flat
+upon its white surface, and the words, which still remained, were
+immediately visible to her.  She read them.  Her face flushed to
+crimson.  She could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the
+back; the charred spar-gad with which the lines had been written
+lay on the ground beneath the wall.  Feeling pretty sure that
+Winterborne would observe her action, she quickly went up to the
+wall, rubbed out "lose" and inserted "keep" in its stead.  Then
+she made the best of her way home without looking behind her. 
+Giles could draw an inference now if he chose.
+
+There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was warming
+to more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Winterborne than
+ever she had done while he was her promised lover; that since his
+misfortune those social shortcomings of his, which contrasted so
+awkwardly with her later experiences of life, had become obscured
+by the generous revival of an old romantic attachment to him. 
+Though mentally trained and tilled into foreignness of view, as
+compared with her youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious girl,
+and might, if left to herself, have declined Winterborne without
+much discontent or unhappiness.  Her feelings just now were so far
+from latent that the writing on the wall had thus quickened her to
+an unusual rashness.
+
+Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast silently.  When
+her step-mother had left the room she said to her father, "I have
+made up my mind that I should like my engagement to Giles to
+continue, for the present at any rate, till I can see further what
+I ought to do."
+
+Melbury looked much surprised.
+
+"Nonsense," he said, sharply.  "You don't know what you are
+talking about.  Look here."
+
+He handed across to her the letter received from Giles.
+
+She read it, and said no more.  Could he have seen her write on
+the wall?  She did not know.  Fate, it seemed, would have it this
+way, and there was nothing to do but to acquiesce.
+
+It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curiously
+enough, had NOT perceived Grace writing, was clearing away the
+tree from the front of South's late dwelling.  He saw Marty
+standing in her door-way, a slim figure in meagre black, almost
+without womanly contours as yet.  He went up to her and said,
+"Marty, why did you write that on my wall last night?  It WAS you,
+you know."
+
+"Because it was the truth.  I didn't mean to let it stay, Mr. 
+Winterborne; but when I was going to rub it out you came, and I
+was obliged to run off."
+
+"Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to another?
+Your predictions can't be worth much."
+
+"I have not altered it."
+
+"But you have."
+
+"No."
+
+"It is altered.  Go and see."
+
+She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling-place, he
+would KEEP his Grace.  Marty came back surprised.
+
+"Well, I never," she said.  "Who can have made such nonsense of
+it?"
+
+"Who, indeed?" said he.
+
+"I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone."
+
+"You'd no business to rub it out.  I didn't tell you to.  I meant
+to let it stay a little longer."
+
+"Some idle boy did it, no doubt," she murmured.
+
+As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetrator was
+unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dismissed the matter
+from his mind.
+
+From this day of his life onward for a considerable time,
+Winterborne, though not absolutely out of his house as yet,
+retired into the background of human life and action thereabout--a
+feat not particularly difficult of performance anywhere when the
+doer has the assistance of a lost prestige.  Grace, thinking that
+Winterborne saw her write, made no further sign, and the frail
+bark of fidelity that she had thus timidly launched was stranded
+and lost.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of much
+less pretension, both as to architecture and as to magnitude, than
+the timber-merchant's.  The latter had, without doubt, been once
+the manorial residence appertaining to the snug and modest domain
+of Little Hintock, of which the boundaries were now lost by its
+absorption with others of its kind into the adjoining estate of
+Mrs. Charmond.  Though the Melburys themselves were unaware of the
+fact, there was every reason to believe--at least so the parson
+said that the owners of that little manor had been Melbury's own
+ancestors, the family name occurring in numerous documents
+relating to transfers of land about the time of the civil wars.
+
+Mr. Fitzpiers's dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cottage-
+like, and comparatively modern.  It had been occupied, and was in
+part occupied still, by a retired farmer and his wife, who, on the
+surgeon's arrival in quest of a home, had accommodated him by
+receding from their front rooms into the kitchen quarter, whence
+they administered to his wants, and emerged at regular intervals
+to receive from him a not unwelcome addition to their income.
+
+The cottage and its garden were so regular in their arrangement
+that they might have been laid out by a Dutch designer of the time
+of William and Mary.  In a low, dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape,
+was a door over which the hedge formed an arch, and from the
+inside of the door a straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran
+up the slope of the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the
+middle of the house front, with two windows on each side.  Right
+and left of the path were first a bed of gooseberry bushes; next
+of currant; next of raspberry; next of strawberry; next of old-
+fashioned flowers; at the corners opposite the porch being spheres
+of box resembling a pair of school globes.  Over the roof of the
+house could be seen the orchard, on yet higher ground, and behind
+the orchard the forest-trees, reaching up to the crest of the
+hill.
+
+Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor window was a
+swing-gate leading into a field, across which there ran a foot-
+path.  The swing-gate had just been repainted, and on one fine
+afternoon, before the paint was dry, and while gnats were still
+dying thereon, the surgeon was standing in his sitting-room
+abstractedly looking out at the different pedestrians who passed
+and repassed along that route.  Being of a philosophical stamp, he
+perceived that the chararter of each of these travellers exhibited
+itself in a somewhat amusing manner by his or her method of
+handling the gate.
+
+As regarded the men, there was not much variety: they gave the
+gate a kick and passed through.  The women were more contrasting. 
+To them the sticky wood-work was a barricade, a disgust, a menace,
+a treachery, as the case might be.
+
+The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her skirts
+tucked up and her hair uncombed.  She grasped the gate without
+looking, giving it a supplementary push with her shoulder, when
+the white imprint drew from her an exclamation in language not too
+refined.  She went to the green bank, sat down and rubbed herself
+in the grass, cursing the while.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the doctor.
+
+The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom the
+surgeon recognized the daughter of his late patient, the woodman
+South.  Moreover, a black bonnet that she wore by way of mourning
+unpleasantly reminded him that he had ordered the felling of a
+tree which had caused her parent's death and Winterborne's losses. 
+She walked and thought, and not recklessly; but her preoccupation
+led her to grasp unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it
+with her arm.  Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled
+that new black frock, poor as it was, for it was probably her only
+one.  She looked at her hand and arm, seemed but little surprised,
+wiped off the disfigurement with an almost unmoved face, and as if
+without abandoning her original thoughts.  Thus she went on her
+way.
+
+Then there came over the green quite a different sort of
+personage.  She walked as delicately as if she had been bred in
+town, and as firmly as if she had been bred in the country; she
+seemed one who dimly knew her appearance to be attractive, but who
+retained some of the charm of being ignorant of that fact by
+forgetting it in a general pensiveness.  She approached the gate. 
+To let such a creature touch it even with a tip of her glove was
+to Fitzpiers almost like letting her proceed to tragical self-
+destruction.  He jumped up and looked for his hat, but was unable
+to find the right one; glancing again out of the window he saw
+that he was too late.  Having come up, she stopped, looked at the
+gate, picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet, pushed
+open the obstacle without touching it at all.
+
+He steadily watched her till she had passed out of sight,
+recognizing her as the very young lady whom he had seen once
+before and been unable to identify.  Whose could that emotional
+face be? All the others he had seen in Hintock as yet oppressed
+him with their crude rusticity; the contrast offered by this
+suggested that she hailed from elsewhere.
+
+Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first time of
+seeing her; but he now went a little further with them, and
+considered that as there had been no carriage seen or heard lately
+in that spot she could not have come a very long distance.  She
+must be somebody staying at Hintock House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond,
+of whom he had heard so much--at any rate an inmate, and this
+probability was sufficient to set a mild radiance in the surgeon's
+somewhat dull sky.
+
+Fitzpiers sat down to the book he had been perusing.  It happened
+to be that of a German metaphysician, for the doctor was not a
+practical man, except by fits, and much preferred the ideal world
+to the real, and the discovery of principles to their application. 
+The young lady remained in his thoughts.  He might have followed
+her; but he was not constitutionally active, and preferred a
+conjectural pursuit.  However, when he went out for a ramble just
+before dusk he insensibly took the direction of Hintock House,
+which was the way that Grace had been walking, it having happened
+that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that day, and she had
+walked to the brow of a hill whence the house could be seen,
+returning by another route.
+
+Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, overlooking
+the manor-house.  The shutters were shut, and only one chimney
+smoked.  The mere aspect of the place was enough to inform him
+that Mrs. Charmond had gone away and that nobody else was staying
+there.  Fitzpiers felt a vague disappointment that the young lady
+was not Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much; and without
+pausing longer to gaze at a carcass from which the spirit had
+flown, he bent his steps homeward.
+
+Later in the evening Fitzpiers was summoned to visit a cottage
+patient about two miles distant.  Like the majority of young
+practitioners in his position he was far from having assumed the
+dignity of being driven his rounds by a servant in a brougham that
+flashed the sunlight like a mirror; his way of getting about was
+by means of a gig which he drove himself, hitching the rein of the
+horse to the gate post, shutter hook, or garden paling of the
+domicile under visitation, or giving pennies to little boys to
+hold the animal during his stay--pennies which were well earned
+when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful kind that
+wore out the patience of the little boys.
+
+On this account of travelling alone, the night journeys which
+Fitzpiers had frequently to take were dismal enough, a serious
+apparent perversity in nature ruling that whenever there was to be
+a birth in a particularly inaccessible and lonely place, that
+event should occur in the night.  The surgeon, having been of late
+years a town man, hated the solitary midnight woodland.  He was
+not altogether skilful with the reins, and it often occurred to
+his mind that if in some remote depths of the trees an accident
+were to happen, the fact of his being alone might be the death of
+him.  Hence he made a practice of picking up any countryman or lad
+whom he chanced to pass by, and under the disguise of treating him
+to a nice drive, obtained his companionship on the journey, and
+his convenient assistance in opening gates.
+
+The doctor had started on his way out of the village on the night
+in question when the light of his lamps fell upon the musing form
+of Winterborne, walking leisurely along, as if he had no object in
+life.  Winterborne was a better class of companion than the doctor
+usually could get, and he at once pulled up and asked him if he
+would like a drive through the wood that fine night.
+
+Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor's friendliness, but
+said that he had no objection, and accordingly mounted beside Mr.
+Fitzpiers.
+
+They drove along under the black boughs which formed a network
+upon the stars, all the trees of a species alike in one respect,
+and no two of them alike in another.  Looking up as they passed
+under a horizontal bough they sometimes saw objects like large
+tadpoles lodged diametrically across it, which Giles explained to
+be pheasants there at roost; and they sometimes heard the report
+of a gun, which reminded him that others knew what those tadpole
+shapes represented as well as he.
+
+Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say for some
+time:
+
+"Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood--a very
+attractive girl--with a little white boa round her neck, and white
+fur round her gloves?"
+
+Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, whom he had
+caught the doctor peering at, was represented by these
+accessaries.  With a wary grimness, partly in his character,
+partly induced by the circumstances, he evaded an answer by
+saying, "I saw a young lady talking to Mrs. Charmond the other
+day; perhaps it was she."
+
+Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not seen him
+looking over the hedge.  "It might have been," he said.  "She is
+quite a gentlewoman--the one I mean.  She cannot be a permanent
+resident in Hintock or I should have seen her before.  Nor does
+she look like one."
+
+"She is not staying at Hintock House?"
+
+"No; it is closed."
+
+"Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or farm-
+houses?"
+
+"Oh no--you mistake.  She was a different sort of girl
+altogether." As Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him
+accordingly, and apostrophized the night in continuation:
+
+
+  "'She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,
+    A power, that from its objects scarcely drew
+    One impulse of her being--in her lightness
+    Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,
+    Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue,
+    To nourish some far desert: she did seem
+    Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
+    Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
+    Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life's dark
+stream.'"
+
+
+The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winterborne, though he
+divined that they were a quotation, to be somehow the result of
+his lost love's charms upon Fitzpiers.
+
+"You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir," he said, with a
+sensation of heart-sickness, and more than ever resolved not to
+mention Grace by name.
+
+"Oh no--I am not that, Winterborne; people living insulated, as I
+do by the solitude of this place, get charged with emotive fluid
+like a Leyden-jar with electric, for want of some conductor at
+hand to disperse it.  Human love is a subjective thing--the
+essence itself of man, as that great thinker Spinoza the
+philosopher says--ipsa hominis essentia--it is joy accompanied by
+an idea which we project against any suitable object in the line
+of our vision, just as the rainbow iris is projected against an
+oak, ash, or elm tree indifferently.  So that if any other young
+lady had appeared instead of the one who did appear, I should have
+felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted precisely the
+same lines from Shelley about her, as about this one I saw.  Such
+miserable creatures of circumstance are we all!"
+
+"Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts,
+whether or no," said Winterborne.
+
+"You are right enough if you admit that I am in love with
+something in my own head, and no thing in itself outside it at
+all."
+
+"Is it part of a country doctor's duties to learn that view of
+things, may I ask, sir?" said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic
+{Greek word: irony} with such well-assumed simplicity that
+Fitzpiers answered, readily,
+
+"Oh no.  The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical practice in
+places like this is a very rule-of-thumb matter; a bottle of
+bitter stuff for this and that old woman--the bitterer the better--
+compounded from a few simple stereotyped prescriptions;
+occasional attendance at births, where mere presence is almost
+sufficient, so healthy and strong are the people; and a lance for
+an abscess now and then.  Investigation and experiment cannot be
+carried on without more appliances than one has here--though I
+have attempted it a little."
+
+Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he had been
+struck with was the curious parallelism between Mr. Fitzpiers's
+manner and Grace's, as shown by the fact of both of them straying
+into a subject of discourse so engrossing to themselves that it
+made them forget it was foreign to him.
+
+Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor in relation
+to Grace till they were on their way back.  They had stopped at a
+way-side inn for a glass of brandy and cider hot, and when they
+were again in motion, Fitzpiers, possibly a little warmed by the
+liquor, resumed the subject by saying, "I should like very much to
+know who that young lady was."
+
+"What difference can it make, if she's only the tree your rainbow
+falls on?"
+
+"Ha! ha! True."
+
+"You have no wife, sir?"
+
+"I have no wife, and no idea of one.  I hope to do better things
+than marry and settle in Hintock.  Not but that it is well for a
+medical man to be married, and sometimes, begad, 'twould be
+pleasant enough in this place, with the wind roaring round the
+house, and the rain and the boughs beating against it.  I hear
+that you lost your life-holds by the death of South?"
+
+"I did.  I lost in more ways than one."
+
+They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it could be
+called such where three-quarters of the road-side consisted of
+copse and orchard.  One of the first houses to be passed was
+Melbury's.  A light was shining from a bedroom window facing
+lengthwise of the lane.  Winterborne glanced at it, and saw what
+was coming.  He had withheld an answer to the doctor's inquiry to
+hinder his knowledge of Grace; but, as he thought to himself, "who
+hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the waters in
+a garment?" he could not hinder what was doomed to arrive, and
+might just as well have been outspoken.  As they came up to the
+house, Grace's figure was distinctly visible, drawing the two
+white curtains together which were used here instead of blinds.
+
+"Why, there she is!" said Fitzpiers.  "How does she come there?"
+
+"In the most natural way in the world.  It is her home.  Mr.
+Melbury is her father."
+
+"Oh, indeed--indeed--indeed!  How comes he to have a daughter of
+that stamp?"
+
+Winterborne laughed coldly.  "Won't money do anything," he said,
+"if you've promising material to work upon? Why shouldn't a
+Hintock girl, taken early from home, and put under proper
+instruction, become as finished as any other young lady, if she's
+got brains and good looks to begin with?"
+
+"No reason at all why she shouldn't," murmured the surgeon, with
+reflective disappointment.  "Only I didn't anticipate quite that
+kind of origin for her."
+
+"And you think an inch or two less of her now." There was a little
+tremor in Winterborne's voice as he spoke.
+
+"Well," said the doctor, with recovered warmth, "I am not so sure
+that I think less of her.  At first it was a sort of blow; but,
+dammy! I'll stick up for her.  She's charming, every inch of her!"
+
+"So she is," said Winterborne, "but not to me."
+
+From this ambiguous expression of the reticent woodlander's, Dr. 
+Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss Melbury because of
+some haughtiness in her bearing towards him, and had, on that
+account, withheld her name.  The supposition did not tend to
+diminish his admiration for her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Grace's exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling-to the
+window-curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate incident in
+the house that day--nothing less than the illness of Grammer
+Oliver, a woman who had never till now lain down for such a reason
+in her life.  Like others to whom unbroken years of health has
+made the idea of keeping their bed almost as repugnant as death
+itself, she had continued on foot till she literally fell on the
+floor; and though she had, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty,
+she had sickened into quite a different personage from the
+independent Grammer of the yard and spar-house.  Ill as she was,
+on one point she was firm.  On no account would she see a doctor;
+in other words, Fitzpiers.
+
+The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her own, but
+the old woman's.  On the girl's way to bed she had received a
+message from Grammer, to the effect that she would much like to
+speak to her that night.
+
+Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside the bed,
+so that the profile of Grammer as she lay cast itself in a keen
+shadow upon the whitened wall, her large head being still further
+magnified by an enormous turban, which was, really, her petticoat
+wound in a wreath round her temples.  Grace put the room a little
+in order, and approaching the sick woman, said, "I am come,
+Grammer, as you wish.  Do let us send for the doctor before it
+gets later."
+
+"I will not have him," said Grammer Oliver, decisively.
+
+"Then somebody to sit up with you."
+
+"Can't abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, because 'ch
+have something on my mind.  Dear Miss Grace, I TOOK THAT MONEY OF
+THE DOCTOR, AFTER ALL!"
+
+"What money?"
+
+"The ten pounds."
+
+Grace did not quite understand.
+
+"The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because I've a large
+brain.  I signed a paper when I took the money, not feeling
+concerned about it at all.  I have not liked to tell ye that it
+was really settled with him, because you showed such horror at the
+notion.  Well, having thought it over more at length, I wish I
+hadn't done it; and it weighs upon my mind.  John South's death of
+fear about the tree makes me think that I shall die of this....'Ch
+have been going to ask him again to let me off, but I hadn't the
+face."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I've spent some of the money--more'n two pounds o't.  It do
+wherrit me terribly; and I shall die o' the thought of that paper
+I signed with my holy cross, as South died of his trouble."
+
+ "If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I'm sure, and think no
+more of it."
+
+ "'Ch have done it once already, miss.  But he laughed cruel like. 
+'Yours is such a fine brain, Grammer, 'er said, 'that science
+couldn't afford to lose you.  Besides, you've taken my
+money.'...Don't let your father know of this, please, on no
+account whatever!"
+
+"No, no.  I will let you have the money to return to him."
+
+Grammer rolled her head negatively upon the pillow. "Even if I
+should be well enough to take it to him, he won't like it.  Though
+why he should so particular want to look into the works of a poor
+old woman's head-piece like mine when there's so many other folks
+about, I don't know.  I know how he'll answer me: 'A lonely person
+like you, Grammer,' er woll say.  'What difference is it to you
+what becomes of ye when the breath's out of your body?' Oh, it do
+trouble me! If you only knew how he do chevy me round the chimmer
+in my dreams, you'd pity me.  How I could do it I can't think! But
+'ch was always so rackless!...If I only had anybody to plead for
+me!"
+
+"Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure."
+
+"Ay; but he wouldn't hearken to she! It wants a younger face than
+hers to work upon such as he."
+
+Grace started with comprehension.  "You don't think he would do it
+for me?" she said.
+
+"Oh, wouldn't he!"
+
+"I couldn't go to him, Grammer, on any account.  I don't know him
+at all."
+
+"Ah, if I were a young lady," said the artful Grammer, "and could
+save a poor old woman's skellington from a heathen doctor instead
+of a Christian grave, I would do it, and be glad to.  But nobody
+will do anything for a poor old familiar friend but push her out
+of the way."
+
+You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that.  But you are ill, I
+know, and that's why you speak so.  Now believe me, you are not
+going to die yet.  Remember you told me yourself that you meant to
+keep him waiting many a year."
+
+"Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; but in
+sickness one's gayety falters to grief; and that which seemed
+small looks large; and the grim far-off seems near."
+
+Grace's eyes had tears in them.  "I don't like to go to him on
+such an errand, Grammer," she said, brokenly.  "But I will, to
+ease your mind."
+
+It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked herself next
+morning for the undertaking.  She was all the more indisposed to
+the journey by reason of Grammer's allusion to the effect of a
+pretty face upon Dr. Fitzpiers; and hence she most illogically did
+that which, had the doctor never seen her, would have operated to
+stultify the sole motive of her journey; that is to say, she put
+on a woollen veil, which hid all her face except an occasional
+spark of her eyes.
+
+Her own wish that nothing should be known of this strange and
+grewsome proceeding, no less than Grammer Oliver's own desire, led
+Grace to take every precaution against being discovered.  She went
+out by the garden door as the safest way, all the household having
+occupations at the other side.  The morning looked forbidding
+enough when she stealthily opened it.  The battle between frost
+and thaw was continuing in mid-air: the trees dripped on the
+garden-plots, where no vegetables would grow for the dripping,
+though they were planted year after year with that curious
+mechanical regularity of country people in the face of
+hopelessness; the moss which covered the once broad gravel terrace
+was swamped; and Grace stood irresolute.  Then she thought of poor
+Grammer, and her dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel
+in hand, and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to
+South's ending in the same way; thereupon she stepped out into the
+drizzle.
+
+The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver's account of the
+compact she had made, lent a fascinating horror to Grace's
+conception of Fitzpiers.  She knew that he was a young man; but
+her single object in seeking an interview with him put all
+considerations of his age and social aspect from her mind. 
+Standing as she stood, in Grammer Oliver's shoes, he was simply a
+remorseless Jove of the sciences, who would not have mercy, and
+would have sacrifice; a man whom, save for this, she would have
+preferred to avoid knowing.  But since, in such a small village,
+it was improbable that any long time could pass without their
+meeting, there was not much to deplore in her having to meet him
+now.
+
+But, as need hardly be said, Miss Melbury's view of the doctor as
+a merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was not quite in
+accordance with fact.  The real Dr. Fitzpiers w as a man of too
+many hobbies to show likelihood of rising to any great eminence in
+the profession he had chosen, or even to acquire any wide practice
+in the rural district he had marked out as his field of survey for
+the present.  In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to
+pass in a grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the
+intellectual heaven.  Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in
+the Bull; one month he would be immersed in alchemy, another in
+poesy; one month in the Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in
+the Crab of German literature and metaphysics.  In justice to him
+it must be stated that he took such studies as were immediately
+related to his own profession in turn with the rest, and it had
+been in a month of anatomical ardor without the possibility of a
+subject that he had proposed to Grammer Oliver the terms she had
+mentioned to her mistress.
+
+As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation with
+Winterborne, he had lately plunged into abstract philosophy with
+much zest; perhaps his keenly appreciative, modern, unpractical
+mind found this a realm more to his taste than any other.  Though
+his aims were desultory, Fitzpiers's mental constitution was not
+without its admirable side; a keen inquirer he honestly was, even
+if the midnight rays of his lamp, visible so far through the trees
+of Hintock, lighted rank literatures of emotion and passion as
+often as, or oftener than, the books and materiel of science.
+
+But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, the
+loneliness of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his
+impressionable nature.  Winter in a solitary house in the country,
+without society, is tolerable, nay, even enjoyable and delightful,
+given certain conditions, but these are not the conditions which
+attach to the life of a professional man who drops down into such
+a place by mere accident.  They were present to the lives of
+Winterborne, Melbury, and Grace; but not to the doctor's.  They
+are old association--an almost exhaustive biographical or
+historical acquaintance with every object, animate and inanimate,
+within the observer's horizon.  He must know all about those
+invisible ones of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the
+fields which look so gray from his windows; recall whose creaking
+plough has turned those sods from time to time; whose hands
+planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; whose
+horses and hounds have torn through that underwood; what birds
+affect that particular brake; what domestic dramas of love,
+jealousy, revenge, or disappointment have been enacted in the
+cottages, the mansion, the street, or on the green.  The spot may
+have beauty, grandeur, salubrity, convenience; but if it lack
+memories it will ultimately pall upon him who settles there
+without opportunity of intercourse with his kind.
+
+In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an ideal
+friend, till he throws himself into the arms of any impostor who
+chooses to wear that title on his face.  A young man may dream of
+an ideal friend likewise, but some humor of the blood will
+probably lead him to think rather of an ideal mistress, and at
+length the rustle of a woman's dress, the sound of her voice, or
+the transit of her form across the field of his vision, will
+enkindle his soul with a flame that blinds his eyes.
+
+The discovery of the attractive Grace's name and family would have
+been enough in other circumstances to lead the doctor, if not to
+put her personality out of his head, to change the character of
+his interest in her.  Instead of treasuring her image as a rarity,
+he would at most have played with it as a toy.  He was that kind
+of a man.  But situated here he could not go so far as amative
+cruelty.  He dismissed all reverential thought about her, but he
+could not help taking her seriously.
+
+He went on to imagine the impossible.  So far, indeed, did he go
+in this futile direction that, as others are wont to do, he
+constructed dialogues and scenes in which Grace had turned out to
+be the mistress of Hintock Manor-house, the mysterious Mrs.
+Charmond, particularly ready and willing to be wooed by himself
+and nobody else.  "Well, she isn't that," he said, finally.  "But
+she's a very sweet, nice, exceptional girl."
+
+The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual.  It was snowing
+with a fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to make the
+woodland gray, without ever achieving whiteness.  There was not a
+single letter for Fitzpiers, only a medical circular and a weekly
+newspaper.
+
+To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and
+gradually acquire energy till the evening came, and then, with
+lamp alight, and feeling full of vigor, to pursue some engrossing
+subject or other till the small hours, had hitherto been his
+practice.  But to-day he could not settle into his chair.  That
+self-contained position he had lately occupied, in which the only
+attention demanded was the concentration of the inner eye, all
+outer regard being quite gratuitous, seemed to have been taken by
+insidious stratagem, and for the first time he had an interest
+outside the house.  He walked from one window to another, and
+became aware that the most irksome of solitudes is not the
+solitude of remoteness, but that which is just outside desirable
+company.
+
+The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next followed,
+in the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the weather now being
+the inevitable relapse which sooner or later succeeds a time too
+radiant for the season, such as they had enjoyed in the late
+midwinter at Hintock.  To people at home there these changeful
+tricks had their interests; the strange mistakes that some of the
+more sanguine trees had made in budding before their month, to be
+incontinently glued up by frozen thawings now; the similar
+sanguine errors of impulsive birds in framing nests that were now
+swamped by snow-water, and other such incidents, prevented any
+sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the natives.  But these
+were features of a world not familiar to Fitzpiers, and the inner
+visions to which he had almost exclusively attended having
+suddenly failed in their power to absorb him, he felt unutterably
+dreary.
+
+He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay in Hintock. 
+The season was unpropitious for accidental encounters with her
+out-of-doors, and except by accident he saw not how they were to
+become acquainted.  One thing was clear--any acquaintance with her
+could only, with a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of
+the nature of a flirtation; for he had high aims, and they would
+some day lead him into other spheres than this.
+
+Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon the couch,
+which, as in many draughty old country houses, was constructed
+with a hood, being in fact a legitimate development from the
+settle.  He tried to read as he reclined, but having sat up till
+three o'clock that morning, the book slipped from his hand and he
+fell asleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+It was at this time that Grace approached the house.  Her knock,
+always soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day by reason
+of her strange errand.  However, it was heard by the farmer's wife
+who kept the house, and Grace was admitted.  Opening the door of
+the doctor's room the housewife glanced in, and imagining
+Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss Melbury to enter and wait a few
+minutes while she should go and find him, believing him to be
+somewhere on the premises.  Grace acquiesced, went in, and sat
+down close to the door.
+
+As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round the room,
+and started at perceiving a handsome man snugly ensconced in the
+couch, like the recumbent figure within some canopied mural tomb
+of the fifteenth century, except that his hands were by no means
+clasped in prayer.  She had no doubt that this was the doctor. 
+Awaken him herself she could not, and her immediate impulse was to
+go and pull the broad ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at
+one side of the fireplace.  But expecting the landlady to re-enter
+in a moment she abandoned this intention, and stood gazing in
+great embarrassment at the reclining philosopher.
+
+The windows of Fitzpiers's soul being at present shuttered, he
+probably appeared less impressive than in his hours of animation;
+but the light abstracted from his material presence by sleep was
+more than counterbalanced by the mysterious influence of that
+state, in a stranger, upon the consciousness of a beholder so
+sensitive.  So far as she could criticise at all, she became aware
+that she had encountered a specimen of creation altogether unusual
+in that locality.  The occasions on which Grace had observed men
+of this stamp were when she had been far removed away from
+Hintock, and even then such examples as had met her eye were at a
+distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than the one who now
+confronted her.
+
+She nervously wondered why the woman had not discovered her
+mistake and returned, and went again towards the bell-pull. 
+Approaching the chimney her back was to Fitzpiers, but she could
+see him in the glass.  An indescribable thrill passed through her
+as she perceived that the eyes of the reflected image were open,
+gazing wonderingly at her, and under the curious unexpectedness of
+the sight she became as if spellbound, almost powerless to turn
+her head and regard the original.  However, by an effort she did
+turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before.
+
+Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning was
+sufficient to lead her to precipitately abandon her errand.  She 
+crossed quickly to the door, opened and closed it noiselessly, and
+went out of the house unobserved.  By the time that she had gone
+down the path and through the garden door into the lane she had
+recovered her equanimity.  Here, screened by the hedge, she stood
+and considered a while.
+
+Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and around; she
+had come out on such a morning because of the seriousness of the
+matter in hand; yet now she had allowed her mission to be
+stultified by a momentary tremulousness concerning an incident
+which perhaps had meant nothing after all.
+
+In the mean time her departure from the room, stealthy as it had
+been, had roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up.  In the reflection from
+the mirror which Grace had beheld there was no mystery; he had
+opened his eyes for a few moments, but had immediately relapsed
+into unconsciousness, if, indeed, he had ever been positively
+awake.  That somebody had just left the room he was certain, and
+that the lovely form which seemed to have visited him in a dream
+was no less than the real presentation of the person departed he
+could hardly doubt.
+
+Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down the box-edged
+gravel-path which led to the bottom, he saw the garden door gently
+open, and through it enter the young girl of his thoughts, Grace
+having just at this juncture determined to return and attempt the
+interview a second time.  That he saw her coming instead of going
+made him ask himself if his first impression of her were not a
+dream indeed.  She came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella
+so low over her head that he could hardly see her face.  When she
+reached the point where the raspberry bushes ended and the
+strawberry bed began, she made a little pause.
+
+Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him even now, and
+hastily quitting the room, he ran down the path to meet her.  The
+nature of her errand he could not divine, but he was prepared to
+give her any amount of encouragement.
+
+"I beg pardon, Miss Melbury," he said.  "I saw you from the
+window, and fancied you might imagine that I was not at home--if
+it is I you were coming for."
+
+"I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more," she
+replied.  "And I can say it here."
+
+"No, no.  Please do come in.  Well, then, if you will not come
+into the house, come as far as the porch."
+
+Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood together
+inside it, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her.
+
+"I have merely a request or petition to make," she said.  "My
+father's servant is ill--a woman you know--and her illness is
+serious."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it.  You wish me to come and see her at once?"
+
+"No; I particularly wish you not to come."
+
+"Oh, indeed."
+
+"Yes; and she wishes the same.  It would make her seriously worse
+if you were to come.  It would almost kill her....My errand is of
+a peculiar and awkward nature.  It is concerning a subject which
+weighs on her mind--that unfortunate arrangement she made with
+you, that you might have her body--after death."
+
+"Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head.  Seriously
+ill, is she!"
+
+"And SO disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought the money
+back--will you please return to her the agreement she signed?"
+Grace held out to him a couple of five-pound notes which she had
+kept ready tucked in her glove.
+
+Without replying or considering the notes, Fitzpiers allowed his
+thoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace's personality,
+and the sudden close relation in which he stood to her.  The porch
+was narrow; the rain increased.  It ran off the porch and dripped
+on the creepers, and from the creepers upon the edge of Grace's
+cloak and skirts.
+
+"The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in," he said.  "It
+really makes my heart ache to let you stay here."
+
+Immediately inside the front door was the door of his sitting-
+room; he flung it open, and stood in a coaxing attitude.  Try how
+she would, Grace could not resist the supplicatory mandate written
+in the face and manner of this man, and distressful resignation
+sat on her as she glided past him into the room--brushing his coat
+with her elbow by reason of the narrowness.
+
+He followed her, shut the door--which she somehow had hoped he
+would leave open--and placing a chair for her, sat down.  The
+concern which Grace felt at the development of these commonplace
+incidents was, of course, mainly owing to the strange effect upon
+her nerves of that view of him in the mirror gazing at her with
+open eyes when she had thought him sleeping, which made her fancy
+that his slumber might have been a feint based on inexplicable
+reasons.
+
+She again proffered the notes; he awoke from looking at her as at
+a piece of live statuary, and listened deferentially as she said,
+"Will you then reconsider, and cancel the bond which poor Grammer
+Oliver so foolishly gave?"
+
+"I'll cancel it without reconsideration.  Though you will allow me
+to have my own opinion about her foolishness.  Grammer is a very
+wise woman, and she was as wise in that as in other things.  You
+think there was something very fiendish in the compact, do you
+not, Miss Melbury? But remember that the most eminent of our
+surgeons in past times have entered into such agreements."
+
+"Not fiendish--strange."
+
+"Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a
+thing, but in its relation to something extrinsic--in this case an
+unessential observer."
+
+He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be
+unfolded and brought to her.  A thick cross appeared in ink at the
+bottom--evidently from the hand of Grammer.  Grace put the paper
+in her pocket with a look of much relief.
+
+As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come
+from Grace's own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. 
+"No, no.  I shall not take it from the old woman," he said.  "It
+is more strange than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a
+subject for dissection that our acquaintance should be formed out
+of it."
+
+"I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the
+notion.  But I did not mean to be."
+
+"Oh no, no."  He looked at her, as he had done before, with
+puzzled interest.  "I cannot think, I cannot think," he murmured. 
+"Something bewilders me greatly."  He still reflected and
+hesitated.  "Last night I sat up very late," he at last went on,
+"and on that account I fell into a little nap on that couch about
+half an hour ago.  And during my few minutes of unconsciousness I
+dreamed--what do you think?--that you stood in the room."
+
+Should she tell? She merely blushed.
+
+"You may imagine," Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had,
+indeed, been a dream, "that I should not have dreamed of you
+without considerable thinking about you first."
+
+He could not be acting; of that she felt assured.
+
+"I fancied in my vision that you stood there," he said, pointing
+to where she had paused.  "I did not see you directly, but 
+reflected in the glass.  I thought, what a lovely creature! The
+design is for once carried out.  Nature has at last recovered her
+lost union with the Idea! My thoughts ran in that direction
+because I had been reading the work of a transcendental
+philosopher last night; and I dare say it was the dose of Idealism
+that I received from it that made me scarcely able to distinguish
+between reality and fancy.  I almost wept when I awoke, and found
+that you had appeared to me in Time, but not in Space, alas!"
+
+At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of
+Fitzpiers's effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that
+it was intrinsically theatrical.  It often happens that in
+situations of unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of
+criticism, real feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not
+easily distinguishable from rodomontade.  A veneer of affectation
+overlies a bulk of truth, with the evil consequence, if perceived,
+that the substance is estimated by the superficies, and the whole
+rejected.
+
+Grace, however, was no specialist in men's manners, and she
+admired the sentiment without thinking of the form.  And she was
+embarrassed: "lovely creature" made explanation awkward to her
+gentle modesty.
+
+"But can it be," said he, suddenly, "that you really were here?"
+
+"I have to confess that I have been in the room once before,"
+faltered she.  "The woman showed me in, and went away to fetch
+you; but as she did not return, I left."
+
+"And you saw me asleep," he murmured, with the faintest show of
+humiliation.
+
+"Yes--IF you were asleep, and did not deceive me."
+
+"Why do you say if?"
+
+"I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed when I
+looked round upon you, I thought you were perhaps deceiving me.
+
+"Never," said Fitzpiers, fervently--"never could I deceive you."
+
+Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either of them
+might have spoiled the effect of that pretty speech.  Never
+deceive her! But they knew nothing, and the phrase had its day.
+
+Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the interview, but the
+compelling power of Fitzpiers's atmosphere still held her there. 
+She was like an inexperienced actress who, having at last taken up
+her position on the boards, and spoken her speeches, does not know
+how to move off.  The thought of Grammer occurred to her.  "I'll
+go at once and tell poor Grammer of your generosity," she said. 
+"It will relieve her at once."
+
+"Grammer's a nervous disease, too--how singular!" he answered,
+accompanying her to the door.  "One moment; look at this--it is
+something which may interest you."
+
+He had thrown open the door on the other side of the passage, and
+she saw a microscope on the table of the confronting room.  "Look
+into it, please; you'll be interested," he repeated.
+
+She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light patterned
+all over with a cellular tissue of some indescribable sort.  "What
+do you think that is?" said Fitzpiers.
+
+She did not know.
+
+"That's a fragment of old John South's brain, which I am
+investigating."
+
+She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as to how it
+should have got there.  Fitzpiers laughed.
+
+"Here am I," he said, "endeavoring to carry on simultaneously the
+study of physiology and transcendental philosophy, the material
+world and the ideal, so as to discover if possible a point of
+contrast between them; and your finer sense is quite offended!"
+
+"Oh no, Mr. Fitzpiers," said Grace, earnestly.  "It is not so at
+all.  I know from seeing your light at night how deeply you
+meditate and work.  Instead of condemning you for your studies, I
+admire you very much!"
+
+Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, sincere, and
+self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible Fitzpiers more
+than wished to annihilate the lineal yard which separated it from
+his own.  Whether anything of the kind showed in his eyes or not,
+Grace remained no longer at the microscope, but quickly went her
+way into the rain.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Instead of resuming his investigation of South's brain, which
+perhaps was not so interesting under the microscope as might have
+been expected from the importance of that organ in life, Fitzpiers
+reclined and ruminated on the interview.  Grace's curious
+susceptibility to his presence, though it was as if the currents
+of her life were disturbed rather than attracted by him, added a
+special interest to her general charm.  Fitzpiers was in a
+distinct degree scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate
+all physical manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist.  He
+believed that behind the imperfect lay the perfect; that rare
+things were to be discovered amid a bulk of commonplace; that
+results in a new and untried case might be different from those in
+other cases where the conditions had been precisely similar. 
+Regarding his own personality as one of unbounded possibilities,
+because it was his own--notwithstanding that the factors of his
+life had worked out a sorry product for thousands--he saw nothing
+but what was regular in his discovery at Hintock of an altogether
+exceptional being of the other sex, who for nobody else would have
+had any existence.
+
+One habit of Fitzpiers's--commoner in dreamers of more advanced
+age than in men of his years--was that of talking to himself.  He
+paced round his room with a selective tread upon the more
+prominent blooms of the carpet, and murmured, "This phenomenal
+girl will be the light of my life while I am at Hintock; and the
+special beauty of the situation is that our attitude and relations
+to each other will be purely spiritual.  Socially we can never be
+intimate.  Anything like matrimonial intentions towards her,
+charming as she is, would be absurd.  They would spoil the
+ethereal character of my regard.  And, indeed, I have other aims
+on the practical side of my life."
+
+Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advantageous
+marriage he was bound to make with a woman of family as good as
+his own, and of purse much longer.  But as an object of
+contemplation for the present, as objective spirit rather than
+corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would serve to keep his soul
+alive, and to relieve the monotony of his days.
+
+His first notion--acquired from the mere sight of her without
+converse--that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with a timber-
+merchant's pretty daughter, grated painfully upon him now that he
+had found what Grace intrinsically was.  Personal intercourse with
+such as she could take no lower form than intellectual communion,
+and mutual explorations of the world of thought.  Since he could
+not call at her father's, having no practical views, cursory
+encounters in the lane, in the wood, coming and going to and from
+church, or in passing her dwelling, were what the acquaintance
+would have to feed on.
+
+Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized themselves
+in the event.  Rencounters of not more than a minute's duration,
+frequently repeated, will build up mutual interest, even an
+intimacy, in a lonely place.  Theirs grew as imperceptibly as the
+tree-twigs budded.  There never was a particular moment at which
+it could be said they became friends; yet a delicate understanding
+now existed between two who in the winter had been strangers.
+
+Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing of buds that
+had long been swollen accomplishing itself in the space of one
+warm night.  The rush of sap in the veins of the trees could
+almost be heard.  The flowers of late April took up a position
+unseen, and looked as if they had been blooming a long while,
+though there had been no trace of them the day before yesterday;
+birds began not to mind getting wet.  In-door people said they had
+heard the nightingale, to which out-door people replied
+contemptuously that they had heard him a fortnight before.
+
+The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a London
+surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood.  Indeed such practice
+as he had he did not follow up with the assiduity that would have
+been necessary for developing it to exceptional proportions.  One
+day, book in hand, he walked in a part of the wood where the trees
+were mainly oaks.  It was a calm afternoon, and there was
+everywhere around that sign of great undertakings on the part of
+vegetable nature which is apt to fill reflective human beings who
+are not undertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at
+the contrast.  He heard in the distance a curious sound, something
+like the quack of a duck, which, though it was common enough here
+about this time, was not common to him.
+
+Looking through the trees Fitzpiers soon perceived the origin of
+the noise.  The barking season had just commenced, and what he had
+heard was the tear of the ripping tool as it ploughed its way
+along the sticky parting between the trunk and the rind.  Melbury
+did a large business in bark, and as he was Grace's father, and
+possibly might be found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to
+the scene even more than he might have been by its intrinsic
+interest.  When he got nearer he recognized among the workmen the
+two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who probably had been "lent" by
+Winterborne; Marty South also assisted.
+
+Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first attacked by
+Creedle.  With a small billhook he carefully freed the collar of
+the tree from twigs and patches of moss which incrusted it to a
+height of a foot or two above the ground, an operation comparable
+to the "little toilet" of the executioner's victim.  After this it
+was barked in its erect position to a point as high as a man could
+reach.  If a fine product of vegetable nature could ever be said
+to look ridiculous it was the case now, when the oak stood naked-
+legged, and as if ashamed, till the axe-man came and cut a ring
+round it, and the two Timothys finished the work with the
+crosscut-saw.
+
+As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like locusts, and
+in a short time not a particle of rind was left on the trunk and
+larger limbs.  Marty South was an adept at peeling the upper
+parts, and there she stood encaged amid the mass of twigs and buds
+like a great bird, running her tool into the smallest branches,
+beyond the farthest points to which the skill and patience of the
+men enabled them to proceed--branches which, in their lifetime,
+had swayed high above the bulk of the wood, and caught the latest
+and earliest rays of the sun and moon while the lower part of the
+forest was still in darkness.
+
+"You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty," said
+Fitzpiers.
+
+"No, sir," she said, holding up the tool--a horse's leg-bone
+fitted into a handle and filed to an edge--"'tis only that they've
+less patience with the twigs, because their time is worth more
+than mine."
+
+A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched
+hurdles and boughs, and in front of it was a fire, over which a
+kettle sung.  Fitzpiers sat down inside the shelter, and went on
+with his reading, except when he looked up to observe the scene
+and the actors.  The thought that he might settle here and become
+welded in with this sylvan life by marrying Grace Melbury crossed
+his mind for a moment.  Why should he go farther into the world
+than where he was?  The secret of quiet happiness lay in limiting
+the ideas and aspirations; these men's thoughts were conterminous
+with the margin of the Hintock woodlands, and why should not his
+be likewise limited--a small practice among the people around him
+being the bound of his desires?
+
+Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon the
+quivering boughs, came out from the reclining oak, and prepared
+tea.  When it was ready the men were called; and Fitzpiers being
+in a mood to join, sat down with them.
+
+The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed itself
+when the faint creaking of the joints of a vehicle became audible,
+and one of the men said, "Here's he." Turning their heads they saw
+Melbury's gig approaching, the wheels muffled by the yielding
+moss.
+
+The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, looking back at
+every few steps to caution his daughter, who kept her seat, where
+and how to duck her head so as to avoid the overhanging branches. 
+They stopped at the spot where the bark-ripping had been
+temporarily suspended; Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of
+bark, and drawing near to where the workmen were sitting down,
+accepted their shouted invitation to have a dish of tea, for which
+purpose he hitched the horse to a bough.  (Grace declined to take
+any of their beverage, and remained in her place in the vehicle,
+looking dreamily at the sunlight that came in thin threads through
+the hollies with which the oaks were interspersed.
+
+When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the first
+time perceived that the doctor was present, and warmly appreciated
+Fitzpiers's invitation to sit down on the log beside him.
+
+"Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you here," he
+said, obviously much pleased at the circumstance.  "I wonder now
+if my daughter knows you are so nigh at hand.  I don't expect she
+do."
+
+He looked out towards the gig wherein Grace sat, her face still
+turned in the opposite direction.  "She doesn't see us.  Well,
+never mind: let her be."
+
+Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers's propinquity. 
+She was thinking of something which had little connection with the 
+scene before her--thinking of her friend, lost as soon as found,
+Mrs. Charmond; of her capricious conduct, and of the contrasting
+scenes she was possibly enjoying at that very moment in other
+climes, to which Grace herself had hoped to be introduced by her
+friend's means.  She wondered if this patronizing lady would
+return to Hintock during the summer, and whether the acquaintance
+which had been nipped on the last occasion of her residence there
+would develop on the next.
+
+Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating them
+directly to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who had heard
+them often before.  Marty, who poured out tea, was just saying, "I
+think I'll take out a cup to Miss Grace," when they heard a
+clashing of the gig-harness, and turning round Melbury saw that
+the horse had become restless, and was jerking about the vehicle
+in a way which alarmed its occupant, though she refrained from
+screaming.  Melbury jumped up immediately, but not more quickly
+than Fitzpiers; and while her father ran to the horse's head and
+speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers was alongside the gig
+assisting Grace to descend.  Her surprise at his appearance was so
+great that, far from making a calm and independent descent, she
+was very nearly lifted down in his arms.  He relinquished her when
+she touched ground, and hoped she was not frightened.
+
+"Oh no, not much," she managed to say.  "There was no danger--
+unless he had run under the trees where the boughs are low enough
+to hit my head."
+
+"Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies any amount
+of alarm."
+
+He referred to what he thought he saw written in her face, and she
+could not tell him that this had little to do with the horse, but
+much with himself.  His contiguity had, in fact, the same effect
+upon her as on those former occasions when he had come closer to
+her than usual--that of producing in her an unaccountable tendency
+to tearfulness.  Melbury soon put the horse to rights, and seeing
+that Grace was safe, turned again to the work-people.  His
+daughter's nervous distress had passed off in a few moments, and
+she said quite gayly to Fitzpiers as she walked with him towards
+the group, "There's destiny in it, you see.  I was doomed to join
+in your picnic, although I did not intend to do so."
+
+Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down in the
+circle, and listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from her father
+and the bark-rippers sundry narratives of their fathers', their
+grandfathers', and their own adventures in these woods; of the
+mysterious sights they had seen--only to be accounted for by
+supernatural agency; of white witches and black witches; and the
+standard story of the spirits of the two brothers who had fought
+and fallen, and had haunted Hintock House till they were exorcised
+by the priest, and compelled to retreat to a swamp in this very
+wood, whence they were returning to their old quarters at the rate
+of a cock's stride every New-year's Day, old style; hence the
+local saying, "On New-year's tide, a cock's stride."
+
+It was a pleasant time.  The smoke from the little fire of peeled
+sticks rose between the sitters and the sunlight, and behind its
+blue veil stretched the naked arms of the prostrate trees The
+smell of the uncovered sap mingled with the smell of the burning
+wood, and the sticky inner surface of the scattered bark glistened
+as it revealed its pale madder hues to the eye.  Melbury was so
+highly satisfied at having Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he
+would have sat on for any length of time, but Grace, on whom
+Fitzpiers's eyes only too frequently alighted, seemed to think it
+incumbent upon her to make a show of going; and her father
+thereupon accompanied her to the vehicle.
+
+As the doctor had helped her out of it he appeared to think that
+he had excellent reasons for helping her in, and performed the
+attention lingeringly enough.
+
+"What were you almost in tears about just now?" he asked, softly.
+
+"I don't know," she said: and the words were strictly true.
+
+Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out of the
+grove, their wheels silently crushing delicate-patterned mosses,
+hyacinths, primroses, lords-and-ladies, and other strange and
+ordinary plants, and cracking up little sticks that lay across the
+track.  Their way homeward ran along the crest of a lofty hill,
+whence on the right they beheld a wide valley, differing both in
+feature and atmosphere from that of the Hintock precincts.  It was
+the cider country, which met the woodland district on the axis of
+this hill.  Over the vale the air was blue as sapphire--such a
+blue as outside that apple-valley was never seen.  Under the blue
+the orchards were in a blaze of bloom, some of the richly flowered
+trees running almost up to where they drove along.  Over a gate
+which opened down the incline a man leaned on his arms, regarding
+this fair promise so intently that he did not observe their
+passing.
+
+"That was Giles," said Melbury, when they had gone by.
+
+"Was it? Poor Giles," said she.
+
+"All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and his hands. 
+If no blight happens before the setting the apple yield will be
+such as we have not had for years."
+
+Meanwhile, in the wood they had come from, the men had sat on so
+long that they were indisposed to begin work again that evening;
+they were paid by the ton, and their time for labor was as they
+chose.  They placed the last gatherings of bark in rows for the
+curers, which led them farther and farther away from the shed; and
+thus they gradually withdrew as the sun went down.
+
+Fitzpiers lingered yet.  He had opened his book again, though he
+could hardly see a word in it, and sat before the dying fire,
+scarcely knowing of the men's departure.  He dreamed and mused
+till his consciousness seemed to occupy the whole space of the
+woodland around, so little was there of jarring sight or sound to
+hinder perfect unity with the sentiment of the place.  The idea
+returned upon him of sacrificing all practical aims to live in
+calm contentment here, and instead of going on elaborating new
+conceptions with infinite pains, to accept quiet domesticity
+according to oldest and homeliest notions.  These reflections
+detained him till the wood was embrowned with the coming night,
+and the shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to pour out
+all the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far off.
+
+Fitzpiers's eyes commanded as much of the ground in front as was
+open.  Entering upon this he saw a figure, whose direction of
+movement was towards the spot where he sat.  The surgeon was quite
+shrouded from observation by the recessed shadow of the hut, and
+there was no reason why he should move till the stranger had
+passed by.  The shape resolved itself into a woman's; she was
+looking on the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for
+something that had been lost, her course being precisely that of
+Mr. Melbury's gig.  Fitzpiers by a sort of divination jumped to
+the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer approach made the
+guess a certainty.
+
+Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round by the
+prostrate trees that would have been invisible but for the white
+nakedness which enabled her to avoid them easily.  Thus she
+approached the heap of ashes, and acting upon what was suggested
+by a still shining ember or two, she took a stick and stirred the
+heap, which thereupon burst into a flame.  On looking around by
+the light thus obtained she for the first time saw the illumined
+face of Fitzpiers, precisely in the spot where she had left him.
+
+Grace gave a start and a scream: the place had been associated
+with him in her thoughts, but she had not expected to find him
+there still.  Fitzpiers lost not a moment in rising and going to
+her side.
+
+"I frightened you dreadfully, I know," he said.  "I ought to have
+spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you.  I have been
+sitting here ever since."
+
+He was actually supporting her with his arm, as though under the
+impression that she was quite overcome, and in danger of falling. 
+As soon as she could collect her ideas she gently withdrew from
+his grasp, and explained what she had returned for: in getting up
+or down from the gig, or when sitting by the hut fire, she had
+dropped her purse.
+
+"Now we will find it," said Fitzpiers.
+
+He threw an armful of last year's leaves on to the fire, which
+made the flame leap higher, and the encompassing shades to weave
+themselves into a denser contrast, turning eve into night in a
+moment.  By this radiance they groped about on their hands and
+knees, till Fitzpiers rested on his elbow, and looked at Grace. 
+"We must always meet in odd circumstances," he said; "and this is
+one of the oddest.  I wonder if it means anything?"
+
+"Oh no, I am sure it doesn't," said Grace in haste, quickly
+assuming an erect posture.  "Pray don't say it any more."
+
+"I hope there was not much money in the purse," said Fitzpiers,
+rising to his feet more slowly, and brushing the leaves from his
+trousers.
+
+"Scarcely any.  I cared most about the purse itself, because it
+was given me.  Indeed, money is of little more use at Hintock than
+on Crusoe's island; there's hardly any way of spending it."
+
+They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned something by
+his foot.  "Here it is," he said, "so that your father, mother,
+friend, or ADMIRER will not have his or her feelings hurt by a
+sense of your negligence after all."
+
+"Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now."
+
+"The admirer?" said Fitzpiers, slyly.
+
+"I don't know if you would call him that," said Grace, with
+simplicity.  "The admirer is a superficial, conditional creature,
+and this person is quite different."
+
+"He has all the cardinal virtues."
+
+"Perhaps--though I don't know them precisely."
+
+"You unconsciously practise them, Miss Melbury, which is better. 
+According to Schleiermacher they are Self-control, Perseverance,
+Wisdom, and Love; and his is the best list that I know."
+
+"I am afraid poor--" She was going to say that she feared
+Winterborne--the giver of the purse years before--had not much
+perseverance, though he had all the other three; but she
+determined to go no further in this direction, and was silent.
+
+These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in Fitzpiers. 
+His sense of personal superiority wasted away, and Grace assumed
+in his eyes the true aspect of a mistress in her lover's regard.
+
+"Miss Melbury," he said, suddenly, "I divine that this virtuous
+man you mention has been refused by you?"
+
+She could do no otherwise than admit it.
+
+"I do not inquire without good reason.  God forbid that I should
+kneel in another's place at any shrine unfairly.  But, my dear
+Miss Melbury, now that he is gone, may I draw near?"
+
+"I--I can't say anything about that!" she cried, quickly. 
+"Because when a man has been refused you feel pity for him, and
+like him more than you did before."
+
+This increasing complication added still more value to Grace in
+the surgeon's eyes: it rendered her adorable.  "But cannot you
+say?" he pleaded, distractedly.
+
+"I'd rather not--I think I must go home at once."
+
+"Oh yes," said Fitzpiers.  But as he did not move she felt it
+awkward to walk straight away from him; and so they stood silently
+together.  A diversion was created by the accident of two birds,
+that had either been roosting above their heads or nesting there,
+tumbling one over the other into the hot ashes at their feet,
+apparently engrossed in a desperate quarrel that prevented the use
+of their wings.  They speedily parted, however, and flew up, and
+were seen no more.
+
+"That's the end of what is called love!" said some one.
+
+The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty South, who
+approached with her face turned up to the sky in her endeavor to
+trace the birds.  Suddenly perceiving Grace, she exclaimed, "Oh,
+Miss Melbury! I have been following they pigeons, and didn't see
+you.  And here's Mr. Winterborne!" she continued, shyly, as she
+looked towards Fitzpiers, who stood in the background.
+
+"Marty," Grace interrupted.  "I want you to walk home with me--
+will you? Come along." And without lingering longer she took hold
+of Marty's arm and led her away.
+
+They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees as they
+lay, and onward among the growing trees, by a path where there
+were no oaks, and no barking, and no Fitzpiers--nothing but copse-
+wood, between which the primroses could be discerned in pale
+bunches.  "I didn't know Mr. Winterborne was there," said Marty,
+breaking the silence when they had nearly reached Grace's door.
+
+"Nor was he," said Grace.
+
+"But, Miss Melbury, I saw him."
+
+"No," said Grace.  "It was somebody else.  Giles Winterborne is
+nothing to me."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, and the
+woodland seemed to change from an open filigree to a solid opaque
+body of infinitely larger shape and importance.  The boughs cast
+green shades, which hurt the complexion of the girls who walked
+there; and a fringe of them which overhung Mr. Melbury's garden
+dripped on his seed-plots when it rained, pitting their surface
+all over as with pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in
+such a place were no good at all.  The two trees that had creaked
+all the winter left off creaking, the whir of the night-jar,
+however, forming a very satisfactory continuation of uncanny music
+from that quarter.  Except at mid-day the sun was not seen
+complete by the Hintock people, but rather in the form of numerous
+little stars staring through the leaves.
+
+Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this year, and as
+the hour grew later, and nine o'clock drew on, the irradiation of
+the daytime became broken up by weird shadows and ghostly nooks of
+indistinctness.  Imagination could trace upon the trunks and
+boughs strange faces and figures shaped by the dying lights; the
+surfaces of the holly-leaves would here and there shine like
+peeping eyes, while such fragments of the sky as were visible
+between the trunks assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven
+tongues.  This was before the moonrise.  Later on, when that
+planet was getting command of the upper heaven, and consequently
+shining with an unbroken face into such open glades as there were
+in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became apparent that the
+margin of the wood which approached the timber-merchant's premises
+was not to be left to the customary stillness of that reposeful
+time.
+
+Fitzpiers having heard a voice or voices, was looking over his
+garden gate--where he now looked more frequently than into his
+books--fancying that Grace might be abroad with some friends.  He
+was now irretrievably committed in heart to Grace Melbury, though
+he was by no means sure that she was so far committed to him. 
+That the Idea had for once completely fulfilled itself in the
+objective substance--which he had hitherto deemed an
+impossibility--he was enchanted enough to fancy must be the case
+at last.  It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of
+the ordinary village girls in a group--some steadily walking, some
+in a mood of wild gayety.  He quietly asked his landlady, who was
+also in the garden, what these girls were intending, and she
+informed him that it being Old Midsummer Eve, they were about to
+attempt some spell or enchantment which would afford them a
+glimpse of their future partners for life.  She declared it to be
+an ungodly performance, and one which she for her part would never
+countenance; saying which, she entered her house and retired to
+bed.
+
+The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of maidens slowly
+up the road.  They had turned into the wood at an opening between
+Melbury's and Marty South's; but Fitzpiers could easily track them
+by their voices, low as they endeavored to keep their tones.
+
+In the mean time other inhabitants of Little Hintock had become
+aware of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, and were also
+sauntering stealthily after the frisky maidens.  Miss Melbury had
+been informed by Marty South during the day of the proposed peep
+into futurity, and, being only a girl like the rest, she was
+sufficiently interested to wish to see the issue.  The moon was so
+bright and the night so calm that she had no difficulty in
+persuading Mrs. Melbury to accompany her; and thus, joined by
+Marty, these went onward in the same direction.
+
+Passing Winterborne's house, they heard a noise of hammering. 
+Marty explained it.  This was the last night on which his paternal
+roof would shelter him, the days of grace since it fell into hand
+having expired; and Giles was taking down his cupboards and
+bedsteads with a view to an early exit next morning.  His
+encounter with Mrs. Charmond had cost him dearly.
+
+When they had proceeded a little farther Marty was joined by
+Grammer Oliver (who was as young as the youngest in such matters),
+and Grace and Mrs. Melbury went on by themselves till they had
+arrived at the spot chosen by the village daughters, whose primary
+intention of keeping their expedition a secret had been quite
+defeated.  Grace and her step-mother paused by a holly-tree; and
+at a little distance stood Fitzpiers under the shade of a young
+oak, intently observing Grace, who was in the full rays of the
+moon.
+
+He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by any but Marty
+and Grammer, who had drawn up on the dark side of the same holly
+which sheltered Mrs. and Miss Melbury on its bright side.  The two
+former conversed in low tones.
+
+"If they two come up in Wood next Midsummer Night they'll come as
+one," said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers and Grace.  "Instead of
+my skellington he'll carry home her living carcass before long. 
+But though she's a lady in herself, and worthy of any such as he,
+it do seem to me that he ought to marry somebody more of the sort
+of Mrs. Charmond, and that Miss Grace should make the best of
+Winterborne."
+
+Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the girls, some of
+whom were from Great Hintock, were seen advancing to work the
+incantation, it being now about midnight.
+
+"Directly we see anything we'll run home as fast as we can," said
+one, whose courage had begun to fail her.  To this the rest
+assented, not knowing that a dozen neighbors lurked in the bushes
+around.
+
+"I wish we had not thought of trying this," said another, "but had
+contented ourselves with the hole-digging to-morrow at twelve, and
+hearing our husbands' trades.  It is too much like having dealings
+with the Evil One to try to raise their forms."
+
+However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly began to
+march forward in a skirmishing line through the trees towards the
+deeper recesses of the wood.  As far as the listeners could
+gather, the particular form of black-art to be practised on this
+occasion was one connected with the sowing of hemp-seed, a handful
+of which was carried by each girl.  At the moment of their advance
+they looked back, and discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who,
+alone of all the observers, stood in the full face of the
+moonlight, deeply engrossed in the proceedings.  By contrast with
+her life of late years they made her feel as if she had receded a
+couple of centuries in the world's history.  She was rendered
+doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a few whispered
+words, one of the girls--a bouncing maiden, plighted to young
+Timothy Tangs--asked her if she would join in.  Grace, with some
+excitement, said that she would, and moved on a little in the rear
+of the rest.
+
+Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceedings beyond
+the faintest occasional rustle of leaves.  Grammer whispered again
+to Marty: "Why didn't ye go and try your luck with the rest of the
+maids?"
+
+"I don't believe in it," said Marty, shortly.
+
+"Why, half the parish is here--the silly hussies should have kept
+it quiet.  I see Mr. Winterborne through the leaves, just come up
+with Robert Creedle.  Marty, we ought to act the part o'
+Providence sometimes.  Do go and tell him that if he stands just
+behind the bush at the bottom of the slope, Miss Grace must pass
+down it when she comes back, and she will most likely rush into
+his arms; for as soon as the clock strikes, they'll bundle back
+home--along like hares.  I've seen such larries before."
+
+"Do you think I'd better?" said Marty, reluctantly.
+
+"Oh yes, he'll bless ye for it."
+
+"I don't want that kind of blessing." But after a moment's thought
+she went and delivered the information; and Grammer had the
+satisfaction of seeing Giles walk slowly to the bend in the leafy
+defile along which Grace would have to return.
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had perceived Fitzpiers
+and Winterborne, and also the move of the latter.  An improvement
+on Grammer's idea entered the mind of Mrs. Melbury, for she had
+lately discerned what her husband had not--that Grace was rapidly
+fascinating the surgeon.  She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers.
+
+"You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing," she said to
+him, significantly.  "She will run down through that opening much
+faster than she went up it, if she is like the rest of the girls."
+
+Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice.  He went across to
+Winterborne and stood beside him.  Each knew the probable purpose
+of the other in standing there, and neither spoke, Fitzpiers
+scorning to look upon Winterborne as a rival, and Winterborne
+adhering to the off-hand manner of indifference which had grown
+upon him since his dismissal.
+
+Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the surgeon's manoeuvre,
+and, still to help Winterborne, as she supposed, the old woman
+suggested to the wood-girl that she should walk forward at the
+heels of Grace, and "tole" her down the required way if she showed
+a tendency to run in another direction.  Poor Marty, always doomed
+to sacrifice desire to obligation, walked forward accordingly, and
+waited as a beacon, still and silent, for the retreat of Grace and
+her giddy companions, now quite out of hearing.
+
+The first sound to break the silence was the distant note of Great
+Hintock clock striking the significant hour.  About a minute later
+that quarter of the wood to which the girls had wandered resounded
+with the flapping of disturbed birds; then two or three hares and
+rabbits bounded down the glade from the same direction, and after
+these the rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted
+the hurried approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns
+soon became visible.  Miss Melbury, having gone forward quite in
+the rear of the rest, was one of the first to return, and the
+excitement being contagious, she ran laughing towards Marty, who
+still stood as a hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she
+flew round the fatal bush where the undergrowth narrowed to a
+gorge.  Marty arrived at her heels just in time to see the result. 
+Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward in front of Winterborne,
+who, disdaining to shift his position, had turned on his heel, and
+then the surgeon did what he would not have thought of doing but
+for Mrs. Melbury's encouragement and the sentiment of an eve which
+effaced conventionality.  Stretching out his arms as the white
+figure burst upon him, he captured her in a moment, as if she had
+been a bird.
+
+"Oh!" cried Grace, in her fright.
+
+"You are in my arms, dearest," said Fitzpiers, "and I am going to
+claim you, and keep you there all our two lives!"
+
+She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was several
+seconds before she recovered from this helplessness.  Subdued
+screams and struggles, audible from neighboring brakes, revealed
+that there had been other lurkers thereabout for a similar
+purpose.  Grace, unlike most of these companions of hers, instead
+of gasping and writhing, said in a trembling voice, "Mr.
+Fitzpiers, will you let me go?"
+
+"Certainly," he said, laughing; "as soon as you have recovered."
+
+She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly pushed him
+aside, and glided on her path, the moon whitening her hot blush
+away.  But it had been enough--new relations between them had
+begun.
+
+The case of the other girls was different, as has been said.  They
+wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate struggle. 
+Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going on after Grace
+had left him, and he remained on the spot where he had caught her,
+Winterborne having gone away.  On a sudden another girl came
+bounding down the same descent that had been followed by Grace--a
+fine-framed young woman with naked arms.  Seeing Fitzpiers
+standing there, she said, with playful effrontery, "May'st kiss me
+if 'canst catch me, Tim!"
+
+Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson, a hoydenish damsel of
+the hamlet, who was plainly mistaking him for her lover.  He was
+impulsively disposed to profit by her error, and as soon as she
+began racing away he started in pursuit.
+
+On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in shade, looking
+over her shoulder at him every few moments and kissing her hand;
+but so cunningly dodging about among the trees and moon-shades
+that she never allowed him to get dangerously near her.  Thus they
+ran and doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound
+of their companions had quite died away.  He began to lose hope of
+ever overtaking her, when all at once, by way of encouragement,
+she turned to a fence in which there was a stile and leaped over
+it.  Outside the scene was a changed one--a meadow, where the
+half-made hay lay about in heaps, in the uninterrupted shine of
+the now high moon.
+
+Fitzpiers saw in a moment that, having taken to open ground, she
+had placed herself at his mercy, and he promptly vaulted over
+after her.  She flitted a little way down the mead, when all at
+once her light form disappeared as if it had sunk into the earth. 
+She had buried herself in one of the hay-cocks.
+
+Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let her escape
+him thus.  He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one
+by one.  As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was
+directed anew by an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-
+place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest voice she
+could assume:
+
+
+    "O come in from the foggy, foggy dew."
+
+
+In a minute or two he uncovered her.
+
+"Oh, 'tis not Tim!" said she, burying her face.
+
+Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason of its
+mildness, stooped and imprinted the purposed kiss, then sunk down
+on the next hay-cock, panting with his race.
+
+"Whom do you mean by Tim?" he asked, presently.
+
+"My young man, Tim Tangs," said she.
+
+"Now, honor bright, did you really think it was he?"
+
+"I did at first."
+
+"But you didn't at last?"
+
+"I didn't at last."
+
+"Do you much mind that it was not?"
+
+"No," she answered, slyly.
+
+Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning.  In the moonlight Suke
+looked very beautiful, the scratches and blemishes incidental to
+her out-door occupation being invisible under these pale rays. 
+While they remain silent the coarse whir of the eternal night-jar
+burst sarcastically from the top of a tree at the nearest corner
+of the wood.  Besides this not a sound of any kind reached their
+ears, the time of nightingales being now past, and Hintock lying
+at a distance of two miles at least.  In the opposite direction
+the hay-field stretched away into remoteness till it was lost to
+the eye in a soft mist.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had also been
+looking on, and encountering one of the girls, had asked her what
+caused them all to fly.
+
+She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen something
+very different from what they had hoped to see, and that she for
+one would never attempt such unholy ceremonies again.  "We saw
+Satan pursuing us with his hour-glass.  It was terrible!"
+
+This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward towards
+the spot from which the girls had retreated.  After listening
+there a few minutes he heard slow footsteps rustling over the
+leaves, and looking through a tangled screen of honeysuckle which
+hung from a bough, he saw in the open space beyond a short stout
+man in evening-dress, carrying on one arm a light overcoat and
+also his hat, so awkwardly arranged as possibly to have suggested
+the "hour-glass" to his timid observers--if this were the person
+whom the girls had seen.  With the other hand he silently
+gesticulated and the moonlight falling upon his bare brow showed
+him to have dark hair and a high forehead of the shape seen
+oftener in old prints and paintings than in real life.  His
+curious and altogether alien aspect, his strange gestures, like
+those of one who is rehearsing a scene to himself, and the unusual
+place and hour, were sufficient to account for any trepidation
+among the Hintock daughters at encountering him.
+
+He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten where he was;
+not observing Giles, who was of the color of his environment.  The
+latter advanced into the light.  The gentleman held up his hand
+and came towards Giles, the two meeting half-way.
+
+"I have lost my way," said the stranger.  "Perhaps you can put me
+in the path again."  He wiped his forehead with the air of one
+suffering under an agitation more than that of simple fatigue.
+
+"The turnpike-road is over there," said Giles
+
+"I don't want the turnpike-road," said the gentleman, impatiently. 
+"I came from that.  I want Hintock House.  Is there not a path to
+it across here?"
+
+"Well, yes, a sort of path.  But it is hard to find from this
+point.  I'll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure."
+
+"Thanks, my good friend.  The truth is that I decided to walk
+across the country after dinner from the hotel at Sherton, where I
+am staying for a day or two.  But I did not know it was so far."
+
+"It is about a mile to the house from here."
+
+They walked on together.  As there was no path, Giles occasionally
+stepped in front and bent aside the underboughs of the trees to
+give his companion a passage, saying every now and then when the
+twigs, on being released, flew back like whips, "Mind your eyes,
+sir." To which the stranger replied, "Yes, yes," in a preoccupied
+tone.
+
+So they went on, the leaf-shadows running in their usual quick
+succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the stranger
+said,
+
+"Is it far?"
+
+"Not much farther," said Winterborne.  "The plantation runs up
+into a corner here, close behind the house." He added with
+hesitation, "You know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. Charmond is not
+at home?"
+
+"You mistake," said the other, quickly.  "Mrs.  Charmond has been
+away for some time, but she's at home now."
+
+Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the
+gentleman was wrong.
+
+"You are a native of this place?" the stranger said.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you are happy in having a home.  It is what I don't
+possess."
+
+"You come from far, seemingly?"
+
+"I come now from the south of Europe."
+
+"Oh, indeed, sir.  You are an Italian, or Spanish, or French
+gentleman, perhaps?"
+
+"I am not either."
+
+Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentleman, who
+seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist friendship, at
+length answered the question.
+
+"I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by birth," he
+said.  "I left my native country on the failure of the Southern
+cause, and have never returned to it since."
+
+He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the verge of the
+wood.  Here, striding over the fence out upon the upland sward,
+they could at once see the chimneys of the house in the gorge
+immediately beneath their position, silent, still, and pale.
+
+"Can you tell me the time?" the gentleman asked.  "My watch has
+stopped."
+
+"It is between twelve and one," said Giles.
+
+His companion expressed his astonishment.  "I thought it between
+nine and ten at latest! Dear me--dear me!"
+
+He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold coin, which
+looked like a sovereign, for the assistance rendered.  Giles
+declined to accept anything, to the surprise of the stranger, who,
+on putting the money back into his pocket, said, awkwardly, "I
+offered it because I want you to utter no word about this meeting
+with me.  Will you promise?"
+
+Winterborne promised readily.  He thereupon stood still while the
+other ascended the slope.  At the bottom he looked back dubiously. 
+Giles would no longer remain when he was so evidently desired to
+leave, and returned through the boughs to Hintock.
+
+He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed and
+melancholy, might be that lover and persistent wooer of Mrs.
+Charmond whom he had heard so frequently spoken of, and whom it
+was said she had treated cavalierly.  But he received no
+confirmation of his suspicion beyond a report which reached him a
+few days later that a gentleman had called up the servants who
+were taking care of Hintock House at an hour past midnight; and on
+learning that Mrs. Charmond, though returned from abroad, was as
+yet in London, he had sworn bitterly, and gone away without
+leaving a card or any trace of himself.
+
+The girls who related the story added that he sighed three times
+before he swore, but this part of the narrative was not
+corroborated.  Anyhow, such a gentleman had driven away from the
+hotel at Sherton next day in a carriage hired at that inn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings of
+Midsummer Eve brought a visitor to Fitzpiers's door; a voice that
+he knew sounded in the passage.  Mr. Melbury had called.  At first
+he had a particular objection to enter the parlor, because his
+boots were dusty, but as the surgeon insisted he waived the point
+and came in.
+
+Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at Fitzpiers
+himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with a preoccupied
+gaze at the floor, he said, "I've called to ask you, doctor, quite
+privately, a question that troubles me.  I've a daughter, Grace,
+an only daughter, as you may have heard.  Well, she's been out in
+the dew--on Midsummer Eve in particular she went out in thin
+slippers to watch some vagary of the Hintock maids--and she's got
+a cough, a distinct hemming and hacking, that makes me uneasy. 
+Now, I have decided to send her away to some seaside place for a
+change--"
+
+"Send her away!" Fitzpiers's countenance had fallen.
+
+"Yes.  And the question is, where would you advise me to send
+her?"
+
+The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment when
+Fitzpiers was at the spring-tide of a sentiment that Grace was a
+necessity of his existence.  The sudden pressure of her form upon
+his breast as she came headlong round the bush had never ceased to
+linger with him, ever since he adopted the manoeuvre for which the
+hour and the moonlight and the occasion had been the only excuse. 
+Now she was to be sent away.  Ambition? it could be postponed. 
+Family? culture and reciprocity of tastes had taken the place of
+family nowadays.  He allowed himself to be carried forward on the
+wave of his desire.
+
+"How strange, how very strange it is," he said, "that you should
+have come to me about her just now.  I have been thinking every
+day of coming to you on the very same errand."
+
+"Ah!--you have noticed, too, that her health----"
+
+"I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, because there
+is nothing.  But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your daughter several
+times by accident.  I have admired her infinitely, and I was
+coming to ask you if I may become better acquainted with her--pay
+my addresses to her?"
+
+Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not see the air
+of half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread over Fitzpiers's
+face as he made this declaration.
+
+"You have--got to know her?" said Melbury, a spell of dead silence
+having preceded his utterance, during which his emotion rose with
+almost visible effect.
+
+"Yes," said Fitzpiers.
+
+"And you wish to become better acquainted with her? You mean with
+a view to marriage--of course that is what you mean?"
+
+"Yes," said the young man.  "I mean, get acquainted with her, with
+a view to being her accepted lover; and if we suited each other,
+what would naturally follow."
+
+The timber-merchant was much surprised, and fairly agitated; his
+hand trembled as he laid by his walking-stick.  "This takes me 
+unawares," said he, his voice wellnigh breaking down.  "I don't
+mean that there is anything unexpected in a gentleman being
+attracted by her; but it did not occur to me that it would be you. 
+I always said," continued he, with a lump in his throat, "that my
+Grace would make a mark at her own level some day.  That was why I
+educated her.  I said to myself, 'I'll do it, cost what it may;'
+though her mother-law was pretty frightened at my paying out so
+much money year after year.  I knew it would tell in the end. 
+'Where you've not good material to work on, such doings would be
+waste and vanity,' I said.  'But where you have that material it
+is sure to be worth while.'"
+
+"I am glad you don't object," said Fitzpiers, almost wishing that
+Grace had not been quite so cheap for him.
+
+"If she is willing I don't object, certainly.  Indeed," added the
+honest man, "it would be deceit if I were to pretend to feel
+anything else than highly honored personally; and it is a great
+credit to her to have drawn to her a man of such good professional
+station and venerable old family.  That huntsman-fellow little
+thought how wrong he was about her! Take her and welcome, sir."
+
+"I'll endeavor to ascertain her mind."
+
+"Yes, yes.  But she will be agreeable, I should think.  She ought
+to be."
+
+"I hope she may.  Well, now you'll expect to see me frequently."
+
+"Oh yes.  But, name it all--about her cough, and her going away. 
+I had quite forgot that that was what I came about."
+
+"I assure you," said the surgeon, "that her cough can only be the
+result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to banish her to
+any seaside place at all."
+
+Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought to take
+Fitzpiers's professional opinion in circumstances which naturally
+led him to wish to keep her there.  The doctor saw this, and
+honestly dreading to lose sight of her, he said, eagerly, 'Between
+ourselves, if I am successful with her I will take her away myself
+for a month or two, as soon as we are married, which I hope will
+be before the chilly weather comes on.  This will be so very much
+better than letting her go now."
+
+The proposal pleased Melbury much.  There could be hardly any
+danger in postponing any desirable change of air as long as the
+warm weather lasted, and for such a reason.  Suddenly recollecting
+himself, he said, "Your time must be precious, doctor.  I'll get
+home-along.  I am much obliged to ye.  As you will see her often,
+you'll discover for yourself if anything serious is the matter."
+
+"I can assure you it is nothing," said Fitzpiers, who had seen
+Grace much oftener already than her father knew of.
+
+When he was gone Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering his
+sensations, like a man who has made a plunge for a pearl into a
+medium of which he knows not the density or temperature.  But he
+had done it, and Grace was the sweetest girl alive.
+
+As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered in
+Melbury's ears as he walked homeward; he felt that what he had
+said in the emotion of the moment was very stupid, ungenteel, and
+unsuited to a dialogue with an educated gentleman, the smallness
+of whose practice was more than compensated by the former
+greatness of his family.  He had uttered thoughts before they were
+weighed, and almost before they were shaped.  They had expressed
+in a certain sense his feeling at Fitzpiers's news, but yet they
+were not right.  Looking on the ground, and planting his stick at
+each tread as if it were a flag-staff, he reached his own
+precincts, where, as he passed through the court, he automatically
+stopped to look at the men working in the shed and around.  One of
+them asked him a question about wagon-spokes.
+
+"Hey?" said Melbury, looking hard at him.  The man repeated the
+words.
+
+Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without answering, he
+went up the court and entered the house.  As time was no object
+with the journeymen, except as a thing to get past, they leisurely
+surveyed the door through which he had disappeared.
+
+"What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now?" said Tangs the
+elder.  "Sommit to do with that chiel of his! When you've got a
+maid of yer own, John Upjohn, that costs ye what she costs him,
+that will take the squeak out of your Sunday shoes, John! But
+you'll never be tall enough to accomplish such as she; and 'tis a
+lucky thing for ye, John, as things be.  Well, be ought to have a
+dozen--that would bring him to reason.  I see 'em walking together
+last Sunday, and when they came to a puddle he lifted her over
+like a halfpenny doll.  He ought to have a dozen; he'd let 'em
+walk through puddles for themselves then."
+
+Meanwhile Melbury had entered the house with the look of a man who
+sees a vision before him.  His wife was in the room.  Without
+taking off his hat he sat down at random.
+
+"Luce--we've done it!" he said.  "Yes--the thing is as I expected. 
+The spell, that I foresaw might be worked, has worked.  She's done
+it, and done it well.  Where is she--Grace, I mean?"
+
+"Up in her room--what has happened!"
+
+Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently as he could. 
+"I told you so," he said.  "A maid like her couldn't stay hid
+long, even in a place like this.  But where is Grace? Let's have
+her down.  Here--Gra-a-ace!"
+
+She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was sufficiently
+spoiled by this father of hers not to put herself in a hurry,
+however impatient his tones.  "What is it, father?" said she, with
+a smile.
+
+"Why, you scamp, what's this you've been doing? Not home here more
+than six months, yet, instead of confining yourself to your
+father's rank, making havoc in the educated classes."
+
+Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative of her
+father's meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look anyhow but at a
+loss now.
+
+"No, no--of course you don't know what I mean, or you pretend you
+don't; though, for my part, I believe women can see these things
+through a double hedge.  But I suppose I must tell ye.  Why,
+you've flung your grapnel over the doctor, and he's coming
+courting forthwith."
+
+"Only think of that, my dear! Don't you feel it a triumph?" said
+Mrs. Melbury.
+
+"Coming courting! I've done nothing to make him," Grace exclaimed.
+
+"'Twasn't necessary that you should, 'Tis voluntary that rules in
+these things....Well, he has behaved very honorably, and asked my
+consent.  You'll know what to do when he gets here, I dare say.  I
+needn't tell you to make it all smooth for him."
+
+"You mean, to lead him on to marry me?"
+
+"I do.  Haven't I educated you for it?"
+
+Grace looked out of the window and at the fireplace with no
+animation in her face.  "Why is it settled off-hand in this way?"
+said she, coquettishly.  "You'll wait till you hear what I think
+of him, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh yes, of course.  But you see what a good thing it will be."
+
+She weighed the statement without speaking.
+
+"You will be restored to the society you've been taken away from,"
+continued her father; "for I don't suppose he'll stay here long."
+
+She admitted the advantage; but it was plain that though Fitzpiers
+exercised a certain fascination over her when he was present, or
+even more, an almost psychic influence, and though his impulsive
+act in the wood had stirred her feelings indescribably, she had
+never regarded him in the light of a destined husband.  "I don't
+know what to answer," she said.  "I have learned that he is very
+clever."
+
+"He's all right, and he's coming here to see you."
+
+A premonition that she could not resist him if he came strangely
+moved her.  "Of course, father, you remember that it is only
+lately that Giles--"
+
+"You know that you can't think of him.  He has given up all claim
+to you."
+
+She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he could
+state his opinion, even though she had skill in speech, and her
+father had none.  That Fitzpiers acted upon her like a dram,
+exciting her, throwing her into a novel atmosphere which biassed
+her doings until the influence was over, when she felt something
+of the nature of regret for the mood she had experienced--still
+more if she reflected on the silent, almost sarcastic, criticism
+apparent in Winterborne's air towards her--could not be told to
+this worthy couple in words.
+
+It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called away
+from Hintock by an engagement to attend some medical meetings, and
+his visits, therefore, did not begin at once.  A note, however,
+arrived from him addressed to Grace, deploring his enforced
+absence.  As a material object this note was pretty and superfine,
+a note of a sort that she had been unaccustomed to see since her
+return to Hintock, except when a school friend wrote to her--a
+rare instance, for the girls were respecters of persons, and many
+cooled down towards the timber-dealer's daughter when she was out
+of sight.  Thus the receipt of it pleased her, and she afterwards
+walked about with a reflective air.
+
+In the evening her father, who knew that the note had come, said,
+"Why be ye not sitting down to answer your letter? That's what
+young folks did in my time."
+
+She replied that it did not require an answer.
+
+"Oh, you know best," he said.  Nevertheless, he went about his
+business doubting if she were right in not replying; possibly she
+might be so mismanaging matters as to risk the loss of an alliance
+which would bring her much happiness.
+
+Melbury's respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his professional
+position, which was not much, than on the standing of his family
+in the county in by-gone days.  That implicit faith in members of
+long-established families, as such, irrespective of their personal
+condition or character, which is still found among old-fashioned
+people in the rural districts reached its full intensity in
+Melbury.  His daughter's suitor was descended from a family he had
+heard of in his grandfather's time as being once great, a family
+which had conferred its name upon a neighboring village; how,
+then, could anything be amiss in this betrothal?
+
+"I must keep her up to this," he said to his wife.  "She sees it
+is for her happiness; but still she's young, and may want a little
+prompting from an older tongue."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom of his when
+he wished to say anything specially impressive.  Their way was
+over the top of that lofty ridge dividing their woodland from the
+cider district, whence they had in the spring beheld the miles of
+apple-trees in bloom.  All was now deep green.  The spot recalled
+to Grace's mind the last occasion of her presence there, and she
+said, "The promise of an enormous apple-crop is fulfilling itself,
+is it not?  I suppose Giles is getting his mills and presses
+ready."
+
+This was just what her father had not come there to talk about. 
+Without replying he raised his arm, and moved his finger till he
+fixed it at a point.  "There," he said, "you see that plantation
+reaching over the hill like a great slug, and just behind the hill
+a particularly green sheltered bottom?  That's where Mr.
+Fitzpiers's family were lords of the manor for I don't know how
+many hundred years, and there stands the village of Buckbury
+Fitzpiers.  A wonderful property 'twas--wonderful!"
+
+"But they are not lords of the manor there now."
+
+"Why, no.  But good and great things die as well as little and
+foolish.  The only ones representing the family now, I believe,
+are our doctor and a maiden lady living I don't know where.  You
+can't help being happy, Grace, in allying yourself with such a
+romantical family.  You'll feel as if you've stepped into
+history."
+
+"We've been at Hintock as long as they've been at Buckbury; is it
+not so? You say our name occurs in old deeds continually."
+
+"Oh yes--as yeomen, copyholders, and such like.  But think how
+much better this will be for 'ee.  You'll be living a high
+intellectual life, such as has now become natural to you; and
+though the doctor's practice is small here, he'll no doubt go to a
+dashing town when he's got his hand in, and keep a stylish
+carriage, and you'll be brought to know a good many ladies of
+excellent society.  If you should ever meet me then, Grace, you
+can drive past me, looking the other way.  I shouldn't expect you
+to speak to me, or wish such a thing, unless it happened to be in
+some lonely, private place where 'twouldn't lower ye at all. 
+Don't think such men as neighbor Giles your equal.  He and I shall
+be good friends enough, but he's not for the like of you.  He's
+lived our rough and homely life here, and his wife's life must be
+rough and homely likewise."
+
+So much pressure could not but produce some displacement.  As
+Grace was left very much to herself, she took advantage of one
+fine day before Fitzpiers's return to drive into the aforesaid
+vale where stood the village of Buckbury Fitzpiers.  Leaving her
+father's man at the inn with the horse and gig, she rambled onward
+to the ruins of a castle, which stood in a field hard by.  She had
+no doubt that it represented the ancient stronghold of the
+Fitzpiers family.
+
+The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants of the
+lower vaulting, supported on low stout columns surmounted by the
+crochet capital of the period.  The two or three arches of these
+vaults that were still in position were utilized by the adjoining
+farmer as shelter for his calves, the floor being spread with
+straw, amid which the young creatures rustled, cooling their
+thirsty tongues by licking the quaint Norman carving, which
+glistened with the moisture.  It was a degradation of even such a
+rude form of art as this to be treatad so grossly, she thought,
+and for the first time the family of Fitzpiers assumed in her
+imagination the hues of a melancholy romanticism.
+
+It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the distance
+with a preoccupied mind.  The idea of so modern a man in science
+and aesthetics as the young surgeon springing out of relics so
+ancient was a kind of novelty she had never before experienced. 
+The combination lent him a social and intellectual interest which
+she dreaded, so much weight did it add to the strange influence he
+exercised upon her whenever he came near her.
+
+In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, rather a
+fearful consciousness of hazard in the air, she awaited his
+return.
+
+Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also.  In his house there
+was an old work on medicine, published towards the end of the last
+century, and to put himself in harmony with events Melbury spread
+this work on his knees when he had done his day's business, and
+read about Galen, Hippocrates, and Herophilus--of the dogmatic,
+the empiric, the hermetical, and other sects of practitioners that
+have arisen in history; and thence proceeded to the classification
+of maladies and the rules for their treatment, as laid down in
+this valuable book with absolute precision.  Melbury regretted
+that the treatise was so old, fearing that he might in consequence
+be unable to hold as complete a conversation as he could wish with
+Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt, with more recent discoveries.
+
+The day of Fitzpiers's return arrived, and he sent to say that he
+would call immediately.  In the little time that was afforded for
+putting the house in order the sweeping of Melbury's parlor was as
+the sweeping of the parlor at the Interpreter's which wellnigh
+choked the Pilgrim.  At the end of it Mrs. Melbury sat down,
+folded her hands and lips, and waited.  Her husband restlessly
+walked in and out from the timber-yard, stared at the interior of
+the room, jerked out "ay, ay," and retreated again.  Between four
+and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to the hook outside
+the door.
+
+As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace was not in
+the room, he seemed to have a misgiving.  Nothing less than her
+actual presence could long keep him to the level of this
+impassioned enterprise, and that lacking he appeared as one who
+wished to retrace his steps.
+
+He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland matron's
+level of thought till a rustling was heard on the stairs, and
+Grace came in.  Fitzpiers was for once as agitated as she.  Over
+and above the genuine emotion which she raised in his heart there
+hung the sense that he was casting a die by impulse which he might
+not have thrown by judgment.
+
+Mr. Melbury was not in the room.  Having to attend to matters in
+the yard, he had delayed putting on his afternoon coat and
+waistcoat till the doctor's appearance, when, not wishing to be
+backward in receiving him, he entered the parlor hastily buttoning
+up those garments.  Grace's fastidiousness was a little distressed
+that Fitzpiers should see by this action the strain his visit was
+putting upon her father; and to make matters worse for her just
+then, old Grammer seemed to have a passion for incessantly pumping
+in the back kitchen, leaving the doors open so that the banging
+and splashing were distinct above the parlor conversation.
+
+Whenever the chat over the tea sank into pleasant desultoriness
+Mr. Melbury broke in with speeches of labored precision on very
+remote topics, as if he feared to let Fitzpiers's mind dwell
+critically on the subject nearest the hearts of all.  In truth a
+constrained manner was natural enough in Melbury just now, for the
+greatest interest of his life was reaching its crisis.  Could the
+real have been beheld instead of the corporeal merely, the corner
+of the room in which he sat would have been filled with a form
+typical of anxious suspense, large-eyed, tight-lipped, awaiting
+the issue.  That paternal hopes and fears so intense should be
+bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly circumstanced,
+and not have dispersed themselves over the larger field of a whole
+family, involved dangerous risks to future happiness.
+
+Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time had
+apparently advanced his sentiments towards Grace, once and for
+all, from a vaguely liquescent to an organic shape.  She would not
+have accompanied him to the door in response to his whispered
+"Come!" if her mother had not said in a matter-of-fact way, "Of
+course, Grace; go to the door with Mr. Fitzpiers."  Accordingly
+Grace went, both her parents remaining in the room.  When the
+young pair were in the great brick-floored hall the lover took the
+girl's hand in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led her on to
+the door, where he stealthily kissed her.
+
+She broke from him trembling, blushed and turned aside, hardly
+knowing how things had advanced to this.  Fitzpiers drove off,
+kissing his hand to her, and waving it to Melbury who was visible
+through the window.  Her father returned the surgeon's action with
+a great flourish of his own hand and a satisfied smile.
+
+The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced in Grace's
+brain during the visit passed off somewhat with his withdrawal. 
+She felt like a woman who did not know what she had been doing for
+the previous hour, but supposed with trepidation that the
+afternoon's proceedings, though vague, had amounted to an
+engagement between herself and the handsome, coercive,
+irresistible Fitzpiers.
+
+
+
+This visit was a type of many which followed it during the long
+summer days of that year.  Grace was borne along upon a stream of
+reasonings, arguments, and persuasions, supplemented, it must be
+added, by inclinations of her own at times.  No woman is without
+aspirations, which may be innocent enough within certain limits;
+and Grace had been so trained socially, and educated
+intellectually, as to see clearly enough a pleasure in the
+position of wife to such a man as Fitzpiers.  His material
+standing of itself, either present or future, had little in it to
+give her ambition, but the possibilities of a refined and
+cultivated inner life, of subtle psychological intercourse, had
+their charm.  It was this rather than any vulgar idea of marrying
+well which caused her to float with the current, and to yield to
+the immense influence which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever
+she shared his society.
+
+Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that whether or not
+she loved him as yet in the ordinary sense, she was pretty sure to
+do so in time.
+
+One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather long walk
+together, and for a short cut homeward passed through the
+shrubberies of Hintock House--still deserted, and still blankly
+confronting with its sightless shuttered windows the surrounding
+foliage and slopes.  Grace was tired, and they approached the
+wall, and sat together on one of the stone sills--still warm with
+the sun that had been pouring its rays upon them all the
+afternoon.
+
+"This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest," said her
+betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at the old
+facade.
+
+"Oh yes," said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy had ever
+crossed her mind.  "She is away from home still," Grace added in a
+minute, rather sadly, for she could not forget that she had
+somehow lost the valuable friendship of the lady of this bower.
+
+"Who is?--oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond.  Do you know, dear, that at
+one time I thought you lived here."
+
+"Indeed!" said Grace.  "How was that?"
+
+He explained, as far as he could do so without mentioning his
+disappointment at finding it was otherwise; and then went on:
+"Well, never mind that.  Now I want to ask you something.  There
+is one detail of our wedding which I am sure you will leave to me. 
+My inclination is not to be married at the horrid little church
+here, with all the yokels staring round at us, and a droning
+parson reading."
+
+"Where, then, can it be?  At a church in town?"
+
+"No.  Not at a church at all.  At a registry office.  It is a
+quieter, snugger, and more convenient place in every way."
+
+"Oh," said she, with real distress.  "How can I be married except
+at church, and with all my dear friends round me?"
+
+"Yeoman Winterborne among them."
+
+"Yes--why not? You know there was nothing serious between him and
+me "
+
+"You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church has this
+objection in our case: it would be a thing of report a long way
+round.  Now I would gently, as gently as possible, indicate to you
+how inadvisable such publicity would be if we leave Hintock, and I
+purchase the practice that I contemplate purchasing at Budmouth--
+hardly more than twenty miles off.  Forgive my saying that it will
+be far better if nobody there knows where you come from, nor
+anything about your parents.  Your beauty and knowledge and
+manners will carry you anywhere if you are not hampered by such
+retrospective criticism."
+
+"But could it not be a quiet ceremony, even at church?" she
+pleaded.
+
+"I don't see the necessity of going there!" he said, a trifle
+impatiently.  "Marriage is a civil contract, and the shorter and
+simpler it is made the better.  People don't go to church when
+they take a house, or even when they make a will."
+
+"Oh, Edgar--I don't like to hear you speak like that."
+
+"Well, well--I didn't mean to.  But I have mentioned as much to
+your father, who has made no objection; and why should you?"
+
+She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ought to allow
+sentiment to give way to policy--if there were indeed policy in
+his plan.  But she was indefinably depressed as they walked
+homeward.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+He left her at the door of her father's house.  As he receded, and
+was clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he impressed Grace
+as a man who hardly appertained to her existence at all. 
+Cleverer, greater than herself, one outside her mental orbit, as
+she considered him, he seemed to be her ruler rather than her
+equal, protector, and dear familiar friend.
+
+The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the shock
+given to her girlish sensibilities by his irreverent views of
+marriage, together with the sure and near approach of the day
+fixed for committing her future to his keeping, made her so
+restless that she could scarcely sleep at all that night.  She
+rose when the sparrows began to walk out of the roof-holes, sat on
+the floor of her room in the dim light, and by-and-by peeped out
+behind the window-curtains.  It was even now day out-of-doors,
+though the tones of morning were feeble and wan, and it was long
+before the sun would be perceptible in this overshadowed vale. 
+Not a sound came from any of the out-houses as yet.  The tree-
+trunks, the road, the out-buildings, the garden, every object wore
+that aspect of mesmeric fixity which the suspensive quietude of
+daybreak lends to such scenes.  Outside her window helpless
+immobility seemed to be combined with intense consciousness; a
+meditative inertness possessed all things, oppressively
+contrasting with her own active emotions.  Beyond the road were
+some cottage roofs and orchards; over these roofs and over the
+apple-trees behind, high up the slope, and backed by the
+plantation on the crest, was the house yet occupied by her future
+husband, the rough-cast front showing whitely through its
+creepers.  The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains
+closely drawn, and not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from the
+rugged chimneys.
+
+Something broke the stillness.  The front door of the house she
+was gazing at opened softly, and there came out into the porch a
+female figure, wrapped in a large shawl, beneath which was visible
+the white skirt of a long loose garment.  A gray arm, stretching
+from within the porch, adjusted the shawl over the woman's
+shoulders; it was withdrawn and disappeared, the door closing
+behind her.
+
+The woman went quickly down the box-edged path between the
+raspberries and currants, and as she walked her well-developed
+form and gait betrayed her individuality.  It was Suke Damson, the
+affianced one of simple young Tim Tangs.  At the bottom of the
+garden she entered the shelter of the tall hedge, and only the top
+of her head could be seen hastening in the direction of her own
+dwelling.
+
+Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the gray arm
+stretching from the porch, the sleeve of a dressing-gown which Mr.
+Fitzpiers had been wearing on her own memorable visit to him.  Her
+face fired red.  She had just before thought of dressing herself
+and taking a lonely walk under the trees, so coolly green this
+early morning; but she now sat down on her bed and fell into
+reverie.  It seemed as if hardly any time had passed when she
+heard the household moving briskly about, and breakfast preparing
+down-stairs; though, on rousing herself to robe and descend, she
+found that the sun was throwing his rays completely over the tree-
+tops, a progress of natural phenomena denoting that at least three
+hours had elapsed since she last looked out of the window.
+
+When attired she searched about the house for her father; she
+found him at last in the garden, stooping to examine the potatoes 
+for signs of disease.  Hearing her rustle, he stood up and
+stretched his back and arms, saying, "Morning t'ye, Gracie.  I
+congratulate ye.  It is only a month to-day to the time!"
+
+She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded between
+the dewy rows of tall potato-green into the middle of the plot
+where he was.
+
+"I have been thinking very much about my position this morning--
+ever since it was light," she began, excitedly, and trembling so
+that she could hardly stand.  "And I feel it is a false one.  I
+wish not to marry Mr. Fitzpiers.  I wish not to marry anybody; but
+I'll marry Giles Winterborne if you say I must as an alternative."
+
+Her father's face settled into rigidity, he turned pale, and came
+deliberately out of the plot before he answered her.  She had
+never seen him look so incensed before.
+
+"Now, hearken to me," he said.  "There's a time for a woman to
+alter her mind; and there's a time when she can no longer alter
+it, if she has any right eye to her parents' honor and the
+seemliness of things.  That time has come.  I won't say to ye, you
+SHALL marry him.  But I will say that if you refuse, I shall
+forever be ashamed and a-weary of ye as a daughter, and shall look
+upon you as the hope of my life no more.  What do you know about
+life and what it can bring forth, and how you ought to act to lead
+up to best ends?  Oh, you are an ungrateful maid, Grace; you've
+seen that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye; that's where the
+secret lies, I'll warrant me!"
+
+"No, father, no! It is not Giles--it is something I cannot tell
+you of--"
+
+"Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; break it
+off; have your own way."
+
+"But who knows of the engagement as yet? how can breaking it
+disgrace you?"
+
+Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the
+engagement to this acquaintance and to that, till she perceived
+that in his restlessness and pride he had published it everywhere. 
+She went dismally away to a bower of laurel at the top of the
+garden.  Her father followed her.
+
+"It is that Giles Winterborne!" he said, with an upbraiding gaze
+at her.
+
+"No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged him once,"
+she said, troubled to the verge of despair.  "It is not Giles, it
+is Mr. Fitzpiers."
+
+"You've had a tiff--a lovers' tiff--that's all, I suppose
+
+"It is some woman--"
+
+"Ay, ay; you are jealous.  The old story.  Don't tell me.  Now do
+you bide here.  I'll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw him smoking in
+front of his house but a minute by-gone."
+
+He went off hastily out of the garden-gate and down the lane.  But
+she would not stay where she was; and edging through a slit in the
+garden-fence, walked away into the wood.  Just about here the
+trees were large and wide apart, and there was no undergrowth, so
+that she could be seen to some distance; a sylph-like, greenish-
+white creature, as toned by the sunlight and leafage.  She heard a
+foot-fall crushing dead leaves behind her, and found herself
+reconnoitered by Fitzpiers himself, approaching gay and fresh as
+the morning around them.
+
+His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest rather than
+of rapture.  But she looked so lovely in the green world about
+her, her pink cheeks, her simple light dress, and the delicate
+flexibility of her movement acquired such rarity from their wild-
+wood setting, that his eyes kindled as he drew near.
+
+"My darling, what is it?  Your father says you are in the pouts,
+and jealous, and I don't know what.  Ha! ha! ha! as if there were
+any rival to you, except vegetable nature, in this home of
+recluses! We know better."
+
+"Jealous; oh no, it is not so," said she, gravely.  "That's a
+mistake of his and yours, sir.  I spoke to him so closely about
+the question of marriage with you that he did not apprehend my
+state of mind."
+
+"But there's something wrong--eh?" he asked, eying her narrowly,
+and bending to kiss her.  She shrank away, and his purposed kiss
+miscarried.
+
+"What is it?" he said, more seriously for this little defeat.
+
+She made no answer beyond, "Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had no
+breakfast, I must go in."
+
+"Come," he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her.  "Tell me at once,
+I say."
+
+It was the greater strength against the smaller; but she was
+mastered less by his manner than by her own sense of the
+unfairness of silence.  "I looked out of the window," she said,
+with hesitation.  "I'll tell you by-and-by.  I must go in-doors. 
+I have had no breakfast."
+
+By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to the fact. 
+"Nor I," said he, lightly.  "Indeed, I rose late to-day.  I have
+had a broken night, or rather morning.  A girl of the village--I
+don't know her name--came and rang at my bell as soon as it was
+light--between four and five, I should think it was--perfectly
+maddened with an aching tooth.  As no-body heard her ring, she
+threw some gravel at my window, till at last I heard her and
+slipped on my dressing-gown and went down.  The poor thing begged
+me with tears in her eyes to take out her tormentor, if I dragged
+her head off.  Down she sat and out it came--a lovely molar, not a
+speck upon it; and off she went with it in her handkerchief, much
+contented, though it would have done good work for her for fifty
+years to come."
+
+It was all so plausible--so completely explained.  knowing nothing
+of the incident in the wood on old Midsummer-eve, Grace felt that
+her suspicions were unworthy and absurd, and with the readiness of
+an honest heart she jumped at the opportunity of honoring his
+word.  At the moment of her mental liberation the bushes about the
+garden had moved, and her father emerged into the shady glade. 
+"Well, I hope it is made up?" he said, cheerily.
+
+"Oh yes," said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, whose eyes
+were shyly bent downward.
+
+"Now," said her father, "tell me, the pair of ye, that you still
+mean to take one another for good and all; and on the strength o't
+you shall have another couple of hundred paid down.  I swear it by
+the name."
+
+Fitzpiers took her hand.  "We declare it, do we not, my dear
+Grace?" said he.
+
+Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever anxious to
+please, she was disposed to settle the matter; yet, womanlike, she
+would not relinquish her opportunity of asking a concession of
+some sort.  "If our wedding can be at church, I say yes," she
+answered, in a measured voice.  "If not, I say no."
+
+Fitzpiers was generous in his turn.  "It shall be so," he
+rejoined, gracefully.  "To holy church we'll go, and much good may
+it do us."
+
+They returned through the bushes indoors, Grace walking, full of
+thought between the other two, somewhat comforted, both by
+Fitzpiers's ingenious explanation and by the sense that she was
+not to be deprived of a religious ceremony.  "So let it be," she
+said to herself.  "Pray God it is for the best."
+
+From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalcitration on
+her part.  Fitzpiers kept himself continually near her, dominating
+any rebellious impulse, and shaping her will into passive
+concurrence with all his desires.  Apart from his lover-like
+anxiety to possess her, the few golden hundreds of the timber-
+dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm background to Grace's lovely
+face, and went some way to remove his uneasiness at the prospect
+of endangering his professional and social chances by an alliance
+with the family of a simple countryman.
+
+
+
+The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. 
+Whenever Grace had any doubts of her position, the sense of
+contracting time was like a shortening chamber: at other moments
+she was comparatively blithe.  Day after day waxed and waned; the
+one or two woodmen who sawed, shaped, spokeshaved on her father's
+premises at this inactive season of the year, regularly came and
+unlocked the doors in the morning, locked them in the evening,
+supped, leaned over their garden-gates for a whiff of evening air,
+and to catch any last and farthest throb of news from the outer
+world, which entered and expired at Little Hintock like the
+exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost cavern of some
+innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news interfered with the
+nuptial purpose at their neighbor's house.  The sappy green twig-
+tips of the season's growth would not, she thought, be appreciably
+woodier on the day she became a wife, so near was the time; the
+tints of the foliage would hardly have changed.  Everything was so
+much as usual that no itinerant stranger would have supposed a
+woman's fate to be hanging in the balance at that summer's
+decline.
+
+But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough by those
+who had special knowledge.  In the remote and fashionable town of
+Sandbourne something was growing up under the hands of several
+persons who had never seen Grace Melbury, never would see her, or
+care anything about her at all, though their creation had such
+interesting relation to her life that it would enclose her very
+heart at a moment when that heart would beat, if not with more
+emotional ardor, at least with more emotional turbulence than at
+any previous time.
+
+Why did Mrs. Dollery's van, instead of passing along at the end of
+the smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn one Saturday
+night into Little Hintock Lane, and never pull up till it reached
+Mr. Melbury's gates?  The gilding shine of evening fell upon a
+large, flat box not less than a yard square, and safely tied with
+cord, as it was handed out from under the tilt with a great deal
+of care.  But it was not heavy for its size; Mrs. Dollery herself
+carried it into the house.  Tim Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree,
+Suke Damson, and others, looked knowing, and made remarks to each
+other as they watched its entrance.  Melbury stood at the door of
+the timber-shed in the attitude of a man to whom such an arrival
+was a trifling domestic detail with which he did not condescend to
+be concerned.  Yet he well divined the contents of that box, and
+was in truth all the while in a pleasant exaltation at the proof
+that thus far, at any rate, no disappointment had supervened. 
+While Mrs. Dollery remained--which was rather long, from her sense
+of the importance of her errand--he went into the out-house; but
+as soon as she had had her say, been paid, and had rumbled away,
+he entered the dwelling, to find there what he knew he should
+find--his wife and daughter in a flutter of excitement over the
+wedding-gown, just arrived from the leading dress-maker of
+Sandbourne watering-place aforesaid.
+
+During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to be seen or
+heard of.  At the close of his tenure in Hintock he had sold some
+of his furniture, packed up the rest--a few pieces endeared by
+associations, or necessary to his occupation--in the house of a
+friendly neighbor, and gone away.  People said that a certain
+laxity had crept into his life; that he had never gone near a
+church latterly, and had been sometimes seen on Sundays with
+unblacked boots, lying on his elbow under a tree, with a cynical
+gaze at surrounding objects.  He was likely to return to Hintock
+when the cider-making season came round, his apparatus being
+stored there, and travel with his mill and press from village to
+village.
+
+The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished yet. 
+There was in Grace's mind sometimes a certain anticipative
+satisfaction, the satisfaction of feeling that she would be the
+heroine of an hour; moreover, she was proud, as a cultivated
+woman, to be the wife of a cultivated man.  It was an opportunity
+denied very frequently to young women in her position, nowadays
+not a few; those in whom parental discovery of the value of
+education has implanted tastes which parental circles fail to
+gratify.  But what an attenuation was this cold pride of the dream
+of her youth, in which she had pictured herself walking in state
+towards the altar, flushed by the purple light and bloom of her
+own passion, without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the
+bond, and fervently receiving as her due
+
+
+"The homage of a thousand hearts; the fond, deep love of one."
+
+
+Everything had been clear then, in imagination; now something was
+undefined.  She had little carking anxieties; a curious
+fatefulness seemed to rule her, and she experienced a mournful
+want of some one to confide in.
+
+The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear could, in
+fancy, catch the noise of it, hear the murmur of the villagers as
+she came out of church, imagine the jangle of the three thin-toned
+Hintock bells.  The dialogues seemed to grow louder, and the ding-
+ding-dong of those three crazed bells more persistent.  She awoke:
+the morning had come.
+
+Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone-fronted inn with
+a yawning arch, under which vehicles were driven by stooping
+coachmen to back premises of wonderful commodiousness.  The
+windows to the street were mullioned into narrow lights, and only
+commanded a view of the opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose
+that the best and most luxurious private sitting-room that the inn
+could afford over-looked the nether parts of the establishment,
+where beyond the yard were to be seen gardens and orchards, now
+bossed, nay incrusted, with scarlet and gold fruit, stretching to
+infinite distance under a luminous lavender mist.  The time was
+early autumn,
+
+
+    "When the fair apples, red as evening sky,
+    Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground,
+     When juicy pears, and berries of black dye,
+    Do dance in air, and call the eyes around."
+
+
+The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, have been part
+of the identical stretch of country which the youthful Chatterton
+had in his mind.
+
+In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Melbury till
+the finger of fate touched her and turned her to a wife.  It was
+two months after the wedding, and she was alone.  Fitzpiers had
+walked out to see the abbey by the light of sunset, but she had
+been too fatigued to accompany him.  They had reached the last
+stage of a long eight-weeks' tour, and were going on to Hintock
+that night.
+
+In the yard, between Grace and the orchards, there progressed a
+scene natural to the locality at this time of the year.  An apple-
+mill and press had been erected on the spot, to which some men
+were bringing fruit from divers points in mawn-baskets, while
+others were grinding them, and others wringing down the pomace,
+whose sweet juice gushed forth into tubs and pails.  The
+superintendent of these proceedings, to whom the others spoke as
+master, was a young yeoman of prepossessing manner and aspect,
+whose form she recognized in a moment.  He had hung his coat to a
+nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt-sleeves rolled up
+beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he rammed the
+pomace into the bags of horse-hair.  Fragments of apple-rind had
+alighted upon the brim of his hat--probably from the bursting of a
+bag--while brown pips of the same fruit were sticking among the
+down upon his fine, round arms.
+
+She realized in a moment how he had come there.  Down in the heart
+of the apple country nearly every farmer kept up a cider-making
+apparatus and wring-house for his own use, building up the pomace
+in great straw "cheeses," as they were called; but here, on the
+margin of Pomona's plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor
+sylvan exclusively, where the apple produce was hardly sufficient
+to warrant each proprietor in keeping a mill of his own.  This was
+the field of the travelling cider-maker.  His press and mill were
+fixed to wheels instead of being set up in a cider-house; and with
+a couple of horses, buckets, tubs, strainers, and an assistant or
+two, he wandered from place to place, deriving very satisfactory
+returns for his trouble in such a prolific season as the present.
+
+The back parts of the town were just now abounding with apple-
+gatherings.  They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, and loose
+heaps; and the blue.  stagnant air of autumn which hung over
+everything was heavy with a sweet cidery smell.  Cakes of pomace
+lay against the walls in the yellow sun, where they were drying to
+be used as fuel.  Yet it was not the great make of the year as
+yet; before the standard crop came in there accumulated, in
+abundant times like this, a large superfluity of early apples, and
+windfalls from the trees of later harvest, which would not keep
+long.  Thus, in the baskets, and quivering in the hopper of the
+mill, she saw specimens of mixed dates, including the mellow
+countenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costards, stubbards,
+ratheripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous youth.
+
+Grace watched the head-man with interest.  The slightest sigh
+escaped her.  Perhaps she thought of the day--not so far distant--
+when that friend of her childhood had met her by her father's
+arrangement in this same town, warm with hope, though diffident,
+and trusting in a promise rather implied than given.  Or she might
+have thought of days earlier yet--days of childhood--when her
+mouth was somewhat more ready to receive a kiss from his than was
+his to bestow one.  However, all that was over.  She had felt
+superior to him then, and she felt superior to him now.
+
+She wondered why he never looked towards her open window.  She did
+not know that in the slight commotion caused by their arrival at
+the inn that afternoon Winterborne had caught sight of her through
+the archway, had turned red, and was continuing his work with more
+concentrated attention on the very account of his discovery.
+Robert Creedle, too, who travelled with Giles, had been
+incidentally informed by the hostler that Dr. Fitzpiers and his
+young wife were in the hotel, after which news Creedle kept
+shaking his head and saying to himself, "Ah!" very audibly,
+between his thrusts at the screw of the cider-press.
+
+"Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?" asked Winterborne,
+at last.
+
+"Ah, maister--'tis my thoughts--'tis my thoughts!...Yes, ye've
+lost a hundred load o' timber well seasoned; ye've lost five
+hundred pound in good money; ye've lost the stone-windered house
+that's big enough to hold a dozen families; ye've lost your share
+of half a dozen good wagons and their horses--all lost!--through
+your letting slip she that was once yer own!"
+
+"Good God, Creedle, you'll drive me mad!" said Giles, sternly. 
+"Don't speak of that any more!"
+
+Thus the subject had ended in the yard.  Meanwhile, the passive
+cause of all this loss still regarded the scene.  She was
+beautifully dressed; she was seated in the most comfortable room
+that the inn afforded; her long journey had been full of variety,
+and almost luxuriously performed--for Fitzpiers did not study
+economy where pleasure was in question.  Hence it perhaps arose
+that Giles and all his belongings seemed sorry and common to her
+for the moment--moving in a plane so far removed from her own of
+late that she could scarcely believe she had ever found congruity
+therein.  "No--I could never have married him!" she said, gently
+shaking her head.  "Dear father was right.  It would have been too
+coarse a life for me." And she looked at the rings of sapphire and
+opal upon her white and slender fingers that had been gifts from
+Fitzpiers.
+
+Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a little of
+the above-described pride of life--easily to be understood, and
+possibly excused, in a young, inexperienced woman who thought she
+had married well--she said at last, with a smile on her lips, "Mr.
+Winterborne!"
+
+He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, "Mr.
+Winterborne!"
+
+Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close enough to
+him to see the expression of his face might have doubted it; and
+she said a third time, with a timid loudness, "Mr. Winterborne!
+What, have you forgotten my voice?" She remained with her lips
+parted in a welcoming smile.
+
+He turned without surprise, and came deliberately towards the
+window.  "Why do you call me?" he said, with a sternness that took
+her completely unawares, his face being now pale.  "Is it not
+enough that you see me here moiling and muddling for my daily
+bread while you are sitting there in your success, that you can't
+refrain from opening old wounds by calling out my name?"
+
+She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; but she forgave
+his unreasoning anger, knowing so well in what it had its root. 
+"I am sorry I offended you by speaking," she replied, meekly. 
+"Believe me, I did not intend to do that.  I could hardly sit here
+so near you without a word of recognition."
+
+Winterborne's heart had swollen big, and his eyes grown moist by
+this time, so much had the gentle answer of that familiar voice
+moved him.  He assured her hurriedly, and without looking at her,
+that he was not angry.  He then managed to ask her, in a clumsy,
+constrained way, if she had had a pleasant journey, and seen many
+interesting sights.  She spoke of a few places that she had
+visited, and so the time passed till he withdrew to take his place
+at one of the levers which pulled round the screw.
+
+Forgotten her voice! Indeed, he had not forgotten her voice, as
+his bitterness showed.  But though in the heat of the moment he
+had reproached her keenly, his second mood was a far more tender
+one--that which could regard her renunciation of such as he as her
+glory and her privilege, his own fidelity notwithstanding.  He
+could have declared with a contemporary poet--
+
+
+           "If I forget,
+   The salt creek may forget the ocean;
+            If I forget
+   The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion,
+   May I sink meanlier than the worst
+   Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst,
+            If I forget.
+
+            "Though you forget,
+   No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;
+            Though you forget,
+   You filled my barren life with treasure,
+   You may withdraw the gift you gave;
+   You still are queen, I still am slave,
+            Though you forget."
+
+
+She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could not remind
+him of what he ought to have remembered; that not herself but the
+pressure of events had dissipated the dreams of their early youth. 
+Grace was thus unexpectedly worsted in her encounter with her old
+friend.  She had opened the window with a faint sense of triumph,
+but he had turned it into sadness; she did not quite comprehend
+the reason why.  In truth it was because she was not cruel enough
+in her cruelty.  If you have to use the knife, use it, say the
+great surgeons; and for her own peace Grace should have contemned
+Winterborne thoroughly or not at all.  As it was, on closing the
+window an indescribable, some might have said dangerous, pity
+quavered in her bosom for him.
+
+Presently her husband entered the room, and told her what a
+wonderful sunset there was to be seen.
+
+"I have not noticed it.  But I have seen somebody out there that
+we know," she replied, looking into the court.
+
+Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he did not
+recognize anybody.
+
+"Why, Mr. Winterborne--there he is, cider-making.  He combines
+that with his other business, you know."
+
+"Oh--that fellow," said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming extinct.
+
+She, reproachfully: "What, call Mr. Winterborne a fellow, Edgar?
+It is true I was just saying to myself that I never could have
+married him; but I have much regard for him, and always shall."
+
+"Well, do by all means, my dear one.  I dare say I am inhuman, and
+supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my poor old ramshackle
+family; but I do honestly confess to you that I feel as if I
+belonged to a different species from the people who are working in
+that yard."
+
+"And from me too, then.  For my blood is no better than theirs."
+
+He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening.  It was, indeed,
+a startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be
+standing there beside him as his wife, if his sentiments were as
+he had said.  In their travels together she had ranged so
+unerringly at his level in ideas, tastes, and habits that he had
+almost forgotten how his heart had played havoc with his
+principles in taking her to him.
+
+"Ah YOU--you are refined and educated into something quite
+different," he said, self-assuringly.
+
+"I don't quite like to think that," she murmured with soft regret. 
+"And I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne.  Remember, I was
+brought up with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be
+radically different.  At any rate, I don't feel so.  That is, no
+doubt, my fault, and a great blemish in me.  But I hope you will
+put up with it, Edgar."
+
+Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now
+getting on for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of
+their journey, so as to arrive at Hintock before it grew very
+late.
+
+In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the
+yard having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only
+sounds audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the
+tightly screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had
+drunk itself so tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall.  Grace
+was very cheerful at the thought of being soon in her sylvan home,
+but Fitzpiers sat beside her almost silent.  An indescribable
+oppressiveness had overtaken him with the near approach of the
+journey's end and the realities of life that lay there.
+
+"You don't say a word, Edgar," she observed.  "Aren't you glad to
+get back? I am."
+
+"You have friends here.  I have none."
+
+"But my friends are yours."
+
+"Oh yes--in that sense."
+
+The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock
+Lane.  It had been decided that they should, at least for a time,
+take up their abode in her father's roomy house, one wing of which
+was quite at their service, being almost disused by the Melburys. 
+Workmen had been painting, papering, and whitewashing this set of
+rooms in the wedded pair's absence; and so scrupulous had been the
+timber-dealer that there should occur no hitch or disappointment
+on their arrival, that not the smallest detail remained undone. 
+To make it all complete a ground-floor room had been fitted up as
+a surgery, with an independent outer door, to which Fitzpiers's
+brass plate was screwed--for mere ornament, such a sign being
+quite superfluous where everybody knew the latitude and longitude
+of his neighbors for miles round.
+
+Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, and all
+the house with deference.  They went up to explore their rooms,
+that opened from a passage on the left hand of the staircase, the
+entrance to which could be shut off on the landing by a door that
+Melbury had hung for the purpose.  A friendly fire was burning in
+the grate, although it was not cold.  Fitzpiers said it was too
+soon for any sort of meal, they only having dined shortly before
+leaving Sherton-Abbas.  He would walk across to his old lodging,
+to learn how his locum tenens had got on in his absence.
+
+In leaving Melbury's door he looked back at the house.  There was
+economy in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but
+in some way he was dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed
+him so deeply in son-in-lawship to Melbury.  He went on to his
+former residence.  His deputy was out, and Fitzpiers fell into
+conversation with his former landlady.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Cox, what's the best news?" he asked of her, with
+cheery weariness.
+
+She was a little soured at losing by his marriage so profitable a
+tenant as the surgeon had proved to be duling his residence under
+her roof; and the more so in there being hardly the remotest
+chance of her getting such another settler in the Hintock
+solitudes.  "'Tis what I don't wish to repeat, sir; least of all
+to you," she mumbled.
+
+"Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead."
+
+"It is what people say about your hasty marrying, Dr. Fitzpiers. 
+Whereas they won't believe you know such clever doctrines in
+physic as they once supposed of ye, seeing as you could marry into
+Mr. Melbury's family, which is only Hintock-born, such as me."
+
+"They are kindly welcome to their opinion," said Fitzpiers, not
+allowing himself to recognize that he winced.  "Anything else?"
+
+"Yes; SHE'S come home at last."
+
+"Who's she?"
+
+"Mrs. Charmond."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest.  "I've
+never seen her."
+
+"She has seen you, sir, whether or no."
+
+"Never."
+
+"Yes; she saw you in some hotel or street for a minute or two
+while you were away travelling, and accidentally heard your name;
+and when she made some remark about you, Miss Ellis--that's her
+maid--told her you was on your wedding-tower with Mr. Melbury's
+daughter; and she said, 'He ought to have done better than that. 
+I fear he has spoiled his chances,' she says."
+
+Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and
+walked home with no very brisk step.  He entered the door quietly,
+and went straight up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for
+their use by Melbury in his and his bride's absence, expecting to
+find her there as he had left her.  The fire was burning still,
+but there were no lights.  He looked into the next apartment,
+fitted up as a little dining-room, but no supper was laid.  He
+went to the top of the stairs, and heard a chorus of voices in the
+timber-merchant's parlor below, Grace's being occasionally
+intermingled.
+
+Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found
+quite a large gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances,
+praising and congratulating Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among
+them being the dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, and the master-blacksmith
+from Great Hintock; also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the
+exciseman, and some others, with their wives, who lived hard by. 
+Grace, girl that she was, had quite forgotten her new dignity and
+her husband's; she was in the midst of them, blushing, and
+receiving their compliments with all the pleasure of old-
+comradeship.
+
+Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. 
+Melbury was nowhere in the room, but Melbury's wife, perceiving
+the doctor, came to him.  "We thought, Grace and I," she said,
+"that as they have called, hearing you were come, we could do no
+less than ask them to supper; and then Grace proposed that we
+should all sup together, as it is the first night of your return."
+
+By this time Grace had come round to him.  "Is it not good of them
+to welcome me so warmly?" she exclaimed, with tears of friendship
+in her eyes.  "After so much good feeling I could not think of our
+shutting ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room."
+
+"Certainly not--certainly not," said Fitzpiers; and he entered the
+room with the heroic smile of a martyr.
+
+As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to
+see at once that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such
+demonstrative reception.  He thereupon privately chid his wife for
+her forwardness in the matter.  Mrs. Melbury declared that it was
+as much Grace's doing as hers, after which there was no more to be
+said by that young woman's tender father.  By this time Fitzpiers
+was making the best of his position among the wide-elbowed and
+genial company who sat eating and drinking and laughing and joking
+around him; and getting warmed himself by the good cheer, was
+obliged to admit that, after all, the supper was not the least
+enjoyable he had ever known.
+
+At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his
+opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted
+him like a handwriting on the wall.  Then his manner would become
+suddenly abstracted.  At one moment he would mentally put an
+indignant query why Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make
+it her business to have opinions about his opportunities; at
+another he thought that he could hardly be angry with her for
+taking an interest in the doctor of her own parish.  Then he would
+drink a glass of grog and so get rid of the misgiving.  These
+hitches and quaffings were soon perceived by Grace as well as by
+her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when the
+first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late
+rose and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the
+words Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten
+minutes they were gone.
+
+"Now, Grace," said her husband as soon as he found himself alone
+with her in their private apartments, "we've had a very pleasant
+evening, and everybody has been very kind.  But we must come to an
+understanding about our way of living here.  If we continue in
+these rooms there must be no mixing in with your people below.  I
+can't stand it, and that's the truth."
+
+She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for
+those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship
+he had professed to regard with so much interest.  But she
+assented in a moment.
+
+"We must be simply your father's tenants," he continued, "and our
+goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived
+elsewhere."
+
+"Certainly, Edgar--I quite see that it must be so."
+
+"But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without
+knowing whether I should approve or disapprove.  When I came I
+couldn't help myself at all."
+
+She, sighing: "Yes--I see I ought to have waited; though they came
+unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best."
+
+Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his
+old rounds as usual.  But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye
+as his to discern, or to think he discerned, that he was no longer
+regarded as an extrinsic, unfathomed gentleman of limitless
+potentiality, scientific and social; but as Mr. Melbury's compeer,
+and therefore in a degree only one of themselves.  The Hintock
+woodlandlers held with all the strength of inherited conviction to
+the aristocratic principle, and as soon as they had discovered
+that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury Fitzpierses they had
+accorded to him for nothing a touching of hat-brims, promptness of
+service, and deference of approach, which Melbury had to do
+without, though he paid for it over and over.  But now, having
+proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage, Fitzpiers was
+believed in no more as a superior hedged by his own divinity;
+while as doctor he began to be rated no higher than old Jones,
+whom they had so long despised.
+
+His few patients seemed in his two months' absence to have
+dwindled considerably in number, and no sooner had he returned
+than there came to him from the Board of Guardians a complaint
+that a pauper had been neglected by his substitute.  In a fit of
+pride Fitzpiers resigned his appointment as one of the surgeons to
+the union, which had been the nucleus of his practice here.
+
+At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening to Grace
+more briskly than usual.  "They have written to me again about
+that practice in Budmouth that I once negotiated for," he said to
+her.  "The premium asked is eight hundred pounds, and I think that
+between your father and myself it ought to be raised.  Then we can
+get away from this place forever."
+
+The question had been mooted between them before, and she was not
+unprepared to consider it.  They had not proceeded far with the
+discussion when a knock came to the door, and in a minute Grammer
+ran up to say that a message had arrived from Hintock House
+requesting Dr. Fitzpiers to attend there at once.  Mrs. Charmond
+had met with a slight accident through the overturning of her
+carriage.
+
+"This is something, anyhow," said Fitzpiers, rising with an
+interest which he could not have defined.  "I have had a
+presentiment that this mysterious woman and I were to be better
+acquainted."
+
+The latter words were murmured to himself alone.
+
+"Good-night," said Grace, as soon as he was ready.  "I shall be
+asleep, probably, when you return."
+
+"Good-night, "he replied, inattentively, and went down-stairs.  It
+was the first time since their marriage that he had left her
+without a kiss.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Winterborne's house had been pulled down.  On this account his
+face had been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he would probably
+have disappeared from the place altogether but for his slight
+business connection with Melbury, on whose premises Giles kept his
+cider-making apparatus, now that he had no place of his own to
+stow it in.  Coming here one evening on his way to a hut beyond
+the wood where he now slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-
+thatched pinion of his paternal roof had vanished from its site,
+and that the walls were levelled.  In present circumstances he had
+a feeling for the spot that might have been called morbid, and
+when he had supped in the hut aforesaid he made use of the spare
+hour before bedtime to return to Little Hintock in the twilight
+and ramble over the patch of ground on which he had first seen the
+day.
+
+He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions.  Even in
+the gloom he could trace where the different rooms had stood;
+could mark the shape of the kitchen chimney-corner, in which he
+had roasted apples and potatoes in his boyhood, cast his bullets,
+and burned his initials on articles that did and did not belong to
+him.  The apple-trees still remained to show where the garden had
+been, the oldest of them even now retaining the crippled slant to
+north-east given them by the great November gale of 1824, which
+carried a brig bodily over the Chesil Bank.  They were at present
+bent to still greater obliquity by the heaviness of their produce. 
+Apples bobbed against his head, and in the grass beneath he
+crunched scores of them as he walked.  There was nobody to gather
+them now.
+
+It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half
+leaning against one of these inclined trunks, Winterborne had
+become lost in his thoughts, as usual, till one little star after
+another had taken up a position in the piece of sky which now
+confronted him where his walls and chimneys had formerly raised
+their outlines.  The house had jutted awkwardly into the road, and
+the opening caused by its absence was very distinct.
+
+In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage-wheels
+became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself against the
+blank sky, bearing down upon him with the bend in the lane which
+here occurred, and of which the house had been the cause.  He
+could discern the figure of a woman high up on the driving-seat of
+a phaeton, a groom being just visible behind.  Presently there was
+a slight scrape, then a scream.  Winterborne went across to the
+spot, and found the phaeton half overturned, its driver sitting on
+the heap of rubbish which had once been his dwelling, and the man
+seizing the horses' heads.  The equipage was Mrs. Charmond's, and
+the unseated charioteer that lady herself.
+
+To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent reply to
+the effect that she did not know.  The damage in other respects
+was little or none: the phaeton was righted, Mrs. Charmond placed
+in it, and the reins given to the servant.  It appeared that she
+had been deceived by the removal of the house, imagining the gap
+caused by the demolition to be the opening of the road, so that
+she turned in upon the ruins instead of at the bend a few yards
+farther on.
+
+"Drive home--drive home!" cried the lady, impatiently; and they
+started on their way.  They had not, however, gone many paces
+when, the air being still, Winterborne heard her say "Stop; tell
+that man to call the doctor--Mr. Fitzpiers--and send him on to the
+House.  I find I am hurt more seriously than I thought."
+
+Winterborne took the message from the groom and proceeded to the
+doctor's at once.  Having delivered it, he stepped back into the
+darkness, and waited till he had seen Fitzpiers leave the door. 
+He stood for a few minutes looking at the window which by its
+light revealed the room where Grace was sitting, and went away
+under the gloomy trees.
+
+
+
+Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he now saw
+open for the first time.  Contrary to his expectation there was
+visible no sign of that confusion or alarm which a serious
+accident to the mistress of the abode would have occasioned.  He
+was shown into a room at the top of the staircase, cosily and
+femininely draped, where, by the light of the shaded lamp, he saw
+a woman of full round figure reclining upon a couch in such a
+position as not to disturb a pile of magnificent hair on the crown
+of her head.  A deep purple dressing-gown formed an admirable foil
+to the peculiarly rich brown of her hair-plaits; her left arm,
+which was naked nearly up to the shoulder, was thrown upward, and
+between the fingers of her right hand she held a cigarette, while
+she idly breathed from her plump lips a thin stream of smoke
+towards the ceiling.
+
+The doctor's first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated
+prevision in having brought appliances for a serious case; the
+next, something more curious.  While the scene and the moment were
+new to him and unanticipated, the sentiment and essence of the
+moment were indescribably familiar.  What could be the cause of
+it? Probably a dream.
+
+Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her eyes to him, and
+he came and stood by her.  She glanced up at his face across her 
+brows and forehead, and then he observed a blush creep slowly over
+her decidedly handsome cheeks.  Her eyes, which had lingered upon
+him with an inquiring, conscious expression, were hastily
+withdrawn, and she mechanically applied the cigarette again to her
+lips.
+
+For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arousing himself
+he addressed her, formally condoled with her, and made the usual
+professional inquiries about what had happened to her, and where
+she was hurt.
+
+"That's what I want you to tell me," she murmured, in tones of
+indefinable reserve.  "I quite believe in you, for I know you are
+very accomplished, because you study so hard."
+
+"I'll do my best to justify your good opinion," said the young
+man, bowing.  "And none the less that I am happy to find the
+accident has not been serious."
+
+"I am very much shaken," she said.
+
+"Oh yes," he replied; and completed his examination, which
+convinced him that there was really nothing the matter with her,
+and more than ever puzzled him as to why he had been fetched,
+since she did not appear to be a timid woman.  "You must rest a
+while, and I'll send something," he said.
+
+"Oh, I forgot," she returned.  "Look here." And she showed him a
+little scrape on her arm--the full round arm that was exposed. 
+"Put some court-plaster on that, please."
+
+He obeyed.  "And now," she said, "before you go I want to put a
+question to you.  Sit round there in front of me, on that low
+chair, and bring the candles, or one, to the little table.  Do you
+smoke? Yes? That's right--I am learning.  Take one of these; and
+here's a light." She threw a matchbox across.
+
+Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from his new
+position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for the first
+time afforded him a full view of her face.  "How many years have
+passed since first we met!" she resumed, in a voice which she
+mainly endeavored to maintain at its former pitch of composure,
+and eying him with daring bashfulness.
+
+"WE met, do you say?"
+
+She nodded.  "I saw you recently at an hotel in London, when you
+were passing through, I suppose, with your bride, and I recognized
+you as one I had met in my girlhood.  Do you remember, when you
+were studying at Heidelberg, an English family that was staying
+there, who used to walk--"
+
+"And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-colored hair--ah,
+I see it before my eyes!--who lost her gloves on the Great
+Terrace--who was going back in the dusk to find them--to whom I
+said, 'I'll go for them,' and you said, 'Oh, they are not worth
+coming all the way up again for.' I DO remember, and how very long
+we stayed talking there! I went next morning while the dew was on
+the grass: there they lay--the little fingers sticking out damp
+and thin.  I see them now! I picked them up, and then--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I kissed them," he rejoined, rather shamefacedly.
+
+"But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk?"
+
+"Never mind.  I was young then, and I kissed them.  I wondered how
+I could make the most of my trouvaille, and decided that I would
+call at your hotel with them that afternoon.  It rained, and I
+waited till next day.  I called, and you were gone."
+
+"Yes," answered she, with dry melancholy.  "My mother, knowing my
+disposition, said she had no wish for such a chit as me to go
+falling in love with an impecunious student, and spirited me away
+to Baden.  As it is all over and past I'll tell you one thing: I
+should have sent you a line passing warm had I known your name. 
+That name I never knew till my maid said, as you passed up the
+hotel stairs a month ago, 'There's Dr. Fitzpiers.'"
+
+"Good Heaven!" said Fitzpiers, musingly.  "How the time comes back
+to me!  The evening, the morning, the dew, the spot.  When I found
+that you really were gone it was as if a cold iron had been passed
+down my back.  I went up to where you had stood when I last saw
+you---I flung myself on the grass, and--being not much more than a
+boy--my eyes were literally blinded with tears.  Nameless, unknown
+to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice."
+
+"For how long?"
+
+"Oh--ever so long.  Days and days."
+
+"Days and days! ONLY days and days? Oh, the heart of a man! Days
+and days!"
+
+"But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than a day or two. 
+It was not a full-blown love--it was the merest bud--red, fresh,
+vivid, but small.  It was a colossal passion in posse, a giant in
+embryo.  It never matured."
+
+"So much the better, perhaps."
+
+"Perhaps.  But see how powerless is the human will against
+predestination.  We were prevented meeting; we have met.  One
+feature of the case remains the same amid many changes.  You are
+still rich, and I am still poor.  Better than that, you have
+(judging by your last remark) outgrown the foolish, impulsive
+passions of your early girl-hood.  I have not outgrown mine."
+
+"I beg your pardon," said she, with vibrations of strong feeling
+in her words.  "I have been placed in a position which hinders
+such outgrowings.  Besides, I don't believe that the genuine
+subjects of emotion do outgrow them; I believe that the older such
+people get the worse they are.  Possibly at ninety or a hundred
+they may feel they are cured; but a mere threescore and ten won't
+do it--at least for me."
+
+He gazed at her in undisguised admiration.  Here was a soul of
+souls!
+
+"Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly," he exclaimed.  "But you speak
+sadly as well.  Why is that?"
+
+"I always am sad when I come here," she said, dropping to a low
+tone with a sense of having been too demonstrative.
+
+"Then may I inquire why you came?"
+
+"A man brought me.  Women are always carried about like corks upon
+the waves of masculine desires....I hope I have not alarmed you;
+but Hintock has the curious effect of bottling up the emotions
+till one can no longer hold them; I am often obliged to fly away
+and discharge my sentiments somewhere, or I should die outright."
+
+"There is very good society in the county for those who have the
+privilege of entering it."
+
+"Perhaps so.  But the misery of remote country life is that your
+neighbors have no toleration for difference of opinion and habit. 
+My neighbors think I am an atheist, except those who think I am a
+Roman Catholic; and when I speak disrespectfully of the weather or
+the crops they think I am a blasphemer."
+
+She broke into a low musical laugh at the idea.
+
+"You don't wish me to stay any longer?" he inquired, when he found
+that she remained musing.
+
+"No--I think not."
+
+"Then tell me that I am to be gone."
+
+"Why? Cannot you go without?"
+
+"I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself."
+
+"Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you'll be in my way?"
+
+"I feared it might be so."
+
+"Then fear no more.  But good-night.  Come to-morrow and see if I
+am going on right.  This renewal of acquaintance touches me.  I
+have already a friendship for you."
+
+"If it depends upon myself it shall last forever."
+
+"My best hopes that it may.  Good-by."
+
+Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to decide whether
+she had sent for him in the natural alarm which might have
+followed her mishap, or with the single view of making herself
+known to him as she had done, for which the capsize had afforded
+excellent opportunity.  Outside the house he mused over the spot
+under the light of the stars.  It seemed very strange that he
+should have come there more than once when its inhabitant was
+absent, and observed the house with a nameless interest; that he
+should have assumed off-hand before he knew Grace that it was here
+she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and seasons the
+individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself upon him
+as appertaining to some existence with which he was concerned.
+
+The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Charmond's for a
+day or two in the past had created a sentimental interest in her
+at the time, but it had been so evanescent that in the ordinary
+onward roll of affairs he would scarce ever have recalled it
+again.  To find her here, however, in these somewhat romantic
+circumstances, magnified that by-gone and transitory tenderness to
+indescribable proportions.
+
+On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding it in a new
+way--from the Hintock House point of view rather than from his own
+and the Melburys'.  The household had all gone to bed, and as he
+went up-stairs he heard the snore of the timber-merchant from his
+quarter of the building, and turned into the passage communicating
+with his own rooms in a strange access of sadness.  A light was
+burning for him in the chamber; but Grace, though in bed, was not
+asleep.  In a moment her sympathetic voice came from behind the
+curtains.
+
+"Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?"
+
+Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond as a patient
+that he was not on the instant ready with a reply.
+
+"Oh no," he said.  "There are no bones broken, but she is shaken. 
+I am going again to-morrow."
+
+Another inquiry or two, and Grace said,
+
+"Did she ask for me?"
+
+"Well--I think she did--I don't quite remember; but I am under the
+impression that she spoke of you."
+
+"Cannot you recollect at all what she said?"
+
+"I cannot, just this minute."
+
+"At any rate she did not talk much about me?" said Grace with
+disappointment.
+
+"Oh no."
+
+"But you did, perhaps," she added, innocently fishing for a
+compliment.
+
+"Oh yes--you may depend upon that!" replied he, warmly, though
+scarcely thinking of what he was saving, so vividly was there
+present to his mind the personality of Mrs. Charmond.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+The doctor's professional visit to Hintock House was promptly
+repeated the next day and the next.  He always found Mrs. Charmond
+reclining on a sofa, and behaving generally as became a patient
+who was in no great hurry to lose that title.  On each occasion he
+looked gravely at the little scratch on her arm, as if it had been
+a serious wound.
+
+He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight scar on
+her temple, and it was very convenient to put a piece of black
+plaster on this conspicuous part of her person in preference to
+gold-beater's skin, so that it might catch the eyes of the
+servants, and make his presence appear decidedly necessary, in
+case there should be any doubt of the fact.
+
+"Oh--you hurt me!" she exclaimed one day.
+
+He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under which the
+scrape had turned the color of an unripe blackberry previous to
+vanishing altogether.  "Wait a moment, then--I'll damp it," said
+Fitzpiers.  He put his lips to the place and kept them there till
+the plaster came off easily.  "It was at your request I put it
+on," said he.
+
+"I know it," she replied.  "Is that blue vein still in my temple
+that used to show there?  The scar must be just upon it.  If the
+cut had been a little deeper it would have spilt my hot blood
+indeed!" Fitzpiers examined so closely that his breath touched her
+tenderly, at which their eyes rose to an encounter--hers showing
+themselves as deep and mysterious as interstellar space.  She
+turned her face away suddenly.  "Ah! none of that! none of that--I
+cannot coquet with you!" she cried.  "Don't suppose I consent to
+for one moment.  Our poor, brief, youthful hour of love-making was
+too long ago to bear continuing now.  It is as well that we should
+understand each other on that point before we go further."
+
+"Coquet! Nor I with you.  As it was when I found the historic
+gloves, so it is now.  I might have been and may be foolish; but I
+am no trifler.  I naturally cannot forget that little space in
+which I flitted across the field of your vision in those days of
+the past, and the recollection opens up all sorts of imaginings."
+
+"Suppose my mother had not taken me away?" she murmured, her
+dreamy eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree.
+
+"I should have seen you again."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then the fire would have burned higher and higher.  What would
+have immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of
+heart at last."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Well--that's the end of all love, according to Nature's law.  I
+can give no other reason."
+
+"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed.  "Since we are only
+picturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake,
+spoil the picture." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she
+added, with an incipient pout upon her full lips, "Let me think at
+least that if you had really loved me at all seriously, you would
+have loved me for ever and ever!"
+
+"You are right--think it with all your heart," said he.  "It is a
+pleasant thought, and costs nothing."
+
+She weighed that remark in silence a while.  "Did you ever hear
+anything of me from then till now?" she inquired.
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"So much the better.  I had to fight the battle of life as well as
+you.  I may tell you about it some day.  But don't ever ask me to
+do it, and particularly do not press me to tell you now."
+
+Thus the two or three days that they had spent in tender
+acquaintance on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were
+stretched out in retrospect to the length and importance of years;
+made to form a canvas for infinite fancies, idle dreams, luxurious
+melancholies, and sweet, alluring assertions which could neither
+be proved nor disproved.  Grace was never mentioned between them,
+but a rumor of his proposed domestic changes somehow reached her
+ears.
+
+"Doctor, you are going away," she exclaimed, confronting him with
+accusatory reproach in her large dark eyes no less than in her
+rich cooing voice.  "Oh yes, you are," she went on, springing to
+her feet with an air which might almost have been called
+passionate.  "It is no use denying it.  You have bought a practice
+at Budmouth.  I don't blame you.  Nobody can live at Hintock--
+least of all a professional man who wants to keep abreast of
+recent discovery.  And there is nobody here to induce such a one
+to stay for other reasons.  That's right, that's right--go away!"
+
+"But no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, though I
+am indeed in treaty for it.  And, my dear friend, if I continue to
+feel about the business as I feel at this moment--perhaps I may
+conclude never to go at all."
+
+"But you hate Hintock, and everybody and everything in it that you
+don't mean to take away with you?"
+
+Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory tones, and
+she lapsed into the frivolous archness under which she hid
+passions of no mean strength--strange, smouldering, erratic
+passions, kept down like a stifled conflagration, but bursting out
+now here, now there--the only certain element in their direction
+being its unexpectedness.  If one word could have expressed her it
+would have been Inconsequence.  She was a woman of perversities,
+delighting in frequent contrasts.  She liked mystery, in her life,
+in her love, in her history.  To be fair to her, there was nothing
+in the latter which she had any great reason to be ashamed of, and
+many things of which she might have been proud; but it had never
+been fathomed by the honest minds of Hintock, and she rarely
+volunteered her experiences.  As for her capricious nature, the
+people on her estates grew accustomed to it, and with that
+marvellous subtlety of contrivance in steering round odd tempers,
+that is found in sons of the soil and dependants generally, they
+managed to get along under her government rather better than they
+would have done beneath a more equable rule.
+
+Now, with regard to the doctor's notion of leaving Hintock, he had
+advanced furthur towards completing the purchase of the Budmouth
+surgeon's good-will than he had admitted to Mrs. Charmond.  The
+whole matter hung upon what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four
+hours.  The evening after leaving her he went out into the lane,
+and walked and pondered between the high hedges, now greenish-
+white with wild clematis--here called "old-man's beard," from its
+aspect later in the year.
+
+The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, after which
+his departure from Hintock would be irrevocable.  But could he go
+away, remembering what had just passed? The trees, the hills, the
+leaves, the grass--each had been endowed and quickened with a
+subtle charm since he had discovered the person and history, and,
+above all, mood of their owner.  There was every temporal reason
+for leaving; it would be entering again into a world which he had
+only quitted in a passion for isolation, induced by a fit of
+Achillean moodiness after an imagined slight.  His wife herself
+saw the awkwardness of their position here, and cheerfully
+welcomed the purposed change, towards which every step had been
+taken but the last.  But could he find it in his heart--as he
+found it clearly enough in his conscience--to go away?
+
+He drew a troubled breath, and went in-doors.  Here he rapidly
+penned a letter, wherein he withdrew once for all from the treaty
+for the Budmouth practice.  As the postman had already left Little
+Hintock for that night, he sent one of Melbury's men to intercept
+a mail-cart on another turnpike-road, and so got the letter off.
+
+The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told him the
+thing was done.  Fitzpiers went back to his house musing.  Why had
+he carried out this impulse--taken such wild trouble to effect a
+probable injury to his own and his young wife's prospects? His
+motive was fantastic, glowing, shapeless as the fiery scenery
+about the western sky.  Mrs. Charmond could overtly be nothing
+more to him than a patient now, and to his wife, at the outside, a
+patron.  In the unattached bachelor days of his first sojourning
+here how highly proper an emotional reason for lingering on would
+have appeared to troublesome dubiousness.  Matrimonial ambition is
+such an honorable thing.
+
+"My father has told me that you have sent off one of the men with
+a late letter to Budmouth," cried Grace, coming out vivaciously to
+meet him under the declining light of the sky, wherein hung,
+solitary, the folding star.  "I said at once that you had finally
+agreed to pay the premium they ask, and that the tedious question
+had been settled.  When do we go, Edgar?"
+
+"I have altered my mind," said he.  "They want too much--seven
+hundred and fifty is too large a sum--and in short, I have
+declined to go further.  We must wait for another opportunity.  I
+fear I am not a good business-man." He spoke the last words with a
+momentary faltering at the great foolishness of his act; for, as
+he looked in her fair and honorable face, his heart reproached him
+for what he had done.
+
+Her manner that evening showed her disappointment.  Personally she
+liked the home of her childhood much, and she was not ambitious. 
+But her husband had seemed so dissatisfied with the circumstances
+hereabout since their marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go
+for his sake.
+
+It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond again. 
+The morning had been windy, and little showers had sowed
+themselves like grain against the walls and window-panes of the
+Hintock cottages.  He went on foot across the wilder recesses of
+the park, where slimy streams of green moisture, exuding from
+decayed holes caused by old amputations, ran down the bark of the
+oaks and elms, the rind below being coated with a lichenous wash
+as green as emerald.  They were stout-trunked trees, that never
+rocked their stems in the fiercest gale, responding to it entirely
+by crooking their limbs.  Wrinkled like an old crone's face, and
+antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage of their
+summits, they were nevertheless still green--though yellow had
+invaded the leaves of other trees.
+
+She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first floor,
+and Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the window-curtains
+were closed and a red-shaded lamp and candles burning, though out-
+of-doors it was broad daylight.  Moreover, a large fire was
+burning in the grate, though it was not cold.
+
+"What does it all mean?" he asked.
+
+She sat in an easy-chair, her face being turned away.  "Oh," she
+murmured, "it is because the world is so dreary outside.  Sorrow
+and bitterness in the sky, and floods of agonized tears beating
+against the panes.  I lay awake last night, and I could hear the
+scrape of snails creeping up the window-glass; it was so sad! My
+eyes were so heavy this morning that I could have wept my life
+away.  I cannot bear you to see my face; I keep it away from you
+purposely.  Oh! why were we given hungry hearts and wild desires
+if we have to live in a world like this? Why should Death only
+lend what Life is compelled to borrow--rest? Answer that, Dr.
+Fitzpiers."
+
+"You must eat of a second tree of knowledge before you can do it,
+Felice Charmond."
+
+"Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I become full
+of fears, till I think I shall die for very fear.  The terrible
+insistencies of society--how severe they are, and cold and
+inexorable--ghastly towards those who are made of wax and not of
+stone.  Oh, I am afraid of them; a stab for this error, and a stab
+for that--correctives and regulations framed that society may tend
+to perfection--an end which I don't care for in the least.  Yet
+for this, all I do care for has to be stunted and starved."
+
+Fitzpiers had seated himself near her.  "What sets you in this
+mournful mood?" he asked, gently.  (In reality he knew that it was
+the result of a loss of tone from staying in-doors so much, but he
+did not say so.)
+
+"My reflections.  Doctor, you must not come here any more.  They
+begin to think it a farce already.  I say you must come no more. 
+There--don't be angry with me;" and she jumped up, pressed his
+hand, and looked anxiously at him.  "It is necessary.  It is best
+for both you and me."
+
+"But," said Fitzpiers, gloomily, "what have we done?"
+
+"Done--we have done nothing.  Perhaps we have thought the more. 
+However, it is all vexation.  I am going away to Middleton Abbey,
+near Shottsford, where a relative of my late husband lives, who is
+confined to her bed.  The engagement was made in London, and I
+can't get out of it.  Perhaps it is for the best that I go there
+till all this is past.  When are you going to enter on your new
+practice, and leave Hintock behind forever, with your pretty wife
+on your arm?"
+
+"I have refused the opportunity.  I love this place too well to
+depart."
+
+"You HAVE?" she said, regarding him with wild uncertainty.
+
+"Why do you ruin yourself in that way?  Great Heaven, what have I
+done!"
+
+"Nothing.  Besides, you are going away."
+
+"Oh yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or two.  Yet
+perhaps I shall gain strength there--particularly strength of
+mind--I require it.  And when I come back I shall be a new woman;
+and you can come and see me safely then, and bring your wife with
+you, and we'll be friends--she and I.  Oh, how this shutting up of
+one's self does lead to indulgence in idle sentiments.  I shall
+not wish you to give your attendance to me after to-day.  But I am
+glad that you are not going away--if your remaining does not
+injure your prospects at all."
+
+As soon as he had left the room the mild friendliness she had
+preserved in her tone at parting, the playful sadness with which
+she had conversed with him, equally departed from her.  She became
+as heavy as lead--just as she had been before he arrived.  Her
+whole being seemed to dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do
+anything, and the sense of it made her lips tremulous and her
+closed eyes wet.  His footsteps again startled her, and she turned
+round.
+
+"I returned for a moment to tell you that the evening is going to
+be fine.  The sun is shining; so do open your curtains and put out
+those lights.  Shall I do it for you?"
+
+"Please--if you don't mind."
+
+He drew back the window-curtains, whereupon the red glow of the
+lamp and the two candle-flames became almost invisible with the
+flood of late autumn sunlight that poured in.  "Shall I come round 
+to you?" he asked, her back being towards him.
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I am crying, and I don't want to see you."
+
+He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had killed the
+rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the curtains and letting in
+garish day.
+
+"Then I am going," he said.
+
+"Very well," she answered, stretching one hand round to him, and
+patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in the other.
+
+"Shall I write a line to you at--"
+
+"No, no." A gentle reasonableness came into her tone as she added,
+"It must not be, you know.  It won't do."
+
+"Very well.  Good-by." The next moment he was gone.
+
+In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged the maid
+who dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitzpiers's marriage.
+
+"Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winterborne," said
+the young woman.
+
+"And why didn't she marry him?" said Mrs. Charmond.
+
+"Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses."
+
+"Lost his houses? How came he to do that?"
+
+"The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, and your
+agent wouldn't renew them, though it is said that Mr. Winterborne
+had a very good claim.  That's as I've heard it, ma'am, and it was
+through it that the match was broke off."
+
+Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. Charmond sunk
+into a mood of dismal self-reproach.  "In refusing that poor man
+his reasonable request," she said to herself, "I foredoomed my
+rejuvenated girlhood's romance.  Who would have thought such a
+business matter could have nettled my own heart like this? Now for
+a winter of regrets and agonies and useless wishes, till I forget
+him in the spring.  Oh! I am glad I am going away."
+
+She left her chamber and went down to dine with a sigh.  On the
+stairs she stood opposite the large window for a moment, and
+looked out upon the lawn.  It was not yet quite dark.  Half-way up
+the steep green slope confronting her stood old Timothy Tangs, who
+was shortening his way homeward by clambering here where there was
+no road, and in opposition to express orders that no path was to
+be made there.  Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a pinch of
+snuff; but observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at him, he hastened to
+get over the top out of hail.  His precipitancy made him miss his
+footing, and he rolled like a barrel to the bottom, his snuffbox
+rolling in front of him.
+
+Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers; her
+constitutional cloud of misery; the sorrowful drops that still
+hung upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incursive mood
+started by the spectacle.  She burst into an immoderate fit of
+laughter, her very gloom of the previous hour seeming to render it
+the more uncontrollable.  It had not died out of her when she
+reached the dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her
+shoulders suddenly shook as the scene returned upon her; and the
+tears of her hilarity mingled with the remnants of those
+engendered by her grief.
+
+She resolved to be sad no more.  She drank two glasses of
+champagne, and a little more still after those, and amused herself
+in the evening with singing little amatory songs.
+
+"I must do something for that poor man Winterborne, however," she
+said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hintock House. 
+Middleton Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles
+distant by road, eighteen by bridle-paths and footways.
+
+Grace observed, for the first time, that her husband was restless,
+that at moments he even was disposed to avoid her.  The scrupulous
+civility of mere acquaintanceship crept into his manner; yet, when
+sitting at meals, he seemed hardly to hear her remarks.  Her
+little doings interested him no longer, while towards her father
+his bearing was not far from supercilious.  It was plain that his
+mind was entirely outside her life, whereabouts outside it she
+could not tell; in some region of science, possibly, or of
+psychological literature.  But her hope that he was again
+immersing himself in those lucubrations which before her marriage
+had made his light a landmark in Hintock, was founded simply on
+the slender fact that he often sat up late.
+
+One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on Rub-Down
+Hill, the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing, and
+which opened on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into
+Blackmoor Vale, or the Vale of the White Hart, extending beneath
+the eye at this point to a distance of many miles.  His attention
+was fixed on the landscape far away, and Grace's approach was so
+noiseless that he did not hear her.  When she came close she could
+see his lips moving unconsciously, as to some impassioned
+visionary theme.
+
+She spoke, and Fitzpiers started.  "What are you looking at?" she
+asked.
+
+"Oh! I was contemplating our old place of Buckbury, in my idle
+way," he said.
+
+It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that
+cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but she made no further
+observation, and taking his arm walked home beside him almost in
+silence.  She did not know that Middleton Abbey lay in the
+direction of his gaze.  "Are you going to have out Darling this
+afternoon?" she asked, presently.  Darling being the light-gray
+mare which Winterborne had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers
+now constantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful
+bargain, in combining a perfect docility with an almost human
+intelligence; moreover, she was not too young.  Fitzpiers was
+unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these qualities.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "but not to drive.  I am riding her.  I
+practise crossing a horse as often as I can now, for I find that I
+can take much shorter cuts on horseback."
+
+He had, in fact, taken these riding exercises for about a week,
+only since Mrs. Charmond's absence, his universal practice
+hitherto having been to drive.
+
+Some few days later, Fitzpiers started on the back of this horse
+to see a patient in the aforesaid Vale.  It was about five o'clock
+in the evening when he went away, and at bedtime he had not
+reached home.  There was nothing very singular in this, though she
+was not aware that he had any patient more than five or six miles
+distant in that direction.  The clock had struck one before
+Fitzpiers entered the house, and he came to his room softly, as if
+anxious not to disturb her.
+
+The next morning she was stirring considerably earlier than he.
+
+In the yard there was a conversation going on about the mare; the
+man who attended to the horses, Darling included, insisted that
+the latter was "hag-rid;" for when he had arrived at the stable
+that morning she was in such a state as no horse could be in by
+honest riding.  It was true that the doctor had stabled her
+himself when he got home, so that she was not looked after as she
+would have been if he had groomed and fed her; but that did not
+account for the appearance she presented, if Mr. Fitzpiers's
+journey had been only where he had stated.  The phenomenal
+exhaustion of Darling, as thus related, was sufficient to develop
+a whole series of tales about riding witches and demons, the
+narration of which occupied a considerable time.
+
+Grace returned in-doors.  In passing through the outer room she
+picked up her husband's overcoat which he had carelessly flung
+down across a chair.  A turnpike ticket fell out of the breast-
+pocket, and she saw that it had been issued at Middleton Gate.  He
+had therefore visited Middleton the previous night, a distance of
+at least five-and-thirty miles on horseback, there and back.
+
+During the day she made some inquiries, and learned for the first
+time that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middleton Abbey.  She could
+not resist an inference--strange as that inference was.
+
+A few days later he prepared to start again, at the same time and
+in the same direction.  She knew that the state of the cottager
+who lived that way was a mere pretext; she was quite sure he was
+going to Mrs. Charmond.  Grace was amazed at the mildness of the
+passion which the suspicion engendered in her.  She was but little
+excited, and her jealousy was languid even to death.  It told
+tales of the nature of her affection for him.  In truth, her
+antenuptial regard for Fitzpiers had been rather of the quality of
+awe towards a superior being than of tender solicitude for a
+lover.  It had been based upon mystery and strangeness--the
+mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his professional skill,
+of his beliefs.  When this structure of ideals was demolished by
+the intimacy of common life, and she found him as merely human as
+the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for
+an enduring and stanch affection--a sympathetic interdependence,
+wherein mutual weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive
+alliance.  Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded
+confidence and truth out of which alone such a second union could
+spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that she now
+watched the mare brought round.
+
+"I'll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great hurry,"
+she said, rather loath, after all, to let him go.
+
+"Do; there's plenty of time," replied her husband.  Accordingly he
+led along the horse, and walked beside her, impatient enough
+nevertheless.  Thus they proceeded to the turnpike road, and
+ascended Rub-Down Hill to the gate he had been leaning over when
+she surprised him ten days before.  This was the end of her
+excursion.  Fitzpiers bade her adieu with affection, even with
+tenderness, and she observed that he looked weary-eyed.
+
+"Why do you go to-night?" she said.  "You have been called up two
+nights in succession already."
+
+"I must go," he answered, almost gloomily.  "Don't wait up for
+me." With these words he mounted his horse, passed through the
+gate which Grace held open for him, and ambled down the steep
+bridle-track to the valley.
+
+She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey
+onward.  His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her
+back beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of
+the hill.  Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding she was
+determined to be loyal if he proved true; and the determination to
+love one's best will carry a heart a long way towards making that
+best an ever-growing thing.  The conspicuous coat of the active
+though blanching mare made horse and rider easy objects for the
+vision.  Though Darling had been chosen with such pains by
+Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek creature;
+but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient,
+particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of
+staying power being left in Darling yet.  Fitzpiers, like others
+of his character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not
+at all disdain to spend Melbury's money, or appropriate to his own
+use the horse which belonged to Melbury's daughter.
+
+And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the
+gorgeous autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by
+orchards lustrous with the reds of apple-crops, berries, and
+foliage, the whole intensified by the gilding of the declining
+sun.  The earth this year had been prodigally bountiful, and now
+was the supreme moment of her bounty.  In the poorest spots the
+hedges were bowed with haws and blackberries; acorns cracked
+underfoot, and the burst husks of chestnuts lay exposing their
+auburn contents as if arranged by anxious sellers in a fruit-
+market.  In all this proud show some kernels were unsound as her
+own situation, and she wondered if there were one world in the
+universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow.
+
+Herr Tannhauser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him
+distinctly visible yet.  Could she have heard Fitzpiers's voice at
+that moment she would have found him murmuring--
+
+
+    "...Towards the loadstar of my one desire
+     I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light."
+
+
+But he was a silent spectacle to her now.  Soon he rose out of the
+valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his
+right, which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy
+clay, the character and herbage of the two formations being so
+distinct that the calcareous upland appeared but as a deposit of a
+few years' antiquity upon the level vale.  He kept along the edge
+of this high, unenclosed country, and the sky behind him being
+deep violet, she could still see white Darling in relief upon it--
+a mere speck now--a Wouvermans eccentricity reduced to microscopic
+dimensions.  Upon this high ground he gradually disappeared.
+
+Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her own use, in
+pure love of her, by one who had always been true, impressed to
+convey her husband away from her to the side of a new-found idol. 
+While she was musing on the vicissitudes of horses and wives, she
+discerned shapes moving up the valley towards her, quite near at
+hand, though till now hidden by the hedges.  Surely they were
+Giles Winterborne, with his two horses and cider-apparatus,
+conducted by Robert Creedle.  Up, upward they crept, a stray beam
+of the sun alighting every now and then like a star on the blades
+of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted to steel mirrors
+by the action of the malic acid.  She opened the gate when he came
+close, and the panting horses rested as they achieved the ascent.
+
+"How do you do, Giles?" said she, under a sudden impulse to be
+familiar with him.
+
+He replied with much more reserve.  "You are going for a walk,
+Mrs. Fitzpiers?" he added.  "It is pleasant just now."
+
+"No, I am returning," said she.
+
+The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Winterborne
+walked by her side in the rear of the apple-mill.
+
+He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being
+sunburnt to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots
+and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the
+sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere
+about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each
+season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have
+been born and bred among the orchards.  Her heart rose from its
+late sadness like a released spring; her senses revelled in the
+sudden lapse back to nature unadorned.  The consciousness of
+having to be genteel because of her husband's profession, the
+veneer of artificiality which she had acquired at the fashionable
+schools, were thrown off, and she became the crude, country girl
+of her latent, earliest instincts.
+
+Nature was bountiful, she thought.  No sooner had she been starved
+off by Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, impersonating bare and
+undiluted manliness, had arisen out of the earth, ready to hand. 
+This was an excursion of the imagination which she did not
+encourage, and she said suddenly, to disguise the confused regard
+which had followed her thoughts, "Did you meet my husband?"
+
+Winterborne, with some hesitation, "Yes."
+
+"Where did you meet him?"
+
+"At Calfhay Cross.  I come from Middleton Abbey; I have been
+making there for the last week."
+
+"Haven't they a mill of their own?"
+
+"Yes, but it's out of repair."
+
+"I think--I heard that Mrs. Charmond had gone there to stay?"
+
+"Yes.  I have seen her at the windows once or twice."
+
+Grace waited an interval before she went on: "Did Mr. Fitzpiers
+take the way to Middleton?"
+
+"Yes...I met him on Darling." As she did not reply, he added, with
+a gentler inflection, "You know why the mare was called that?"
+
+"Oh yes--of course," she answered, quickly.
+
+They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the whole
+west sky was revealed.  Between the broken clouds they could see
+far into the recesses of heaven, the eye journeying on under a
+species of golden arcades, and past fiery obstructions, fancied
+cairns, logan-stones, stalactites and stalagmite of topaz.  Deeper
+than this their gaze passed thin flakes of incandescence, till it
+plunged into a bottomless medium of soft green fire.
+
+Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of ill-usage,
+her revolt for the nonce against social law, her passionate desire
+for primitive life, may have showed in her face.  Winterborne was
+looking at her, his eyes lingering on a flower that she wore in
+her bosom.  Almost with the abstraction of a somnambulist he
+stretched out his hand and gently caressed the flower.
+
+She drew back.  "What are you doing, Giles Winterborne!" she
+exclaimed, with a look of severe surprise.  The evident absence of
+all premeditation from the act, however, speedily led her to think
+that it was not necessary to stand upon her dignity here and now. 
+"You must bear in mind, Giles," she said, kindly, "that we are not
+as we were; and some people might have said that what you did was
+taking a liberty."
+
+It was more than she need have told him; his action of
+forgetfulness had made him so angry with himself that he flushed
+through his tan.  "I don't know what I am coming to!" he
+exclaimed, savagely.  "Ah--I was not once like this!" Tears of
+vexation were in his eyes.
+
+"No, now--it was nothing.  I was too reproachful."
+
+"It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen something like
+it done elsewhere--at Middleton lately," he said, thoughtfully,
+after a while.
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"Don't ask it."
+
+She scanned him narrowly.  "I know quite well enough," she
+returned, indifferently.  "It was by my husband, and the woman was
+Mrs. Charmond.  Association of ideas reminded you when you saw
+me....Giles--tell me all you know about that--please do, Giles!
+But no--I won't hear it.  Let the subject cease.  And as you are
+my friend, say nothing to my father."
+
+They reached a place where their ways divided.  Winterborne
+continued along the highway which kept outside the copse, and
+Grace opened a gate that entered it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by
+nut-bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos and threes and
+fours.  A little way on, the track she pursued was crossed by a
+similar one at right angles.  Here Grace stopped; some few yards
+up the transverse ride the buxom Suke Damson was visible--her gown
+tucked up high through her pocket-hole, and no bonnet on her head--
+in the act of pulling down boughs from which she was gathering
+and eating nuts with great rapidity, her lover Tim Tangs standing
+near her engaged in the same pleasant meal.
+
+Crack, crack went Suke's jaws every second or two.  By an
+automatic chain of thought Grace's mind reverted to the tooth-
+drawing scene described by her husband; and for the first time she
+wondered if that narrative were really true, Susan's jaws being so
+obviously sound and strong.  Grace turned up towards the nut-
+gatherers, and conquered her reluctance to speak to the girl who
+was a little in advance of Tim.  "Good-evening, Susan," she said.
+
+"Good-evening, Miss Melbury" (crack).
+
+"Mrs. Fitzpiers."
+
+"Oh yes, ma'am--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Suke, with a peculiar smile.
+
+Grace, not to be daunted, continued: "Take care of your teeth,
+Suke.  That accounts for the toothache."
+
+"I don't know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or head,
+thank the Lord" (crack).
+
+"Nor the loss of one, either?"
+
+"See for yourself, ma'am." She parted her red lips, and exhibited
+the whole double row, full up and unimpaired.
+
+"You have never had one drawn?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"So much the better for your stomach," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, in an
+altered voice.  And turning away quickly, she went on.
+
+As her husband's character thus shaped itself under the touch of
+time, Grace was almost startled to find how little she suffered
+from that jealous excitement which is conventionally attributed to
+all wives in such circumstances.  But though possessed by none of
+that feline wildness which it was her moral duty to experience,
+she did not fail to know that she had made a frightful mistake in
+her marriage.  Acquiescence in her father's wishes had been
+degradation to herself.  People are not given premonitions for
+nothing; she should have obeyed her impulse on that early morning,
+and steadfastly refused her hand.
+
+Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had told her
+about Suke--the dramatic account of her entreaties to him to draw
+the aching enemy, and the fine artistic touch he had given to the
+story by explaining that it was a lovely molar without a flaw!
+
+She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed by the
+complications of her position.  If his protestations to her before
+their marriage could be believed, her husband had felt affection
+of some sort for herself and this woman simultaneously; and was
+now again spreading the same emotion over Mrs. Charmond and
+herself conjointly, his manner being still kind and fond at times. 
+But surely, rather than that, he must have played the hypocrite
+towards her in each case with elaborate completeness; and the
+thought of this sickened her, for it involved the conjecture that
+if he had not loved her, his only motive for making her his wife
+must have been her little fortune.  Yet here Grace made a mistake,
+for the love of men like Fitzpiers is unquestionably of such
+quality as to bear division and transference.  He had indeed, once
+declared, though not to her, that on one occasion he had noticed
+himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at the same
+time.  Therein it differed from the highest affection as the lower
+orders of the animal world differ from advanced organisms,
+partition causing, not death, but a multiplied existence.  He had
+loved her sincerely, and had by no means ceased to love her now. 
+But such double and treble barrelled hearts were naturally beyond
+her conception.
+
+Of poor Suke Damson, Grace thought no more.  She had had her day.
+
+"If he does not love me I will not love him!" said Grace, proudly. 
+And though these were mere words, it was a somewhat formidable
+thing for Fitzpiers that her heart was approximating to a state in
+which it might be possible to carry them out.  That very absence
+of hot jealousy which made his courses so easy, and on which,
+indeed, he congratulated himself, meant, unknown to either wife or
+husband, more mischief than the inconvenient watchfulness of a
+jaundiced eye.
+
+Her sleep that night was nervous.  The wing allotted to her and
+her husband had never seemed so lonely.  At last she got up, put
+on her dressing-gown, and went down-stairs.  Her father, who slept
+lightly, heard her descend, and came to the stair-head.
+
+"Is that you, Grace? What's the matter?" he said.
+
+"Nothing more than that I am restless.  Edgar is detained by a
+case at Owlscombe in White Hart Vale."
+
+"But how's that? I saw the woman's husband at Great Hintock just
+afore bedtime; and she was going on well, and the doctor gone
+then."
+
+"Then he's detained somewhere else," said Grace.  "Never mind me;
+he will soon be home.  I expect him about one."
+
+She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several times.  One
+o'clock had been the hour of his return on the last occasion; but
+it passed now by a long way, and Fitzpiers did not come.  Just
+before dawn she heard the men stirring in the yard; and the
+flashes of their lanterns spread every now and then through her
+window-blind.  She remembered that her father had told her not to
+be disturbed if she noticed them, as they would be rising early to
+send off four loads of hurdles to a distant sheep-fair.  Peeping
+out, she saw them bustling about, the hollow-turner among the
+rest; he was loading his wares--wooden-bowls, dishes, spigots,
+spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and so on--upon one of her father's
+wagons, who carried them to the fair for him every year out of
+neighborly kindness.
+
+The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her but that her
+husband was still absent; though it was now five o'clock.  She
+could hardly suppose him, whatever his infatuation, to have
+prolonged to a later hour than ten an ostensibly professional call
+on Mrs. Charmond at Middleton; and he could have ridden home in
+two hours and a half.  What, then, had become of him? That he had
+been out the greater part of the two preceding nights added to her
+uneasiness.
+
+She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird twilight
+of advancing day chilling the rays from the lanterns, and making
+the men's faces wan.  As soon as Melbury saw her he came round,
+showing his alarm.
+
+"Edgar is not come," she said.  "And I have reason to know that
+he's not attending anybody.  He has had no rest for two nights
+before this.  I was going to the top of the hill to look for him."
+
+"I'll come with you," said Melbury.
+
+She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, for he saw
+a peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and above her
+uneasiness, and did not like the look of it.  Telling the men he
+would be with them again soon, he walked beside her into the
+turnpike-road, and partly up the hill whence she had watched
+Fitzpiers the night before across the Great White Hart or
+Blackmoor Valley.  They halted beneath a half-dead oak, hollow,
+and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out like
+accipitrine claws grasping the ground.  A chilly wind circled
+round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-
+tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of
+the boughs downward like fledglings from their nest.  The vale was
+wrapped in a dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was
+like a livid curtain edged with pink.  There was no sign nor sound
+of Fitzpiers.
+
+"It is no use standing here," said her father.  "He may come home
+fifty ways...why, look here!--here be Darling's tracks--turned
+homeward and nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours
+ago without your seeing him."
+
+"He has not done that," said she.
+
+They went back hastily.  On entering their own gates they
+perceived that the men had left the wagons, and were standing
+round the door of the stable which had been appropriated to the
+doctor's use.  "Is there anything the matter?" cried Grace.
+
+"Oh no, ma'am.  All's well that ends well," said old Timothy
+Tangs.  "I've heard of such things before--among workfolk, though
+not among your gentle people--that's true."
+
+They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling
+standing in the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back,
+sound asleep.  Darling was munching hay as well as she could with
+the bit in her month, and the reins, which had fallen from
+Fitzpiers's hand, hung upon her neck.
+
+Grace went and touched his hand; shook it before she could arouse
+him.  He moved, started, opened his eyes, and exclaimed, "Ah,
+Felice!...Oh, it's Grace.  I could not see in the gloom.  What--am
+I in the saddle?"
+
+"Yes," said she.  "How do you come here?"
+
+He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stammered, "I was
+riding along homeward through the vale, very, very sleepy, having
+been up so much of late.  When I came opposite Holywell spring the
+mare turned her head that way, as if she wanted to drink.  I let
+her go in, and she drank; I thought she would never finish.  While
+she was drinking, the clock of Owlscombe Church struck twelve.  I
+distinctly remember counting the strokes.  From that moment I
+positively recollect nothing till I saw you here by my side."
+
+"The name! If it had been any other horse he'd have had a broken
+neck!" murmured Melbury.
+
+"'Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet hoss will bring a man home at
+such times!" said John Upjohn.  "And what's more wonderful than
+keeping your seat in a deep, slumbering sleep?  I've knowed men
+drowze off walking home from randies where the mead and other
+liquors have gone round well, and keep walking for more than a
+mile on end without waking.  Well, doctor, I don't care who the
+man is, 'tis a mercy you wasn't a drownded, or a splintered, or a
+hanged up to a tree like Absalom--also a handsome gentleman like
+yerself, as the prophets say."
+
+"True," murmured old Timothy.  "From the soul of his foot to the
+crown of his head there was no blemish in him."
+
+"Or leastwise you might ha' been a-wownded into tatters a'most,
+and no doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven mile!"
+
+While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted,
+and taking Grace's arm walked stiffly in-doors with her.  Melbury
+stood staring at the horse, which, in addition to being very
+weary, was spattered with mud.  There was no mud to speak of about
+the Hintocks just now--only in the clammy hollows of the vale
+beyond Owlscombe, the stiff soil of which retained moisture for
+weeks after the uplands were dry.  While they were rubbing down
+the mare, Melbury's mind coupled with the foreign quality of the
+mud the name he had heard unconsciously muttered by the surgeon
+when Grace took his hand--"Felice."  Who was Felice? Why, Mrs.
+Charmond; and she, as he knew, was staying at Middleton.
+
+Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers's
+half-awakened soul--wherein there had been a picture of a recent
+interview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had
+begged him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him
+to disobey.  "What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me?
+Another belongs to you.  If they were to see you they would seize
+you as a thief!" And she had turbulently admitted to his wringing
+questions that her visit to Middleton had been undertaken less
+because of the invalid relative than in shamefaced fear of her own
+weakness if she remained near his home.  A triumph then it was to
+Fitzpiers, poor and hampered as he had become, to recognize his
+real conquest of this beauty, delayed so many years.  His was the
+selfish passion of Congreve's Millamont, to whom love's supreme
+delight lay in "that heart which others bleed for, bleed for me."
+
+When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here
+and there about his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the
+comfortable views which had lately possessed him on his domestic
+concerns.  It is true that he had for some days discerned that
+Grace more and more sought his company, preferred supervising his
+kitchen and bakehouse with her step-mother to occupying herself
+with the lighter details of her own apartments.  She seemed no
+longer able to find in her own hearth an adequate focus for her
+life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee after leading off to an
+independent home, had hovered again into the parent hive.  But he
+had not construed these and other incidents of the kind till now.
+
+Something was wrong in the dove-cot.  A ghastly sense that he
+alone would be responsible for whatever unhappiness should be
+brought upon her for whom he almost solely lived, whom to retain
+under his roof he had faced the numerous inconveniences involved
+in giving up the best part of his house to Fitzpiers.  There was
+no room for doubt that, had he allowed events to take their
+natural course, she would have accepted Winterborne, and realized
+his old dream of restitution to that young man's family.
+
+That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other creature
+for a moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief and
+astonishment.  In the pure and simple life he had led it had
+scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man might be
+faithless.  That he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charmond's
+position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, would have amazed
+Melbury by its audacity if he had not suspected encouragement from
+that quarter.  What could he and his simple Grace do to
+countervail the passions of such as those two sophisticated
+beings--versed in the world's ways, armed with every apparatus for
+victory?  In such an encounter the homely timber-dealer felt as
+inferior as a bow-and-arrow savage before the precise weapons of
+modern warfare.
+
+Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on.  The village
+was silent, most of the folk having gone to the fair.  Fitzpiers
+had retired to bed, and was sleeping off his fatigue.  She went to
+the stable and looked at poor Darling: in all probability Giles
+Winterborne, by obtaining for her a horse of such intelligence and
+docility, had been the means of saving her husband's life.  She
+paused over the strange thought; and then there appeared her
+father behind her.  She saw that he knew things were not as they
+ought to be, from the troubled dulness of his eye, and from his
+face, different points of which had independent motions,
+twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to himself, and involuntary.
+
+"He was detained, I suppose, last night?" said Melbury.
+
+"Oh yes; a bad case in the vale," she replied, calmly.
+
+"Nevertheless, he should have stayed at home."
+
+"But he couldn't, father."
+
+Her father turned away.  He could hardly bear to see his whilom
+truthful girl brought to the humiliation of having to talk like
+that.
+
+That night carking care sat beside Melbury's pillow, and his stiff
+limbs tossed at its presence.  "I can't lie here any longer," he
+muttered.  Striking a light, he wandered about the room.  "What
+have I done--what have I done for her?" he said to his wife, who
+had anxiously awakened.  "I had long planned that she should marry
+the son of the man I wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I
+told you all about it, Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah!
+but I was not content with doing right, I wanted to do more!"
+
+"Don't raft yourself without good need, George," she replied.  "I
+won't quite believe that things are so much amiss.  I won't
+believe that Mrs. Charmond has encouraged him.  Even supposing she
+has encouraged a great many, she can have no motive to do it now. 
+What so likely as that she is not yet quite well, and doesn't care
+to let another doctor come near her?"
+
+He did not heed.  "Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing
+a curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no
+employment now!"
+
+"Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond's past history? Perhaps
+that would throw some light upon things.  Pefore she came here as
+the wife of old Charmond four or five years ago, not a soul seems
+to have heard aught of her.  Why not make inquiries? And then do
+ye wait and see more; there'll be plenty of opportnnity.  Time
+enough to cry when you know 'tis a crying matter; and 'tis bad to
+meet troubles half-way."
+
+There was some good-sense in the notion of seeing further. 
+Melbury resolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, hut oppressed
+between-whiles with much fear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit nothing.  For
+the present, therefore, he simply watched.
+
+The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted wrought
+almost a miraculous change in Melbury's nature.  No man so furtive
+for the time as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his
+ingenuousness has been abused.  Melbury's heretofore confidential
+candor towards his gentlemanly son-in-law was displaced by a
+feline stealth that did injnry to his every action, thought, and
+mood.  He knew that a woman once given to a man for life took, as
+a rule, her lot as it came and made the best of it, without
+external interference; but for the first time he asked himself why
+this so generally should be so.  Moreover, this case was not, he
+argued, like ordinary cases.  Leaving out the question of Grace
+being anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar situation, as
+it were in mid-air between two planes of society, together with
+the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband's neglect a far more
+tragical matter to her than it would be to one who had a large
+circle of friends to fall back upon.  Wisely or unwisely, and
+whatever other fathers did, he resolved to fight his daughter's
+battle still.
+
+Mrs. Charmond had returned.  But Hintock House scarcely gave forth
+signs of life, so quietly had she reentered it.  He went to church
+at Great Hintock one afternoon as usual, there being no service at 
+the smaller village.  A few minutes before his departure, he had
+casually heard Fitzpiers, who was no church-goer, tell his wife
+that he was going to walk in the wood.  Melbury entered the
+building and sat down in his pew; the parson came in, then Mrs.
+Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers.
+
+The service proceeded, and the jealons father was quite sure that
+a mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly maintained between
+those two; he fancied that more than once their eyes met.  At the
+end, Fitzpiers so timed his movement into the aisle that it
+exactly coincided with Felice Charmond's from the opposite side,
+and they walked out with their garments in contact, the surgeon
+being just that two or three inches in her rear which made it
+convenient for his eyes to rest upon her cheek.  The cheek warmed
+up to a richer tone.
+
+This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had expected. 
+If she had been playing with him in an idle freak the game might
+soon have wearied her; but the smallest germ of passion--and women
+of the world do not change color for nothing--was a threatening
+development.  The mere presence of Fitzpiers in the building,
+after his statement, was wellnigh conclusive as far as he was
+concerned; but Melbury resolved yet to watch.
+
+He had to wait long.  Autumn drew shiveringly to its end.  One day
+something seemed to be gone from the gardens; the tenderer leaves
+of vegetables had shrunk under the first smart frost, and hung
+like faded linen rags; then the forest leaves, which had been
+descending at leisure, descended in haste and in multitudes, and
+all the golden colors that had hung overhead were now crowded
+together in a degraded mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads
+got redder and hornier, and curled themselves up to rot.  The only
+suspicious features in Mrs. Charmond's existence at this season
+were two: the first, that she lived with no companion or relative
+about her, which, considering her age and attractions, was
+somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow in a lonely country-
+house; the other, that she did not, as in previous years, start
+from Hintock to winter abroad.  In Fitzpiers, the only change from
+his last autnmn's habits lay in his abandonment of night study--
+his lamp never shone from his new dwelling as from his old.
+
+If the suspected ones met, it was by such adroit contrivances that
+even Melbury's vigilance could not encounter them together.  A
+simple call at her house by the doctor had nothing irregular about
+it, and that he had paid two or three such calls was certain. 
+What had passed at those interviews was known only to the parties
+themselves; but that Felice Charmond was under some one's
+influence Melbury soon had opportunity of perceiving.
+
+Winter had come on.  Owls began to be noisy in the mornings and
+evenings, and flocks of wood-pigeons made themselves prominent
+again.  One day in February, about six months after the marriage
+of Fitzpiers, Melbury was returning from Great Hintock on foot
+through the lane, when he saw before him the surgeon also walking. 
+Melbury would have overtaken him, but at that moment Fitzpiers
+turned in through a gate to one of the rambling drives among the
+trees at this side of the wood, which led to nowhere in
+particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine curves was the only
+justification of their existence.  Felice almost simultaneously
+trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer, in a little
+basket-carriage which she sometimes drove about the estate, 
+unaccompanied by a servant.  She turned in at the same place
+without having seen either Melbury or apparently Fitzpiers. 
+Melbury was soon at the spot, despite his aches and his sixty
+years.  Mrs. Charmond had come up with the doctor, who was
+standing immediately behind the carriage.  She had turned to him,
+her arm being thrown carelessly over the back of the seat.  They
+looked in each other's faces without uttering a word, an arch yet
+gloomy smile wreathing her lips.  Fitzpiers clasped her hanging
+hand, and, while she still remained in the same listless attitude,
+looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily unbuttoned her glove,
+and stripped her hand of it by rolling back the gauntlet over the
+fingers, so that it came off inside out.  He then raised her hand
+to his month, she still reclining passively, watching him as she
+might have watched a fly upon her dress.  At last she said, "Well,
+sir, what excuse for this disobedience?"
+
+"I make none."
+
+"Then go your way, and let me go mine." She snatched away her
+hand, touched the pony with the whip, and left him standing there,
+holding the reversed glove.
+
+Melbury's first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers,
+and upbraid him bitterly.  But a moment's thought was sufficient
+to show him the futility of any such simple proceeding.  There was
+not, after all, so much in what he had witnessed as in what that
+scene might be the surface and froth of--probably a state of mind
+on which censure operates as an aggravation rather than as a cure. 
+Moreover, he said to himself that the point of attack should be
+the woman, if either.  He therefore kept out of sight, and musing
+sadly, even tearfully--for he was meek as a child in matters
+concerning his daughter--continued his way towards Hintock.
+
+The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never more finely
+exemplified than in this instance.  Through her guarded manner,
+her dignified speech, her placid countenance, he discerned the
+interior of Grace's life only too truly, hidden as were its
+incidents from every outer eye.
+
+These incidents had become painful enough.  Fitzpiers had latterly
+developed an irritable discontent which vented itself in
+monologues when Grace was present to hear them.  The early morning
+of this day had been dull, after a night of wind, and on looking
+out of the window Fitzpiers had observed some of Melbury's men
+dragging away a large limb which had been snapped off a beech-
+tree.  Everything was cold and colorless.
+
+"My good Heaven!" he said, as he stood in his dressing-gown. 
+"This is life!" He did not know whether Grace was awake or not,
+and he would not turn his head to ascertain.  "Ah, fool," he went
+on to himself, "to clip your own wings when you were free to
+soar!...But I could not rest till I had done it.  Why do I never
+recognize an opportunity till I have missed it, nor the good or
+ill of a step till it is irrevocable!...I fell in love....Love,
+indeed!--
+
+
+    "'Love's but the frailty of the mind
+      When 'tis not with ambition joined;
+      A sickly flame which if not fed, expires,
+      And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!'
+
+
+Ah, old author of 'The Way of the World,' you knew--you knew!"
+Grace moved.  He thought she had heard some part of his soliloquy. 
+He was sorry--though he had not taken any precaution to prevent
+her.
+
+He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited an
+extreme reserve.  It was enough, however, to make him repent that
+he should have done anything to produce discomfort; for he
+attributed her manner entirely to what he had said.  But Grace's
+manner had not its cause either in his sayings or in his doings. 
+She had not heard a single word of his regrets.  Something even
+nearer home than her husband's blighted prospects--if blighted
+they were--was the origin of her mood, a mood that was the mere
+continuation of what her father had noticed when he would have
+preferred a passionate jealousy in her, as the more natural.
+
+She had made a discovery--one which to a girl of honest nature was
+almost appalling.  She had looked into her heart, and found that
+her early interest in Giles Winterborne had become revitalized
+into luxuriant growth by her widening perceptions of what was
+great and little in life.  His homeliness no longer offended her
+acquired tastes; his comparative want of so-called culture did not
+now jar on her intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye;
+his exterior roughness fascinated her.  Having discovered by
+marriage how much that was humanly not great could co-exist with
+attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion in her
+sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to in this kind:
+honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, devotion, for her only
+existed in their purity now in the breasts of unvarnished men; and
+here was one who had manifested them towards her from his youth
+up.
+
+There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles
+as a man whom she had wronged--a man who had been unfortunate in
+his worldly transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity,
+he had, like Horatio, borne himself throughout his scathing
+
+
+    "As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing."
+
+
+It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her husband's
+murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible in her.
+
+When her father approached the house after witnessing the
+interview between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace was looking
+out of her sitting-room window, as if she had nothing to do, or
+think of, or care for.  He stood still.
+
+"Ah, Grace," he said, regarding her fixedly.
+
+"Yes, father," she murmured.
+
+"Waiting for your dear husband?" he inquired, speaking with the
+sarcasm of pitiful affection.
+
+"Oh no--not especially.  He has a great many patients to see this
+afternoon."
+
+Melbury came quite close.  "Grace, what's the use of talking like
+that, when you know--Here, come down and walk with me out in the
+garden, child."
+
+He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited.  This
+apparent indifference alarmed him.  He would far rather that she
+had rushed in all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House,
+regardless of conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice
+Charmond unguibus et rostro, and accused her even in exaggerated
+shape of stealing away her husband.  Such a storm might have
+cleared the air.
+
+She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. 
+"You know as well as I do," he resumed, "that there is something
+threatening mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. 
+Do you suppose I don't see the trouble in your face every day?  I
+am very sure that this quietude is wrong conduct in you.  You
+should look more into matters."
+
+"I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir me to
+action."
+
+Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions--did she not feel
+jealous? was she not indignant? but a natural delicacy restrained
+him.  "You are very tame and let-alone, I am bound to say," he
+remarked, pointedly.
+
+"I am what I feel, father," she repeated.
+
+He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the scene of
+her offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitzpiers in the last
+days before her marriage; and he asked himself if it could be the
+fact that she loved Winterborne, now that she had lost him, more
+than she had ever done when she was comparatively free to choose
+him.
+
+"What would you have me do?" she asked, in a low voice.
+
+He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the practical
+matter before them.  "I would have you go to Mrs. Charmond," he
+said.
+
+"Go to Mrs. Charmond--what for?" said she.
+
+"Well--if I must speak plain, dear Grace--to ask her, appeal to
+her in the name of your common womanhood, and your many like
+sentiments on things, not to make unhappiness between you and your
+husband.  It lies with her entirely to do one or the other--that I
+can see."
+
+Grace's face had heated at her father's words, and the very rustle
+of her skirts upon the box-edging bespoke hauteur.  "I shall not
+think of going to her, father--of course I could not!" she
+answered.
+
+"Why--don't 'ee want to be happier than you be at present?" said
+Melbury, more moved on her account than she was herself.
+
+"I don't wish to be more humiliated.  If I have anything to bear I
+can bear it in silence."
+
+"But, my dear maid, you are too young--you don't know what the
+present state of things may lead to.  Just see the harm done
+a'ready! Your husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger
+practice if it had not been for this.  Although it has gone such a
+little way, it is poisoning your future even now.  Mrs. Charmond
+is thoughtlessly bad, not bad by calculation; and just a word to
+her now might save 'ee a peck of woes."
+
+"Ah, I loved her once," said Grace, with a broken articulation,
+"and she would not care for me then! Now I no longer love her. 
+Let her do her worst: I don't care."
+
+"You ought to care.  You have got into a very good position to
+start with.  You have been well educated, well tended, and you
+have become the wife of a professional man of unusually good
+family.  Surely you ought to make the best of your position."
+
+"I don't see that I ought.  I wish I had never got into it.  I
+wish you had never, never thought of educating me.  I wish I
+worked in the woods like Marty South.  I hate genteel life, and I
+want to be no better than she."
+
+"Why?" said her amazed father.
+
+"Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences and
+troubles.  I say again, I wish you had never sent me to those
+fashionable schools you set your mind on.  It all arose out of
+that, father.  If I had stayed at home I should have married--"
+She closed up her mouth suddenly and was silent; and be saw that
+she was not far from crying.
+
+Melbury was much grieved.  "What, and would you like to have grown
+up as we be here in Hintock--knowing no more, and with no more
+chance of seeing good life than we have here?"
+
+"Yes.  I have never got any happiness outside Hintock that I know
+of, and I have suffered many a heartache at being sent away.  Oh,
+the misery of those January days when I had got back to school,
+and left you all here in the wood so happy.  I used to wonder why
+I had to bear it.  And I was always a little despised by the other
+girls at school, because they knew where I came from, and that my
+parents were not in so good a station as theirs."
+
+Her poor father was much hurt at what he thought her ingratitude
+and intractability.  He had admitted to himself bitterly enough
+that he should have let young hearts have their way, or rather
+should have helped on her affection for Winterborne, and given her
+to him according to his original plan; but he was not prepared for
+her deprecation of those attainments whose completion had been a
+labor of years, and a severe tax upon his purse.
+
+"Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit.  "If you
+don't like to go to her I don't wish to force you."
+
+And so the question remained for him still: how should he remedy
+this perilous state of things?  For days he sat in a moody
+attitude over the fire, a pitcher of cider standing on the hearth
+beside him, and his drinking-horn inverted upon the top of it.  He
+spent a week and more thus composing a letter to the chief
+offender, which he would every now and then attempt to complete,
+and suddenly crumple up in his hand.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+As February merged in March, and lighter evenings broke the gloom
+of the woodmen's homeward journey, the Hintocks Great and Little
+began to have ears for a rumor of the events out of which had
+grown the timber-dealer's troubles.  It took the form of a wide
+sprinkling of conjecture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. 
+Tantalizing phenomena, at once showing and concealing the real
+relationship of the persons concerned, caused a diffusion of
+excited surprise.  Honest people as the woodlanders were, it was
+hardly to be expected that they could remain immersed in the study
+of their trees and gardens amid such circumstances, or sit with
+their backs turned like the good burghers of Coventry at the
+passage of the beautiful lady.
+
+Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little.  There were, in fact, in
+this case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, old as the
+hills, which, with individual variations, made a mourner of
+Ariadne, a by-word of Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. 
+There were rencounters accidental and contrived, stealthy
+correspondence, sudden misgivings on one side, sudden self-
+reproaches on the other.  The inner state of the twain was one as
+of confused noise that would not allow the accents of calmer
+reason to be heard.  Determinations to go in this direction, and
+headlong plunges in that; dignified safeguards, undignified
+collapses; not a single rash step by deliberate intention, and all
+against judgment.
+
+It was all that Melbury had expected and feared.  It was more, for
+he had overlooked the publicity that would be likely to result, as
+it now had done.  What should he do--appeal to Mrs. Charmond
+himself, since Grace would not? He bethought himself of
+Winterborne, and resolved to consult him, feeling the strong need
+of some friend of his own sex to whom he might unburden his mind.
+
+He had entirely lost faith in his own judgment.  That judgment on
+which he had relied for so many years seemed recently, like a
+false companion unmasked, to have disclosed unexpected depths of
+hypocrisy and speciousness where all had seemed solidity.  He felt
+almost afraid to form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or
+the fruit-promise, so great was his self-abasement.
+
+It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles.  The
+woods seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspiration hung
+from every bare twig; the sky had no color, and the trees rose
+before him as haggard, gray phantoms, whose days of substantiality
+were passed.  Melbury seldom saw Winterborne now, but he believed
+him to be occupying a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs.
+Charmond's estate, though still within the circuit of the
+woodland.  The timber-merchant's thin legs stalked on through the
+pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead leaves of last year;
+while every now and then a hasty "Ay?" escaped his lips in reply
+to some bitter proposition.
+
+His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, behind
+which arose sounds of voices and chopping: bending his steps that
+way, he saw Winterborne just in front of him.  It just now
+happened that Giles, after being for a long time apathetic and
+unemployed, had become one of the busiest men in the neighborhood. 
+It is often thus; fallen friends, lost sight of, we expect to find
+starving; we discover them going on fairly well.  Without any
+solicitation, or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked
+to execute during that winter a very large order for hurdles and
+other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been obliged to buy
+several acres of brushwood standing.  He was now engaged in the
+cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work
+daily like an automaton.
+
+The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day.  The whole of the
+copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of
+that hue, amid which Winterborne himself was in the act of making
+a hurdle, the stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row,
+over which he bent and wove the twigs.  Beside him was a square,
+compact pile like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already
+finished, which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of
+their stakes.  At a little distance the men in his employ were
+assisting him to carry out his contract.  Rows of copse-wood lay
+on the ground as it had fallen under the axe; and a shelter had
+been constructed near at hand, in front of which burned the fire
+whose smoke had attracted him.  The air was so dank that the smoke
+hung heavy, and crept away amid the bushes without rising from the
+ground.
+
+After wistfully regarding Winterborne a while, Melbury drew
+nearer, and briefly inquired of Giles how he came to be so busily
+engaged, with an undertone of slight surprise that Winterborne
+could seem so thriving after being deprived of Grace.  Melbury was
+not without emotion at the meeting; for Grace's affairs had
+divided them, and ended their intimacy of old times.
+
+Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising his eyes
+from his occupation of chopping a bough that he held in front of
+him.
+
+"'Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared," said
+Melbury.
+
+"Yes, there or thereabouts," said Winterborne, a chop of the
+billhook jerking the last word into two pieces.
+
+There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a chip from
+Winterborne's hook occasionally flying against the waistcoat and
+legs of his visitor, who took no heed.
+
+"Ah, Giles--you should have been my partner.  You should have been
+my son-in-law," the old man said at last.  "It would have been far
+better for her and for me."
+
+Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with his former
+friend, and throwing down the switch he was about to interweave,
+he responded only too readily to the mood of the timber-dealer. 
+"Is she ill?" he said, hurriedly.
+
+"No, no." Melbury stood without speaking for some minutes, and
+then, as though he could not bring himself to proceed, turned to
+go away.
+
+Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night
+and walked after Melbury.
+
+"Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir," he said,
+"especially since we don't stand as we used to stand to one
+another; but I hope it is well with them all over your way?"
+
+"No," said Melbury--"no."  He stopped, and struck the smooth trunk
+of a young ash-tree with the flat of his hand.  "I would that his
+ear had been where that rind is!" he exclaimed; "I should have
+treated him to little compared wi what he deserves."
+
+"Now," said Winterborne, "don't be in a hurry to go home.  I've
+put some cider down to warm in my shelter here, and we'll sit and
+drink it and talk this over."
+
+Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and they went
+back to where the fire was, and sat down under the screen, the
+other woodmen having gone.  He drew out the cider-mug from the
+ashes and they drank together.
+
+"Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now," repeated
+Melbury.  "I'll tell you why for the first time."
+
+He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the story of
+how he won away Giles's father's chosen one--by nothing worse than
+a lover's cajoleries, it is true, but by means which, except in
+love, would certainly have been pronounced cruel and unfair.  He
+explained how he had always intended to make reparation to
+Winterborne the father by giving Grace to Winterborne the son,
+till the devil tempted him in the person of Fitzpiers, and he
+broke his virtuous vow.
+
+"How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who'd have supposed
+he'd have been so weak and wrong-headed as this! You ought to have
+had her, Giles, and there's an end on't."
+
+Winterborne knew how to preserve his calm under this unconsciously
+cruel tearing of a healing wound to which Melbury's concentration
+on the more vital subject had blinded him.  The young man
+endeavored to make the best of the case for Grace's sake.
+
+"She would hardly have been happy with me," he said, in the dry,
+unimpassioned voice under which he hid his feelings.  "I was not
+well enough educated: too rough, in short.  I couldn't have
+surrounded her with the refinements she looked for, anyhow, at
+all."
+
+"Nonsense--you are quite wrong there," said the unwise old man,
+doggedly.  "She told me only this day that she hates refinements
+and such like.  All that my trouble and money bought for her in
+that way is thrown away upon her quite.  She'd fain be like Marty
+South--think o' that! That's the top of her ambition! Perhaps
+she's right.  Giles, she loved you--under the rind; and, what's
+more, she loves ye still--worse luck for the poor maid!"
+
+If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up
+he might have held his peace.  Winterborne was silent a long time. 
+The darkness had closed in round them, and the monotonous drip of
+the fog from the branches quickened as it turned to fine rain.
+
+"Oh, she never cared much for me," Giles managed to say, as he
+stirred the embers with a brand.
+
+"She did, and does, I tell ye," said the other, obstinately. 
+"However, all that's vain talking now.  What I come to ask you
+about is a more practical matter--how to make the best of things
+as they are.  I am thinking of a desperate step--of calling on the
+woman Charmond.  I am going to appeal to her, since Grace will
+not.  'Tis she who holds the balance in her hands--not he.  While
+she's got the will to lead him astray he will follow--poor,
+unpractical, lofty-notioned dreamer--and how long she'll do it
+depends upon her whim.  Did ye ever hear anything about her
+character before she came to Hintock?"
+
+"She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe," replied
+Giles, with the same level quietude, as he regarded the red coals. 
+"One who has smiled where she has not loved and loved where she
+has not married.  Before Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a
+play-actress."
+
+"Hey?"  But how close you have kept all this, Giles! What
+besides?"
+
+"Mr. Charmond was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the
+north, twenty or thirty years older than she.  He married her and
+retired, and came down here and bought this property, as they do
+nowadays."
+
+"Yes, yes--I know all about that; but the other I did not know.  I
+fear it bodes no good.  For how can I go and appeal to the
+forbearance of a woman in this matter who has made cross-loves and
+crooked entanglements her trade for years?  I thank ye, Giles, for
+finding it out; but it makes my plan the harder that she should
+have belonged to that unstable tribe."
+
+Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the smoke that
+beat about the hurdles which sheltered them, through whose
+weavings a large drop of rain fell at intervals and spat smartly
+into the fire.  Mrs. Charmond had been no friend to Winterborne,
+but he was manly, and it was not in his heart to let her be
+condemned without a trial.
+
+"She is said to be generous," he answered.  "You might not appeal
+to her in vain."
+
+"It shall be done," said Melbury, rising.  "For good or for evil,
+to Mrs. Charmond I'll go."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+At nine o'clock the next morning Melbury dressed himself up in
+shining broadcloth, creased with folding and smelling of camphor,
+and started for Hintock House.  He was the more impelled to go at
+once by the absence of his son-in-law in London for a few days, to
+attend, really or ostensibly, some professional meetings.  He said
+nothing of his destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing
+that they might entreat him to abandon so risky a project, and
+went out unobserved.  He had chosen his time with a view, as he
+supposed, of conveniently catching Mrs. Charmond when she had just
+finished her breakfast, before any other business people should be
+about, if any came.  Plodding thoughtfully onward, he crossed a
+glade lying between Little Hintock Woods and the plantation which
+abutted on the park; and the spot being open, he was discerned
+there by Winterborne from the copse on the next hill, where he and
+his men were working.  Knowing his mission, the younger man
+hastened down from the copse and managed to intercept the timber-
+merchant.
+
+"I have been thinking of this, sir," he said, "and I am of opinion
+that it would be best to put off your visit for the present."
+
+But Melbury would not even stop to hear him.  His mind was made
+up, the appeal was to be made; and Winterborne stood and watched
+him sadly till he entered the second plantation and disappeared.
+
+Melbury rang at the tradesmen's door of the manor-house, and was
+at once informed that the lady was not yet visible, as indeed he
+might have guessed had he been anybody but the man he was. 
+Melbury said he would wait, whereupon the young man informed him
+in a neighborly way that, between themselves, she was in bed and
+asleep.
+
+"Never mind," said Melbury, retreating into the court, "I'll stand
+about here." Charged so fully with his mission, he shrank from
+contact with anybody.
+
+But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, and still
+nobody came to him.  At last he entered the house and sat down in
+a small waiting-room, from which he got glimpses of the kitchen
+corridor, and of the white-capped maids flitting jauntily hither
+and thither.  They had heard of his arrival, but had not seen him
+enter, and, imagining him still in the court, discussed freely the
+possible reason of his calling.  They marvelled at his temerity;
+for though most of the tongues which had been let loose attributed
+the chief blame-worthiness to Fitzpiers, these of her household
+preferred to regard their mistress as the deeper sinner.
+
+Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed thorn
+walking-stick, whose growing he had seen before he enjoyed its
+use.  The scene to him was not the material environment of his
+person, but a tragic vision that travelled with him like an
+envelope.  Through this vision the incidents of the moment but
+gleamed confusedly here and there, as an outer landscape through
+the high-colored scenes of a stained window.  He waited thus an
+hour, an hour and a half, two hours.  He began to look pale and
+ill, whereupon the butler, who came in, asked him to have a glass
+of wine.  Melbury roused himself and said, "No, no.  Is she almost
+ready?"
+
+"She is just finishing breakfast," said the butler.  "She will
+soon see you now.  I am just going up to tell her you are here."
+
+"What! haven't you told her before?" said Melbury.
+
+"Oh no," said the other.  "You see you came so very early."
+
+At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him.  She was not
+in her private sitting-room when he reached it, but in a minute he
+heard her coming from the front staircase, and she entered where
+he stood.
+
+At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her full age and
+more.  She might almost have been taken for the typical femme de
+trente ans, though she was really not more than seven or eight and
+twenty.  There being no fire in the room, she came in with a shawl
+thrown loosely round her shoulders, and obviously without the
+least suspicion that Melbury had called upon any other errand than
+timber.  Felice was, indeed, the only woman in the parish who had
+not heard the rumor of her own weaknesses; she was at this moment
+living in a fool's paradise in respect of that rumor, though not
+in respect of the weaknesses themselves, which, if the truth be
+told, caused her grave misgivings.
+
+"Do sit down, Mr. Melbury.  You have felled all the trees that
+were to be purchased by you this season, except the oaks, I
+believe."
+
+"Yes," said Melbury.
+
+"How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just
+now!"
+
+She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous
+person's affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of
+the perfect social machine.  Hence her words "very nice," "so
+charming," were uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them
+sound absurdly unreal.
+
+"Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie.  He did not take a chair,
+and she also remained standing.  Resting upon his stick, he began:
+"Mrs. Charmond, I have called upon a more serious matter--at least
+to me--than tree-throwing.  And whatever mistakes I make in my
+manner of speaking upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set
+'em down to my want of practice, and not to my want of care."
+
+Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease.  She might have begun to guess
+his meaning; but apart from that, she had such dread of contact
+with anything painful, harsh, or even earnest, that his
+preliminaries alone were enough to distress her.  "Yes, what is
+it?" she said.
+
+"I am an old man," said Melbury, "whom, somewhat late in life, God
+thought fit to bless with one child, and she a daughter.  Her
+mother was a very dear wife to me, but she was taken away from us
+when the child was young, and the child became precious as the
+apple of my eye to me, for she was all I had left to love.  For
+her sake entirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who
+had been kind as a mother to her.  In due time the question of her
+education came on, and I said, 'I will educate the maid well, if I
+live upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I could not
+bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she should cleave
+to another man, and grow to think his house her home rather than
+mine.  But I saw it was the law of nature that this should be, and
+that it was for the maid's happiness that she should have a home
+when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to help it
+on for her sake.  In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to
+make amends I determined to give her, my most precious possession,
+to my friend's son, seeing that they liked each other well. 
+Things came about which made me doubt if it would be for my
+daughter's happiness to do this, inasmuch as the young man was
+poor, and she was delicately reared.  Another man came and paid
+court to her--one her equal in breeding and accomplishments; in
+every way it seemed to me that he only could give her the home
+which her training had made a necessity almost.  I urged her on,
+and she married him.  But, ma'am, a fatal mistake was at the root
+of my reckoning.  I found that this well-born gentleman I had
+calculated on so surely was not stanch of heart, and that therein
+lay a danger of great sorrow for my daughter.  Madam, he saw you,
+and you know the rest....I have come to make no demands--to utter
+no threats; I have come simply as a father in great grief about
+this only child, and I beseech you to deal kindly with my
+daughter, and to do nothing which can turn her husband's heart
+away from her forever.  Forbid him your presence, ma'am, and speak
+to him on his duty as one with your power over him well can do,
+and I am hopeful that the rent between them may be patched up. 
+For it is not as if you would lose by so doing; your course is far
+higher than the courses of a simple professional man, and the
+gratitude you would win from me and mine by your kindness is more
+than I can say."
+
+Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indignation on
+comprehending Melbury's story; hot and cold by turns, she had
+murmured, "Leave me, leave me!" But as he seemed to take no notice
+of this, his words began to influence her, and when he ceased
+speaking she said, with hurried, hot breath, "What has led you to
+think this of me?  Who says I have won your daughter's husband
+away from her?  Some monstrous calumnies are afloat--of which I
+have known nothing until now!"
+
+Melbury started, and looked at her simply.  "But surely, ma'am,
+you know the truth better than I?"
+
+Her features became a little pinched, and the touches of powder on
+her handsome face for the first time showed themselves as an
+extrinsic film.  "Will you leave me to myself?" she said, with a
+faintness which suggested a guilty conscience.  "This is so
+utterly unexpected--you obtain admission to my presence by
+misrepresentation--"
+
+"As God's in heaven, ma'am, that's not true.  I made no pretence;
+and I thought in reason you would know why I had come.  This
+gossip--"
+
+"I have heard nothing of it.  Tell me of it, I say."
+
+"Tell you, ma'am--not I.  What the gossip is, no matter.  What
+really is, you know.  Set facts right, and the scandal will right
+of itself.  But pardon me--I speak roughly; and I came to speak
+gently, to coax you, beg you to be my daughter's friend.  She
+loved you once, ma'am; you began by liking her.  Then you dropped
+her without a reason, and it hurt her warm heart more than I can
+tell ye.  But you were within your right as the superior, no
+doubt.  But if you would consider her position now--surely,
+surely, you would do her no harm!"
+
+"Certainly I would do her no harm--I--" Melbury's eye met hers. 
+It was curious, but the allusion to Grace's former love for her
+seemed to touch her more than all Melbury's other arguments.  "Oh,
+Melbury," she burst out, "you have made me so unhappy! How could
+you come to me like this! It is too dreadful! Now go away--go,
+go!"
+
+"I will," he said, in a husky tone.
+
+As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner and there
+sat and writhed under an emotion in which hurt pride and vexation
+mingled with better sentiments.
+
+Mrs. Charmond's mobile spirit was subject to these fierce periods
+of stress and storm.  She had never so clearly perceived till now
+that her soul was being slowly invaded by a delirium which had
+brought about all this; that she was losing judgment and dignity
+under it, becoming an animated impulse only, a passion incarnate. 
+A fascination had led her on; it was as if she had been seized by
+a hand of velvet; and this was where she found herself--
+overshadowed with sudden night, as if a tornado had passed by.
+
+While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the interview,
+lunch-time came, and then the early afternoon, almost without her
+consciousness.  Then "a strange gentleman who says it is not
+necessary to give his name," was suddenly announced.
+
+"I cannot see him, whoever he may be.  I am not at home to
+anybody."
+
+She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in an attempt
+to recover some mental serenity by violent physical exercise, she
+put on her hat and cloak and went out-of-doors, taking a path
+which led her up the slopes to the nearest spur of the wood.  She
+disliked the woods, but they had the advantage of being a place in
+which she could walk comparatively unobserved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these matters
+concerned.  It was not till the Hintock dinner-time--one o'clock--
+that Grace discovered her father's absence from the house after a
+departure in the morning under somewhat unusual conditions.  By a
+little reasoning and inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion
+on his destination, and to divine his errand.
+
+Her husband was absent, and her father did not return.  He had, in
+truth, gone on to Sherton after the interview, but this Grace did
+not know.  In an indefinite dread that something serious would
+arise out of Melbury's visit by reason of the inequalities of
+temper and nervous irritation to which he was subject, something
+possibly that would bring her much more misery than accompanied
+her present negative state of mind, she left the house about three
+o'clock, and took a loitering walk in the woodland track by which
+she imagined he would come home.  This track under the bare trees
+and over the cracking sticks, screened and roofed in from the
+outer world of wind and cloud by a net-work of boughs, led her
+slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees behind her
+and swept round into the coppice where Winterborne and his men
+were clearing the undergrowth.
+
+Had Giles's attention been concentrated on his hurdles he would
+not have seen her; but ever since Melbury's passage across the
+opposite glade in the morning he had been as uneasy and unsettled
+as Grace herself; and her advent now was the one appearance which,
+since her father's avowal, could arrest him more than Melbury's
+return with his tidings.  Fearing that something might be the
+matter, he hastened up to her.
+
+She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and, too conscious
+of the late pranks of her heart, she could not behold him calmly. 
+"I am only looking for my father," she said, in an unnecessarily
+apologetic intonation.
+
+"I was looking for him too," said Giles.  "I think he may perhaps
+have gone on farther."
+
+"Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?" she said,
+turning her large tender eyes anxiously upon him.  "Did he tell
+you what for?"
+
+Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly hinted that
+her father had visited him the evening before, and that their old
+friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest.
+
+"Oh, I am glad, indeed, that you two are friends again!" she
+cried.  And then they stood facing each other, fearing each other,
+troubling each other's souls.  Grace experienced acute misery at
+the sight of these wood-cutting scenes, because she had estranged
+herself from them, craving, even to its defects and
+inconveniences, that homely sylvan life of her father which in the
+best probable succession of events would shortly be denied her.
+
+At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty South was
+shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture during the
+evenings.  While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitzpiers stood looking at
+her in their mutual embarrassment at each other's presence, they
+beheld approaching the girl a lady in a dark fur mantle and a
+black hat, having a white veil tied picturesquely round it.  She
+spoke to Marty, who turned and courtesied, and the lady fell into
+conversation with her.  It was Mrs. Charmond.
+
+On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and onward under
+the fret and fever of her mind with more vigor than she was
+accustomed to show in her normal moods--a fever which the solace
+of a cigarette did not entirely allay.  Reaching the coppice, she
+listlessly observed Marty at work, threw away her cigarette, and
+came near.  Chop, chop, chop, went Marty's little billhook with
+never more assiduity, till Mrs. Charmond spoke.
+
+"Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman yonder?" she
+asked.
+
+"Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma'am," said Marty.
+
+"Oh," said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start; for she had
+not recognized Grace at that distance.  "And the man she is
+talking to?"
+
+"That's Mr. Winterborne."
+
+A redness stole into Marty's face as she mentioned Giles's name,
+which Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice informed her of the
+state of the girl's heart.  "Are you engaged to him?" she asked,
+softly.
+
+"No, ma'am," said Marty.  "SHE was once; and I think--"
+
+But Marty could not possibly explain the complications of her
+thoughts on this matter--which were nothing less than one of
+extraordinary acuteness for a girl so young and inexperienced--
+namely, that she saw danger to two hearts naturally honest in
+Grace being thrown back into Winterborne's society by the neglect
+of her husband.  Mrs. Charmond, however, with the almost
+supersensory means to knowledge which women have on such
+occasions, quite understood what Marty had intended to convey, and
+the picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away,
+involving the wreck of poor Marty's hopes, prompted her to more
+generous resolves than all Melbury's remonstrances had been able
+to stimulate.
+
+Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, and
+went on over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and Winterborne
+were standing.  They saw her approach, and Winterborne said, "She
+is coming to you; it is a good omen.  She dislikes me, so I'll go
+away."  He accordingly retreated to where he had been working
+before Grace came, and Grace's formidable rival approached her,
+each woman taking the other's measure as she came near.
+
+"Dear--Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Felice Charmond, with some inward
+turmoil which stopped her speech.  "I have not seen you for a long
+time."
+
+She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like a wild
+animal on first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of
+civilization.  Was it really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? 
+If it was, she could no longer form any guess as to what it
+signified.
+
+"I want to talk with you," said Mrs. Charmond, imploringly, for
+the gaze of the young woman had chilled her through.  "Can you
+walk on with me till we are quite alone?"
+
+Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by clockwork
+and they moved evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the
+woods.  They went farther, much farther than Mrs. Charmond had
+meant to go; but she could not begin her conversation, and in
+default of it kept walking.
+
+"I have seen your father," she at length resumed.  "And--I am much
+troubled by what he told me."
+
+"What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his confidence
+on anything he may have said to you."
+
+"Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can easily
+divine?"
+
+"True--true," returned Grace, mournfully.  "Why should you repeat
+what we both know to be in our minds already?"
+
+"Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband--" The moment that the speaker's
+tongue touched the dangerous subject a vivid look of self-
+consciousness flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by
+a lightning gleam, what filled it to overflowing.  So transitory
+was the expression that none but a sensitive woman, and she in
+Grace's position, would have had the power to catch its meaning. 
+Upon her the phase was not lost.
+
+"Then you DO love him!" she exclaimed, in a tone of much surprise.
+
+"What do you mean, my young friend?"
+
+"Why," cried Grace, "I thought till now that you had only been
+cruelly flirting with my husband, to amuse your idle moments--a
+rich lady with a poor professional gentleman whom in her heart she
+despised not much less than her who belongs to him.  But I guess
+from your manner that you love him desperately, and I don't hate
+you as I did before."
+
+"Yes, indeed," continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling tongue,
+"since it is not playing in your case at all, but REAL.  Oh, I do
+pity you, more than I despise you, for you will s-s-suffer most!"
+
+Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace.  "I ought not to
+allow myself to argue with you," she exclaimed.  "I demean myself
+by doing it.  But I liked you once, and for the sake of that time
+I try to tell you how mistaken you are!" Much of her confusion
+resulted from her wonder and alarm at finding herself in a sense
+dominated mentally and emotionally by this simple school-girl.  "I
+do not love him," she went on, with desperate untruth.  "It was a
+kindness--my making somewhat more of him than one usually does of
+one's doctor.  I was lonely; I talked--well, I trifled with him. 
+I am very sorry if such child's playing out of pure friendship has
+been a serious matter to you.  Who could have expected it? But the
+world is so simple here."
+
+"Oh, that's affectation," said Grace, shaking her head.  "It is no
+use--you love him.  I can see in your face that in this matter of
+my husband you have not let your acts belie your feelings.  During
+these last four or six months you have been terribly indiscreet;
+but you have not been insincere, and that almost disarms me."
+
+"I HAVE been insincere--if you will have the word--I mean I HAVE
+coquetted, and do NOT love him!"
+
+But Grace clung to her position like a limpet.  "You may have
+trifled with others, but him you love as you never loved another
+man."
+
+"Oh, well--I won't argue," said Mrs. Charmond, laughing faintly. 
+"And you come to reproach me for it, child."
+
+"No," said Grace, magnanimously.  "You may go on loving him if you
+like--I don't mind at all.  You'll find it, let me tell you, a
+bitterer business for yourself than for me in the end.  He'll get
+tired of you soon, as tired as can be--you don't know him so well
+as I--and then you may wish you had never seen him!"
+
+Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this prophecy. 
+It was extraordinary that Grace, whom almost every one would have
+characterized as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than
+her interlocutor.  "You exaggerate--cruel, silly young woman," she
+reiterated, writhing with little agonies.  "It is nothing but
+playful friendship--nothing! It will be proved by my future
+conduct.  I shall at once refuse to see him more--since it will
+make no difference to my heart, and much to my name."
+
+"I question if you will refuse to see him again," said Grace,
+dryly, as with eyes askance she bent a sapling down.  "But I am
+not incensed against you as you are against me," she added,
+abandoning the tree to its natural perpendicular.  "Before I came
+I had been despising you for wanton cruelty; now I only pity you
+for misplaced affection.  When Edgar has gone out of the house in
+hope of seeing you, at seasonable hours and unseasonable; when I
+have found him riding miles and miles across the country at
+midnight, and risking his life, and getting covered with mud, to
+get a glimpse of you, I have called him a foolish man--the
+plaything of a finished coquette.  I thought that what was getting
+to be a tragedy to me was a comedy to you.  But now I see that
+tragedy lies on YOUR side of the situation no less than on MINE,
+and more; that if I have felt trouble at my position, you have
+felt anguish at yours; that if I have had disappointments, you
+have had despairs.  Heaven may fortify me--God help you!"
+
+"I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence," returned the
+other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely
+collapsed.  "My acts will be my proofs.  In the world which you
+have seen nothing of, friendships between men and women are not
+unknown, and it would have been better both for you and your
+father if you had each judged me more respectfully, and left me
+alone.  As it is I wish never to see or speak to you, madam, any
+more."
+
+Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away.  The two went apart in
+directly opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by
+their umbrageous surroundings and by the shadows of eve.
+
+In the excitement of their long argument they had walked onward
+and zigzagged about without regarding direction or distance.  All
+sound of the woodcutters had long since faded into remoteness, and
+even had not the interval been too great for hearing them they
+would have been silent and homeward bound at this twilight hour. 
+But Grace went on her course without any misgiving, though there
+was much underwood here, with only the narrowest passages for
+walking, across which brambles hung.  She had not, however,
+traversed this the wildest part of the wood since her childhood,
+and the transformation of outlines had been great; old trees which
+once were landmarks had been felled or blown down, and the bushes
+which then had been small and scrubby were now large and
+overhanging.  She soon found that her ideas as to direction were
+vague--that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all.  If
+the evening had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not put
+on its night moan so distinctly, Grace would not have minded; but
+she was rather frightened now, and began to strike across hither
+and thither in random courses.
+
+Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind-voices, and
+still no recognizable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any
+sound of the Hintocks floated near, though she had wandered
+probably between one and two hours, and began to be weary.  She
+was vexed at her foolishness, since the ground she had covered, if
+in a straight line, must inevitably have taken her out of the wood
+to some remote village or other; but she had wasted her forces in
+countermarches; and now, in much alarm, wondered if she would have
+to pass the night here.  She stood still to meditate, and fancied
+that between the soughing of the wind she heard shuffling
+footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of rabbits or hares. 
+Though fearing at first to meet anybody on the chance of his being
+a friend, she decided that the fellow night-rambler, even if a
+poacher, would not injure her, and that he might possibly be some
+one sent to search for her.  She accordingly shouted a rather
+timid "Hoi!"
+
+The cry was immediately returned by the other person; and Grace
+running at once in the direction whence it came beheld an
+indistinct figure hastening up to her as rapidly.  They were
+almost in each other's arms when she recognized in her vis-a-vis
+the outline and white veil of her whom she had parted from an hour
+and a half before--Mrs. Charmond.
+
+"I have lost my way, I have lost my way," cried that lady.  "Oh--
+is it indeed you? I am so glad to meet you or anybody.  I have
+been wandering up and down ever since we parted, and am nearly
+dead with terror and misery and fatigue!"
+
+"So am I," said Grace.  "What shall we, shall we do?"
+
+"You won't go away from me?" asked her companion, anxiously.
+
+"No, indeed.  Are you very tired?"
+
+"I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the
+ankles."
+
+Grace reflected.  "Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the best
+thing for us to do would be to sit down for half an hour, and then
+start again when we have thoroughly rested.  By walking straight
+we must come to a track leading somewhere before the morning."
+
+They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded a shelter from
+the wind, and sat down under it, some tufts of dead fern, crisp
+and dry, that remained from the previous season forming a sort of
+nest for them.  But it was cold, nevertheless, on this March
+night, particularly for Grace, who with the sanguine prematureness
+of youth in matters of dress, had considered it spring-time, and
+hence was not so warmly clad as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore her
+winter fur.  But after sitting a while the latter lady shivered no
+less than Grace as the warmth imparted by her hasty walking began
+to go off, and they felt the cold air drawing through the holly
+leaves which scratched their backs and shoulders.  Moreover, they
+could hear some drops of rain falling on the trees, though none
+reached the nook in which they had ensconced themselves.
+
+"If we were to cling close together," said Mrs. Charmond, "we
+should keep each other warm.  But," she added, in an uneven voice,
+"I suppose you won't come near me for the world!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because--well, you know."
+
+"Yes.  I will--I don't hate you at all."
+
+They consequently crept up to one another, and being in the dark,
+lonely and weary, did what neither had dreamed of doing
+beforehand, clasped each other closely, Mrs. Charmond's furs
+consoling Grace's cold face, and each one's body as she breathed
+alternately heaving against that of her companion.
+
+When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond said, "I am
+so wretched!" in a heavy, emotional whisper.
+
+"You are frightened," said Grace, kindly.  "But there is nothing
+to fear; I know these woods well."
+
+"I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other
+things."
+
+Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and the
+younger woman could feel her neighbor's breathings grow deeper and
+more spasmodic, as though uncontrollable feelings were
+germinating.
+
+"After I had left you," she went on, "I regretted something I had
+said.  I have to make a confession--I must make it!" she
+whispered, brokenly, the instinct to indulge in warmth of
+sentiment which had led this woman of passions to respond to
+Fitzpiers in the first place leading her now to find luxurious
+comfort in opening her heart to his wife.  "I said to you I could
+give him up without pain or deprivation--that he had only been my
+pastime.  That was untrue--it was said to deceive you.  I could
+not do it without much pain; and, what is more dreadful, I cannot
+give him up--even if I would--of myself alone."
+
+"Why? Because you love him, you mean."
+
+Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement.
+
+"I knew I was right!" said Grace, exaltedly.  "But that should not
+deter you," she presently added, in a moral tone.  "Oh, do
+struggle against it, and you will conquer!"
+
+"You are so simple, so simple!" cried Felice.  "You think, because
+you guessed my assumed indifference to him to be a sham, that you
+know the extremes that people are capable of going to! But a good
+deal more may have been going on than you have fathomed with all
+your insight.  I CANNOT give him up until he chooses to give up
+me."
+
+"But surely you are the superior in station and in every way, and
+the cut must come from you."
+
+"Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I suppose I
+must! I shall eat away my heart if I do not let out all, after
+meeting you like this and finding how guileless you are." She
+thereupon whispered a few words in the girl's ear, and burst into
+a violent fit of sobbing.
+
+Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, and sprang
+to her feet.
+
+"Oh, my God!" she exclaimed, thunderstruck at a revelation
+transcending her utmost suspicion.  "Can it be--can it be!"
+
+She turned as if to hasten away.  But Felice Charmond's sobs came
+to her ear: deep darkness circled her about, the funereal trees
+rocked and chanted their diriges and placebos around her, and she
+did not know which way to go.  After a moment of energy she felt
+mild again, and turned to the motionless woman at her feet.
+
+"Are you rested?" she asked, in what seemed something like her own
+voice grown ten years older.
+
+Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose.
+
+"You mean to betray me!" she said from the bitterest depths of her
+soul.  "Oh fool, fool I!"
+
+"No," said Grace, shortly.  "I mean no such thing.  But let us be
+quick now.  We have a serious undertaking before us.  Think of
+nothing but going straight on."
+
+They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs now
+growing wet, and treading down woodbine, but still keeping a
+pretty straight course.  Grace began to be thoroughly worn out,
+and her companion too, when, on a sudden, they broke into the
+deserted highway at the hill-top on which the Sherton man had
+waited for Mrs. Dollery's van.  Grace recognized the spot as soon
+as she looked around her.
+
+"How we have got here I cannot tell," she said, with cold
+civility.  "We have made a complete circuit of Little Hintock. 
+The hazel copse is quite on the other side.  Now we have only to
+follow the road."
+
+They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, passed the
+track to Little Hintock, and so reached the park.
+
+"Here I turn back," said Grace, in the same passionless voice. 
+"You are quite near home."
+
+Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her late admission.
+
+"I have told you something in a moment of irresistible desire to
+unburden my soul which all but a fool would have kept silent as
+the grave," she said.  "I cannot help it now.  Is it to be a
+secret--or do you mean war?"
+
+"A secret, certainly," said Grace, mournfully.  "How can you
+expect war from such a helpless, wretched being as I!"
+
+"And I'll do my best not to see him.  I am his slave; but I'll
+try."
+
+Grace was naturally kind; but she could not help using a small
+dagger now.
+
+"Pray don't distress yourself," she said, with exquisitely fine
+scorn.  "You may keep him--for me." Had she been wounded instead
+of mortified she could not have used the words; but Fitzpiers's
+hold upon her heart was slight.
+
+They parted thus and there, and Grace went moodily homeward. 
+Passing Marty's cottage she observed through the window that the
+girl was writing instead of chopping as usual, and wondered what
+her correspondence could be.  Directly afterwards she met people
+in search of her, and reached the house to find all in serious
+alarm.  She soon explained that she had lost her way, and her
+general depression was attributed to exhaustion on that account.
+
+Could she have known what Marty was writing she would have been
+surprised.
+
+The rumor which agitated the other folk of Hintock had reached the
+young girl, and she was penning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him
+that Mrs. Charmond wore her hair.  It was poor Marty's only card,
+and she played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and thinking her
+revelation a fatal one for a lover.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting
+between Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, that Fitzpiers, just
+returned from London, was travelling from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock
+in a hired carriage.  In his eye there was a doubtful light, and
+the lines of his refined face showed a vague disquietude.  He
+appeared now like one of those who impress the beholder as having
+suffered wrong in being born.
+
+His position was in truth gloomy, and to his appreciative mind it
+seemed even gloomier than it was.  His practice had been slowly
+dwindling of late, and now threatened to die out altogether, the
+irrepressible old Dr. Jones capturing patients up to Fitzpiers's
+very door.  Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest
+cause of his unpopularity; and yet, so illogical is man, the
+second branch of his sadness grew out of a remedial measure
+proposed for the first--a letter from Felice Charmond imploring
+him not to see her again.  To bring about their severance still
+more effectually, she added, she had decided during his absence
+upon almost immediate departure for the Continent.
+
+The time was that dull interval in a woodlander's life which
+coincides with great activity in the life of the woodland itself--
+a period following the close of the winter tree-cutting, and
+preceding the barking season, when the saps are just beginning to
+heave with the force of hydraulic lifts inside all the trunks of
+the forest.
+
+Winterborne's contract was completed, and the plantations were
+deserted.  It was dusk; there were no leaves as yet; the
+nightingales would not begin to sing for a fortnight; and "the
+Mother of the Months" was in her most attenuated phase--starved
+and bent to a mere bowed skeleton, which glided along behind the
+bare twigs in Fitzpiers's company
+
+When he reached home he went straight up to his wife's sitting-
+room.  He found it deserted, and without a fire.  He had mentioned
+no day for his return; nevertheless, he wondered why she was not
+there waiting to receive him.  On descending to the other wing of
+the house and inquiring of Mrs. Melbury, he learned with much
+surprise that Grace had gone on a visit to an acquaintance at
+Shottsford-Forum three days earlier; that tidings had on this
+morning reached her father of her being very unwell there, in
+consequence of which he had ridden over to see her.
+
+Fitzpiers went up-stairs again, and the little drawing-room, now
+lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered more cheerful by
+the entrance of Grammer Oliver with an apronful of wood, which she
+threw on the hearth while she raked out the grate and rattled
+about the fire-irons, with a view to making things comfortable. 
+Fitzpiers considered that Grace ought to have let him know her
+plans more accurately before leaving home in a freak like this. 
+He went desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been
+pulled down, and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at
+the tall stalk of smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson's
+chimney, signifying that the young woman had just lit her fire to
+prepare supper.
+
+He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite
+side of the court.  Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to
+the sawyers, and was telling them in a loud voice news in which
+the name of Mrs. Charmond soon arrested his ears.
+
+"Grammer, don't make so much noise with that grate," said the
+surgeon; at which Grammer reared herself upon her knees and held
+the fuel suspended in her hand, while Fitzpiers half opened the
+casement.
+
+"She is off to foreign lands again at last--hev made up her mind
+quite sudden-like--and it is thoughted she'll leave in a day or
+two.  She's been all as if her mind were low for some days past--
+with a sort of sorrow in her face, as if she reproached her own
+soul.  She's the wrong sort of woman for Hintock--hardly knowing a
+beech from a woak--that I own.  But I don't care who the man is,
+she's been a very kind friend to me.
+
+"Well, the day after to-morrow is the Sabbath day, and without
+charity we are but tinkling simples; but this I do say, that her
+going will be a blessed thing for a certain married couple who
+remain."
+
+The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of it,
+restless as the last leaf upon a tree.  "A sort of sorrow in her
+face, as if she reproached her own soul." Poor Felice.  How
+Felice's frame must be pulsing under the conditions of which he
+had just heard the caricature; how her fair temples must ache;
+what a mood of wretchedness she must be in! But for the mixing up
+of his name with hers, and her determination to sunder their too
+close acquaintance on that account, she would probably have sent
+for him professionally. She was now sitting alone, suffering,
+perhaps wishing that she had not forbidden him to come again.
+
+Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to wait for
+the meal which was in course of preparation, he made himself ready
+for riding, descended to the yard, stood by the stable-door while
+Darling was being saddled, and rode off down the lane.  He would
+have preferred walking, but was weary with his day's travel.
+
+As he approached the door of Marty South's cottage, which it was
+necessary to pass on his way, she came from the porch as if she
+had been awaiting him, and met him in the middle of the road,
+holding up a letter.  Fitzpiers took it without stopping, and
+asked over his shoulder from whom it came.
+
+Marty hesitated.  "From me," she said, shyly, though with
+noticeable firmness.
+
+This letter contained, in fact, Marty's declaration that she was
+the original owner of Mrs. Charmond's supplementary locks, and
+enclosed a sample from the native stock, which had grown
+considerably by this time.  It was her long contemplated apple of
+discord, and much her hand trembled as she handed the document up
+to him.
+
+But it was impossible on account of the gloom for Fitzpiers to
+read it then, while he had the curiosity to do so, and he put it
+in his pocket.  His imagination having already centred itself on
+Hintock House, in his pocket the letter remained unopened and
+forgotten, all the while that Marty was hopefully picturing its
+excellent weaning effect upon him.
+
+He was not long in reaching the precincts of the Manor House.  He
+drew rein under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the
+front, and reflected a while.  His entry would not be altogether
+unnatural in the circumstances of her possible indisposition; but
+upon the whole he thought it best to avoid riding up to the door. 
+By silently approaching he could retreat unobserved in the event
+of her not being alone.  Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling
+to a stray bough hanging a little below the general browsing line
+of the trees, and proceeded to the door on foot.
+
+In the mean time Melbury had returned from Shottsford-Forum.  The
+great court or quadrangle of the timber-merchant's house, divided
+from the shady lane by an ivy-covered wall, was entered by two
+white gates, one standing near each extremity of the wall.  It so
+happened that at the moment when Fitzpiers was riding out at the
+lower gate on his way to the Manor House, Melbury was approaching
+the upper gate to enter it.  Fitzpiers being in front of Melbury
+was seen by the latter, but the surgeon, never turning his head,
+did not observe his father-in-law, ambling slowly and silently
+along under the trees, though his horse too was a gray one.
+
+"How is Grace?" said his wife, as soon as he entered.
+
+Melbury looked gloomy.  "She is not at all well," he said.  "I
+don't like the looks of her at all.  I couldn't bear the notion of
+her biding away in a strange place any longer, and I begged her to
+let me get her home.  At last she agreed to it, but not till after
+much persuading.  I was then sorry that I rode over instead of
+driving; but I have hired a nice comfortable carriage--the
+easiest-going I could get--and she'll be here in a couple of hours
+or less.  I rode on ahead to tell you to get her room ready; but I
+see her husband has come back."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Melbury.  She expressed her concern that her
+husband had hired a carriage all the way from Shottsford.  "What
+it will cost!" she said.
+
+"I don't care what it costs!" he exclaimed, testily.  "I was
+determined to get her home.  Why she went away I can't think! She
+acts in a way that is not at all likely to mend matters as far as
+I can see." (Grace had not told her father of her interview with
+Mrs. Charmond, and the disclosure that had been whispered in her
+startled ear.) "Since Edgar is come," he continued, "he might have
+waited in till I got home, to ask me how she was, if only for a
+compliment.  I saw him go out; where is he gone?"
+
+Mrs. Melbury did not know positively; but she told her husband
+that there was not much doubt about the place of his first visit
+after an absence.  She had, in fact, seen Fitzpiers take the
+direction of the Manor House.
+
+Melbury said no more.  It was exasperating to him that just at
+this moment, when there was every reason for Fitzpiers to stay
+indoors, or at any rate to ride along the Shottsford road to meet
+his ailing wife, he should be doing despite to her by going
+elsewhere.  The old man went out-of-doors again; and his horse
+being hardly unsaddled as yet, he told Upjohn to retighten the
+girths, when he again mounted, and rode off at the heels of the
+surgeon.
+
+By the time that Melbury reached the park, he was prepared to go
+any lengths in combating this rank and reckless errantry of his
+daughter's husband.  He would fetch home Edgar Fitzpiers to-night
+by some means, rough or fair: in his view there could come of his
+interference nothing worse than what existed at present.  And yet
+to every bad there is a worse.
+
+He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the park on
+this side, and cantered over the soft turf almost in the tracks of
+Fitzpiers's horse, till he reached the clump of trees under which
+his precursor had halted.  The whitish object that was
+indistinctly visible here in the gloom of the boughs he found to
+be Darling, as left by Fitzpiers.
+
+"D--n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an honest way?"
+said Melbury.
+
+He profited by Fitzpiers's example; dismounting, he tied his horse
+under an adjoining tree, and went on to the house on foot, as the
+other had done.  He was no longer disposed to stick at trifles in
+his investigation, and did not hesitate to gently open the front
+door without ringing.
+
+The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and
+wainscot, was lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam.  Not a
+soul was visible.  He went into the corridor and listened at a
+door which he knew to be that of the drawing-room; there was no
+sound, and on turning the handle he found the room empty.  A fire
+burning low in the grate was the sole light of the apartment; its
+beams flashed mockingly on the somewhat showy Versaillese
+furniture and gilding here, in style as unlike that of the
+structural parts of the building as it was possible to be, and
+probably introduced by Felice to counteract the fine old-English
+gloom of the place.  Disappointed in his hope of confronting his
+son-in-law here, he went on to the dining-room; this was without
+light or fire, and pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which signified
+that she had not dined there that day.
+
+By this time Melbury's mood had a little mollified.  Everything
+here was so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that he was no
+longer incited to provoke a collision with Fitzpiers or with
+anybody.  The comparative stateliness of the apartments influenced
+him to an emotion, rather than to a belief, that where all was
+outwardly so good and proper there could not be quite that
+delinquency within which he had suspected.  It occurred to him,
+too, that even if his suspicion were justified, his abrupt, if not
+unwarrantable, entry into the house might end in confounding its
+inhabitant at the expense of his daughter's dignity and his own. 
+Any ill result would be pretty sure to hit Grace hardest in the
+long-run.  He would, after all, adopt the more rational course,
+and plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs.
+Charmond.
+
+He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come.  Passing the
+door of the drawing-room anew, he fancied that he heard a noise
+within which was not the crackling of the fire.  Melbury gently
+reopened the door to a distance of a few inches, and saw at the
+opposite window two figures in the act of stepping out--a man and
+a woman--in whom he recognized the lady of the house and his son-
+in-law.  In a moment they had disappeared amid the gloom of the
+lawn.
+
+He returned into the hall, and let himself out by the carriage-
+entrance door, coming round to the lawn front in time to see the
+two figures parting at the railing which divided the precincts of
+the house from the open park.  Mrs. Charmond turned to hasten back
+immediately that Fitzpiers had left her side, and he was speedily
+absorbed into the duskiness of the trees.
+
+Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the drawing-room,
+and then followed after Fitzpiers, thinking that he would allow
+the latter to mount and ride ahead a little way before overtaking
+him and giving him a piece of his mind.  His son-in-law might
+possibly see the second horse near his own; but that would do him
+no harm, and might prepare him for what he was to expect.
+
+The event, however, was different from the plan.  On plunging into
+the thick shade of the clump of oaks, he could not perceive his
+horse Blossom anywhere; but feeling his way carefully along, he
+by-and-by discerned Fitzpiers's mare Darling still standing as
+before under the adjoining tree.  For a moment Melbury thought
+that his own horse, being young and strong, had broken away from
+her fastening; but on listening intently he could hear her ambling
+comfortably along a little way ahead, and a creaking of the saddle
+which showed that she had a rider.  Walking on as far as the small
+gate in the corner of the park, he met a laborer, who, in reply to
+Melbury's inquiry if he had seen any person on a gray horse, said
+that he had only met Dr. Fitzpiers.
+
+It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect: Fitzpiers had
+mounted the mare which did not belong to him in mistake for his
+own--an oversight easily explicable, in a man ever unwitting in
+horse-flesh, by the darkness of the spot and the near similarity
+of the animals in appearance, though Melbury's was readily enough
+seen to be the grayer horse by day.  He hastened back, and did
+what seemed best in the circumstances--got upon old Darling, and
+rode rapidly after Fitzpiers.
+
+Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding along the cart-
+way which led through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mould with
+large ruts that were formed by the timber-wagons in fetching the
+spoil of the plantations, when all at once he descried in front,
+at a point where the road took a turning round a large chestnut-
+tree, the form of his own horse Blossom, at which Melbury
+quickened Darling's pace, thinking to come up with Fitzpiers.
+
+Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider.  At Melbury's
+approach it galloped friskily away under the trees in a homeward
+direction.  Thinking something was wrong, the timber-merchant
+dismounted as soon as he reached the chestnut, and after feeling
+about for a minute or two discovered Fitzpiers lying on the
+ground.
+
+"Here--help!" cried the latter as soon as he felt Melbury's touch;
+"I have been thrown off, but there's not much harm done, I think."
+
+Since Melbury could not now very well read the younger man the
+lecture he had intended, and as friendliness would be hypocrisy,
+his instinct was to speak not a single word to his son-in-law.  He
+raised Fitzpiers into a sitting posture, and found that he was a
+little stunned and stupefied, but, as he had said, not otherwise
+hurt.  How this fall had come about was readily conjecturable:
+Fitzpiers, imagining there was only old Darling under him, had
+been taken unawares by the younger horse's sprightliness.
+
+Melbury was a traveller of the old-fashioned sort; having just
+come from Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket the
+pilgrim's flask of rum which he always carried on journeys
+exceeding a dozen miles, though he seldom drank much of it.  He
+poured it down the surgeon's throat, with such effect that he
+quickly revived.  Melbury got him on his legs; but the question
+was what to do with him.  He could not walk more than a few steps,
+and the other horse had gone away.
+
+With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride Darling,
+mounting himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers round his waist
+with one arm.  Darling being broad, straight-backed, and high in
+the withers, was well able to carry double, at any rate as far as
+Hintock, and at a gentle pace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread through the
+copse where Winterborne had worked, and into the heavier soil
+where the oaks grew; past Great Willy, the largest oak in the
+wood, and thence towards Nellcombe Bottom, intensely dark now with
+overgrowth, and popularly supposed to be haunted by the spirits of
+the fratricides exorcised from Hintock House.
+
+By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical
+strength.  But he had eaten nothing since making a hasty breakfast
+in London that morning, his anxiety about Felice having hurried
+him away from home before dining; as a consequence, the old rum
+administered by his father-in-law flew to the young man's head and
+loosened his tongue, without his ever having recognized who it was
+that had lent him a kindly hand.  He began to speak in desultory
+sentences, Melbury still supporting him.
+
+"I've come all the way from London to-day," said Fitzpiers.  "Ah,
+that's the place to meet your equals.  I live at Hintock--worse,
+at Little Hintock--and I am quite lost there.  There's not a man
+within ten miles of Hintock who can comprehend me.  I tell you,
+Farmer What's-your-name, that I'm a man of education.  I know
+several languages; the poets and I are familiar friends; I used to
+read more in metaphysics than anybody within fifty miles; and
+since I gave that up there's nobody can match me in the whole
+county of Wessex as a scientist.  Yet I an doomed to live with
+tradespeople in a miserable little hole like Hintock!"
+
+"Indeed!" muttered Melbury.
+
+Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here reared
+himself up suddenly from the bowed posture he had hitherto held,
+thrusting his shoulders so violently against Melbury's breast as
+to make it difficult for the old man to keep a hold on the reins. 
+"People don't appreciate me here!" the surgeon exclaimed; lowering
+his voice, he added, softly and slowly, "except one--except
+one!...A passionate soul, as warm as she is clever, as beautiful
+as she is warm, and as rich as she is beautiful.  I say, old
+fellow, those claws of yours clutch me rather tight--rather like
+the eagle's, you know, that ate out the liver of Pro--Pre--the man
+on Mount Caucasus.  People don't appreciate me, I say, except HER. 
+Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man!  She would have been mine, she
+would have taken my name; but unfortunately it cannot be so.  I
+stooped to mate beneath me, and now I rue it."
+
+The position was becoming a very trying one for Melbury,
+corporeally and mentally.  He was obliged to steady Fitzpiers with
+his left arm, and he began to hate the contact.  He hardly knew
+what to do.  It was useless to remonstrate with Fitzpiers, in his
+intellectual confusion from the rum and from the fall.  He
+remained silent, his hold upon his companion, however, being stern
+rather than compassionate.
+
+"You hurt me a little, farmer--though I am much obliged to you for
+your kindness.  People don't appreciate me, I say.  Between
+ourselves, I am losing my practice here; and why?  Because I see
+matchless attraction where matchless attraction is, both in person
+and position.  I mention no names, so nobody will be the wiser. 
+But I have lost her, in a legitimate sense, that is.  If I were a
+free man now, things have come to such a pass that she could not
+refuse me; while with her fortune (which I don't covet for itself)
+I should have a chance of satisfying an honorable ambition--a
+chance I have never had yet, and now never, never shall have,
+probably!"
+
+Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other's backbone, and his
+brain on fire with indignation, ventured to mutter huskily, "Why?"
+
+The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied, "Because
+I am tied and bound to another by law, as tightly as I am to you
+by your arm--not that I complain of your arm--I thank you for
+helping me.  Well, where are we?  Not nearly home yet?...Home, say
+I.  It is a home!  When I might have been at the other house over
+there."  In a stupefied way he flung his hand in the direction of
+the park.  "I was just two months too early in committing myself. 
+Had I only seen the other first--"
+
+Here the old man's arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake.  "What
+are you doing?" continued the latter.  "Keep still, please, or put
+me down.  I was saying that I lost her by a mere little two
+months! There is no chance for me now in this world, and it makes
+me reckless--reckless! Unless, indeed, anything should happen to
+the other one.  She is amiable enough; but if anything should
+happen to her--and I hear she is ill--well, if it should, I should
+be free--and my fame, my happiness, would be insured."
+
+These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in his seat in
+front of the timber-merchant.  Unable longer to master himself,
+Melbury, the skin of his face compressed, whipped away his spare
+arm from Fitzpiers's waist, and seized him by the collar.
+
+"You heartless villain--after all that we have done for ye!" he
+cried, with a quivering lip.  "And the money of hers that you've
+had, and the roof we've provided to shelter ye! It is to me,
+George Melbury, that you dare to talk like that!" The exclamation
+was accompanied by a powerful swing from the shoulder, which flung
+the young man head-long into the road, Fitzpiers fell with a heavy
+thud upon the stumps of some undergrowth which had been cut during
+the winter preceding.  Darling continued her walk for a few paces
+farther and stopped.
+
+"God forgive me!" Melbury murmured, repenting of what he had done. 
+"He tried me too sorely; and now perhaps I've murdered him!"
+
+He turned round in the saddle and looked towards the spot on which
+Fitzpiers had fallen.  To his great surprise he beheld the surgeon
+rise to his feet with a bound, as if unhurt, and walk away rapidly
+under the trees.
+
+Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers's footsteps died
+away.  "It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of
+Providence in providing leaves for his fall," he said to himself. 
+And then his mind reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, and his
+indignation so mounted within him that he almost wished the fall
+had put an end to the young man there and then.
+
+He had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray mare standing
+under some bushes.  Leaving Darling for a moment, Melbury went
+forward and easily caught the younger animal, now disheartened at
+its freak.  He then made the pair of them fast to a tree, and
+turning back, endeavored to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling
+pitifully that, after all, he had gone further than he intended
+with the offender.
+
+But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, his toes
+ploughing layer after layer of the little horny scrolls that had
+once been leaves, he could not find him.  He stood still listening
+and looking round.  The breeze was oozing through the network of
+boughs as through a strainer; the trunks and larger branches stood
+against the light of the sky in the forms of writhing men,
+gigantic candelabra, pikes, halberds, lances, and whatever besides
+the fancy chose to make of them.  Giving up the search, Melbury
+came back to the horses, and walked slowly homeward, leading one
+in each hand.
+
+
+
+It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had been
+returning from Great to Little Hintock about the time of
+Fitzpiers's and Melbury's passage home along that route.  A horse-
+collar that had been left at the harness-mender's to be repaired
+was required for use at five o'clock next morning, and in
+consequence the boy had to fetch it overnight.  He put his head
+through the collar, and accompanied his walk by whistling the one
+tune he knew, as an antidote to fear.
+
+The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting rather friskily
+along the track behind him, and not knowing whether to expect
+friend or foe, prudence suggested that he should cease his
+whistling and retreat among the trees till the horse and his rider
+had gone by; a course to which he was still more inclined when he
+found how noiselessly they approached, and saw that the horse
+looked pale, and remembered what he had read about Death in the
+Revelation.  He therefore deposited the collar by a tree, and hid
+himself behind it.  The horseman came on, and the youth, whose
+eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his great relief recognized
+the doctor.
+
+As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken Blossom
+for Darling, and he had not discovered his mistake when he came up
+opposite the boy, though he was somewhat surprised at the
+liveliness of his usually placid mare.  The only other pair of
+eyes on the spot whose vision was keen as the young carter's were
+those of the horse; and, with that strongly conservative objection
+to the unusual which animals show, Blossom, on eying the collar
+under the tree--quite invisible to Fitzpiers--exercised none of
+the patience of the older horse, but shied sufficiently to unseat
+so second-rate an equestrian as the surgeon.
+
+He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterwards found him. 
+The boy ran away, salving his conscience for the desertion by
+thinking how vigorously he would spread the alarm of the accident
+when he got to Hintock--which he uncompromisingly did, incrusting
+the skeleton event with a load of dramatic horrors.
+
+Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, though not
+by her husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shottsford-Forum, had been
+paid for and dismissed.  The long drive had somewhat revived her,
+her illness being a feverish intermittent nervousness which had
+more to do with mind than body, and she walked about her sitting-
+room in something of a hopeful mood.  Mrs. Melbury had told her as
+soon as she arrived that her husband had returned from London.  He
+had gone out, she said, to see a patient, as she supposed, and he
+must soon be back, since he had had no dinner or tea.  Grace would
+not allow her mind to harbor any suspicion of his whereabouts, and
+her step-mother said nothing of Mrs. Charmond's rumored sorrows
+and plans of departure.
+
+So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently.  She had left
+Hintock in a turmoil of feeling after the revelation of Mrs.
+Charmond, and had intended not to be at home when her husband
+returned.  But she had thought the matter over, and had allowed
+her father's influence to prevail and bring her back; and now
+somewhat regretted that Edgar's arrival had preceded hers.
+
+By-and-by Mrs. Melbury came up-stairs with a slight air of flurry
+and abruptness.
+
+"I have something to tell--some bad news," she said.  "But you
+must not be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been. 
+Edgar has been thrown off his horse.  We don't think he is hurt
+much.  It happened in the wood the other side of Nellcombe Bottom,
+where 'tis said the ghosts of the brothers walk."
+
+She went on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the
+invented horrors that had been communicated by the boy.  "I
+thought it better to tell you at once," she added, "in case he
+should not be very well able to walk home, and somebody should
+bring him."
+
+Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than she
+represented, and Grace knew that she thought so.  She sat down
+dazed for a few minutes, returning a negative to her step-mother's
+inquiry if she could do anything for her.  "But please go into the
+bedroom," Grace said, on second thoughts, "and see if all is ready
+there--in case it is serious." Mrs. Melbury thereupon called
+Grammer, and they did as directed, supplying the room with
+everything they could think of for the accommodation of an injured
+man.
+
+Nobody was left in the lower part of the house.  Not many minutes
+passed when Grace heard a knock at the door--a single knock, not
+loud enough to reach the ears of those in the bedroom.  She went
+to the top of the stairs and said, faintly, "Come up," knowing
+that the door stood, as usual in such houses, wide open.
+
+Retreating into the gloom of the broad landing she saw rise up the
+stairs a woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice
+revealed her to be Suke Damson, in great fright and sorrow.  A
+streak of light from the partially closed door of Grace's room
+fell upon her face as she came forward, and it was drawn and pale.
+
+"Oh, Miss Melbury--I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers," she said, wringing
+her hands.  "This terrible news.  Is he dead? Is he hurted very
+bad? Tell me; I couldn't help coming; please forgive me, Miss
+Melbury--Mrs. Fitzpiers I would say!"
+
+Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the landing, and
+put her hands to her now flushed face and head.  Could she order
+Suke Damson down-stairs and out of the house? Her husband might be
+brought in at any moment, and what would happen? But could she
+order this genuinely grieved woman away?
+
+There was a dead silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said,
+"Why don't ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can't I
+see him--would it be so very wrong?"
+
+Before Grace had answered somebody else came to the door below--a
+foot-fall light as a roe's.  There was a hurried tapping upon the
+panel, as if with the impatient tips of fingers whose owner
+thought not whether a knocker were there or no.  Without a pause,
+and possibly guided by the stray beam of light on the landing, the
+newcomer ascended the staircase as the first had done.  Grace was
+sufficiently visible, and the lady, for a lady it was, came to her
+side.
+
+"I could make nobody hear down-stairs," said Felice Charmond, with
+lips whose dryness could almost be heard, and panting, as she
+stood like one ready to sink on the floor with distress.  "What
+is--the matter--tell me the worst! Can he live?" She looked at
+Grace imploringly, without perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at
+such a presence, had shrunk away into the shade.
+
+Mrs. Charmond's little feet were covered with mud; she was quite
+unconscious of her appearance now.  "I have heard such a dreadful
+report," she went on; "I came to ascertain the truth of it.  Is
+he--killed?"
+
+"She won't tell us--he's dying--he's in that room!" burst out
+Suke, regardless of consequences, as she heard the distant
+movements of Mrs. Melbury and Grammer in the bedroom at the end of
+the passage.
+
+"Where?" said Mrs. Charmond; and on Suke pointing out the
+direction, she made as if to go thither.
+
+Grace barred the way.  "He is not there," she said.  "I have not
+seen him any more than you.  I have heard a report only--not so
+bad as you think.  It must have been exaggerated to you."
+
+"Please do not conceal anything--let me know all!" said Felice,
+doubtingly.
+
+"You shall know all I know--you have a perfect right to know--who
+can have a better than either of you?" said Grace, with a delicate
+sting which was lost upon Felice Charmond now.  "I repeat, I have
+only heard a less alarming account than you have heard; how much
+it means, and how little, I cannot say.  I pray God that it means
+not much--in common humanity.  You probably pray the same--for
+other reasons."
+
+She regarded them both there in the dim light a while.
+
+They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at her; not
+heeding her mood.  A tenderness spread over Grace like a dew.  It
+was well, very well, conventionally, to address either one of them
+in the wife's regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman,
+creature, or thing, for losing their hearts to her husband.  But
+life, what was it, and who was she?  She had, like the singer of
+the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and chastened all the day long;
+but could she, by retributive words, in order to please herself--
+the individual--"offend against the generation," as he would not?
+
+"He is dying, perhaps," blubbered Suke Damson, putting her apron
+to her eyes.
+
+In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affection, agony
+of heart, all for a man who had wronged them--had never really
+behaved towards either of them anyhow but selfishly.  Neither one
+but would have wellnigh sacrificed half her life to him, even now. 
+The tears which his possibly critical situation could not bring to
+her eyes surged over at the contemplation of these fellow-women. 
+She turned to the balustrade, bent herself upon it, and wept.
+
+Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her
+handkerchief, and letting the tears run down silently.  While
+these three poor women stood together thus, pitying another though
+most to be pitied themselves, the pacing of a horse or horses
+became audible in the court, and in a moment Melbury's voice was
+heard calling to his stableman.  Grace at once started up, ran
+down the stairs and out into the quadrangle as her father crossed
+it towards the door.  "Father, what is the matter with him?" she
+cried.
+
+"Who--Edgar?" said Melbury, abruptly.  "Matter? Nothing.  What, my
+dear, and have you got home safe? Why, you are better already! But
+you ought not to be out in the air like this."
+
+"But he has been thrown off his horse!"
+
+"I know; I know.  I saw it.  He got up again, and walked off as
+well as ever.  A fall on the leaves didn't hurt a spry fellow like
+him.  He did not come this way," he added, significantly.  "I
+suppose he went to look for his horse.  I tried to find him, but
+could not.  But after seeing him go away under the trees I found
+the horse, and have led it home for safety.  So he must walk. 
+Now, don't you stay out here in this night air.
+
+She returned to the house with her father.  when she had again
+ascended to the landing and to her own rooms beyond it was a great
+relief to her to find that both Petticoat the First and Petticoat
+the Second of her Bien-aime had silently disappeared.  They had,
+in all probability, heard the words of her father, and departed
+with their anxieties relieved.
+
+Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied themselves to
+see that she was comfortable.  Perceiving soon that she would
+prefer to be left alone they went away.
+
+Grace waited on.  The clock raised its voice now and then, but her
+husband did not return.  At her father's usual hour for retiring
+he again came in to see her.  "Do not stay up," she said, as soon
+as he entered.  "I am not at all tired.  I will sit up for him."
+
+"I think it will be useless, Grace," said Melbury, slowly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I have had a bitter quarrel with him; and on that account I
+hardly think he will return to-night."
+
+"A quarrel?  Was that after the fall seen by the boy?"
+
+Melbury nodded an affirmative, without taking his eyes off the
+candle.
+
+"Yes; it was as we were coming home together," he said.
+
+Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father was
+speaking.  "How could you want to quarrel with him?" she cried,
+suddenly.  "Why could you not let him come home quietly if he were
+inclined to?  He is my husband; and now you have married me to him
+surely you need not provoke him unnecessarily.  First you induce
+me to accept him, and then you do things that divide us more than
+we should naturally be divided!"
+
+"How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?" said Melbury, with
+indignant sorrow.  "I divide you from your husband, indeed!  You
+little think--"
+
+He was inclined to say more--to tell her the whole story of the
+encounter, and that the provocation he had received had lain
+entirely in hearing her despised.  But it would have greatly
+distressed her, and he forbore.  "You had better lie down.  You
+are tired," he said, soothingly.  "Good-night."
+
+The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the dwelling,
+broken only by the occasional skirr of a halter in Melbury's
+stables.  Despite her father's advice Grace still waited up.  But
+nobody came.
+
+It was a critical time in Grace's emotional life that night.  She
+thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce forgot
+Winterborne.
+
+"How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!" she said to
+herself.  "How attractive he must be to everybody; and, indeed, he
+is attractive." The possibility is that, piqued by rivalry, these
+ideas might have been transformed into their corresponding
+emotions by a show of the least reciprocity in Fitzpiers.  There
+was, in truth, a love-bird yearning to fly from her heart; and it
+wanted a lodging badly.
+
+But no husband came.  The fact was that Melbury had been much
+mistaken about the condition of Fitzpiers.  People do not fall
+headlong on stumps of underwood with impunity.  Had the old man
+been able to watch Fitzpiers narrowly enough, he would have
+observed that on rising and walking into the thicket he dropped
+blood as he went; that he had not proceeded fifty yards before he
+showed signs of being dizzy, and, raising his hands to his head,
+reeled and fell down.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated in Hintock
+that night.  Felice Charmond was in no mood to retire to rest at a
+customary hour; and over her drawing-room fire at the Manor House 
+she sat as motionless and in as deep a reverie as Grace in her
+little apartment at the homestead.
+
+Having caught ear of Melbury's intelligence while she stood on the
+landing at his house, and been eased of much of her mental
+distress, her sense of personal decorum returned upon her with a
+rush.  She descended the stairs and left the door like a ghost,
+keeping close to the walls of the building till she got round to
+the gate of the quadrangle, through which she noiselessly passed
+almost before Grace and her father had finished their discourse. 
+Suke Damson had thought it well to imitate her superior in this
+respect, and, descending the back stairs as Felice descended the
+front, went out at the side door and home to her cottage.
+
+Once outside Melbury's gates Mrs. Charmond ran with all her speed
+to the Manor House, without stopping or turning her head, and
+splitting her thin boots in her haste.  She entered her own
+dwelling, as she had emerged from it, by the drawing-room window. 
+In other circumstances she would have felt some timidity at
+undertaking such an unpremeditated excursion alone; but her
+anxiety for another had cast out her fear for herself.
+
+Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left it--the
+candles still burning, the casement closed, and the shutters
+gently pulled to, so as to hide the state of the window from the
+cursory glance of a servant entering the apartment.  She had been
+gone about three-quarters of an hour by the clock, and nobody
+seemed to have discovered her absence.  Tired in body but tense in
+mind, she sat down, palpitating, round-eyed, bewildered at what
+she had done.
+
+She had been betrayed by affrighted love into a visit which, now
+that the emotion instigating it had calmed down under her belief
+that Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest surprise to her. 
+This was how she had set about doing her best to escape her
+passionate bondage to him! Somehow, in declaring to Grace and to
+herself the unseemliness of her infatuation, she had grown a
+convert to its irresistibility.  If Heaven would only give her
+strength; but Heaven never did! One thing was indispensable; she
+must go away from Hintock if she meant to withstand further
+temptation.  The struggle was too wearying, too hopeless, while
+she remained.  It was but a continual capitulation of conscience
+to what she dared not name.
+
+By degrees, as she sat, Felice's mind--helped perhaps by the
+anticlimax of learning that her lover was unharmed after all her
+fright about him--grew wondrously strong in wise resolve.  For the
+moment she was in a mood, in the words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu,
+"to run mad with discretion;" and was so persuaded that discretion
+lay in departure that she wished to set about going that very
+minute.  Jumping up from her seat, she began to gather together
+some small personal knick-knacks scattered about the room, to feel
+that preparations were really in train.
+
+While moving here and there she fancied that she heard a slight
+noise out-of-doors, and stood still.  Surely it was a tapping at
+the window.  A thought entered her mind, and burned her cheek.  He
+had come to that window before; yet was it possible that he should
+dare to do so now! All the servants were in bed, and in the
+ordinary course of affairs she would have retired also.  Then she
+remembered that on stepping in by the casement and closing it, she
+had not fastened the window-shutter, so that a streak of light
+from the interior of the room might have revealed her vigil to an
+observer on the lawn.  How all things conspired against her
+keeping faith with Grace!
+
+The tapping recommenced, light as from the bill of a little bird;
+her illegitimate hope overcame her vow; she went and pulled back
+the shutter, determining, however, to shake her head at him and
+keep the casement securely closed.
+
+What she saw outside might have struck terror into a heart stouter
+than a helpless woman's at midnight.  In the centre of the lowest
+pane of the window, close to the glass, was a human face, which
+she barely recognized as the face of Fitzpiers.  It was surrounded
+with the darkness of the night without, corpse-like in its pallor,
+and covered with blood.  As disclosed in the square area of the
+pane it met her frightened eyes like a replica of the Sudarium of
+St. Veronica.
+
+He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly.  Her rapid mind
+pieced together in an instant a possible concatenation of events
+which might have led to this tragical issue.  She unlatched the
+casement with a terrified hand, and bending down to where he was
+crouching, pressed her face to his with passionate solicitude. 
+She assisted him into the room without a word, to do which it was
+almost necessary to lift him bodily.  Quickly closing the window
+and fastening the shutters, she bent over him breathlessly.
+
+"Are you hurt much--much?" she cried, faintly.  "Oh, oh, how is
+this!"
+
+"Rather much--but don't be frightened," he answered in a difficult 
+whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier position if
+possible.  "A little water, please."
+
+She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle and
+glass, from which he eagerly drank.  He could then speak much
+better, and with her help got upon the nearest couch.
+
+"Are you dying, Edgar?" she said.  "Do speak to me!"
+
+"I am half dead," said Fitzpiers.  "But perhaps I shall get over
+it....It is chiefly loss of blood."
+
+"But I thought your fall did not hurt you," said she.  "Who did
+this?"
+
+"Felice--my father-in-law!...I have crawled to you more than a
+mile on my hands and knees--God, I thought I should never have got
+here!...I have come to you--be-cause you are the only friend--I
+have in the world now....I can never go back to Hintock--never--to
+the roof of the Melburys! Not poppy nor mandragora will ever
+medicine this bitter feud!...If I were only well again--"
+
+"Let me bind your head, now that you have rested."
+
+"Yes--but wait a moment--it has stopped bleeding, fortunately, or
+I should be a dead man before now.  While in the wood I managed to
+make a tourniquet of some half-pence and my handkerchief, as well
+as I could in the dark....But listen, dear Felice! Can you hide me
+till I am well? Whatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. 
+My practice is nearly gone, you know--and after this I would not
+care to recover it if I could."
+
+By this time Felice's tears began to blind her.  Where were now
+her discreet plans for sundering their lives forever? To
+administer to him in his pain, and trouble, and poverty, was her
+single thought.  The first step was to hide him, and she asked
+herself where.  A place occurred to her mind.
+
+She got him some wine from the dining-room, which strengthened him
+much.  Then she managed to remove his boots, and, as he could now
+keep himself upright by leaning upon her on one side and a
+walking-stick on the other, they went thus in slow march out of
+the room and up the stairs.  At the top she took him along a
+gallery, pausing whenever he required rest, and thence up a
+smaller staircase to the least used part of the house, where she
+unlocked a door.  Within was a lumber-room, containing abandoned
+furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles which obscured
+the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks and lairs
+in which a person would not be discerned even should an eye gaze
+in at the door.  The articles were mainly those that had belonged
+to the previous owner of the house, and had been bought in by the
+late Mr. Charmond at the auction; but changing fashion, and the
+tastes of a young wife, had caused them to be relegated to this
+dungeon.
+
+Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she had
+hauled out materials for a bed, which she spread on the floor in
+one of the aforesaid nooks.  She obtained water and a basin, and
+washed the dried blood from his face and hands; and when he was
+comfortably reclining, fetched food from the larder.  While he ate
+her eyes lingered anxiously on his face, following its every
+movement with such loving-kindness as only a fond woman can show.
+
+He was now in better condition, and discussed his position with
+her.
+
+"What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough to enrage
+any man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowledge of his
+presence.  But I did not know him, and I was stupefied by what he
+had given me, so that I hardly was aware of what I said.  Well--
+the veil of that temple is rent in twain!...As I am not going to
+be seen again in Hintock, my first efforts must be directed to
+allay any alarm that may be felt at my absence, before I am able
+to get clear away.  Nobody must suspect that I have been hurt, or
+there will be a country talk about me.  Felice, I must at once
+concoct a letter to check all search for me.  I think if you can
+bring me a pen and paper I may be able to do it now.  I could rest
+better if it were done.  Poor thing! how I tire her with running
+up and down!"
+
+She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting-book as a
+support to his hand, while he penned a brief note to his nominal
+wife.
+
+"The animosity shown towards me by your father," he wrote, in this
+coldest of marital epistles, "is such that I cannot return again
+to a roof which is his, even though it shelters you.  A parting is
+unavoidable, as you are sure to be on his side in this division. 
+I am starting on a journey which will take me a long way from
+Hintock, and you must not expect to see me there again for some
+time."
+
+He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his professional
+engagements and other practical matters, concluding without a hint
+of his destination, or a notion of when she would see him again. 
+He offered to read the note to Felice before he closed it up, but
+she would not hear or see it; that side of his obligations
+distressed her beyond endurance.  She turned away from Fitzpiers,
+and sobbed bitterly.
+
+"If you can get this posted at a place some miles away," he
+whispered, exhausted by the effort of writing--"at Shottsford or
+Port-Bredy, or still better, Budmouth--it will divert all
+suspicion from this house as the place of my refuge."
+
+"I will drive to one or other of the places myself--anything to
+keep it unknown," she murmured, her voice weighted with vague
+foreboding, now that the excitement of helping him had passed
+away.
+
+Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to he done. 
+"In creeping over the fence on to the lawn," he said, "I made the
+rail bloody, and it shows rather much on the white paint--I could
+see it in the dark.  At all hazards it should be washed off. 
+Could you do that also, Felice?"
+
+What will not women do on such devoted occasions? weary as she was
+she went all the way down the rambling staircases to the ground-
+floor, then to search for a lantern, which she lighted and hid
+under her cloak; then for a wet sponge, and next went forth into
+the night.  The white railing stared out in the darkness at her
+approach, and a ray from the enshrouded lantern fell upon the
+blood--just where he had told her it would be found.  she
+shuddered.  It was almost too much to bear in one day--but with a
+shaking hand she sponged the rail clean, and returned to the
+house.
+
+The time occupied by these several proceedings was not much less
+than two hours.  When all was done, and she had smoothed his
+extemporized bed, and placed everything within his reach that she
+could think of, she took her leave of him, and locked him in.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bearing upon it
+the postmark of a distant town, it never once crossed her mind
+that Fitzpiers was within a mile of her still.  she felt relieved
+that he did not write more bitterly of the quarrel with her
+father, whatever its nature might have been; but the general
+frigidity of his communication quenched in her the incipient spark
+that events had kindled so shortly before.
+
+From this centre of information it was made known in Hintock that
+the doctor had gone away, and as none but the Melbury household
+was aware that he did not return on the night of his accident, no
+excitement manifested itself in the village.
+
+Thus the early days of May passed by.  None but the nocturnal
+birds and animals observed that late one evening, towards the
+middle of the month, a closely wrapped figure, with a crutch under
+one arm and a stick in his hand, crept out from Hintock House
+across the lawn to the shelter of the trees, taking thence a slow
+and laborious walk to the nearest point of the turnpike-road.  The
+mysterious personage was so disguised that his own wife would
+hardly have known him.  Felice Charmond was a practised hand at
+make-ups, as well she might be; and she had done her utmost in
+padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old materials of her art
+in the recesses of the lumber-room.
+
+In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which conveyed
+him to Sherton-Abbas, whence he proceeded to the nearest port on
+the south coast, and immediately crossed the Channel.
+
+But it was known to everybody that three days after this time Mrs.
+Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of setting out for a long
+term of travel and residence on the Continent.  She went off one
+morning as unostentatiously as could be, and took no maid with
+her, having, she said, engaged one to meet her at a point farther
+on in her route.  After that, Hintock House, so frequently
+deserted, was again to be let.  Spring had not merged in summer
+when a clinching rumor, founded on the best of evidence, reached
+the parish and neighborhood.  Mrs. Charmond and Fitzpiers had been
+seen together in Baden, in relations which set at rest the
+question that had agitated the little community ever since the
+winter.
+
+Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even farther than
+Grace.  His spirit seemed broken.
+
+But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, and here,
+as he was passing by the conduit one day, his mental condition
+expressed largely by his gait, he heard his name spoken by a voice
+formerly familiar.  He turned and saw a certain Fred Beaucock--
+once a promising lawyer's clerk and local dandy, who had been
+called the cleverest fellow in Sherton, without whose brains the
+firm of solicitors employing him would be nowhere.  But later on
+Beaucock had fallen into the mire.  He was invited out a good
+deal, sang songs at agricultural meetings and burgesses' dinners;
+in sum, victualled himself with spirits more frequently than was
+good for the clever brains or body either.  He lost his situation,
+and after an absence spent in trying his powers elsewhere, came
+back to his native town, where, at the time of the foregoing
+events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for astonishingly small
+fees--mostly carrying on his profession on public-house settles,
+in whose recesses he might often have been overheard making
+country-people's wills for half a crown; calling with a learned
+voice for pen-and-ink and a halfpenny sheet of paper, on which he
+drew up the testament while resting it in a little space wiped
+with his hand on the table amid the liquid circles formed by the
+cups and glasses.  An idea implanted early in life is difficult to
+uproot, and many elderly tradespeople still clung to the notion
+that Fred Beaucock knew a great deal of law.
+
+It was he who had called Melbury by name.  "You look very down,
+Mr. Melbury--very, if I may say as much," he observed, when the
+timber-merchant turned.  "But I know--I know.  A very sad case--
+very.  I was bred to the law, as you know, and am professionally
+no stranger to such matters.  Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her
+remedy."
+
+"How--what--a remedy?" said Melbury.
+
+"Under the new law, sir.  A new court was established last year,
+and under the new statute, twenty and twenty-one Vic., cap.
+eighty-five, unmarrying is as easy as marrying.  No more Acts of
+Parliament necessary; no longer one law for the rich and another
+for the poor.  But come inside--I was just going to have a
+nibleykin of rum hot--I'll explain it all to you."
+
+The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of newspapers. 
+And though he was a severely correct man in his habits, and had no
+taste for entering a tavern with Fred Beaucock--nay, would have
+been quite uninfluenced by such a character on any other matter in
+the world--such fascination lay in the idea of delivering his poor
+girl from bondage, that it deprived him of the critical faculty. 
+He could not resist the ex-lawyer's clerk, and entered the inn.
+
+Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for as a matter
+of course, Beaucock leaning back in the settle with a legal
+gravity which would hardly allow him to be conscious of the
+spirits before him, though they nevertheless disappeared with
+mysterious quickness.
+
+How much of the exaggerated information on the then new divorce
+laws which Beaucock imparted to his listener was the result of
+ignorance, and how much of dupery, was never ascertained.  But he
+related such a plausible story of the ease with which Grace could
+become a free woman that her father was irradiated with the
+project; and though he scarcely wetted his lips, Melbury never
+knew how he came out of the inn, or when or where he mounted his
+gig to pursue his way homeward.  But home he found himself, his
+brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorously as a gong in
+the intensity of its stir.  Before he had seen Grace, he was
+accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his face shining as if
+he had, like the Law-giver, conversed with an angel.
+
+He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the arm to a
+heap of rendlewood--as barked oak was here called--which lay under
+a privet-hedge.
+
+"Giles," he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, "there's a
+new law in the land! Grace can be free quite easily.  I only knew
+it by the merest accident.  I might not have found it out for the
+next ten years.  She can get rid of him--d'ye hear?--get rid of
+him.  Think of that, my friend Giles!"
+
+He related what he had learned of the new legal remedy.  A subdued
+tremulousness about the mouth was all the response that
+Winterborne made; and Melbury added, "My boy, you shall have her
+yet--if you want her." His feelings had gathered volume as he said
+this, and the articulate sound of the old idea drowned his sight
+in mist.
+
+"Are you sure--about this new law?" asked Winterborne, so
+disquieted by a gigantic exultation which loomed alternately with
+fearful doubt that he evaded the full acceptance of Melbury's last
+statement.
+
+Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since his talk
+with Beaucock it had come into his mind that he had seen some time
+ago in the weekly paper an allusion to such a legal change; but,
+having no interest in those desperate remedies at the moment, he
+had passed it over.  "But I'm not going to let the matter rest
+doubtful for a single day," he continued.  "I am going to London. 
+Beaucock will go with me, and we shall get the best advice as soon
+as we possibly can.  Beaucock is a thorough lawyer--nothing the
+matter with him but a fiery palate.  I knew him as the stay and
+refuge of Sherton in knots of law at one time."
+
+Winterborne's replies were of the vaguest.  The new possibility
+was almost unthinkable by him at the moment.  He was what was
+called at Hintock "a solid-going fellow;" he maintained his
+abeyant mood, not from want of reciprocity, but from a taciturn
+hesitancy, taught by life as he knew it.
+
+"But," continued the timber-merchant, a temporary crease or two of
+anxiety supplementing those already established in his forehead by
+time and care, "Grace is not at all well.  Nothing constitutional,
+you know; but she has been in a low, nervous state ever since that
+night of fright.  I don't doubt but that she will be all right
+soon....I wonder how she is this evening?" He rose with the words,
+as if he had too long forgotten her personality in the excitement
+of her previsioned career.
+
+They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the garden
+brown, and now went towards Melbury's house, Giles a few steps in
+the rear of his old friend, who was stimulated by the enthusiasm
+of the moment to outstep the ordinary walking of Winterborne.  He
+felt shy of entering Grace's presence as her reconstituted lover--
+which was how her father's manner would be sure to present him--
+before definite information as to her future state was
+forthcoming; it seemed too nearly like the act of those who rush
+in where angels fear to tread.
+
+A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the day was
+prompt enough in coming.  No sooner had he followed the timber-
+merchant in at the door than he heard Grammer inform him that Mrs.
+Fitzpiers was still more unwell than she had been in the morning. 
+Old Dr. Jones being in the neighborhood they had called him in,
+and he had instantly directed them to get her to bed.  They were
+not, however, to consider her illness serious--a feverish, nervous
+attack the result of recent events, was what she was suffering
+from, and she would doubtless be well in a few days.
+
+Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of seeing her
+that evening was disappointed.  Even this aggravation of her
+morning condition did not greatly depress Melbury.  He knew, he
+said, that his daughter's constitution was sound enough.  It was
+only these domestic troubles that were pulling her down.  Once
+free she would be blooming again.  Melbury diagnosed rightly, as
+parents usually do.
+
+He set out for London the next morning, Jones having paid another
+visit and assured him that he might leave home without uneasiness,
+especially on an errand of that sort, which would the sooner put
+an end to her suspense.
+
+The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two when it was
+told in Hintock that Mr. Fitzpiers's hat had been found in the
+wood.  Later on in the afternoon the hat was brought to Melbury,
+and, by a piece of ill-fortune, into Grace's presence.  It had
+doubtless lain in the wood ever since his fall from the horse, but
+it looked so clean and uninjured--the summer weather and leafy
+shelter having much favored its preservation--that Grace could not
+believe it had remained so long concealed.  A very little of fact
+was enough to set her fevered fancy at work at this juncture; she
+thought him still in the neighborhood; she feared his sudden
+appearance; and her nervous malady developed consequences so grave
+that Dr. Jones began to look serious, and the household was
+alarmed.
+
+It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time of the
+summer scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or three hours
+during the night.  The bird's note, so familiar to her ears from
+infancy, was now absolute torture to the poor girl.  On the Friday
+following the Wednesday of Melbury's departure, and the day after
+the discovery of Fitzpiers's hat, the cuckoo began at two o'clock
+in the morning with a sudden cry from one of Melbury's apple-
+trees, not three yards from the window of Grace's room.
+
+"Oh, he is coming!" she cried, and in her terror sprang clean from
+the bed out upon the floor.
+
+These starts and frights continued till noon; and when the doctor
+had arrived and had seen her, and had talked with Mrs. Melbury, he
+sat down and meditated.  That ever-present terror it was
+indispensable to remove from her mind at all hazards; and he
+thought how this might be done.
+
+Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to the
+disquieted Winterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. Jones went
+home and wrote to Mr. Melbury at the London address he had
+obtained from his wife.  The gist of his communication was that
+Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as soon as possible that steps
+were being taken to sever the bond which was becoming a torture to
+her; that she would soon be free, and was even then virtually so. 
+"If you can say it AT ONCE it may be the means of averting much
+harm," he said.  "Write to herself; not to me."
+
+On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her with
+mysterious pacifications that in a day or two she might expect to
+receive some assuring news.  So it turned out.  When Sunday
+morning came there was a letter for Grace from her father.  It
+arrived at seven o'clock, the usual time at which the toddling
+postman passed by Hintock; at eight Grace awoke, having slept an
+hour or two for a wonder, and Mrs. Melbury brought up the letter.
+
+"Can you open it yourself?" said she.
+
+"Oh yes, yes!" said Grace, with feeble impatience.  She tore the
+envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a creeping blush
+tinctured her white neck and cheek.
+
+Her father had exercised a bold discretion.  He informed her that
+she need have no further concern about Fitzpiers's return; that
+she would shortly be a free woman; and therefore, if she should
+desire to wed her old lover--which he trusted was the case, since
+it was his own deep wish--she would be in a position to do so.  In
+this Melbury had not written beyond his belief.  But he very much
+stretched the facts in adding that the legal formalities for
+dissolving her union were practically settled.  The truth was that
+on the arrival of the doctor's letter poor Melbury had been much
+agitated, and could with difficulty be prevented by Beaucock from
+returning to her bedside.  What was the use of his rushing back to
+Hintock? Beaucock had asked him.  The only thing that could do her
+any good was a breaking of the bond.  Though he had not as yet had
+an interview with the eminent solicitor they were about to
+consult, he was on the point of seeing him; and the case was clear
+enough.  Thus the simple Melbury, urged by his parental alarm at
+her danger by the representations of his companion, and by the
+doctor's letter, had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly
+that she was virtually free.
+
+"And you'd better write also to the gentleman," suggested
+Beaucock, who, scenting notoriety and the germ of a large practice
+in the case, wished to commit Melbury to it irretrievably; to
+effect which he knew that nothing would be so potent as awakening
+the passion of Grace for Winterborne, so that her father might not
+have the heart to withdraw from his attempt to make her love
+legitimate when he discovered that there were difficulties in the
+way.
+
+The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with the idea of
+"starting them at once," as he called it.  To put his long-delayed
+reparative scheme in train had become a passion with him now.  He
+added to the letter addressed to his daughter a passage hinting
+that she ought to begin to encourage Winterborne, lest she should
+lose him altogether; and he wrote to Giles that the path was
+virtually open for him at last.  Life was short, he declared;
+there were slips betwixt the cup and the lip; her interest in him
+should be reawakened at once, that all might be ready when the
+good time came for uniting them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed than he was
+moved in heart.  The novelty of the avowal rendered what it
+carried with it inapprehensible by him in its entirety.
+
+Only a few short months ago completely estranged from this family--
+beholding Grace going to and fro in the distance, clothed with
+the alienating radiance of obvious superiority, the wife of the
+then popular and fashionable Fitzpiers, hopelessly outside his
+social boundary down to so recent a time that flowers then folded
+were hardly faded yet--he was now asked by that jealously guarding
+father of hers to take courage--to get himself ready for the day
+when he should be able to claim her.
+
+The old times came back to him in dim procession.  How he had been
+snubbed; how Melbury had despised his Christmas party; how that
+sweet, coy Grace herself had looked down upon him and his
+household arrangements, and poor Creedle's contrivances!
+
+Well, he could not believe it.  Surely the adamantine barrier of
+marriage with another could not be pierced like this! It did
+violence to custom.  Yet a new law might do anything.  But was it
+at all within the bounds of probability that a woman who, over and
+above her own attainments, had been accustomed to those of a
+cultivated professional man, could ever be the wife of such as he?
+
+Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to see the
+reasonableness of that treatment.  He had said to himself again
+and again that her father was right; that the poor ceorl, Giles
+Winterborne, would never have been able to make such a dainty girl
+happy.  Yet, now that she had stood in a position farther removed
+from his own than at first, he was asked to prepare to woo her. 
+He was full of doubt.
+
+Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness.  To act so
+promptly as Melbury desired him to act seemed, indeed, scarcely
+wise, because of the uncertainty of events.  Giles knew nothing of
+legal procedure, but he did know that for him to step up to Grace
+as a lover before the bond which bound her was actually dissolved
+was simply an extravagant dream of her father's overstrained mind. 
+He pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw that
+the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weakened to this
+unreasoning desire.
+
+Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any cynical
+conjecture that the timber-merchant, in his intense affection for
+Grace, was courting him now because that young lady, when
+disunited, would be left in an anomalous position, to escape which
+a bad husband was better than none.  He felt quite sure that his
+old friend was simply on tenterhooks of anxiety to repair the
+almost irreparable error of dividing two whom Nature had striven
+to join together in earlier days, and that in his ardor to do this
+he was oblivious of formalities. The cautious supervision of his
+past years had overleaped itself at last.  hence, Winterborne
+perceived that, in this new beginning, the necessary care not to
+compromise Grace by too early advances must be exercised by
+himself.
+
+Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as heretofore.  There
+is no such thing as a stationary love: men are either loving more
+or loving less.  But Giles himself recognized no decline in his
+sense of her dearness.  If the flame did indeed burn lower now
+than when he had fetched her from Sherton at her last return from
+school, the marvel was small.  He had been laboring ever since his
+rejection and her marriage to reduce his former passion to a
+docile friendship, out of pure regard to its expediency; and their
+separation may have helped him to a partial success.
+
+A week and more passed, and there was no further news of Melbury. 
+But the effect of the intelligence he had already transmitted upon
+the elastic-nerved daughter of the woods had been much what the
+old surgeon Jones had surmised.  It had soothed her perturbed
+spirit better than all the opiates in the pharmacopoeia.  She had
+slept unbrokenly a whole night and a day.  The "new law" was to
+her a mysterious, beneficent, godlike entity, lately descended
+upon earth, that would make her as she once had been without
+trouble or annoyance.  Her position fretted her, its abstract
+features rousing an aversion which was even greater than her
+aversion to the personality of him who had caused it.  It was
+mortifying, productive of slights, undignified.  Him she could
+forget; her circumstances she had always with her.
+
+She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her recovery;
+and perhaps on that account her fancy wove about him a more
+romantic tissue than it could have done if he had stood before her
+with all the specks and flaws inseparable from corporeity.  He
+rose upon her memory as the fruit-god and the wood-god in
+alternation; sometimes leafy, and smeared with green lichen, as
+she had seen him among the sappy boughs of the plantations;
+sometimes cider-stained, and with apple-pips in the hair of his
+arms, as she had met him on his return from cider-making in White
+Hart Vale, with his vats and presses beside him.  In her secret
+heart she almost approximated to her father's enthusiasm in
+wishing to show Giles once for all how she still regarded him. 
+The question whether the future would indeed bring them together
+for life was a standing wonder with her.  She knew that it could
+not with any propriety do so just yet.  But reverently believing
+in her father's sound judgment and knowledge, as good girls are 
+wont to do, she remembered what he had written about her giving a
+hint to Winterborne lest there should be risk in delay, and her
+feelings were not averse to such a step, so far as it could be
+done without danger at this early stage of the proceedings.
+
+From being a frail phantom of her former equable self she returned
+in bounds to a condition of passable philosophy.  She bloomed
+again in the face in the course of a few days, and was well enough
+to go about as usual.  One day Mrs. Melbury proposed that for a
+change she should be driven in the gig to Sherton market, whither
+Melbury's man was going on other errands.  Grace had no business
+whatever in Sherton; but it crossed her mind that Winterborne
+would probably be there, and this made the thought of such a drive
+interesting.
+
+On the way she saw nothing of him; but when the horse was walking
+slowly through the obstructions of Sheep Street, she discerned the
+young man on the pavement.  She thought of that time when he had
+been standing under his apple-tree on her return from school, and
+of the tender opportunity then missed through her fastidiousness. 
+Her heart rose in her throat.  She abjured all such fastidiousness
+now.  Nor did she forget the last occasion on which she had beheld
+him in that town, making cider in the court-yard of the Earl of
+Wessex Hotel, while she was figuring as a fine lady in the balcony
+above.
+
+Grace directed the man to set her down there in the midst, and
+immediately went up to her lover.  Giles had not before observed
+her, and his eyes now suppressedly looked his pleasure, without
+the embarrassment that had formerly marked him at such meetings.
+
+When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly, "I have
+nothing to do.  Perhaps you are deeply engaged?"
+
+"I?  Not a bit.  My business now at the best of times is small, I
+am sorry to say."
+
+"Well, then, I am going into the Abbey.  Come along with me."
+
+The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape from
+publicity, for many eyes were regarding her.  She had hoped that
+sufficient time had elapsed for the extinction of curiosity; but
+it was quite otherwise.  The people looked at her with tender
+interest as the deserted girl-wife--without obtrusiveness, and
+without vulgarity; but she was ill prepared for scrutiny in any
+shape.
+
+They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat down.  Not a
+soul was in the building save themselves.  She regarded a stained
+window, with her head sideways, and tentatively asked him if he
+remembered the last time they were in that town alone.
+
+He remembered it perfectly, and remarked, "You were a proud miss
+then, and as dainty as you were high.  Perhaps you are now?"
+
+Grace slowly shook her head.  "Affliction has taken all that out
+of me," she answered, impressively.  "Perhaps I am too far the
+other way now." As there was something lurking in this that she
+could not explain, she added, so quickly as not to allow him time
+to think of it, "Has my father written to you at all?"
+
+"Yes," said Winterborne.
+
+She glanced ponderingly up at him.  "Not about me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+His mouth was lined with charactery which told her that he had
+been bidden to take the hint as to the future which she had been
+bidden to give.  The unexpected discovery sent a scarlet pulsation
+through Grace for the moment.  However, it was only Giles who
+stood there, of whom she had no fear; and her self-possession
+returned.
+
+"He said I was to sound you with a view to--what you will 
+understand, if you care to," continued Winterborne, in a low
+voice.  Having been put on this track by herself, he was not
+disposed to abandon it in a hurry.
+
+They had been children together, and there was between them that
+familiarity as to personal affairs which only such
+acquaintanceship can give.  "You know, Giles," she answered,
+speaking in a very practical tone, "that that is all very well;
+but I am in a very anomalous position at present, and I cannot say
+anything to the point about such things as those."
+
+"No?" he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject.  He was
+looking at her with a curious consciousness of discovery.  He had
+not been imagining that their renewed intercourse would show her
+to him thus.  For the first time he realized an unexpectedness in
+her, which, after all, should not have been unexpected.  She
+before him was not the girl Grace Melbury whom he used to know. 
+Of course, he might easily have prefigured as much; but it had
+never occurred to him.  She was a woman who had been married; she
+had moved on; and without having lost her girlish modesty, she had
+lost her girlish shyness.  The inevitable change, though known to
+him, had not been heeded; and it struck him into a momentary
+fixity.  The truth was that he had never come into close
+comradeship with her since her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the
+brief exception of the evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she
+met him with his cider apparatus; and that interview had been of
+too cursory a kind for insight.
+
+Winterborne had advanced, too.  He could criticise her.  Times had
+been when to criticise a single trait in Grace Melbury would have
+lain as far beyond his powers as to criticise a deity.  This thing
+was sure: it was a new woman in many ways whom he had come out to
+see; a creature of more ideas, more dignity, and, above all, more
+assurance, than the original Grace had been capable of.  He could
+not at first decide whether he were pleased or displeased at this. 
+But upon the whole the novelty attracted him.
+
+She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence
+betokened something in his brain of the nature of an enemy to her. 
+"What are you thinking of that makes those lines come in your
+forehead?" she asked.  "I did not mean to offend you by speaking
+of the time being premature as yet."
+
+Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain at the
+foundation of these words, and much moved, Winterborne turned his
+face aside, as he took her by the hand.  He was grieved that he
+had criticised her.
+
+"You are very good, dear Grace," he said, in a low voice.  "You
+are better, much better, than you used to be."
+
+"How?"
+
+He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an evasive
+smile, "You are prettier;" which was not what he really had meant. 
+He then remained still holding her right hand in his own right, so
+that they faced in opposite ways; and as he did not let go, she
+ventured upon a tender remonstrance.
+
+"I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present--and far
+enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the same as ever. 
+You see, Giles, my case is not settled yet, and if--Oh, suppose I
+NEVER get free!--there should be any hitch or informality!"
+
+She drew a catching breath, and turned pale.  The dialogue had
+been affectionate comedy up to this point.  The gloomy atmosphere
+of the past, and the still gloomy horizon of the present, had been
+for the interval forgotten.  Now the whole environment came back,
+the due balance of shade among the light was restored.
+
+"It is sure to be all right, I trust?" she resumed, in uneasy
+accents.  "What did my father say the solicitor had told him?"
+
+"Oh--that all is sure enough.  The case is so clear--nothing could
+be clearer.  But the legal part is not yet quite done and
+finished, as is natural."
+
+"Oh no--of course not," she said, sunk in meek thought.  "But
+father said it was ALMOST--did he not? Do you know anything about
+the new law that makes these things so easy?"
+
+"Nothing--except the general fact that it enables ill-assorted
+husbands and wives to part in a way they could not formerly do
+without an Act of Parliament."
+
+"Have you to sign a paper, or swear anything? Is it something like
+that?"
+
+"Yes, I believe so."
+
+"How long has it been introduced?"
+
+"About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think."
+
+To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of imperial law
+would have made a humane person weep who should have known what a
+dangerous structure they were building up on their supposed
+knowledge.  They remained in thought, like children in the
+presence of the incomprehensible.
+
+"Giles," she said, at last, "it makes me quite weary when I think
+how serious my situation is, or has been.  Shall we not go out
+from here now, as it may seem rather fast of me--our being so long
+together, I mean--if anybody were to see us? I am almost sure,"
+she added, uncertainly, "that I ought not to let you hold my hand
+yet, knowing that the documents--or whatever it may be--have not
+been signed; so that I--am still as married as ever--or almost. 
+My dear father has forgotten himself.  Not that I feel morally
+bound to any one else, after what has taken place--no woman of
+spirit could--now, too, that several months have passed.  But I
+wish to keep the proprieties as well as I can."
+
+"Yes, yes.  Still, your father reminds us that life is short.  I
+myself feel that it is; that is why I wished to understand you in
+this that we have begun.  At times, dear Grace, since receiving
+your father's letter, I am as uneasy and fearful as a child at
+what he said.  If one of us were to die before the formal signing
+and sealing that is to release you have been done--if we should
+drop out of the world and never have made the most of this little,
+short, but real opportunity, I should think to myself as I sunk
+down dying, 'Would to my God that I had spoken out my whole heart--
+given her one poor little kiss when I had the chance to give it!
+But I never did, although she had promised to be mine some day;
+and now I never can.' That's what I should think."
+
+She had begun by watching the words from his lips with a mournful
+regard, as though their passage were visible; but as he went on
+she dropped her glance.  "Yes," she said, "I have thought that,
+too.  And, because I have thought it, I by no means meant, in
+speaking of the proprieties, to be reserved and cold to you who
+loved me so long ago, or to hurt your heart as I used to do at
+that thoughtless time.  Oh, not at all, indeed! But--ought I to
+allow you?--oh, it is too quick--surely!"  Her eyes filled with
+tears of bewildered, alarmed emotion.
+
+Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her further
+against her better judgment.  "Yes--I suppose it is," he said,
+repentantly.  "I'll wait till all is settled.  What did your
+father say in that last letter?"
+
+He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, mistaking
+him, frankly spoke of the personal part.  "He said--what I have
+implied.  Should I tell more plainly?"
+
+"Oh no--don't, if it is a secret."
+
+"Not at all.  I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if you
+wish.  He said I was to encourage you.  There.  But I cannot obey
+him further to-day.  Come, let us go now." She gently slid her
+hand from his, and went in front of him out of the Abbey.
+
+"I was thinking of getting some dinner," said Winterborne,
+changing to the prosaic, as they walked.  "And you, too, must
+require something.  Do let me take you to a place I know."
+
+Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside her
+father's house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her no
+society; had sometimes, indeed, brought her deeper solitude and
+inconsideration than any she had ever known before.  Hence it was
+a treat to her to find herself again the object of thoughtful
+care.  But she questioned if to go publicly to dine with Giles
+Winterborne were not a proposal, due rather to his
+unsophistication than to his discretion.  She said gently that she
+would much prefer his ordering her lunch at some place and then
+coming to tell her it was ready, while she remained in the Abbey
+porch.  Giles saw her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly
+blind to propriety he was beside her, and went to do as she
+wished.
+
+He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found Grace where he
+had left her.  "It will be quite ready by the time you get there,"
+he said, and told her the name of the inn at which the meal had
+been ordered, which was one that she had never heard of.
+
+"I'll find it by inquiry," said Grace, setting out.
+
+"And shall I see you again?"
+
+"Oh yes--come to me there.  It will not be like going together.  I
+shall want you to find my father's man and the gig for me."
+
+He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, till he
+thought her lunch ended, and that he might fairly take advantage
+of her invitation to start her on her way home.  He went straight
+to The Three Tuns--a little tavern in a side street, scrupulously
+clean, but humble and inexpensive.  On his way he had an
+occasional misgiving as to whether the place had been elegant
+enough for her; and as soon as he entered it, and saw her
+ensconced there, he perceived that he had blundered.
+
+Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the simple old
+hostelry could boast of, which was also a general parlor on
+market-days; a long, low apartment, with a sanded floor herring-
+boned with a broom; a wide, red-curtained window to the street,
+and another to the garden.  Grace had retreated to the end of the
+room looking out upon the latter, the front part being full of a
+mixed company which had dropped in since he was there.
+
+She was in a mood of the greatest depression.  On arriving, and
+seeing what the tavern was like, she had been taken by surprise;
+but having gone too far to retreat, she had heroically entered and
+sat down on the well-scrubbed settle, opposite the narrow table
+with its knives and steel forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-
+cellars, and posters advertising the sale of bullocks against the
+wall.  The last time that she had taken any meal in a public place
+it had been with Fitzpiers at the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel
+in that town, after a two months' roaming and sojourning at the
+gigantic hotels of the Continent.  How could she have expected any
+other kind of accommodation in present circumstances than such as
+Giles had provided? And yet how unprepared she was for this
+change! The tastes that she had acquired from Fitzpiers had been
+imbibed so subtly that she hardly knew she possessed them till
+confronted by this contrast.  The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact, at
+that very moment owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for
+the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there whenever
+they drove to Sherton.  But such is social sentiment, that she had
+been quite comfortable under those debt-impending conditions,
+while she felt humiliated by her present situation, which
+Winterborne had paid for honestly on the nail.
+
+He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her position, and
+all his pleasure was gone.  It was the same susceptibility over
+again which had spoiled his Christmas party long ago.
+
+But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the casual
+result of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was determined to
+learn in spite of it--a consequence of one of those sudden
+surprises which confront everybody bent upon turning over a new
+leaf.  She had finished her lunch, which he saw had been a very
+mincing performance; and he brought her out of the house as soon
+as he could.
+
+"Now," he said, with great sad eyes, "you have not finished at all
+well, I know.  Come round to the Earl of Wessex.  I'll order a tea
+there.  I did not remember that what was good enough for me was
+not good enough for you."
+
+Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she saw what
+had happened.  "Oh no, Giles," she said, with extreme pathos;
+"certainly not.  Why do you--say that when you know better?  You
+EVER will misunderstand me."
+
+"Indeed, that's not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers.  Can you deny that you
+felt out of place at The Three Tuns?"
+
+"I don't know.  Well, since you make me speak, I do not deny it."
+
+"And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years.  Your
+husband used always to take you to the Earl of Wessex, did he
+not?"
+
+"Yes," she reluctantly admitted.  How could she explain in the
+street of a market-town that it was her superficial and transitory
+taste which had been offended, and not her nature or her
+affection? Fortunately, or unfortunately, at that moment they saw
+Melbury's man driving vacantly along the street in search of her,
+the hour having passed at which he had been told to take her up. 
+Winterborne hailed him, and she was powerless then to prolong the
+discourse.  She entered the vehicle sadly, and the horse trotted
+away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory ending of
+a pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself.  He feared
+anew that they could never be happy together, even should she be
+free to choose him.  She was accomplished; he was unrefined.  It
+was the original difficulty, which he was too sensitive to
+recklessly ignore, as some men would have done in his place.
+
+He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want little
+from others in the way of favor or condescension, and perhaps on
+that very account scrutinize those others' behavior too closely. 
+He was not versatile, but one in whom a hope or belief which had
+once had its rise, meridian, and decline seldom again exactly
+recurred, as in the breasts of more sanguine mortals.  He had once
+worshipped her, laid out his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost
+her.  Though it was with almost the same zest, it was with not
+quite the same hope, that he had begun to tread the old tracks
+again, and allowed himself to be so charmed with her that day.
+
+Move another step towards her he would not.  He would even repulse
+her--as a tribute to conscience.  It would be sheer sin to let her
+prepare a pitfall for her happiness not much smaller than the
+first by inveigling her into a union with such as he.  Her poor
+father was now blind to these subtleties, which he had formerly
+beheld as in noontide light.  It was his own duty to declare them--
+for her dear sake.
+
+
+
+Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her solicitous
+embarrassment was not lessened the next morning when another
+letter from her father was put into her hands.  Its tenor was an
+intenser strain of the one that had preceded it.  After stating
+how extremely glad he was to hear that she was better, and able to
+get out-of-doors, he went on:
+
+"This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have come to see
+being out of town.  I do not know when I shall get home.  My great
+anxiety in this delay is still lest you should lose Giles
+Winterborne.  I cannot rest at night for thinking that while our
+business is hanging fire he may become estranged, or go away from
+the neighborhood.  I have set my heart upon seeing him your
+husband, if you ever have another.  Do, then, Grace, give him some
+temporary encouragement, even though it is over-early.  For when I
+consider the past I do think God will forgive me and you for being
+a little forward.  I have another reason for this, my dear.  I
+feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have still
+further helped me that way.  And until this thing is done I cannot
+rest in peace."
+
+He added a postscript:
+
+"I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-morrow. 
+Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after you get
+this."
+
+
+
+The paternal longing ran on all fours with her own desire; and yet
+in forwarding it yesterday she had been on the brink of giving
+offence.  While craving to be a country girl again just as her
+father requested; to put off the old Eve, the fastidious miss--or
+rather madam--completely, her first attempt had been beaten by the
+unexpected vitality of that fastidiousness.  Her father on
+returning and seeing the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure
+to say that the same perversity which had led her to make
+difficulties about marrying Fitzpiers was now prompting her to
+blow hot and cold with poor Winterborne.
+
+If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching the stops
+of her delicate soul instead of one who had just bound himself to
+let her drift away from him again (if she would) on the wind of
+her estranging education, he could not have acted more seductively
+than he did that day.  He chanced to be superintending some
+temporary work in a field opposite her windows.  She could not
+discover what he was doing, but she read his mood keenly and
+truly: she could see in his coming and going an air of determined
+abandonment of the whole landscape that lay in her direction.
+
+Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father coming in
+the evening--which meant, she supposed, that all formalities would
+be in train, her marriage virtually annulled, and she be free to
+be won again--how could she look him in the face if he should see
+them estranged thus?
+
+It was a fair green evening in June.  She was seated in the
+garden, in the rustic chair which stood under the laurel-bushes--
+made of peeled oak-branches that came to Melbury's premises as
+refuse after barking-time.  The mass of full-juiced leafage on the
+heights around her was just swayed into faint gestures by a nearly
+spent wind which, even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her
+shelter.  All day she had expected Giles to call--to inquire how
+she had got home, or something or other; but he had not come.  And
+he still tantalized her by going athwart and across that orchard
+opposite.  She could see him as she sat.
+
+A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bringing him a
+letter.  She knew from this that Creedle had just come from
+Sherton, and had called as usual at the post-office for anything
+that had arrived by the afternoon post, of which there was no
+delivery at Hintock.  She pondered on what the letter might
+contain--particularly whether it were a second refresher for
+Winterborne from her father, like her own of the morning.
+
+But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever.  Giles
+read its contents; and almost immediately turned away to a gap in
+the hedge of the orchard--if that could be called a hedge which,
+owing to the drippings of the trees, was little more than a bank
+with a bush upon it here and there.  He entered the plantation,
+and was no doubt going that way homeward to the mysterious hut he
+occupied on the other side of the woodland.
+
+The sad sands were running swiftly through Time's glass; she had
+often felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, she felt it
+doubly now after the solemn and pathetic reminder in her father's
+communication.  Her freshness would pass, the long-suffering
+devotion of Giles might suddenly end--might end that very hour. 
+Men were so strange.  The thought took away from her all her
+former reticence, and made her action bold.  She started from her
+seat.  If the little breach, quarrel, or whatever it might be
+called, of yesterday, was to be healed up it must be done by her
+on the instant.  She crossed into the orchard, and clambered
+through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to a faun-
+like figure under the green canopy and over the brown floor.
+
+Grace had been wrong--very far wrong--in assuming that the letter
+had no reference to herself because Giles had turned away into the
+wood after its perusal.  It was, sad to say, because the missive
+had so much reference to herself that he had thus turned away.  He
+feared that his grieved discomfiture might be observed.  The
+letter was from Beaucock, written a few hours later than Melbury's
+to his daughter.  It announced failure.
+
+Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and now was
+the moment when Beaucock had chosen to remember it in his own way. 
+During his absence in town with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had
+naturally heard a great deal of the timber-merchant's family
+scheme of justice to Giles, and his communication was to inform
+Winterborne at the earliest possible moment that their attempt had
+failed, in order that the young man should not place himself in a
+false position towards Grace in the belief of its coming success. 
+The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers's conduct had not been
+sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap the bond.  She
+was apparently doomed to be his wife till the end of the chapter.
+
+Winterborne quite forgot his superficial differences with the poor
+girl under the warm rush of deep and distracting love for her
+which the almost tragical information engendered.
+
+To renounce her forever--that was then the end of it for him,
+after all.  There was no longer any question about suitability, or
+room for tiffs on petty tastes.  The curtain had fallen again
+between them.  She could not be his.  The cruelty of their late
+revived hope was now terrible.  How could they all have been so
+simple as to suppose this thing could be done?
+
+It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming behind him, he
+turned and saw her hastening on between the thickets.  He
+perceived in an instant that she did not know the blighting news.
+
+"Giles, why didn't you come across to me?" she asked, with arch
+reproach.  "Didn't you see me sitting there ever so long?"
+
+"Oh yes," he said, in unprepared, extemporized tones, for her
+unexpected presence caught him without the slightest plan of
+behavior in the conjuncture.  His manner made her think that she
+had been too chiding in her speech; and a mild scarlet wave passed
+over her as she resolved to soften it.
+
+"I have had another letter from my father," she hastened to
+continue.  "He thinks he may come home this evening.  And--in view
+of his hopes--it will grieve him if there is any little difference
+between us, Giles."
+
+"There is none," he said, sadly regarding her from the face
+downward as he pondered how to lay the cruel truth bare.
+
+"Still--I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my being
+uncomfortable at the inn."
+
+"I have, Grace, I'm sure."
+
+"But you speak in quite an unhappy way," she returned, coming up
+close to him with the most winning of the many pretty airs that
+appertained to her.  "Don't you think you will ever be happy,
+Giles?"
+
+He did not reply for some instants.  "When the sun shines on the
+north front of Sherton Abbey--that's when my happiness will come
+to me!" said he, staring as it were into the earth.
+
+"But--then that means that there is something more than my
+offending you in not liking The Three Tuns.  If it is because I--
+did not like to let you kiss me in the Abbey--well, you know,
+Giles, that it was not on account of my cold feelings, but because
+I did certainly, just then, think it was rather premature, in
+spite of my poor father.  That was the true reason--the sole one. 
+But I do not want to be hard--God knows I do not," she said, her
+voice fluctuating.  "And perhaps--as I am on the verge of freedom--
+I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any harm in your
+kissing me."
+
+"Oh God!" said Winterborne within himself.  His head was turned
+askance as he still resolutely regarded the ground.  For the last
+several minutes he had seen this great temptation approaching him
+in regular siege; and now it had come.  The wrong, the social sin,
+of now taking advantage of the offer of her lips had a magnitude,
+in the eyes of one whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by
+purest household laws, as Giles's, which can hardly be explained.
+
+"Did you say anything?" she asked, timidly.
+
+"Oh no--only that--"
+
+"You mean that it must BE settled, since my father is coming
+home?" she said, gladly.
+
+Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself all this
+while--though he would have protected Grace's good repute as the
+apple of his eye--was a man; and, as Desdemona said, men are not
+gods.  In face of the agonizing seductiveness shown by her, in her
+unenlightened school-girl simplicity about the laws and
+ordinances, he betrayed a man's weakness.  Since it was so--since
+it had come to this, that Grace, deeming herself free to do it,
+was virtually asking him to demonstrate that he loved her--since
+he could demonstrate it only too truly--since life was short and
+love was strong--he gave way to the temptation, notwithstanding
+that he perfectly well knew her to be wedded irrevocably to
+Fitzpiers.  Indeed, he cared for nothing past or future, simply
+accepting the present and what it brought, desiring once in his
+life to clasp in his arms her he had watched over and loved so
+long.
+
+She started back suddenly from his embrace, influenced by a sort
+of inspiration.  "Oh, I suppose," she stammered, "that I am really
+free?--that this is right? Is there REALLY a new law? Father
+cannot have been too sanguine in saying--"
+
+He did not answer, and a moment afterwards Grace burst into tears
+in spite of herself.  "Oh, why does not my father come home and
+explain," she sobbed, "and let me know clearly what I am? It is
+too trying, this, to ask me to--and then to leave me so long in so
+vague a state that I do not know what to do, and perhaps do
+wrong!"
+
+Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his previous
+sorrow.  How he had sinned against her in not telling her what he
+knew.  He turned aside; the feeling of his cruelty mounted higher
+and higher.  How could he have dreamed of kissing her? He could
+hardly refrain from tears.  Surely nothing more pitiable had ever
+been known than the condition of this poor young thing, now as
+heretofore the victim of her father's well-meant but blundering
+policy.
+
+Even in the hour of Melbury's greatest assurance Winterborne had
+harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, could undo Grace's
+marriage without her appearance in public; though he was not
+sufficiently sure of what might have been enacted to destroy by
+his own words her pleasing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on
+her father's testimony, was going to be sufficient.  But he had
+never suspected the sad fact that the position was irremediable.
+
+Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too much
+fluster for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how grave he
+was.  "I am glad we are friends again anyhow," she said, smiling
+through her tears.  "Giles, if you had only shown half the
+boldness before I married that you show now, you would have
+carried me off for your own first instead of second.  If we do
+marry, I hope you will never think badly of me for encouraging you
+a little, but my father is SO impatient, you know, as his years
+and infirmities increase, that he will wish to see us a little
+advanced when he comes.  That is my only excuse."
+
+To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet.  How could
+she so trust her father's conjectures? He did not know how to tell
+her the truth and shame himself.  And yet he felt that it must be
+done.  "We may have been wrong," he began, almost fearfully, "in
+supposing that it can all be carried out while we stay here at
+Hintock.  I am not sure but that people may have to appear in a
+public court even under the new Act; and if there should be any
+difficulty, and we cannot marry after all--"
+
+Her cheeks became slowly bloodless.  "Oh, Giles," she said,
+grasping his arm, "you have heard something! What--cannot my
+father conclude it there and now? Surely he has done it? Oh,
+Giles, Giles, don't deceive me.  What terrible position am I in?"
+
+He could not tell her, try as he would.  The sense of her implicit
+trust in his honor absolutely disabled him.  "I cannot inform
+you," he murmured, his voice as husky as that of the leaves
+underfoot.  "Your father will soon be here.  Then we shall know. 
+I will take you home."
+
+Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his arm with
+the most reserved air, as he added, correctingly, "I will take
+you, at any rate, into the drive."
+
+Thus they walked on together.  Grace vibrating between happiness
+and misgiving.  It was only a few minutes' walk to where the drive
+ran, and they had hardly descended into it when they heard a voice
+behind them cry, "Take out that arm!"
+
+For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, more
+loudly and hoarsely,
+
+"Take out that arm!"
+
+It was Melbury's.  He had returned sooner than they expected, and
+now came up to them.  Grace's hand had been withdrawn like
+lightning on her hearing the second command.  "I don't blame you--
+I don't blame you," he said, in the weary cadence of one broken
+down with scourgings.  "But you two must walk together no more--I
+have been surprised--I have been cruelly deceived--Giles, don't
+say anything to me; but go away!"
+
+He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had known the truth
+before he brought it; and Giles would not stay to discuss it with
+him then.  When the young man had gone Melbury took his daughter
+in-doors to the room he used as his office.  There he sat down,
+and bent over the slope of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed
+upon him.
+
+When Melbury had recovered a little he said, "You are now, as
+ever, Fitzpiers's wife.  I was deluded.  He has not done you
+ENOUGH harm.  You are still subject to his beck and call."
+
+"Then let it be, and never mind, father," she said, with dignified
+sorrow.  "I can bear it.  It is your trouble that grieves me
+most." She stooped over him, and put her arm round his neck, which
+distressed Melbury still more.  "I don't mind at all what comes to
+me," Grace continued; "whose wife I am, or whose I am not.  I do
+love Giles; I cannot help that; and I have gone further with him
+than I should have done if I had known exactly how things were. 
+But I do not reproach you."
+
+"Then Giles did not tell you?" said Melbury.
+
+"No," said she.  "He could not have known it.  His behavior to me
+proved that he did not know."
+
+Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to the solitude
+of her chamber.
+
+Her heavy disquietude had many shapes; and for a time she put
+aside the dominant fact to think of her too free conduct towards
+Giles.  His love-making had been brief as it was sweet; but would
+he on reflection contemn her for forwardness? How could she have
+been so simple as to suppose she was in a position to behave as
+she had done! Thus she mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in
+the centre of her heart she blessed it a little for what it had
+momentarily brought her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+Life among the people involved in these events seemed to be
+suppressed and hide-bound for a while.  Grace seldom showed
+herself outside the house, never outside the garden; for she
+feared she might encounter Giles Winterborne; and that she could
+not bear.
+
+This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted nun
+appeared likely to continue for an indefinite time.  She had
+learned that there was one possibility in which her formerly
+imagined position might become real, and only one; that her
+husband's absence should continue long enough to amount to
+positive desertion.  But she never allowed her mind to dwell much
+upon the thought; still less did she deliberately hope for such a
+result.  Her regard for Winterborne had been rarefied by the shock
+which followed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that had little
+to do with living and doing.
+
+As for Giles, he was lying--or rather sitting--ill at his hut.  A
+feverish indisposition which had been hanging about him for some
+time, the result of a chill caught the previous winter, seemed to
+acquire virulence with the prostration of his hopes.  But not a
+soul knew of his languor, and he did not think the case serious
+enough to send for a medical man.  After a few days he was better
+again, and crept about his home in a great coat, attending to his
+simple wants as usual with his own hands.  So matters stood when
+the limpid inertion of Grace's pool-like existence was disturbed
+as by a geyser.  She received a letter from Fitzpiers.
+
+Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched in the
+gentlest language.  In his absence Grace had grown to regard him
+with toleration, and her relation to him with equanimity, till she
+had almost forgotten how trying his presence would be.  He wrote
+briefly and unaffectedly; he made no excuses, but informed her
+that he was living quite alone, and had been led to think that
+they ought to be together, if she would make up her mind to
+forgive him.  He therefore purported to cross the Channel to
+Budmouth by the steamer on a day he named, which she found to be
+three days after the time of her present reading.
+
+He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious reasons,
+which her father would understand even better than herself.  As
+the only alternative she was to be on the quay to meet the steamer
+when it arrived from the opposite coast, probably about half an
+hour before midnight, bringing with her any luggage she might
+require; join him there, and pass with him into the twin vessel,
+which left immediately the other entered the harbor; returning
+thus with him to his continental dwelling-place, which he did not
+name.  He had no intention of showing himself on land at all.
+
+The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now
+continued for long hours by the fireless summer chimney-corner, as
+if he thought it were winter, the pitcher of cider standing beside
+him, mostly untasted, and coated with a film of dust.  After
+reading it he looked up.
+
+"You sha'n't go," said he.
+
+"I had felt I would not," she answered.  "But I did not know what
+you would say."
+
+"If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a
+respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that
+I'll oppose him in wishing it," muttered Melbury.  "I'd stint
+myself to keep you both in a genteel and seemly style.  But go
+abroad you never shall with my consent."
+
+There the question rested that day.  Grace was unable to reply to
+her husband in the absence of an address, and the morrow came, and
+the next day, and the evening on which he had requested her to
+meet him.  Throughout the whole of it she remained within the four
+walls of her room.
+
+The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what might be
+impending, hung like a cowl of blackness over the Melbury
+household.  They spoke almost in whispers, and wondered what
+Fitzpiers would do next.  It was the hope of every one that,
+finding she did not arrive, he would return again to France; and
+as for Grace, she was willing to write to him on the most kindly
+terms if he would only keep away.
+
+The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide awake, and her
+relatives, in great part, likewise.  When they met the next
+morning they were pale and anxious, though neither speaking of the
+subject which occupied all their thoughts.  The day passed as
+quietly as the previous ones, and she began to think that in the
+rank caprice of his moods he had abandoned the idea of getting her
+to join him as quickly as it was formed.  All on a sudden, some
+person who had just come from Sherton entered the house with the
+news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home to Hintock.  He had
+been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex Hotel.
+
+Her father and Grace were both present when the intelligence was
+announced.
+
+"Now," said Melbury, "we must make the best of what has been a
+very bad matter.  The man is repenting; the partner of his shame,
+I hear, is gone away from him to Switzerland, so that chapter of
+his life is probably over.  If he chooses to make a home for ye I
+think you should not say him nay, Grace.  Certainly he cannot very
+well live at Hintock without a blow to his pride; but if he can
+bear that, and likes Hintock best, why, there's the empty wing of
+the house as it was before."
+
+"Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay.
+
+"Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness returning. 
+He was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more leniency towards her
+husband just now than he had shown formerly, from a conviction
+that he had treated him over-roughly in his anger.  "Surely it is
+the most respectable thing to do?" he continued.  "I don't like
+this state that you are in--neither married nor single.  It hurts
+me, and it hurts you, and it will always be remembered against us
+in Hintock.  There has never been any scandal like it in the
+family before."
+
+"He will be here in less than an hour," murmured Grace.  The
+twilight of the room prevented her father seeing the despondent
+misery of her face.  The one intolerable condition, the condition
+she had deprecated above all others, was that of Fitzpiers's
+reinstatement there.  "Oh, I won't, I won't see him," she said,
+sinking down.  She was almost hysterical.
+
+"Try if you cannot," he returned, moodily.
+
+"Oh yes, I will, I will," she went on, inconsequently.  "I'll
+try;" and jumping up suddenly, she left the room.
+
+In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew nothing could
+have been seen during the next half-hour; but from a corner a
+quick breathing was audible from this impressible creature, who
+combined modern nerves with primitive emotions, and was doomed by
+such coexistence to be numbered among the distressed, and to take
+her scourgings to their exquisite extremity.
+
+The window was open.  On this quiet, late summer evening, whatever
+sound arose in so secluded a district--the chirp of a bird, a call
+from a voice, the turning of a wheel--extended over bush and tree
+to unwonted distances.  Very few sounds did arise.  But as Grace
+invisibly breathed in the brown glooms of the chamber, the small
+remote noise of light wheels came in to her, accompanied by the
+trot of a horse on the turnpike-road.  There seemed to be a sudden
+hitch or pause in the progress of the vehicle, which was what
+first drew her attention to it.  She knew the point whence the
+sound proceeded--the hill-top over which travellers passed on
+their way hitherward from Sherton Abbas--the place at which she
+had emerged from the wood with Mrs. Charmond.  Grace slid along
+the floor, and bent her head over the window-sill, listening with
+open lips.  The carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use
+exclamatory words.  Then another said, "What the devil is the
+matter with the horse?" She recognized the voice as her husband's.
+
+The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, and the
+carriage could be heard descending the hill on the Hintock side,
+soon to turn into the lane leading out of the highway, and then
+into the "drong" which led out of the lane to the house where she
+was.
+
+A spasm passed through Grace.  The Daphnean instinct,
+exceptionally strong in her as a girl, had been revived by her
+widowed seclusion; and it was not lessened by her affronted
+sentiments towards the comer, and her regard for another man.  She
+opened some little ivory tablets that lay on the dressing-table,
+scribbled in pencil on one of them, "I am gone to visit one of my
+school-friends," gathered a few toilet necessaries into a hand-
+bag, and not three minutes after that voice had been heard, her
+slim form, hastily wrapped up from observation, might have been
+seen passing out of the back door of Melbury's house.  Thence she
+skimmed up the garden-path, through the gap in the hedge, and into
+the mossy cart-track under the trees which led into the depth of
+the woods.
+
+The leaves overhead were now in their latter green--so opaque,
+that it was darker at some of the densest spots than in winter-
+time, scarce a crevice existing by which a ray could get down to
+the ground.  But in open places she could see well enough.  Summer
+was ending: in the daytime singing insects hung in every sunbeam;
+vegetation was heavy nightly with globes of dew; and after showers
+creeping damps and twilight chills came up from the hollows.  The
+plantations were always weird at this hour of eve--more spectral
+far than in the leafless season, when there were fewer masses and
+more minute lineality.  The smooth surfaces of glossy plants came
+out like weak, lidless eyes; there were strange faces and figures
+from expiring lights that had somehow wandered into the canopied
+obscurity; while now and then low peeps of the sky between the
+trunks were like sheeted shapes, and on the tips of boughs sat
+faint cloven tongues.
+
+But Grace's fear just now was not imaginative or spiritual, and
+she heeded these impressions but little.  She went on as silently
+as she could, avoiding the hollows wherein leaves had accumulated,
+and stepping upon soundless moss and grass-tufts.  She paused
+breathlessly once or twice, and fancied that she could hear, above
+the beat of her strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers
+turning in at the gate of her father's premises.  She hastened on
+again.
+
+The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were presently left
+behind, and those into which she next plunged were divided from
+the latter by a bank, from whose top the hedge had long ago
+perished--starved for want of sun.  It was with some caution that
+Grace now walked, though she was quite free from any of the
+commonplace timidities of her ordinary pilgrimages to such spots. 
+She feared no lurking harms, but that her effort would be all in
+vain, and her return to the house rendered imperative.
+
+She had walked between three and four miles when that prescriptive
+comfort and relief to wanderers in woods--a distant light--broke
+at last upon her searching eyes.  It was so very small as to be
+almost sinister to a stranger, but to her it was what she sought. 
+She pushed forward, and the dim outline of a dwelling was
+disclosed.
+
+The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up on all
+sides to a chimney in the midst.  It had formerly been the home of
+a charcoal-burner, in times when that fuel was still used in the
+county houses.  Its only appurtenance was a paled enclosure, there
+being no garden, the shade of the trees preventing the growth of
+vegetables.  She advanced to the window whence the rays of light
+proceeded, and the shutters being as yet unclosed, she could
+survey the whole interior through the panes.
+
+The room within was kitchen, parlor, and scullery all in one; the
+natural sandstone floor was worn into hills and dales by long
+treading, so that none of the furniture stood level, and the table
+slanted like a desk.  A fire burned on the hearth, in front of
+which revolved the skinned carcass of a rabbit, suspended by a
+string from a nail.  Leaning with one arm on the mantle-shelf
+stood Winterborne, his eyes on the roasting animal, his face so
+rapt that speculation could build nothing on it concerning his
+thoughts, more than that they were not with the scene before him. 
+She thought his features had changed a little since she saw them
+last.  The fire-light did not enable her to perceive that they
+were positively haggard.
+
+Grace's throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the result so
+nearly as she had hoped.  She went to the door and tapped lightly.
+
+He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeckers,
+squirrels, and such small creatures, for he took no notice of her
+tiny signal, and she knocked again.  This time he came and opened
+the door.  When the light of the room fell upon her face he
+started, and, hardly knowing what he did, crossed the threshold to
+her, placing his hands upon her two arms, while surprise, joy,
+alarm, sadness, chased through him by turns.  With Grace it was
+the same: even in this stress there was the fond fact that they
+had met again.  Thus they stood,
+
+
+    "Long tears upon their faces, waxen white
+         With extreme sad delight."
+
+
+He broke the silence by saying in a whisper, "Come in."
+
+"No, no, Giles!" she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet farther
+back from the door.  "I am passing by--and I have called on you--I
+won't enter.  Will you help me?  I am afraid.  I want to get by a
+roundabout way to Sherton, and so to Exbury.  I have a school-
+fellow there--but I cannot get to Sherton alone.  Oh, if you will
+only accompany me a little way! Don't condemn me, Giles, and be
+offended! I was obliged to come to you because--I have no other
+help here.  Three months ago you were my lover; now you are only
+my friend.  The law has stepped in, and forbidden what we thought
+of.  It must not be.  But we can act honestly, and yet you can be
+my friend for one little hour?  I have no other--"
+
+She could get no further.  Covering her eyes with one hand, by an
+effort of repression she wept a silent trickle, without a sigh or
+sob.  Winterborne took her other hand.  "What has happened?" he
+said.
+
+"He has come."
+
+There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, "You
+mean this, Grace--that I am to help you to get away?"
+
+"Yes," said she.  "Appearance is no matter, when the reality is
+right.  I have said to myself I can trust you."
+
+Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treachery--if it
+could be called such--earlier in the summer, when they met for the
+last time as lovers; and in the intensity of his contrition for
+that tender wrong, he determined to deserve her faith now at
+least, and so wipe out that reproach from his conscience.  "I'll
+come at once," he said.  "I'll light a lantern."
+
+He unhooked a dark-lantern from a nail under the eaves and she did
+not notice how his hand shook with the slight strain, or dream
+that in making this offer he was taxing a convalescence which
+could ill afford such self-sacrifice.  The lantern was lit, and
+they started.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+The first hundred yards of their course lay under motionless
+trees, whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of
+rain.  By the time that they emerged upon a glade it rained
+heavily.
+
+"This is awkward," said Grace, with an effort to hide her concern.
+
+Winterborne stopped.  "Grace," he said, preserving a strictly
+business manner which belied him, "you cannot go to Sherton to-
+night."
+
+"But I must!"
+
+"Why? It is nine miles from here.  It is almost an impossibility
+in this rain."
+
+"True--WHY?" she replied, mournfully, at the end of a silence. 
+"What is reputation to me?"
+
+"Now hearken," said Giles.  "You won't--go back to your--"
+
+"No, no, no!  Don't make me!" she cried, piteously.
+
+"Then let us turn." They slowly retraced their steps, and again
+stood before his door.  "Now, this house from this moment is
+yours, and not mine," he said, deliberately.  "I have a place near
+by where I can stay very well."
+
+Her face had drooped.  "Oh!" she murmured, as she saw the dilemma. 
+"What have I done!"
+
+There was a smell of something burning within, and he looked
+through the window.  The rabbit that he had been cooking to coax a
+weak appetite was beginning to char.  "Please go in and attend to
+it," he said.  "Do what you like.  Now I leave.  You will find
+everything about the hut that is necessary."
+
+"But, Giles--your supper," she exclaimed.  "An out-house would do
+for me--anything--till to-morrow at day-break!"
+
+He signified a negative.  "I tell you to go in--you may catch
+agues out here in your delicate state.  You can give me my supper
+through the window, if you feel well enough.  I'll wait a while."
+
+He gently urged her to pass the door-way, and was relieved when he
+saw her within the room sitting down.  Without so much as crossing
+the threshold himself, he closed the door upon her, and turned the
+key in the lock.  Tapping at the window, he signified that she
+should open the casement, and when she had done this he handed in
+the key to her.
+
+"You are locked in," he said; "and your own mistress."
+
+Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint smile at
+his scrupulousness, as she took the door-key.
+
+"Do you feel better?" he went on.  "If so, and you wish to give me
+some of your supper, please do.  If not, it is of no importance. 
+I can get some elsewhere."
+
+The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, though
+she only knew half what that kindness really was.  At the end of
+some ten minutes she again came to the window, pushed it open, and
+said in a whisper, "Giles!"  He at once emerged from the shade,
+and saw that she was preparing to hand him his share of the meal
+upon a plate.
+
+"I don't like to treat you so hardly," she murmured, with deep
+regret in her words as she heard the rain pattering on the leaves. 
+"But--I suppose it is best to arrange like this?"
+
+"Oh yes," he said, quickly.
+
+"I feel that I could never have reached Sherton."
+
+"It was impossible."
+
+"Are you sure you have a snug place out there?" (With renewed
+misgiving.)
+
+"Quite.  Have you found everything you want? I am afraid it is
+rather rough accommodation."
+
+"Can I notice defects?  I have long passed that stage, and you
+know it, Giles, or you ought to."
+
+His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale responsiveness
+modulated through a crowd of expressions that showed only too
+clearly to what a pitch she was strung.  If ever Winterborne's
+heart fretted his bosom it was at this sight of a perfectly
+defenceless creature conditioned by such circumstances.  He forgot
+his own agony in the satisfaction of having at least found her a
+shelter.  He took his plate and cup from her hands, saying, "Now
+I'll push the shutter to, and you will find an iron pin on the
+inside, which you must fix into the bolt.  Do not stir in the
+morning till I come and call you."
+
+She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go very far away.
+
+"Oh no--I shall be quite within hail," said Winterborne.
+
+She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated.  His snug
+place proved to be a wretched little shelter of the roughest kind,
+formed of four hurdles thatched with brake-fern.  Underneath were
+dry sticks, hay, and other litter of the sort, upon which he sat
+down; and there in the dark tried to eat his meal.  But his
+appetite was quite gone.  He pushed the plate aside, and shook up
+the hay and sacks, so as to form a rude couch, on which he flung
+himself down to sleep, for it was getting late.
+
+But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not the least
+was thought of his charge.  He sat up, and looked towards the cot
+through the damp obscurity.  With all its external features the
+same as usual, he could scarcely believe that it contained the
+dear friend--he would not use a warmer name--who had come to him
+so unexpectedly, and, he could not help admitting, so rashly.
+
+He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the position
+was pretty clear without them.  Though social law had negatived
+forever their opening paradise of the previous June, it was not
+without stoical pride that he accepted the present trying
+conjuncture.  There was one man on earth in whom she believed
+absolutely, and he was that man.  That this crisis could end in
+nothing but sorrow was a view for a moment effaced by this
+triumphant thought of her trust in him; and the purity of the
+affection with which he responded to that trust rendered him more
+than proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation to
+her.
+
+The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his attention by
+beginning to drop through the meagre screen that covered him.  He
+rose to attempt some remedy for this discomfort, but the trembling
+of his knees and the throbbing of his pulse told him that in his
+weakness he was unable to fence against the storm, and he lay down
+to bear it as best he might.  He was angry with himself for his
+feebleness--he who had been so strong.  It was imperative that she
+should know nothing of his present state, and to do that she must
+not see his face by daylight, for its color would inevitably
+betray him.
+
+The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, he rose
+and dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, preparing for her
+everything she could require for getting breakfast within.  On the
+bench outside the window-sill he placed water, wood, and other
+necessaries, writing with a piece of chalk beside them, "It is
+best that I should not see you.  Put my breakfast on the bench."
+
+At seven o'clock he tapped at her window, as he had promised,
+retreating at once, that she might not catch sight of him.  But
+from his shelter under the boughs he could see her very well,
+when, in response to his signal, she opened the window and the
+light fell upon her face.  The languid largeness of her eyes
+showed that her sleep had been little more than his own, and the
+pinkness of their lids, that her waking hours had not been free
+from tears.
+
+She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, but took
+up the materials he had provided, evidently thinking him some way
+off.  Giles waited on, assured that a girl who, in spite of her
+culture, knew what country life was, would find no difficulty in
+the simple preparation of their food.
+
+Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, though
+Grace had slept much longer than he.  After the loneliness of the
+night, she would have been glad to see him; but appreciating his
+feeling when she read the writing, she made no attempt to recall
+him.  She found abundance of provisions laid in, his plan being to
+replenish his buttery weekly, and this being the day after the
+victualling van had called from Sherton.  When the meal was ready,
+she put what he required outside, as she had done with the supper;
+and, notwithstanding her longing to see him, withdrew from the
+window promptly, and left him to himself.
+
+It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily renewed its
+fall.  As she heard no more of Winterborne, she concluded that he
+had gone away to his daily work, and forgotten that he had
+promised to accompany her to Sherton; an erroneous conclusion, for
+he remained all day, by force of his condition, within fifty yards
+of where she was.  The morning wore on; and in her doubt when to
+start, and how to travel, she lingered yet, keeping the door
+carefully bolted, lest an intruder should discover her.  Locked in
+this place, she was comparatively safe, at any rate, and doubted
+if she would be safe elsewhere.
+
+The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled by the shade
+and drip of the leafage.  Autumn, this year, was coming in with
+rains.  Gazing, in her enforced idleness, from the one window of
+the living-room, she could see various small members of the animal
+community that lived unmolested there--creatures of hair, fluff,
+and scale, the toothed kind and the billed kind; underground
+creatures, jointed and ringed--circumambulating the hut, under the
+impression that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there; and
+eying it inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters.  Watching
+these neighbors, who knew neither law nor sin, distracted her a
+little from her trouble; and she managed to while away some
+portion of the afternoon by putting Giles's home in order and
+making little improvements which she deemed that he would value
+when she was gone.
+
+Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise amid the
+trees, resembling a cough; but as it never came any nearer she
+concluded that it was a squirrel or a bird.
+
+At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger fire for
+the evenings were chilly.  As soon as it was too dark--which was
+comparatively early--to discern the human countenance in this
+place of shadows, there came to the window to her great delight, a
+tapping which she knew from its method to be Giles's.
+
+She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand to him,
+though she could only just perceive his outline.  He clasped her
+fingers, and she noticed the heat of his palm and its shakiness.
+
+"He has been walking fast, in order to get here quickly," she
+thought.  How could she know that he had just crawled out from the
+straw of the shelter hard by; and that the heat of his hand was
+feverishness?
+
+"My dear, good Giles!" she burst out, impulsively.
+
+"Anybody would have done it for you," replied Winterborne, with as
+much matter-of-fact as he could summon.
+
+"About my getting to Exbury?" she said.
+
+"I have been thinking," responded Giles, with tender deference,
+"that you had better stay where you are for the present, if you
+wish not to be caught.  I need not tell you that the place is
+yours as long as you like; and perhaps in a day or two, finding
+you absent, he will go away.  At any rate, in two or three days I
+could do anything to assist--such as make inquiries, or go a great
+way towards Sherton-Abbas with you; for the cider season will soon
+be coming on, and I want to run down to the Vale to see how the
+crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road.  But for a day or
+two I am busy here."  He was hoping that by the time mentioned he
+would be strong enough to engage himself actively on her behalf. 
+"I hope you do not feel over-much melancholy in being a prisoner?"
+
+She declared that she did not mind it; but she sighed.
+
+From long acquaintance they could read each other's heart-symptoms
+like books of large type.  "I fear you are sorry you came," said
+Giles, "and that you think I should have advised you more firmly
+than I did not to stay."
+
+"Oh no, dear, dear friend," answered Grace, with a heaving bosom. 
+"Don't think that that is what I regret.  What I regret is my
+enforced treatment of you--dislodging you, excluding you from your
+own house.  Why should I not speak out? You know what I feel for
+you--what I have felt for no other living man, what I shall never
+feel for a man again! But as I have vowed myself to somebody else
+than you, and cannot be released, I must behave as I do behave,
+and keep that vow.  I am not bound to him by any divine law, after
+what he has done; but I have promised, and I will pay."
+
+The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her such things
+as she would require the next day, and casual remarks thereupon,
+an occupation which diverted her mind to some degree from pathetic
+views of her attitude towards him, and of her life in general. 
+The only infringement--if infringement it could be called--of his
+predetermined bearing towards her was an involuntary pressing of
+her hand to his lips when she put it through the casement to bid
+him good-night.  He knew she was weeping, though he could not see
+her tears.
+
+She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly appropriating
+the cottage.  But it would only be for a day or two more, she
+thought, since go she must.
+
+He replied, yearningly, "I--I don't like you to go away."
+
+"Oh, Giles," said she, "I know--I know! But--I am a woman, and you
+are a man.  I cannot speak more plainly.  'Whatsoever things are
+pure, whatsoever things are of good report'--you know what is in
+my mind, because you know me so well."
+
+"Yes, Grace, yes.  I do not at all mean that the question between
+us has not been settled by the fact of your marriage turning out
+hopelessly unalterable.  I merely meant--well, a feeling no more."
+
+"In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I stayed
+here: and I think that by law he could compel me to return to
+him."
+
+"Yes; perhaps you are right.  Go when you wish, dear Grace."
+
+His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that all might
+be well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would not intrude upon
+her life, if he found that his presence cost her so much pain. 
+Then the window was closed, the shutters folded, and the rustle of
+his footsteps died away.
+
+No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the wind began
+to rise, and, after a few prefatory blasts, to be accompanied by
+rain.  The wind grew more violent, and as the storm went on, it
+was difficult to believe that no opaque body, but only an
+invisible colorless thing, was trampling and climbing over the
+roof, making branches creak, springing out of the trees upon the
+chimney, popping its head into the flue, and shrieking and
+blaspheming at every corner of the walls.  As in the old story,
+the assailant was a spectre which could be felt but not seen.  She
+had never before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night
+in a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in spirit
+as she was now.  She seemed almost to be apart from herself--a
+vacuous duplicate only.  The recent self of physical animation and
+clear intentions was not there.
+
+Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so low as to
+smite the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand smiting the mouth
+of an adversary, to be followed by a trickle of rain, as blood
+from the wound.  To all this weather Giles must be more or less
+exposed; how much, she did not know.
+
+At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a hardship in
+relation to him.  Whatever he was suffering, it was she who had
+caused it; he vacated his house on account of her.  She was not
+worth such self-sacrifice; she should not have accepted it of him. 
+And then, as her anxiety increased with increasing thought, there
+returned upon her mind some incidents of her late intercourse with
+him, which she had heeded but little at the time.  The look of his
+face--what had there been about his face which seemed different
+from its appearance as of yore?  Was it not thinner, less rich in
+hue, less like that of ripe autumn's brother to whom she had
+formerly compared him? And his voice; she had distinctly noticed a
+change in tone.  And his gait; surely it had been feebler,
+stiffer, more like the gait of a weary man.  That slight
+occasional noise she had heard in the day, and attributed to
+squirrels, it might have been his cough after all.
+
+Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that Winterborne
+was ill, or had been so, and that he had carefully concealed his
+condition from her that she might have no scruples about accepting
+a hospitality which by the nature of the case expelled her
+entertainer.
+
+"My own, own, true l---, my dear kind friend!" she cried to
+herself.  "Oh, it shall not be--it shall not be!"
+
+She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, with which
+she entered the adjoining room, the cot possessing only one floor. 
+Setting down the candle on the table here, she went to the door
+with the key in her hand, and placed it in the lock.  Before
+turning it she paused, her fingers still clutching it; and
+pressing her other hand to her forehead, she fell into agitating
+thought.
+
+A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings blowing
+against it, brought her indecision to a close.  She turned the key
+and opened the door.
+
+The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils like a
+substance.  She only now became aware how heavy the rainfall had
+been and was; the dripping of the eaves splashed like a fountain. 
+She stood listening with parted lips, and holding the door in one
+hand, till her eyes, growing accustomed to the obscurity,
+discerned the wild brandishing of their boughs by the adjoining
+trees.  At last she cried loudly with an effort, "Giles! you may
+come in!"
+
+There was no immediate answer to her cry, and overpowered by her
+own temerity, Grace retreated quickly, shut the door, and stood
+looking on the floor.  But it was not for long.  She again lifted
+the latch, and with far more determination than at first.
+
+"Giles, Giles!" she cried, with the full strength of her voice,
+and without any of the shamefacedness that had characterized her
+first cry.  "Oh, come in--come in!  Where are you?  I have been
+wicked.  I have thought too much of myself!  Do you hear?  I don't
+want to keep you out any longer.  I cannot bear that you should
+suffer so.  Gi-i-iles!"
+
+A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkness and wind a voice
+reached her, floating upon the weather as though a part of it.
+
+"Here I am--all right.  Don't trouble about me."
+
+"Don't you want to come in? Are you not ill? I don't mind what
+they say, or what they think any more."
+
+"I am all right," he repeated.  "It is not necessary for me to
+come.  Good-night! good-night!"
+
+Grace sighed, turned and shut the door slowly.  Could she have
+been mistaken about his health? Perhaps, after all, she had
+perceived a change in him because she had not seen him for so
+long.  Time sometimes did his ageing work in jerks, as she knew. 
+Well, she had done all she could.  He would not come in.  She
+retired to rest again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+The next morning Grace was at the window early.  She felt
+determined to see him somehow that day, and prepared his breakfast
+eagerly.  Eight o'clock struck, and she had remembered that he had
+not come to arouse her by a knocking, as usual, her own anxiety
+having caused her to stir.
+
+The breakfast was set in its place without.  But he did not arrive
+to take it; and she waited on.  Nine o'clock arrived, and the
+breakfast was cold; and still there was no Giles.  A thrush, that
+had been repeating itself a good deal on an opposite bush for some
+time, came and took a morsel from the plate and bolted it, waited,
+looked around, and took another.  At ten o'clock she drew in the
+tray, and sat down to her own solitary meal.  He must have been
+called away on business early, the rain having cleared off.
+
+Yet she would have liked to assure herself, by thoroughly
+exploring the precincts of the hut, that he was nowhere in its
+vicinity; but as the day was comparatively fine, the dread lest
+some stray passenger or woodman should encounter her in such a
+reconnoitre paralyzed her wish.  The solitude was further
+accentuated to-day by the stopping of the clock for want of
+winding, and the fall into the chimney-corner of flakes of soot
+loosened by the rains.  At noon she heard a slight rustling
+outside the window, and found that it was caused by an eft which
+had crept out of the leaves to bask in the last sun-rays that
+would be worth having till the following May.
+
+She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could see
+little.  In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and upon them
+some yellowish-green ones of this season that had been prematurely
+blown down by the gale.  Above stretched an old beech, with vast
+armpits, and great pocket-holes in its sides where branches had
+been amputated in past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. 
+Dead boughs were scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum,
+and beyond them were perishing woodbine stems resembling old
+ropes.
+
+From the other window all she could see were more trees, jacketed
+with lichen and stockinged with moss.  At their roots were
+stemless yellow fungi like lemons and apricots, and tall fungi
+with more stem than stool.  Next were more trees close together,
+wrestling for existence, their branches disfigured with wounds
+resulting from their mutual rubbings and blows.  It was the
+struggle between these neighbors that she had heard in the night. 
+Beneath them were the rotting stumps of those of the group that
+had been vanquished long ago, rising from their mossy setting like
+decayed teeth from green gums.  Farther on were other tufts of
+moss in islands divided by the shed leaves--variety upon variety,
+dark green and pale green; moss-like little fir-trees, like plush,
+like malachite stars, like nothing on earth except moss.
+
+The strain upon Grace's mind in various ways was so great on this
+the most desolate day she had passed there that she felt it would
+be well-nigh impossible to spend another in such circumstances. 
+The evening came at last; the sun, when its chin was on the earth,
+found an opening through which to pierce the shade, and stretched
+irradiated gauzes across the damp atmosphere, making the wet
+trunks shine, and throwing splotches of such ruddiness on the
+leaves beneath the beech that they were turned to gory hues.  When
+night at last arrived, and with it the time for his return, she
+was nearly broken down with suspense.
+
+The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, which Grace
+had prepared, stood waiting upon the hearth; and yet Giles did not
+come.  It was now nearly twenty-four hours since she had seen him. 
+As the room grew darker, and only the firelight broke against the
+gloom of the walls, she was convinced that it would be beyond her
+staying power to pass the night without hearing from him or from
+somebody.  Yet eight o'clock drew on, and his form at the window
+did not appear.
+
+The meal remained untasted.  Suddenly rising from before the
+hearth of smouldering embers, where she had been crouching with
+her hands clasped over her knees, she crossed the room, unlocked
+the door, and listened.  Every breath of wind had ceased with the
+decline of day, but the rain had resumed the steady dripping of
+the night before.  Grace might have stood there five minutes when
+she fancied she heard that old sound, a cough, at no great
+distance; and it was presently repeated.  If it were
+Winterborne's, he must be near her; why, then, had he not visited
+her?
+
+A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took possession of
+Grace, and she looked up anxiously for the lantern, which was
+hanging above her head.  To light it and go in the direction of
+the sound would be the obvious way to solve the dread problem; but
+the conditions made her hesitate, and in a moment a cold sweat
+pervaded her at further sounds from the same quarter.
+
+They were low mutterings; at first like persons in conversation,
+but gradually resolving themselves into varieties of one voice. 
+It was an endless monologue, like that we sometimes hear from
+inanimate nature in deep secret places where water flows, or where
+ivy leaves flap against stones; but by degrees she was convinced
+that the voice was Winterborne's.  Yet who could be his listener,
+so mute and patient; for though he argued so rapidly and
+persistently, nobody replied.
+
+A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of Grace.  "Oh,"
+she cried, in her anguish, as she hastily prepared herself to go
+out, "how selfishly correct I am always--too, too correct! Cruel
+propriety is killing the dearest heart that ever woman clasped to
+her own."
+
+While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, and
+hastening out without further thought, took the direction whence
+the mutterings had proceeded.  The course was marked by a little
+path, which ended at a distance of about forty yards in a small
+erection of hurdles, not much larger than a shock of corn, such as
+were frequent in the woods and copses when the cutting season was
+going on.  It was too slight even to be called a hovel, and was
+not high enough to stand upright in; appearing, in short, to be
+erected for the temporary shelter of fuel.  The side towards Grace
+was open, and turning the light upon the interior, she beheld what
+her prescient fear had pictured in snatches all the way thither.
+
+Upon the straw within, Winterborne lay in his clothes, just as she
+had seen him during the whole of her stay here, except that his
+hat was off, and his hair matted and wild.
+
+Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain.  His arms
+were flung over his head; his face was flushed to an unnatural
+crimson.  His eyes had a burning brightness, and though they met
+her own, she perceived that he did not recognize her.
+
+"Oh, my Giles," she cried, "what have I done to you!"
+
+But she stopped no longer even to reproach herself.  She saw that
+the first thing to be thought of was to get him indoors.
+
+How Grace performed that labor she never could have exactly
+explained.  But by dint of clasping her arms round him, rearing
+him into a sitting posture, and straining her strength to the
+uttermost, she put him on one of the hurdles that was loose
+alongside, and taking the end of it in both her hands, dragged him
+along the path to the entrance of the hut, and, after a pause for
+breath, in at the door-way.
+
+It was somewhat singular that Giles in his semi-conscious state
+acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did.  But he never for a
+moment recognized her--continuing his rapid conversation to
+himself, and seeming to look upon her as some angel, or other
+supernatural creature of the visionary world in which he was
+mentally living.  The undertaking occupied her more than ten
+minutes; but by that time, to her great thankfulness, he was in
+the inner room, lying on the bed, his damp outer clothing removed.
+
+Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of the candle. 
+There was something in his look which agonized her, in the rush of
+his thoughts, accelerating their speed from minute to minute.  He
+seemed to be passing through the universe of ideas like a comet--
+erratic, inapprehensible, untraceable.
+
+Grace's distraction was almost as great as his.  In a few moments
+she firmly believed he was dying.  Unable to withstand her
+impulse, she knelt down beside him, kissed his hands and his face
+and his hair, exclaiming, in a low voice, "How could I? How could
+I?"
+
+Her timid morality had, indeed, underrated his chivalry till now,
+though she knew him so well.  The purity of his nature, his
+freedom from the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy, had
+never been fully understood by Grace till this strange self-
+sacrifice in lonely juxtaposition to her own person was revealed. 
+The perception of it added something that was little short of
+reverence to the deep affection for him of a woman who, herself,
+had more of Artemis than of Aphrodite in her constitution.
+
+All that a tender nurse could do, Grace did; and the power to
+express her solicitude in action, unconscious though the sufferer
+was, brought her mournful satisfaction.  She bathed his hot head,
+wiped his perspiring hands, moistened his lips, cooled his fiery
+eyelids, sponged his heated skin, and administered whatever she
+could find in the house that the imagination could conceive as
+likely to be in any way alleviating.  That she might have been the
+cause, or partially the cause, of all this, interfused misery with
+her sorrow.
+
+Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in its
+mechanical parts, had been enacted at Hintock House.  It was
+between a pair of persons most intimately connected in their lives
+with these.  Outwardly like as it had been, it was yet infinite in
+spiritual difference, though a woman's devotion had been common to
+both.
+
+Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and, bracing her
+energies, saw that something practical must immediately be done. 
+Much as she would have liked, in the emotion of the moment, to
+keep him entirely to herself, medical assistance was necessary
+while there remained a possibility of preserving him alive.  Such
+assistance was fatal to her own concealment; but even had the
+chance of benefiting him been less than it was, she would have run
+the hazard for his sake.  The question was, where should she get a
+medical man, competent and near?
+
+There was one such man, and only one, within accessible distance;
+a man who, if it were possible to save Winterborne's life, had the
+brain most likely to do it.  If human pressure could bring him,
+that man ought to be brought to the sick Giles's side.  The
+attempt should be made.
+
+Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes raced past,
+and yet she postponed her departure.  At last, when it was after
+eleven o'clock, Winterborne fell into a fitful sleep, and it
+seemed to afford her an opportunity.
+
+She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put on her
+things, cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in the cupboard,
+and having set it up, and placed it so that the light did not fall
+upon his eyes, she closed the door and started.
+
+The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company and banish
+all sense of darkness from her mind.  The rains had imparted a
+phosphorescence to the pieces of touchwood and rotting leaves that
+lay about her path, which, as scattered by her feet, spread abroad
+like spilt milk.  She would not run the hazard of losing her way
+by plunging into any short, unfrequented track through the denser
+parts of the woodland, but followed a more open course, which
+eventually brought her to the highway.  Once here, she ran along
+with great speed, animated by a devoted purpose which had much
+about it that was stoical; and it was with scarcely any faltering
+of spirit that, after an hour's progress, she passed over Rubdown
+Hill, and onward towards that same Hintock, and that same house,
+out of which she had fled a few days before in irresistible alarm. 
+But that had happened which, above all other things of chance and
+change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of flight
+and sink all regard of personal consequences.
+
+One speciality of Fitzpiers's was respected by Grace as much as
+ever--his professional skill.  In this she was right.  Had his
+persistence equalled his insight, instead of being the spasmodic
+and fitful thing it was, fame and fortune need never have remained
+a wish with him.  His freedom from conventional errors and crusted
+prejudices had, indeed, been such as to retard rather than
+accelerate his advance in Hintock and its neighborhood, where
+people could not believe that nature herself effected cures, and
+that the doctor's business was only to smooth the way.
+
+It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her father's
+house, now again temporarily occupied by her husband, unless he
+had already gone away.  Ever since her emergence from the denser
+plantations about Winterborne's residence a pervasive lightness
+had hung in the damp autumn sky, in spite of the vault of cloud,
+signifying that a moon of some age was shining above its arch. 
+The two white gates were distinct, and the white balls on the
+pillars, and the puddles and damp ruts left by the recent rain,
+had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness.  She entered by the lower
+gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing wherein the
+apartments that had been hers since her marriage were situate,
+till she stood under a window which, if her husband were in the
+house, gave light to his bedchamber.
+
+She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart, in spite of
+herself.  Could she call to her presence the very cause of all her
+foregoing troubles? Alas!--old Jones was seven miles off; Giles
+was possibly dying--what else could she do?
+
+It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by consciousness than
+by exercise, that she picked up some gravel, threw it at the
+panes, and waited to see the result.  The night-bell which had
+been fixed when Fitzpiers first took up his residence there still
+remained; but as it had fallen into disuse with the collapse of
+his practice, and his elopement, she did not venture to pull it
+now.
+
+Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight as it was. 
+In half a minute the window was opened, and a voice said "Yes?"
+inquiringly.  Grace recognized her husband in the speaker at once. 
+Her effort was now to disguise her own accents.
+
+"Doctor," she said, in as unusual a tone as she could command, "a
+man is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, out towards Delborough,
+and you must go to him at once--in all mercy!"
+
+"I will, readily."
+
+The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his reply amazed
+her for a moment.  But, in truth, they denoted the sudden relief
+of a man who, having got back in a mood of contrition, from
+erratic abandonment to fearful joys, found the soothing routine of
+professional practice unexpectedly opening anew to him.  The
+highest desire of his soul just now was for a respectable life of
+painstaking.  If this, his first summons since his return, had
+been to attend upon a cat or dog, he would scarcely have refused
+it in the circumstances.
+
+"Do you know the way?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," said he.
+
+"One-chimney Hut," she repeated.  "And--immediately!"
+
+"Yes, yes," said Fitzpiers.
+
+Grace remained no longer.  She passed out of the white gate
+without slamming it, and hastened on her way back.  Her husband,
+then, had re-entered her father's house.  How he had been able to
+effect a reconciliation with the old man, what were the terms of
+the treaty between them, she could not so much as conjecture. 
+Some sort of truce must have been entered into, that was all she
+could say.  But close as the question lay to her own life, there
+was a more urgent one which banished it; and she traced her steps
+quickly along the meandering track-ways.
+
+Meanwhile, Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house.  The state
+of his mind, over and above his professional zeal, was peculiar. 
+At Grace's first remark he had not recognized or suspected her
+presence; but as she went on, he was awakened to the great
+resemblance of the speaker's voice to his wife's.  He had taken in
+such good faith the statement of the household on his arrival,
+that she had gone on a visit for a time because she could not at
+once bring her mind to be reconciled to him, that he could not
+quite actually believe this comer to be she.  It was one of the
+features of Fitzpiers's repentant humor at this date that, on
+receiving the explanation of her absence, he had made no attempt
+to outrage her feelings by following her; though nobody had
+informed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his
+entry, and of all that might have been inferred from her
+precipitancy.
+
+Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had decided not to
+follow her either.  He sympathized with her flight, much as he
+deplored it; moreover, the tragic color of the antecedent events
+that he had been a great means of creating checked his instinct to
+interfere.  He prayed and trusted that she had got into no danger
+on her way (as he supposed) to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if
+that were the place she had gone to, forbearing all inquiry which
+the strangeness of her departure would have made natural.  A few
+months before this time a performance by Grace of one-tenth the
+magnitude of this would have aroused him to unwonted
+investigation.
+
+It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to
+Fitzpiers's domicilation there.  The two men had not met face to
+face, but Mrs. Melbury had proposed herself as an intermediary,
+who made the surgeon's re-entrance comparatively easy to him. 
+Everything was provisional, and nobody asked questions.  Fitzpiers
+had come in the performance of a plan of penitence, which had
+originated in circumstances hereafter to be explained; his self-
+humiliation to the very bass-string was deliberate; and as soon as
+a call reached him from the bedside of a dying man his desire was
+to set to work and do as much good as he could with the least
+possible fuss or show.  He therefore refrained from calling up a
+stableman to get ready any horse or gig, and set out for One-
+chimney Hut on foot, as Grace had done.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, and
+approached the sufferer.  He had begun anew those terrible
+mutterings, and his hands were cold.  As soon as she saw him there
+returned to her that agony of mind which the stimulus of her
+journey had thrown off for a time.
+
+Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, forgot all
+things but the fact that lying there before her was he who had
+loved her more than the mere lover would have loved; had martyred
+himself for her comfort, cared more for her self-respect than she
+had thought of caring.  This mood continued till she heard quick,
+smart footsteps without; she knew whose footsteps they were.
+
+Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, holding
+Giles's hand, so that when her husband entered the patient lay
+between herself and him.  He stood transfixed at first, noticing
+Grace only.  Slowly he dropped his glance and discerned who the
+prostrate man was.  Strangely enough, though Grace's distaste for
+her husband's company had amounted almost to dread, and culminated
+in actual flight, at this moment her last and least feeling was
+personal.  Sensitive femininity was eclipsed by self-effacing
+purpose, and that it was a husband who stood there was forgotten. 
+The first look that possessed her face was relief; satisfaction at
+the presence of the physician obliterated thought of the man,
+which only returned in the form of a sub-consciousness that did
+not interfere with her words.
+
+"Is he dying--is there any hope?" she cried.
+
+"Grace!" said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper--more than
+invocating, if not quite deprecatory.
+
+He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic
+character--though that was striking enough to a man who called
+himself the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse--but in its
+character as the counterpart of one that had its hour many months
+before, in which he had figured as the patient, and the woman had
+been Felice Charmond.
+
+"Is he in great danger--can you save him?" she cried again.
+
+Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined
+Winterborne as he stood.  His inspection was concluded in a mere
+glance.  Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to
+the effect of his coming words.
+
+"He is dying," he said, with dry precision.
+
+"What?" said she.
+
+"Nothing can be done, by me or any other man.  It will soon be all
+over.  The extremities are dead already."  His eyes still remained
+fixed on her; the conclusion to which he had come seeming to end
+his interest, professional and otherwise, in Winterborne forever.
+
+"But it cannot be!  He was well three days ago."
+
+"Not well, I suspect.  This seems like a secondary attack, which
+has followed some previous illness--possibly typhoid--it may have
+been months ago, or recently."
+
+"Ah--he was not well--you are right.  He was ill--he was ill when
+I came."
+
+There was nothing more to do or say.  She crouched down at the
+side of the bed, and Fitzpiers took a seat.  Thus they remained in
+silence, and long as it lasted she never turned her eyes, or
+apparently her thoughts, at all to her husband.  He occasionally
+murmured, with automatic authority, some slight directions for
+alleviating the pain of the dying man, which she mechanically
+obeyed, bending over him during the intervals in silent tears.
+
+Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was passing; and
+that he was going became soon perceptible also to her.  In less
+than an hour the delirium ceased; then there was an interval of
+somnolent painlessness and soft breathing, at the end of which
+Winterborne passed quietly away.
+
+
+
+Then Fitzpiers broke the silence.  "Have you lived here long?"
+said he.
+
+Grace was wild with sorrow--with all that had befallen her--with
+the cruelties that had attacked her--with life--with Heaven.  She
+answered at random.  "Yes.  By what right do you ask?"
+
+"Don't think I claim any right," said Fitzpiers, sadly.  "It is
+for you to do and say what you choose.  I admit, quite as much as
+you feel, that I am a vagabond--a brute--not worthy to possess the
+smallest fragment of you.  But here I am, and I have happened to
+take sufficient interest in you to make that inquiry."
+
+"He is everything to me!" said Grace, hardly heeding her husband,
+and laying her hand reverently on the dead man's eyelids, where
+she kept it a long time, pressing down their lashes with gentle
+touches, as if she were stroking a little bird.
+
+He watched her a while, and then glanced round the chamber where
+his eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that she had
+brought.
+
+"Grace--if I may call you so," he said, "I have been already
+humiliated almost to the depths.  I have come back since you
+refused to join me elsewhere--I have entered your father's house,
+and borne all that that cost me without flinching, because I have
+felt that I deserved humiliation.  But is there a yet greater
+humiliation in store for me?  You say you have been living here--
+that he is everything to you.  Am I to draw from that the obvious,
+the extremest inference?"
+
+Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women--especially the
+latter.  It was her first and last opportunity of repaying him for
+the cruel contumely which she had borne at his hands so docilely.
+
+"Yes," she answered; and there was that in her subtly compounded
+nature which made her feel a thrill of pride as she did so.
+
+Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her character she
+half repented.  Her husband had turned as white as the wall behind
+him.  It seemed as if all that remained to him of life and spirit
+had been abstracted at a stroke.  Yet he did not move, and in his
+efforts at self-control closed his mouth together as a vice.  His
+determination was fairly successful, though she saw how very much
+greater than she had expected her triumph had been.  Presently he
+looked across at Winterborne.
+
+"Would it startle you to hear," he said, as if he hardly had
+breath to utter the words, "that she who was to me what he was to
+you is dead also?"
+
+"Dead--SHE dead?" exclaimed Grace.
+
+"Yes.  Felice Charmond is where this young man is."
+
+"Never!" said Grace, vehemently.
+
+He went on without heeding the insinuation: "And I came back to
+try to make it up with you--but--"
+
+Fitzpiers rose, and moved across the room to go away, looking
+downward with the droop of a man whose hope was turned to apathy,
+if not despair.  In going round the door his eye fell upon her
+once more.  She was still bending over the body of Winterborne,
+her face close to the young man's.
+
+"Have you been kissing him during his illness?" asked her husband.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Since his fevered state set in?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"On his lips?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in water as
+soon as possible." He drew a small phial from his pocket and
+returned to offer it to her.
+
+Grace shook her head.
+
+"If you don't do as I tell you you may soon be like him."
+
+"I don't care.  I wish to die."
+
+"I'll put it here," said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a ledge
+beside him.  "The sin of not having warned you will not be upon my
+head at any rate, among my other sins.  I am now going, and I will
+send somebody to you.  Your father does not know that you are
+here, so I suppose I shall be bound to tell him?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon
+immersed in the silence that prevaded the spot.  Grace remained
+kneeling and weeping, she hardly knew how long, and then she sat
+up, covered poor Giles's features, and went towards the door where
+her husband had stood.  No sign of any other comer greeted her
+ear, the only perceptible sounds being the tiny cracklings of the
+dead leaves, which, like a feather-bed, had not yet done rising to
+their normal level where indented by the pressure of her husband's
+receding footsteps.  It reminded her that she had been struck with
+the change in his aspect; the extremely intellectual look that had
+always been in his face was wrought to a finer phase by thinness,
+and a care-worn dignity had been superadded.  She returned to
+Winterborne's side, and during her meditations another tread drew
+near the door, entered the outer room, and halted at the entrance
+of the chamber where Grace was.
+
+"What--Marty!" said Grace.
+
+"Yes.  I have heard," said Marty, whose demeanor had lost all its
+girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost literally to have
+bruised her.
+
+"He died for me!" murmured Grace, heavily.
+
+Marty did not fully comprehend; and she answered, "He belongs to
+neither of us now, and your beauty is no more powerful with him
+than my plainness.  I have come to help you, ma'am.  He never
+cared for me, and he cared much for you; but he cares for us both
+alike now."
+
+"Oh don't, don't, Marty!"
+
+Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from the other
+side.
+
+"Did you meet my hus--Mr. Fitzpiers?"
+
+"Then what brought you here?"
+
+"I come this way sometimes.  I have got to go to the farther side
+of the wood this time of the year, and am obliged to get there
+before four o'clock in the morning, to begin heating the oven for
+the early baking.  I have passed by here often at this time."
+
+Grace looked at her quickly.  "Then did you know I was here?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Did you tell anybody?"
+
+"No.  I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up to ye,
+and lodged out himself."
+
+"Did you know where he lodged?"
+
+"No.  That I couldn't find out.  Was it at Delborough?"
+
+"No.  It was not there, Marty.  Would it had been! It would have
+saved--saved--" To check her tears she turned, and seeing a book
+on the window-bench, took it up.  "Look, Marty, this is a Psalter. 
+He was not an outwardly religious man, but he was pure and perfect
+in his heart.  Shall we read a psalm over him?"
+
+"Oh yes--we will--with all my heart!"
+
+Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had kept at
+hand mainly for the convenience of whetting his pen-knife upon its
+leather covers.  She began to read in that rich, devotional voice
+peculiar to women only on such occasions.  When it was over, Marty
+said, "I should like to pray for his soul."
+
+"So should I," said her companion.  "But we must not."
+
+"Why? Nobody would know."
+
+Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she was by the
+sense of making amends for having neglected him in the body; and
+their tender voices united and filled the narrow room with
+supplicatory murmurs that a Calvinist might have envied.  They had
+hardly ended when now and more numerous foot-falls were audible,
+also persons in conversation, one of whom Grace recognized as her
+father.
+
+She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there was only
+such light as beamed from the inner one.  Melbury and Mrs. Melbury
+were standing there.
+
+"I don't reproach you, Grace," said her father, with an estranged
+manner, and in a voice not at all like his old voice.  "What has
+come upon you and us is beyond reproach, beyond weeping, and
+beyond wailing.  Perhaps I drove you to it.  But I am hurt; I am
+scourged; I am astonished.  In the face of this there is nothing
+to be said."
+
+Without replying, Grace turned and glided back to the inner
+chamber.  "Marty," she said, quickly, "I cannot look my father in
+the face until he knows the true circumstances of my life here. 
+Go and tell him--what you have told me--what you saw--that he gave
+up his house to me."
+
+She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty went, and
+after a short absence returned.  Then Grace rose, and going out
+asked her father if he had met her husband.
+
+"Yes," said Melbury.
+
+"And you know all that has happened?"
+
+"I do.  Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse than
+rashness--I ought to know ye better.  Are you coming with me to
+what was once your home?"
+
+"No.  I stay here with HIM.  Take no account of me any more."
+
+The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which she had
+stood to Winterborne quite lately--brought about by Melbury's own
+contrivance--could not fail to soften the natural anger of a
+parent at her more recent doings.  "My daughter, things are bad,"
+he rejoined.  "But why do you persevere to make 'em worse? What
+good can you do to Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no
+questions.  I don't inquire why you decided to come here, or
+anything as to what your course would have been if he had not
+died, though I know there's no deliberate harm in ye.  As for me,
+I have lost all claim upon you, and I make no complaint.  But I do
+say that by coming back with me now you will show no less kindness
+to him, and escape any sound of shame.
+
+"But I don't wish to escape it."
+
+"If you don't on your own account, cannot you wish to on mine and
+hers? Nobody except our household knows that you have left home. 
+Then why should you, by a piece of perverseness, bring down my
+gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?"
+
+"If it were not for my husband--" she began, moved by his words. 
+"But how can I meet him there? How can any woman who is not a mere
+man's creature join him after what has taken place?"
+
+"He would go away again rather than keep you out of my house."
+
+"How do you know that, father?"
+
+"We met him on our way here, and he told us so," said Mrs.
+Melbury.  "He had said something like it before.  He seems very
+much upset altogether."
+
+"He declared to her when he came to our house that he would wait
+for time and devotion to bring about his forgiveness," said her
+husband.  "That was it, wasn't it, Lucy?"
+
+"Yes.  That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till you gave
+him absolute permission," Mrs. Melbury added.
+
+This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as welcome to
+Grace as it was unexpected; and though she did not desire his
+presence, she was sorry that by her retaliatory fiction she had
+given him a different reason for avoiding her.  She made no
+further objections to accompanying her parents, taking them into
+the inner room to give Winterborne a last look, and gathering up
+the two or three things that belonged to her.  While she was doing
+this the two women came who had been called by Melbury, and at
+their heels poor Creedle.
+
+"Forgive me, but I can't rule my mourning nohow as a man should,
+Mr. Melbury," he said.  "I ha'n't seen him since Thursday
+se'night, and have wondered for days and days where he's been
+keeping.  There was I expecting him to come and tell me to wash
+out the cider-barrels against the making, and here was he-- Well,
+I've knowed him from table-high; I knowed his father--used to bide
+about upon two sticks in the sun afore he died!--and now I've seen
+the end of the family, which we can ill afford to lose, wi' such a
+scanty lot of good folk in Hintock as we've got.  And now Robert
+Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards 'a b'lieve; and noboby
+will glutch down a sigh for he!"
+
+They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining behind.  For a
+time Grace and her father walked side by side without speaking. 
+It was just in the blue of the dawn, and the chilling tone of the
+sky was reflected in her cold, wet face.  The whole wood seemed to
+be a house of death, pervaded by loss to its uttermost length and
+breadth.  Winterborne was gone, and the copses seemed to show the
+want of him; those young trees, so many of which he had planted,
+and of which he had spoken so truly when he said that he should
+fall before they fell, were at that very moment sending out their
+roots in the direction that he had given them with his subtle
+hand.
+
+"One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband should come
+back to the house," said Melbury at last--"the death of Mrs.
+Charmond."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollection, "he
+told me so."
+
+"Did he tell you how she died?  It was no such death as Giles's. 
+She was shot--by a disappointed lover.  It occurred in Germany. 
+The unfortunate man shot himself afterwards.  He was that South
+Carolina gentleman of very passionate nature who used to haunt
+this place to force her to an interview, and followed her about
+everywhere.  So ends the brilliant Felice Charmond--once a good
+friend to me--but no friend to you."
+
+"I can forgive her," said Grace, absently.  "Did Edgar tell you of
+this?"
+
+"No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account of it, on
+the hall table, folded in such a way that we should see it.  It
+will be in the Sherton paper this week, no doubt.  To make the
+event more solemn still to him, he had just before had sharp words
+with her, and left her.  He told Lucy this, as nothing about him
+appears in the newspaper.  And the cause of the quarrel was, of
+all people, she we've left behind us."
+
+"Do you mean Marty?" Grace spoke the words but perfunctorily. 
+For, pertinent and pointed as Melbury's story was, she had no
+heart for it now.
+
+"Yes.  Marty South."  Melbury persisted in his narrative, to
+divert her from her present grief, if possible.  "Before he went
+away she wrote him a letter, which he kept in his, pocket a long
+while before reading.  He chanced to pull it out in Mrs.
+Charmond's, presence, and read it out loud.  It contained
+something which teased her very much, and that led to the rupture. 
+She was following him to make it up when she met with her terrible
+death."
+
+Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the incident,
+which was that Marty South's letter had been concerning a certain
+personal adornment common to herself and Mrs. Charmond.  Her
+bullet reached its billet at last.  The scene between Fitzpiers
+and Felice had been sharp, as only a scene can be which arises out
+of the mortification of one woman by another in the presence of a
+lover.  True, Marty had not effected it by word of mouth; the
+charge about the locks of hair was made simply by Fitzpiers
+reading her letter to him aloud to Felice in the playfully
+ironical tones of one who had become a little weary of his
+situation, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of George
+Herbert, a "flat delight."  He had stroked those false tresses
+with his hand many a time without knowing them to be transplanted,
+and it was impossible when the discovery was so abruptly made to
+avoid being finely satirical, despite her generous disposition.
+
+That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been its end.  On his
+abrupt departure she had followed him to the station but the train
+was gone; and in travelling to Baden in search of him she had met
+his rival, whose reproaches led to an altercation, and the death
+of both.  Of that precipitate scene of passion and crime Fitzpiers
+had known nothing till he saw an account of it in the papers,
+where, fortunately for himself, no mention was made of his prior
+acquaintance with the unhappy lady; nor was there any allusion to
+him in the subsequent inquiry, the double death being attributed
+to some gambling losses, though, in point of fact, neither one of
+them had visited the tables.
+
+Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, having seen but
+one living thing on their way, a squirrel, which did not run up
+its tree, but, dropping the sweet chestnut which it carried, cried
+chut-chut-chut, and stamped with its hind legs on the ground. 
+When the roofs and chimneys of the homestead began to emerge from 
+the screen of boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her
+abstracted advance.
+
+"You clearly understand," she said to her step-mother some of her
+old misgiving returning, "that I am coming back only on condition
+of his leaving as he promised?  Will you let him know this, that
+there may be no mistake?"
+
+Mrs. Melbury, who had some long private talks with Fitzpiers,
+assured Grace that she need have no doubts on that point, and that
+he would probably be gone by the evening.  Grace then entered with
+them into Melbury's wing of the house, and sat down listlessly in
+the parlor, while her step-mother went to Fitzpiers.
+
+The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon showed did
+honor to him, if anything could.  Before Mrs. Melbury had returned
+to the room Grace, who was sitting on the parlor window-bench, saw
+her husband go from the door under the increasing light of
+morning, with a bag in his hand.  While passing through the gate
+he turned his head.  The firelight of the room she sat in threw
+her figure into dark relief against the window as she looked
+through the panes, and he must have seen her distinctly.  In a
+moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he disappeared.  At the
+hut she had declared that another had displaced him; and now she
+had banished him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace began to sicken. 
+The next day she kept her room.  Old Jones was called in; he
+murmured some statements in which the words "feverish symptoms"
+occurred.  Grace heard them, and guessed the means by which she
+had brought this visitation upon herself.
+
+One day, while she still lay there with her head throbbing,
+wondering if she were really going to join him who had gone
+before, Grammer Oliver came to her bedside.  "I don't know whe'r
+this is meant for you to take, ma'am," she said, "but I have found
+it on the table.  It was left by Marty, I think, when she came
+this morning."
+
+Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up.  It was the
+phial left at the hut by her husband when he had begged her to
+take some drops of its contents if she wished to preserve herself
+from falling a victim to the malady which had pulled down
+Winterborne.  She examined it as well as she could.  The liquid
+was of an opaline hue, and bore a label with an inscription in
+Italian.  He had probably got it in his wanderings abroad.  She
+knew but little Italian, but could understand that the cordial was
+a febrifuge of some sort.  Her father, her mother, and all the
+household were anxious for her recovery, and she resolved to obey
+her husband's directions.  Whatever the risk, if any, she was
+prepared to run it.  A glass of water was brought, and the drops
+dropped in.
+
+The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable.  In less than
+an hour she felt calmer, cooler, better able to reflect--less
+inclined to fret and chafe and wear herself away.  She took a few
+drops more.  From that time the fever retreated, and went out like
+a damped conflagration.
+
+"How clever he is!" she said, regretfully.  "Why could he not have
+had more principle, so as to turn his great talents to good
+account?  Perhaps he has saved my useless life.  But he doesn't
+know it, and doesn't care whether he has saved it or not; and on
+that account will never be told by me! Probably he only gave it to
+me in the arrogance of his skill, to show the greatness of his
+resources beside mine, as Elijah drew down fire from heaven."
+
+As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled attack upon
+her life, Grace went to Marty South's cottage.  The current of her
+being had again set towards the lost Giles Winterborne.
+
+"Marty," she said, "we both loved him.  We will go to his grave
+together."
+
+Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the village, and
+could be reached without passing through the street.  In the dusk
+of the late September day they went thither by secret ways,
+walking mostly in silence side by side, each busied with her own
+thoughts.  Grace had a trouble exceeding Marty's--that haunting
+sense of having put out the light of his life by her own hasty
+doings.  She had tried to persuade herself that he might have died
+of his illness, even if she had not taken possession of his house. 
+Sometimes she succeeded in her attempt; sometimes she did not.
+
+They stood by the grave together, and though the sun had gone
+down, they could see over the woodland for miles, and down to the
+vale in which he had been accustomed to descend every year, with
+his portable mill and press, to make cider about this time.
+
+Perhaps Grace's first grief, the discovery that if he had lived he
+could never have claimed her, had some power in softening this,
+the second.  On Marty's part there was the same consideration;
+never would she have been his.  As no anticipation of gratified
+affection had been in existence while he was with them, there was
+none to be disappointed now that he had gone.
+
+Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she had never
+understood Giles as Marty had done.  Marty South alone, of all the
+women in Hintock and the world, had approximated to Winterborne's
+level of intelligent intercourse with nature.  In that respect she
+had formed the complement to him in the other sex, had lived as
+his counterpart, had subjoined her thought to his as a corollary.
+
+The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon
+that wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had
+been with these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze.  They had been
+possessed of its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had
+been able to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the
+sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense
+boughs, which had to Grace a touch of the uncanny, and even the
+supernatural, were simple occurrences whose origin, continuance,
+and laws they foreknew.  They had planted together, and together
+they had felled; together they had, with the run of the years,
+mentally collected those remoter signs and symbols which, seen in
+few, were of runic obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. 
+From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, when
+brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the
+species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the
+wind's murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its
+sort afar off.  They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were
+sound, or tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its
+upper twigs, the stratum that had been reached by its roots.  The
+artifices of the seasons were seen by them from the conjuror's own
+point of view, and not from that of the spectator's.
+
+"He ought to have married YOU, Marty, and nobody else in the
+world!" said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in
+the above strain.
+
+Marty shook her head.  "In all our out-door days and years
+together, ma'am," she replied, "the one thing he never spoke of to
+me was love; nor I to him."
+
+"Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew--not
+even my father, though he came nearest knowing--the tongue of the
+trees and fruits and flowers themselves."
+
+She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty; but the
+hard core to her grief--which Marty's had not--remained.  Had she
+been sure that Giles's death resulted entirely from his exposure,
+it would have driven her well-nigh to insanity; but there was
+always that bare possibility that his exposure had only
+precipitated what was inevitable.  She longed to believe that it
+had not done even this.
+
+There was only one man whose opinion on the circumstances she
+would be at all disposed to trust.  Her husband was that man.  Yet
+to ask him it would be necessary to detail the true conditions in
+which she and Winterborne had lived during these three or four
+critical days that followed her flight; and in withdrawing her
+original defiant announcement on that point, there seemed a
+weakness she did not care to show.  She never doubted that
+Fitzpiers would believe her if she made a clean confession of the
+actual situation; but to volunteer the correction would seem like
+signalling for a truce, and that, in her present frame of mind,
+was what she did not feel the need of.
+
+
+
+It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after what has
+been already declared of Fitzpiers, that the man whom Grace's
+fidelity could not keep faithful was stung into passionate throbs
+of interest concerning her by her avowal of the contrary.
+
+He declared to himself that he had never known her dangerously
+full compass if she were capable of such a reprisal; and,
+melancholy as it may be to admit the fact, his own humiliation and
+regret engendered a smouldering admiration of her.
+
+He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the place to
+which he had retired--quite as much misery indeed as Grace, could
+she have known of it, would have been inclined to inflict upon any
+living creature, how much soever he might have wronged her.  Then
+a sudden hope dawned upon him; he wondered if her affirmation were
+true.  He asked himself whether it were not the act of a woman
+whose natural purity and innocence had blinded her to the
+contingencies of such an announcement.  His wide experience of the
+sex had taught him that, in many cases, women who ventured on
+hazardous matters did so because they lacked an imagination
+sensuous enough to feel their full force.  In this light Grace's
+bold avowal might merely have denoted the desperation of one who
+was a child to the realities of obliquity.
+
+Fitzpiers's mental sufferings and suspense led him at last to take
+a melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little Hintock; and
+here he hovered for hours around the scene of the purest emotional
+experiences that he had ever known in his life.  He walked about
+the woods that surrounded Melbury's house, keeping out of sight
+like a criminal.  It was a fine evening, and on his way homeward
+he passed near Marty South's cottage.  As usual she had lighted
+her candle without closing her shutters; he saw her within as he
+had seen her many times before.
+
+She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished to show
+himself, he could not resist speaking in to her through the half-
+open door.  "What are you doing that for, Marty?"
+
+"Because I want to clean them.  They are not mine." He could see,
+indeed, that they were not hers, for one was a spade, large and
+heavy, and another was a bill-hook which she could only have used
+with both hands.  The spade, though not a new one, had been so
+completely burnished that it was bright as silver.
+
+Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winterborne's, and
+he put the question to her.
+
+She replied in the affirmative.  "I am going to keep 'em," she
+said, "but I can't get his apple-mill and press.  I wish could; it
+is going to be sold, they say."
+
+"Then I will buy it for you," said Fitzpiers.  "That will be
+making you a return for a kindness you did me."  His glance fell
+upon the girl's rare-colored hair, which had grown again.  "Oh,
+Marty, those locks of yours--and that letter! But it was a
+kindness to send it, nevertheless," he added, musingly.
+
+After this there was confidence between them--such confidence as
+there had never been before.  Marty was shy, indeed, of speaking
+about the letter, and her motives in writing it; but she thanked
+him warmly for his promise of the cider-press.  She would travel
+with it in the autumn season, as he had done, she said.  She would
+be quite strong enough, with old Creedle as an assistant.
+
+"Ah! there was one nearer to him than you," said Fitzpiers,
+referring to Winterborne.  "One who lived where he lived, and was
+with him when he died."
+
+Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true
+circumstances, from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and himself were
+living apart, told him of Giles's generosity to Grace in giving up
+his house to her at the risk, and possibly the sacrifice, of his
+own life.  When the surgeon heard it he almost envied Giles his
+chivalrous character.  He expressed a wish to Marty that his visit
+to her should be kept secret, and went home thoughtful, feeling
+that in more that one sense his journey to Hintock had not been in
+vain.
+
+He would have given much to win Grace's forgiveness then.  But
+whatever he dared hope for in that kind from the future, there was
+nothing to be done yet, while Giles Winterborne's memory was
+green.  To wait was imperative.  A little time might melt her
+frozen thoughts, and lead her to look on him with toleration, if
+not with love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+
+Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had been passed by
+Grace in the soothing monotony of the memorial act to which she
+and Marty had devoted themselves.  Twice a week the pair went in
+the dusk to Great Hintock, and, like the two mourners in
+Cymbeline, sweetened his sad grave with their flowers and their
+tears.  Sometimes Grace thought that it was a pity neither one of
+them had been his wife for a little while, and given the world a
+copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes.  Nothing ever had
+brought home to her with such force as this death how little
+acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling personal character. 
+While her simple sorrow for his loss took a softer edge with the
+lapse of the autumn and winter seasons, her self-reproach at
+having had a possible hand in causing it knew little abatement.
+
+Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the fall and
+decay of the leaf.  Discussion of the almost contemporaneous death
+of Mrs. Charmond abroad had waxed and waned.  Fitzpiers had had a
+marvellous escape from being dragged into the inquiry which
+followed it, through the accident of their having parted just
+before under the influence of Marty South's letter--the tiny
+instrument of a cause deep in nature.
+
+Her body was not brought home.  It seemed to accord well with the
+fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life that she should not
+have found a native grave.  She had enjoyed but a life-interest in
+the estate, which, after her death, passed to a relative of her
+husband's--one who knew not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be
+to blot out every vestige of her.
+
+On a certain day in February--the cheerful day of St. Valentine,
+in fact--a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which had been mentally
+promised her for that particular day a long time before.
+
+It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland town, where
+he had obtained a temporary practice as assistant to some local
+medical man, whose curative principles were all wrong, though he
+dared not set them right.  He had thought fit to communicate with
+her on that day of tender traditions to inquire if, in the event
+of his obtaining a substantial practice that he had in view
+elsewhere, she could forget the past and bring herself to join
+him.
+
+There the practical part ended; he then went on--
+
+
+"My last year of experience has added ten years to my age, dear
+Grace and dearest wife that ever erring man undervalued.  You may
+be absolutely indifferent to what I say, but let me say it: I have
+never loved any woman alive or dead as I love, respect, and honor
+you at this present moment.  What you told me in the pride and
+haughtiness of your heart I never believed [this, by the way, was
+not strictly true]; but even if I had believed it, it could never
+have estranged me from you.  Is there any use in telling you--no,
+there is not--that I dream of your ripe lips more frequently than
+I say my prayers; that the old familiar rustle of your dress often
+returns upon my mind till it distracts me? If you could condescend
+even only to see me again you would be breathing life into a
+corpse.  My pure, pure Grace, modest as a turtledove, how came I
+ever to possess you? For the sake of being present in your mind on
+this lovers' day, I think I would almost rather have you hate me a 
+little than not think of me at all.  You may call my fancies
+whimsical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that 'nature is one in
+love, and where 'tis fine it sends some instance of itself.'  I
+will not intrude upon you further now.  Make me a little bit happy
+by sending back one line to say that you will consent, at any
+rate, to a short interview.  I will meet you and leave you as a
+mere acquaintance, if you will only afford me this slight means of
+making a few explanations, and of putting my position before you. 
+Believe me, in spite of all you may do or feel,   Your lover
+always (once your husband),
+
+                                               "E."
+
+
+It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first on
+which Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, his
+courtship having taken place under conditions which rendered
+letter-writing unnecessary.  Its perusal, therefore, had a certain
+novelty for her.  She thought that, upon the whole, he wrote love-
+letters very well.  But the chief rational interest of the letter
+to the reflective Grace lay in the chance that such a meeting as
+he proposed would afford her of setting her doubts at rest, one
+way or the other, on her actual share in Winterborne's death.  The
+relief of consulting a skilled mind, the one professional man who
+had seen Giles at that time, would be immense.  As for that
+statement that she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which at
+the time she had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared
+to admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wronging
+herself as she did when she made it, she had done what to her was
+a far more serious thing, wronged Winterborne's memory.
+
+Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or out of
+it, Grace replied to the letter.  She agreed to meet Fitzpiers on
+two conditions, of which the first was that the place of meeting
+should be the top of Rubdown Hill, the second that he would not
+object to Marty South accompanying her.
+
+Whatever part, much or little, there may have been in Fitzpiers's
+so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight as of the
+bursting of spring when her brief reply came.  It was one of the
+few pleasures that he had experienced of late years at all
+resembling those of his early youth.  He promptly replied that he
+accepted the conditions, and named the day and hour at which he
+would be on the spot she mentioned.
+
+A few minutes before three on the appointed day found him climbing
+the well-known hill, which had been the axis of so many critical
+movements in their lives during his residence at Hintock.
+
+The sight of each homely and well-remembered object swelled the
+regret that seldom left him now.  Whatever paths might lie open to
+his future, the soothing shades of Hintock were forbidden him
+forever as a permanent dwelling-place.
+
+He longed for the society of Grace.  But to lay offerings on her
+slighted altar was his first aim, and until her propitiation was
+complete he would constrain her in no way to return to him.  The
+least reparation that he could make, in a case where he would
+gladly have made much, would be to let her feel herself absolutely
+free to choose between living with him and without him.
+
+Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under glasses
+strange and mournful pleasures that he would not willingly let die
+just at present.  To show any forwardness in suggesting a modus
+vivendi to Grace would be to put an end to these exotics.  To be
+the vassal of her sweet will for a time, he demanded no more, and
+found solace in the contemplation of the soft miseries she caused
+him.
+
+Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these notions,
+Fitzpiers discerned a gay procession of people coming over the
+crest, and was not long in perceiving it to be a wedding-party.
+
+Though the wind was keen the women were in light attire, and the
+flowered waistcoats of the men had a pleasing vividness of
+pattern.  Each of the gentler ones clung to the arm of her partner
+so tightly as to have with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost
+one centre of gravity.  In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no
+other than Suke Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess;
+the small husband beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs.
+
+Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him; though of all
+the beauties of the world whom he did not wish to meet Suke was
+the chief.  But he put the best face on the matter that he could
+and came on, the approaching company evidently discussing him and
+his separation from Mrs. Fitzpiers.  As the couples closed upon
+him he expressed his congratulations.
+
+"We be just walking round the parishes to show ourselves a bit,"
+said Tim.  "First we het across to Delborough, then athwart to
+here, and from here we go to Rubdown and Millshot, and then round
+by the cross-roads home.  Home says I, but it won't be that long!
+We be off next month."
+
+"Indeed.  Where to?"
+
+Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand.  Not but
+that he would have been contented with Hintock, but his wife was
+ambitious and wanted to leave, so he had given way.
+
+"Then good-by," said Fitzpiers; "I may not see you again." He
+shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride.  "Good-by, Suke," he
+said, taking her hand also.  "I wish you and your husband
+prosperity in the country you have chosen."  With this he left
+them, and hastened on to his appointment.
+
+The wedding-party re-formed and resumed march likewise.  But in
+restoring his arm to Suke, Tim noticed that her full and blooming
+countenance had undergone a change.  "Holloa! me dear--what's the
+matter?" said Tim.
+
+"Nothing to speak o'," said she.  But to give the lie to her
+assertion she was seized with lachrymose twitches, that soon
+produced a dribbling face.
+
+"How--what the devil's this about!" exclaimed the bridegroom.
+
+"She's a little wee bit overcome, poor dear!" said the first
+bridesmaid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke's eyes.
+
+"I never did like parting from people!" said Suke, as soon as she
+could speak.
+
+"Why him in particular?"
+
+"Well--he's such a clever doctor, that 'tis a thousand pities we
+sha'n't see him any more! There'll be no such clever doctor as he
+in New Zealand, if I should require one; and the thought o't got
+the better of my feelings!"
+
+They walked on, but Tim's face had grown rigid and pale, for he
+recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of their
+occurrence.  The former boisterous laughter of the wedding-party
+at the groomsman's jokes was heard ringing through the woods no
+more.
+
+By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the top of the
+hill, where he saw two figures emerging from the bank on the right
+hand.  These were the expected ones, Grace and Marty South, who
+had evidently come there by a short and secret path through the
+wood.  Grace was muffled up in her winter dress, and he thought
+that she had never looked so seductive as at this moment, in the
+noontide bright but heatless sun, and the keen wind, and the
+purplish-gray masses of brushwood around.
+
+Fitzpiers continued to regard the nearing picture, till at length
+their glances met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at
+a tangent and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face,
+while with courteous completeness of conduct he lifted his hat in
+a large arc.  Marty dropped behind; and when Fitzpiers held out
+his hand, Grace touched it with her fingers.
+
+"I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask you
+something important," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intonation
+modulating in a direction that she had not quite wished it to
+take.
+
+"I am most attentive," said her husband.  "Shall we take to the
+wood for privacy?"
+
+Grace demurred, and Fitzpiers gave in, and they kept the public
+road.
+
+At any rate she would take his arm?  This also was gravely
+negatived, the refusal being audible to Marty.
+
+"Why not?" he inquired.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers--how can you ask?"
+
+"Right, right," said he, his effusiveness shrivelled up.
+
+As they walked on she returned to her inquiry.  "It is about a
+matter that may perhaps be unpleasant to you.  But I think I need
+not consider that too carefully."
+
+"Not at all," said Fitzpiers, heroically.
+
+She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's death,
+and related the precise circumstances amid which his fatal illness
+had come upon him, particularizing the dampness of the shelter to
+which he had betaken himself, his concealment from her of the
+hardships that he was undergoing, all that he had put up with, all
+that he had done for her in his scrupulous considerateness.  The
+retrospect brought her to tears as she asked him if he thought
+that the sin of having driven him to his death was upon her.
+
+Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at what her
+narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harmlessness of an
+escapade with her lover, which had at first, by her own showing,
+looked so grave, and he did not care to inquire whether that
+harmlessness had been the result of aim or of accident.  With
+regard to her question, he declared that in his judgment no human
+being could answer it.  He thought that upon the whole the balance
+of probabilities turned in her favor.  Winterborne's apparent
+strength, during the last months of his life, must have been
+delusive.  It had often occurred that after a first attack of that
+insidious disease a person's apparent recovery was a physiological
+mendacity.
+
+The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in sharing her
+knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent mind as in the
+assurances Fitzpiers gave her.  "Well, then, to put this case
+before you, and obtain your professional opinion, was chiefly why
+I consented to come here to-day," said she, when he had reached
+the aforesaid conclusion.
+
+"For no other reason at all?" he asked, ruefully.
+
+"It was nearly the whole."
+
+They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty starlings
+feeding in the grass, and he started the talk again by saying, in
+a low voice, "And yet I love you more than ever I loved you in my
+life."
+
+Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded her
+delicate lips as if to keep them in subjection.
+
+"It is a different kind of love altogether," said he.  "Less
+passionate; more profound.  It has nothing to do with the material
+conditions of the object at all; much to do with her character and
+goodness, as revealed by closer observation.  'Love talks with
+better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.'"
+
+"That's out of 'Measure for Measure,'" said she, slyly.
+
+"Oh yes--I meant it as a citation," blandly replied Fitzpiers. 
+"Well, then, why not give me a very little bit of your heart
+again?"
+
+The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the wood
+recalled the past at that moment, and all the homely faithfulness
+of Winterborne.  "Don't ask it! My heart is in the grave with
+Giles," she replied, stanchly.
+
+"Mine is with you--in no less deep a grave, I fear, according to
+that."
+
+"I am very sorry; but it cannot be helped."
+
+"How can you be sorry for me, when you wilfully keep open the
+grave?"
+
+"Oh no--that's not so," returned Grace, quickly, and moved to go
+away from him.
+
+"But, dearest Grace," said he, "you have condescended to come; and
+I thought from it that perhaps when I had passed through a long
+state of probation you would be generous.  But if there can be no
+hope of our getting completely reconciled, treat me gently--wretch
+though I am."
+
+"I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so."
+
+"But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at me that I fear
+you think so."
+
+Grace's heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh and the
+fear that she might mislead him.  "I cannot look contemptuous
+unless I feel contempt," she said, evasively.  "And all I feel is
+lovelessness."
+
+"I have been very bad, I know," he returned.  "But unless you can
+really love me again, Grace, I would rather go away from you
+forever.  I don't want you to receive me again for duty's sake, or
+anything of that sort.  If I had not cared more for your affection
+and forgiveness than my own personal comfort, I should never have
+come back here.  I could have obtained a practice at a distance,
+and have lived my own life without coldness or reproach.  But I
+have chosen to return to the one spot on earth where my name is
+tarnished--to enter the house of a man from whom I have had worse
+treatment than from any other man alive--all for you!"
+
+This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, who
+began to look as if she thought she had been shockingly severe.
+
+"Before you go," he continued, "I want to know your pleasure about
+me--what you wish me to do, or not to do."
+
+"You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery to ask that. 
+Far be it from me to advise.  But I will think it over.  I rather
+need advice myself than stand in a position to give it."
+
+"YOU don't need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever lived.  If
+you did--"
+
+"Would you give it to me?"
+
+"Would you act upon what I gave?"
+
+"That's not a fair inquiry," said she, smiling despite her
+gravity.  "I don't mind hearing it--what you do really think the
+most correct and proper course for me."
+
+"It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it would be
+provoking you to remonstrances."
+
+Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did not press
+him further, and was about to beckon Marty forward and leave him,
+when he interrupted her with, "Oh, one moment, dear Grace--you
+will meet me again?"
+
+She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight.  Fitzpiers
+expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed earnestness
+with which she entreated him not to come sooner made him say
+hastily that he submitted to her will--that he would regard her as
+a friend only, anxious for his reform and well-being, till such
+time as she might allow him to exceed that privilege.
+
+All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he had not
+won her confidence yet.  It amazed Fitzpiers, and overthrew all
+his deductions from previous experience, to find that this girl,
+though she had been married to him, could yet be so coy. 
+Notwithstanding a certain fascination that it carried with it, his
+reflections were sombre as he went homeward; he saw how deep had
+been his offence to produce so great a wariness in a gentle and
+once unsuspicious soul.
+
+He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her.  To be an
+object of misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared his home was
+what he could not endure the thought of.  Life as it stood was
+more tolerable.
+
+When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers.  She would fain
+have consulted Marty on the question of Platonic relations with
+her former husband, as she preferred to regard him.  But Marty
+showed no great interest in their affairs, so Grace said nothing. 
+They came onward, and saw Melbury standing at the scene of the
+felling which had been audible to them, when, telling Marty that
+she wished her meeting with Mr. Fitzpiers to be kept private, she
+left the girl to join her father.  At any rate, she would consult
+him on the expediency of occasionally seeing her husband.
+
+Her father was cheerful, and walked by her side as he had done in
+earlier days.  "I was thinking of you when you came up," he said. 
+"I have considered that what has happened is for the best.  Since
+your husband is gone away, and seems not to wish to trouble you,
+why, let him go, and drop out of your life.  Many women are worse
+off.  You can live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate,
+or do what he likes for his good.  I wouldn't mind sending him the
+further sum of money he might naturally expect to come to him, so
+that you may not be bothered with him any more.  He could hardly
+have gone on living here without speaking to me, or meeting me;
+and that would have been very unpleasant on both sides."
+
+These remarks checked her intention.  There was a sense of
+weakness in following them by saying that she had just met her
+husband by appointment.  "Then you would advise me not to
+communicate with him?" she observed.
+
+"I shall never advise ye again.  You are your own mistress--do as
+you like.  But my opinion is that if you don't live with him, you
+had better live without him, and not go shilly-shallying and
+playing bopeep.  You sent him away; and now he's gone.  Very well;
+trouble him no more."
+
+Grace felt a guiltiness--she hardly knew why--and made no
+confession.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed in-doors a great
+deal.  She became quite a student, reading more than she had done
+since her marriage But her seclusion was always broken for the
+periodical visit to Winterborne's grave with Marty, which was kept
+up with pious strictness, for the purpose of putting snow-drops,
+primroses, and other vernal flowers thereon as they came.
+
+One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside her father's
+garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock enclosures, abutted
+into the wood.  A slight foot-path led along here, forming a
+secret way to either of the houses by getting through its boundary
+hedge.  Grace was just about to adopt this mode of entry when a
+figure approached along the path, and held up his hand to detain
+her.  It was her husband.
+
+"I am delighted," he said, coming up out of breath; and there
+seemed no reason to doubt his words.  "I saw you some way off--I
+was afraid you would go in before I could reach you."
+
+"It is a week before the time," said she, reproachfully.  "I said
+a fortnight from the last meeting."
+
+"My dear, you don't suppose I could wait a fortnight without
+trying to get a glimpse of you, even though you had declined to
+meet me! Would it make you angry to know that I have been along
+this path at dusk three or four times since our last meeting? 
+Well, how are you?"
+
+She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish to retain
+it a moment longer than mere formality required, she made it
+smaller, so that it slipped away from him, with again that same
+alarmed look which always followed his attempts in this direction. 
+He saw that she was not yet out of the elusive mood; not yet to be
+treated presumingly; and he was correspondingly careful to
+tranquillize her.
+
+His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat.  "I had no idea
+you came so often," she said.  "How far do you come from?"
+
+"From Exbury.  I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for if I hire,
+people will know that I come; and my success with you so far has
+not been great enough to justify such overtness.  Now, my dear
+one--as I MUST call you--I put it to you: will you see me a little
+oftener as the spring advances?"
+
+Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the question,
+said, "I wish you would concentrate on your profession, and give
+up those strange studies that used to distract you so much.  I am
+sure you would get on."
+
+"It is the very thing I am doing.  I was going to ask you to burn--
+or, at least, get rid of--all my philosophical literature.  It is
+in the bookcases in your rooms.  The fact is, I never cared much
+for abstruse studies."
+
+"I am so glad to hear you say that.  And those other books--those
+piles of old plays--what good are they to a medical man?"
+
+"None whatever!" he replied, cheerfully.  "Sell them at Sherton
+for what they will fetch."
+
+"And those dreadful old French romances, with their horrid
+spellings of 'filz' and 'ung' and 'ilz' and 'mary' and 'ma foy?'"
+
+"You haven't been reading them, Grace?"
+
+"Oh no--I just looked into them, that was all."
+
+"Make a bonfire of 'em directly you get home.  I meant to do it
+myself.  I can't think what possessed me ever to collect them.  I
+have only a few professional hand-books now, and am quite a
+practical man.  I am in hopes of having some good news to tell you
+soon, and then do you think you could--come to me again?"
+
+"I would rather you did not press me on that just now," she
+replied, with some feeling.  "You have said you mean to lead a
+new, useful, effectual life; but I should like to see you put it
+in practice for a little while before you address that query to
+me.  Besides--I could not live with you."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+Grace was silent a few instants.  "I go with Marty to Giles's
+grave.  We swore we would show him that devotion.  And I mean to
+keep it up."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't mind that at all.  I have no right to expect
+anything else, and I will not wish you to keep away.  I liked the
+man as well as any I ever knew.  In short, I would accompany you a
+part of the way to the place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while
+I waited till you came back."
+
+"Then you haven't given up smoking?"
+
+"Well--ahem--no.  I have thought of doing so, but--"
+
+His extreme complacence had rather disconcerted Grace, and the
+question about smoking had been to effect a diversion.  Presently
+she said, firmly, and with a moisture in her eye that he could not
+see, as her mind returned to poor Giles's "frustrate ghost,"  "I
+don't like you--to speak lightly on that subject, if you did speak
+lightly.  To be frank with you--quite frank--I think of him as my
+betrothed lover still.  I cannot help it.  So that it would be
+wrong for me to join you."
+
+Fitzpiers was now uneasy.  "You say your betrothed lover still,"
+he rejoined.  "When, then, were you betrothed to him, or engaged,
+as we common people say?"
+
+"When you were away."
+
+"How could that be?"
+
+Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor led her on. 
+"It was when I was under the impression that my marriage with you
+was about to be annulled, and that he could then marry me.  So I
+encouraged him to love me."
+
+Fitzpiers winced visibly; and yet, upon the whole, she was right
+in telling it.  Indeed, his perception that she was right in her
+absolute sincerity kept up his affectionate admiration for her
+under the pain of the rebuff.  Time had been when the avowal that
+Grace had deliberately taken steps to replace him would have
+brought him no sorrow.  But she so far dominated him now that he
+could not bear to hear her words, although the object of her high
+regard was no more.
+
+"It is rough upon me--that!" he said, bitterly.  "Oh, Grace--I did
+not know you--tried to get rid of me!  I suppose it is of no use,
+but I ask, cannot you hope to--find a little love in your heart
+for me again?"
+
+"If I could I would oblige you; but I fear I cannot!" she replied,
+with illogical ruefulness.  "And I don't see why you should mind
+my having had one lover besides yourself in my life, when you have
+had so many."
+
+"But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than all of
+them put together, and that's what you will not tell me!"
+
+"I am sorry; but I fear I cannot," she said, sighing again.
+
+"I wonder if you ever will?" He looked musingly into her
+indistinct face, as if he would read the future there.  "Now have
+pity, and tell me: will you try?"
+
+"To love you again?"
+
+"Yes; if you can."
+
+"I don't know how to reply," she answered, her embarrassment
+proving her truth.  "Will you promise to leave me quite free as to
+seeing you or not seeing you?"
+
+"Certainly.  Have I given any ground for you to doubt my first
+promise in that respect?"
+
+She was obliged to admit that he had not.
+
+"Then I think that you might get your heart out of that grave,"
+said he, with playful sadness.  "It has been there a long time."
+
+She faintly shook her head, but said, "I'll try to think of you
+more--if I can."
+
+With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he asked
+her when she would meet him again.
+
+"As we arranged--in a fortnight."
+
+"If it must be a fortnight it must!"
+
+"This time at least.  I'll consider by the day I see you again if
+I can shorten the interval."
+
+"Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week to
+look at your window."
+
+"You must do as you like about that.  Good-night."
+
+"Say 'husband.'"
+
+She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but exclaiming,
+"No, no; I cannot," slipped through the garden-hedge and
+disappeared.
+
+
+
+Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he should haunt
+the precincts of the dwelling.  But his persistence in this course
+did not result in his seeing her much oftener than at the
+fortnightly interval which she had herself marked out as proper. 
+At these times, however, she punctually appeared, and as the
+spring wore on the meetings were kept up, though their character
+changed but little with the increase in their number.
+
+The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs family--
+father, son, and now son's wife--aligned with the larger one of
+the timber-dealer at its upper end; and when young Tim, after
+leaving work at Melbury's, stood at dusk in the little bower at
+the corner of his enclosure to smoke a pipe, he frequently
+observed the surgeon pass along the outside track before-
+mentioned.  Fitzpiers always walked loiteringly, pensively,
+looking with a sharp eye into the gardens one after another as he
+proceeded; for Fitzpiers did not wish to leave the now absorbing
+spot too quickly, after travelling so far to reach it; hoping
+always for a glimpse of her whom he passionately desired to take
+to his arms anew.
+
+Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering progresses along
+the garden boundaries in the gloaming, and wondered what they
+boded.  It was, naturally, quite out of his power to divine the
+singular, sentimental revival in Fitzpiers's heart; the fineness
+of tissue which could take a deep, emotional--almost also an
+artistic--pleasure in being the yearning inamorato of a woman he
+once had deserted, would have seemed an absurdity to the young
+sawyer.  Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers were separated; therefore the
+question of affection as between them was settled.  But his Suke
+had, since that meeting on their marriage-day, repentantly
+admitted, to the urgency of his questioning, a good deal
+concerning her past levities.  Putting all things together, he
+could hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers's mysterious visits to
+this spot with Suke's residence under his roof.  But he made
+himself fairly easy: the vessel in which they were about to
+emigrate sailed that month; and then Suke would be out of
+Fitzpiers's way forever.
+
+The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure
+arrived.  They were pausing in the room of the cottage allotted to
+them by Tim's father, after a busy day of preparation, which left
+them weary.  In a corner stood their boxes, crammed and corded,
+their large case for the hold having already been sent away.  The
+firelight shone upon Suke's fine face and form as she stood
+looking into it, and upon the face of Tim seated in a corner, and
+upon the walls of his father's house, which he was beholding that
+night almost for the last time.
+
+Tim Tangs was not happy.  This scheme of emigration was dividing
+him from his father--for old Tangs would on no account leave
+Hintock--and had it not been for Suke's reputation and his own
+dignity, Tim would at the last moment have abandoned the project. 
+As he sat in the back part of the room he regarded her moodily,
+and the fire and the boxes.  One thing he had particularly noticed
+this evening--she was very restless; fitful in her actions, unable
+to remain seated, and in a marked degree depressed.
+
+"Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?" he said.
+
+She sighed involuntarily.  "I don't know but that I be," she
+answered.  "'Tis natural, isn't it, when one is going away?"
+
+"But you wasn't born here as I was."
+
+"No."
+
+"There's folk left behind that you'd fain have with 'ee, I
+reckon?"
+
+"Why do you think that?"
+
+"I've seen things and I've heard things; and, Suke, I say 'twill
+be a good move for me to get 'ee away.  I don't mind his leavings
+abroad, but I do mind 'em at home."
+
+Suke's face was not changed from its aspect of listless
+indifference by the words.  She answered nothing; and shortly
+after he went out for his customary pipe of tobacco at the top of
+the garden.
+
+The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to the
+gentleman of Tim's suspicions, but in a different--and it must be
+added in justice to her--more innocent sense than he supposed,
+judging from former doings.  She had accidentally discovered that
+Fitzpiers was in the habit of coming secretly once or twice a week
+to Hintock, and knew that this evening was a favorite one of the
+seven for his journey.  As she was going next day to leave the
+country, Suke thought there could be no great harm in giving way
+to a little sentimentality by obtaining a glimpse of him quite
+unknown to himself or to anybody, and thus taking a silent last
+farewell.  Aware that Fitzpiers's time for passing was at hand she
+thus betrayed her feeling.  No sooner, therefore, had Tim left the
+room than she let herself noiselessly out of the house, and
+hastened to the corner of the garden, whence she could witness the
+surgeon's transit across the scene--if he had not already gone by.
+
+Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim lounging in the arbor of
+the opposite corner, though he was hidden from her.  He saw her
+stealthily climb into the hedge, and so ensconce herself there
+that nobody could have the least doubt her purpose was to watch
+unseen for a passer-by.
+
+He went across to the spot and stood behind her.  Suke started,
+having in her blundering way forgotten that he might be near.  She
+at once descended from the hedge.
+
+"So he's coming to-night," said Tim, laconically.  "And we be
+always anxious to see our dears."
+
+"He IS coming to-night," she replied, with defiance.  "And we BE
+anxious for our dears."
+
+"Then will you step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine 'ee? 
+We've to mouster by half-past three to-morrow, and if we don't get
+to bed by eight at latest our faces will be as long as clock-cases
+all day."
+
+She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going slowly 
+down the garden to the house, where he heard the door-latch click
+behind her.
+
+Tim was incensed beyond measure.  His marriage had so far been a
+total failure, a source of bitter regret; and the only course for
+improving his case, that of leaving the country, was a sorry, and
+possibly might not be a very effectual one.  Do what he would, his
+domestic sky was likely to be overcast to the end of the day. 
+Thus he brooded, and his resentment gathered force.  He craved a
+means of striking one blow back at the cause of his cheerless
+plight, while he was still on the scene of his discomfiture.  For
+some minutes no method suggested itself, and then he had an idea.
+
+Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the garden, and
+entered the one attached to the next cottage, which had formerly
+been the dwelling of a game-keeper.  Tim descended the path to the
+back of the house, where only an old woman lived at present, and
+reaching the wall he stopped.  Owing to the slope of the ground 
+the roof-eaves of the linhay were here within touch, and he thrust
+his arm up under them, feeling about in the space on the top of
+the wall-plate.
+
+"Ah, I thought my memory didn't deceive me!" he lipped silently.
+
+With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object curiously
+framed in iron, which clanked as he moved it.  It was about three
+feet in length and half as wide.  Tim contemplated it as well as
+he could in the dying light of day, and raked off the cobwebs with
+his hand.
+
+"That will spoil his pretty shins for'n, I reckon!" he said.
+
+It was a man-trap.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+
+Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged according to
+the excellence of their devices for producing sound artistic
+torture, the creator of the man-trap would occupy a very
+respectable if not a very high place.
+
+It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the particular
+form of man-trap of which this found in the keeper's out-house was
+a specimen.  For there were other shapes and other sizes,
+instruments which, if placed in a row beside one of the type
+disinterred by Tim, would have worn the subordinate aspect of the
+bears, wild boars, or wolves in a travelling menagerie, as
+compared with the leading lion or tiger.  In short, though many
+varieties had been in use during those centuries which we are
+accustomed to look back upon as the true and only period of merry
+England--in the rural districts more especially--and onward down
+to the third decade of the nineteenth century, this model had
+borne the palm, and had been most usually followed when the
+orchards and estates required new ones.
+
+There had been the toothless variety used by the softer-hearted
+landlords--quite contemptible in their clemency.  The jaws of
+these resembled the jaws of an old woman to whom time has left
+nothing but gums.  There were also the intermediate or half-
+toothed sorts, probably devised by the middle-natured squires, or
+those under the influence of their wives: two inches of mercy, two
+inches of cruelty, two inches of mere nip, two inches of probe,
+and so on, through the whole extent of the jaws.  There were also,
+as a class apart, the bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh,
+but only crushed the bone
+
+The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid
+impression that it was endowed with life.  It exhibited the
+combined aspects of a shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion.  Each
+tooth was in the form of a tapering spine, two and a quarter
+inches long, which, when the jaws were closed, stood in
+alternation from this side and from that.  When they were open,
+the two halves formed a complete circle between two and three feet
+in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst being about
+a foot square, while from beneath extended in opposite directions
+the soul of the apparatus, the pair of springs, each one being of
+a stiffness to render necessary a lever or the whole weight of the
+body when forcing it down.
+
+There were men at this time still living at Hintock who remembered
+when the gin and others like it were in use.  Tim Tangs's great-
+uncle had endured a night of six hours in this very trap, which
+lamed him for life.  Once a keeper of Hintock woods set it on the
+track of a poacher, and afterwards, coming back that way,
+forgetful of what he had done, walked into it himself.  The wound
+brought on lockjaw, of which he died.  This event occurred during
+the thirties, and by the year 1840 the use of such implements was
+well-nigh discontinued in the neighborhood.  But being made
+entirely of iron, they by no means disappeared, and in almost
+every village one could be found in some nook or corner as readily
+as this was found by Tim.  It had, indeed, been a fearful
+amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads--especially those who had
+a dim sense of becoming renowned poachers when they reached their
+prime--to drag out this trap from its hiding, set it, and throw it
+with billets of wood, which were penetrated by the teeth to the
+depth of near an inch.
+
+As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the hinges and
+springs were still perfect, he shouldered it without more ado, and
+returned with his burden to his own garden, passing on through the
+hedge to the path immediately outside the boundary.  Here, by the
+help of a stout stake, he set the trap, and laid it carefully
+behind a bush while he went forward to reconnoitre.  As has been
+stated, nobody passed this way for days together sometimes; but
+there was just a possibility that some other pedestrian than the
+one in request might arrive, and it behooved Tim to be careful as
+to the identity of his victim.
+
+Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to the right,
+he reached a ridge whereon a large and thick holly grew.  Beyond
+this for some distance the wood was more open, and the course
+which Fitzpiers must pursue to reach the point, if he came to-
+night, was visible a long way forward.
+
+For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody.  Then there
+shaped itself a spot out of the dim mid-distance, between the
+masses of brushwood on either hand.  And it enlarged, and Tim
+could hear the brushing of feet over the tufts of sour-grass.  The
+airy gait revealed Fitzpiers even before his exact outline could
+be seen.
+
+Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side of the
+hill, till he was again at the head of his own garden.  It was the
+work of a few moments to drag out the man-trap, very gently--that
+the plate might not be disturbed sufficiently to throw it--to a
+space between a pair of young oaks which, rooted in contiguity,
+grew apart upward, forming a V-shaped opening between; and, being
+backed up by bushes, left this as the only course for a foot-
+passenger.  In it he laid the trap with the same gentleness of
+handling, locked the chain round one of the trees, and finally
+slid back the guard which was placed to keep the gin from
+accidentally catching the arms of him who set it, or, to use the
+local and better word, "toiled" it.
+
+Having completed these arrangements, Tim sprang through the
+adjoining hedge of his father's garden, ran down the path, and
+softly entered the house.
+
+Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon as he had
+bolted the door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his boots at the foot
+of the stairs, and retired likewise, without lighting a candle. 
+His object seemed to be to undress as soon as possible.  Before,
+however, he had completed the operation, a long cry resounded
+without--penetrating, but indescribable.
+
+"What's that?" said Suke, starting up in bed.
+
+"Sounds as if somebody had caught a hare in his gin."
+
+"Oh no," said she.  "It was not a hare, 'twas louder.  Hark!"
+
+"Do 'ee get to sleep," said Tim.  "How be you going to wake at
+half-past three else?"
+
+She lay down and was silent.  Tim stealthily opened the window and
+listened.  Above the low harmonies produced by the instrumentation
+of the various species of trees around the premises he could hear
+the twitching of a chain from the spot whereon he had set the man-
+trap.  But further human sound there was none.
+
+Tim was puzzled.  In the haste of his project he had not
+calculated upon a cry; but if one, why not more? He soon ceased to
+essay an answer, for Hintock was dead to him already.  In half a
+dozen hours he would be out of its precincts for life, on his way
+to the antipodes.  He closed the window and lay down.
+
+
+
+The hour which had brought these movements of Tim to birth had
+been operating actively elsewhere.  Awaiting in her father's house
+the minute of her appointment with her husband, Grace Fitzpiers
+deliberated on many things.  Should she inform her father before
+going out that the estrangement of herself and Edgar was not so
+complete as he had imagined, and deemed desirable for her
+happiness? If she did so she must in some measure become the
+apologist of her husband, and she was not prepared to go so far.
+
+As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate gravity.  He
+certainly had changed.  He had at his worst times always been
+gentle in his manner towards her.  Could it be that she might make
+of him a true and worthy husband yet?  She had married him; there
+was no getting over that; and ought she any longer to keep him at
+a distance?  His suave deference to her lightest whim on the
+question of his comings and goings, when as her lawful husband he
+might show a little independence, was a trait in his character as
+unexpected as it was engaging.  If she had been his empress, and
+he her thrall, he could not have exhibited a more sensitive care
+to avoid intruding upon her against her will.
+
+Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book and turned
+to the marriage-service.  Reading it slowly through, she became
+quite appalled at her recent off-handedness, when she rediscovered
+what awfully solemn promises she had made him at those chancel
+steps not so very long ago.
+
+She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person's
+conscience might be bound by vows made without at the time a full
+recognition of their force.  That particular sentence, beginning
+"Whom God hath joined together," was a staggerer for a gentlewoman
+of strong devotional sentiment.  She wondered whether God really
+did join them together.  Before she had done deliberating the time
+of her engagement drew near, and she went out of the house almost
+at the moment that Tim Tangs retired to his own.
+
+The position of things at that critical juncture was briefly as
+follows.
+
+Two hundred yards to the right of the upper end of Tangs's garden
+Fitzpiers was still advancing, having now nearly reached the
+summit of the wood-clothed ridge, the path being the actual one
+which further on passed between the two young oaks.  Thus far it
+was according to Tim's conjecture.  But about two hundred yards to
+the left, or rather less, was arising a condition which he had not
+divined, the emergence of Grace as aforesaid from the upper corner
+of her father's garden, with the view of meeting Tim's intended
+victim.  Midway between husband and wife was the diabolical trap,
+silent, open, ready.
+
+Fitzpiers's walk that night had been cheerful, for he was
+convinced that the slow and gentle method he had adopted was
+promising success.  The very restraint that he was obliged to
+exercise upon himself, so as not to kill the delicate bud of
+returning confidence, fed his flame.  He walked so much more
+rapidly than Grace that, if they continued advancing as they had
+begun, he would reach the trap a good half-minute before she could
+reach the same spot.
+
+But here a new circumstance came in; to escape the unpleasantness
+of being watched or listened to by lurkers--naturally curious by
+reason of their strained relations--they had arranged that their
+meeting for to-night should be at the holm-tree on the ridge above
+named.  So soon, accordingly, as Fitzpiers reached the tree he
+stood still to await her.
+
+He had not paused under the prickly foliage more than two minutes
+when he thought he heard a scream from the other side of the
+ridge.  Fitzpiers wondered what it could mean; but such wind as
+there was just now blew in an adverse direction, and his mood was
+light.  He set down the origin of the sound to one of the
+superstitious freaks or frolicsome scrimmages between sweethearts
+that still survived in Hintock from old-English times; and waited
+on where he stood till ten minutes had passed.  Feeling then a
+little uneasy, his mind reverted to the scream; and he went
+forward over the summit and down the embowered incline, till he
+reached the pair of sister oaks with the narrow opening between
+them.
+
+Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell.  Stretching down his hand to
+ascertain the obstruction, it came in contact with a confused mass
+of silken drapery and iron-work that conveyed absolutely no
+explanatory idea to his mind at all.  It was but the work of a
+moment to strike a match; and then he saw a sight which congealed
+his blood.
+
+The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part of a
+woman's clothing--a patterned silk skirt--gripped with such
+violence that the iron teeth had passed through it, skewering its
+tissue in a score of places.  He immediately recognized the skirt
+as that of one of his wife's gowns--the gown that she had worn
+when she met him on the very last occasion.
+
+Fitzpiers had often studied the effect of these instruments when
+examining the collection at Hintock House, and the conception
+instantly flashed through him that Grace had been caught, taken
+out mangled by some chance passer, and carried home, some of her
+clothes being left behind in the difficulty of getting her free. 
+The shock of this conviction, striking into the very current of
+high hope, was so great that he cried out like one in corporal
+agony, and in his misery bowed himself down to the ground.
+
+Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitzpiers had
+undergone since his sins against Grace first began, not any even
+approximated in intensity to this.
+
+"Oh, my own--my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven--it is too much, this!"
+he cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry accessaries
+of her he deplored.
+
+The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audible to
+any one who might have been there to hear it; and one there was. 
+Right and left of the narrow pass between the oaks were dense
+bushes; and now from behind these a female figure glided, whose
+appearance even in the gloom was, though graceful in outline,
+noticeably strange.
+
+She was in white up to the waist, and figured above.  She was, in
+short, Grace, his wife, lacking the portion of her dress which the
+gin retained.
+
+"Don't be grieved about me--don't, dear Edgar!" she exclaimed,
+rushing up and bending over him.  "I am not hurt a bit! I was
+coming on to find you after I had released myself, but I heard
+footsteps; and I hid away, because I was without some of my
+clothing, and I did not know who the person might be."
+
+Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no less
+unpremeditated by him than it was irresistible by her, and would
+have been so by any woman not of Amazonian strength.  He clasped
+his arms completely round, pressed her to his breast, and kissed
+her passionately.
+
+"You are not dead!--you are not hurt! Thank God--thank God!" he
+said, almost sobbing in his delight and relief from the horror of
+his apprehension.  "Grace, my wife, my love, how is this--what has
+happened?"
+
+"I was coming on to you," she said as distinctly as she could in
+the half-smothered state of her face against his.  "I was trying
+to be as punctual as possible, and as I had started a minute late
+I ran along the path very swiftly--fortunately for myself.  Just
+when I had passed between these trees I felt something clutch at
+my dress from behind with a noise, and the next moment I was
+pulled backward by it, and fell to the ground.  I screamed with
+terror, thinking it was a man lying down there to murder me, but
+the next moment I discovered it was iron, and that my clothes were
+caught in a trap.  I pulled this way and that, but the thing would
+not let go, drag it as I would, and I did not know what to do.  I
+did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as I wished nobody to
+know of these meetings with you; so I could think of no other plan
+than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run on and tell you what a
+strange accident had happened to me.  But when I had just freed
+myself by leaving the dress behind, I heard steps, and not being
+sure it was you, I did not like to be seen in such a pickle, so I
+hid away."
+
+"It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of your legs
+would have been broken if you had come at ordinary walking pace."
+
+"Or yours, if you had got here first," said she, beginning to
+realize the whole ghastliness of the possibility.  "Oh, Edgar,
+there has been an Eye watching over us to-night, and we should be
+thankful indeed!"
+
+He continued to press his face to hers.  "You are mine--mine again
+now."
+
+She gently owned that she supposed she was.  "I heard what you
+said when you thought I was injured," she went on, shyly, "and I
+know that a man who could suffer as you were suffering must have a
+tender regard for me.  But how does this awful thing come here?"
+
+"I suppose it has something to do with poachers." Fitzpiers was
+still so shaken by the sense of her danger that he was obliged to
+sit awhile, and it was not until Grace said, "If I could only get
+my skirt out nobody would know anything about it," that he
+bestirred himself.
+
+By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs of
+the trap, they pressed them down sufficiently to insert across the
+jaws a billet which they dragged from a faggot near at hand; and
+it was then possible to extract the silk mouthful from the
+monster's bite, creased and pierced with many holes, but not torn. 
+Fitzpiers assisted her to put it on again; and when her customary
+contours were thus restored they walked on together, Grace taking
+his arm, till he effected an improvement by clasping it round her
+waist.
+
+The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner, she made no
+further attempt at reserve.  "I would ask you to come into the
+house," she said, "but my meetings with you have been kept secret
+from my father, and I should like to prepare him."
+
+"Never mind, dearest.  I could not very well have accepted the
+invitation.  I shall never live here again--as much for your sake
+as for mine.  I have news to tell you on this very point, but my
+alarm had put it out of my head.  I have bought a practice, or
+rather a partnership, in the Midlands, and I must go there in a
+week to take up permanent residence.  My poor old great-aunt died
+about eight months ago, and left me enough to do this.  I have
+taken a little furnished house for a time, till we can get one of
+our own."
+
+He described the place, and the surroundings, and the view from
+the windows, and Grace became much interested.  "But why are you
+not there now?" she said.
+
+"Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have your
+promise.  Now, darling, you will accompany me there--will you not?
+To-night has settled that."
+
+Grace's tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay.  They
+went on together.
+
+The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the reunion which
+that event had forced on, combined to render Grace oblivious of
+the direction of their desultory ramble, till she noticed they
+were in an encircled glade in the densest part of the wood,
+whereon the moon, that had imperceptibly added its rays to the
+scene, shone almost vertically.  It was an exceptionally soft,
+balmy evening for the time of year, which was just that transient
+period in the May month when beech-trees have suddenly unfolded
+large limp young leaves of the softness of butterflies' wings. 
+Boughs bearing such leaves hung low around, and completely
+enclosed them, so that it was as if they were in a great green
+vase, which had moss for its bottom and leaf sides.
+
+The clouds having been packed in the west that evening so as to
+retain the departing glare a long while, the hour had seemed much
+earlier than it was.  But suddenly the question of time occurred
+to her.
+
+"I must go back," she said; and without further delay they set
+their faces towards Hintock.  As they walked he examined his watch
+by the aid of the now strong moonlight.
+
+"By the gods, I think I have lost my train!" said Fitzpiers.
+
+"Dear me--whereabouts are we?" said she.
+
+"Two miles in the direction of Sherton."
+
+"Then do you hasten on, Edgar.  I am not in the least afraid.  I
+recognize now the part of the wood we are in and I can find my way
+back quite easily.  I'll tell my father that we have made it up. 
+I wish I had not kept our meetings so private, for it may vex him
+a little to know I have been seeing you.  He is getting old and
+irritable, that was why I did not.  Good-by."
+
+"But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I cannot
+possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for you to let
+me take care of you."
+
+"But what will my father think has become of me? He does not know
+in the least where I am--he thinks I only went into the garden for
+a few minutes."
+
+"He will surely guess--somebody has seen me for certain.  I'll go
+all the way back with you to-morrow."
+
+"But that newly done-up place--the Earl of Wessex!"
+
+"If you are so very particular about the publicity I will stay at
+the Three Tuns."
+
+"Oh no--it is not that I am particular--but I haven't a brush or
+comb or anything!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+
+All the evening Melbury had been coming to his door, saying, "I
+wonder where in the world that girl is! Never in all my born days
+did I know her bide out like this!  She surely said she was going
+into the garden to get some parsley."
+
+Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the orchard, but
+could find no trace of her, and then he made inquiries at the
+cottages of such of his workmen as had not gone to bed, avoiding
+Tangs's because he knew the young people were to rise early to
+leave.  In these inquiries one of the men's wives somewhat
+incautiously let out the fact that she had heard a scream in the
+wood, though from which direction she could not say.
+
+This set Melbury's fears on end.  He told the men to light
+lanterns, and headed by himself they started, Creedle following at
+the last moment with quite a burden of grapnels and ropes, which
+he could not be persuaded to leave behind, and the company being
+joined by the hollow-turner and the man who kept the cider-house
+as they went along.
+
+They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short time
+lighted upon the man-trap.  Its discovery simply added an item of
+fact without helping their conjectures; but Melbury's indefinite
+alarm was greatly increased when, holding a candle to the ground,
+he saw in the teeth of the instrument some frayings from Grace's
+clothing.  No intelligence of any kind was gained till they met a
+woodman of Delborough, who said that he had seen a lady answering
+to the description her father gave of Grace, walking through the
+wood on a gentleman's arm in the direction of Sherton.
+
+"Was he clutching her tight?" said Melbury.
+
+"Well--rather," said the man.
+
+"Did she walk lame?"
+
+"Well, 'tis true her head hung over towards him a bit."
+
+Creedle groaned tragically.
+
+Melbury, not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled this
+account with the man-trap and the scream; he could not understand
+what it all meant; but the sinister event of the trap made him
+follow on.  Accordingly, they bore away towards the town, shouting
+as they went, and in due course emerged upon the highway.
+
+Nearing Sherton-Abbas, the previous information was confirmed by
+other strollers, though the gentleman's supporting arm had
+disappeared from these later accounts.  At last they were so near
+Sherton that Melbury informed his faithful followers that he did
+not wish to drag them farther at so late an hour, since he could
+go on alone and inquire if the woman who had been seen were really
+Grace.  But they would not leave him alone in his anxiety, and
+trudged onward till the lamplight from the town began to
+illuminate their fronts.  At the entrance to the High Street they
+got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with the new condition
+that the lady in the costume described had been going up the
+street alone.
+
+"Faith!--I believe she's mesmerized, or walking in her sleep,"
+said Melbury.
+
+However, the identity of this woman with Grace was by no means
+certain; but they plodded along the street.  Percombe, the hair-
+dresser, who had despoiled Marty of her tresses, was standing at
+his door, and they duly put inquiries to him.
+
+"Ah--how's Little Hintock folk by now?" he said, before replying. 
+"Never have I been over there since one winter night some three
+year ago--and then I lost myself finding it.  How can ye live in
+such a one-eyed place?  Great Hintock is bad enough--hut Little
+Hintock--the bats and owls would drive me melancholy-mad! It took
+two days to raise my sperrits to their true pitch again after that
+night I went there.  Mr. Melbury, sir, as a man's that put by
+money, why not retire and live here, and see something of the
+world?"
+
+The responses at last given by him to their queries guided them to
+the building that offered the best accommodation in Sherton--
+having been enlarged contemporaneously with the construction of
+the railway--namely, the Earl of Wessex Hotel.
+
+Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt inquiry here.  His
+alarm was lessened, though his perplexity was increased, when he
+received a brief reply that such a lady was in the house.
+
+"Do you know if it is my daughter?" asked Melbury.
+
+The waiter did not.
+
+"Do you know the lady's name?"
+
+Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel having been
+taken by brand-new people from a distance.  They knew the
+gentleman very well by sight, and had not thought it necessary to
+ask him to enter his name.
+
+"Oh, the gentleman appears again now," said Melbury to himself. 
+"Well, I want to see the lady," he declared.
+
+A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape of Grace
+appeared descending round the bend of the stair-case, looking as
+if she lived there, but in other respects rather guilty and
+frightened.
+
+"Why--what the name--" began her father.  "I thought you went out
+to get parsley!"
+
+"Oh, yes--I did--but it is all right," said Grace, in a flurried
+whisper.  "I am not alone here.  I am here with Edgar.  It is
+entirely owing to an accident, father."
+
+"Edgar! An accident! How does he come here?  I thought he was two
+hundred mile off."
+
+"Yes, so he is--I mean he has got a beautiful practice two hundred
+miles off; he has bought it with his own money, some that came to
+him.  But he travelled here, and I was nearly caught in a man-
+trap, and that's how it is I am here.  We were just thinking of
+sending a messenger to let you know."
+
+Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by this
+explanation.
+
+"You were caught in a man-trap?"
+
+"Yes; my dress was.  That's how it arose.  Edgar is up-stairs in
+his own sitting-room," she went on.  "He would not mind seeing
+you, I am sure."
+
+"Oh, faith, I don't want to see him! I have seen him too often
+a'ready.  I'll see him another time, perhaps, if 'tis to oblige
+'ee."
+
+"He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this large
+partnership I speak of, as it is very promising."
+
+"Oh, I am glad to hear it," said Melbury, dryly.
+
+A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and whity-brown
+clothes of Melbury's companions appeared in the door-way.
+
+"Then bain't you coming home with us?" he asked.
+
+"I--I think not," said Grace, blushing.
+
+"H'm--very well--you are your own mistress," he returned, in tones
+which seemed to assert otherwise.  "Good-night;" and Melbury
+retreated towards the door.
+
+"Don't be angry, father," she said, following him a few steps.  "I
+have done it for the best."
+
+"I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little misled in
+this.  However, good-night.  I must get home along."
+
+He left the hotel, not without relief, for to be under the eyes of
+strangers while he conversed with his lost child had embarrassed
+him much.  His search-party, too, had looked awkward there, having
+rushed to the task of investigation--some in their shirt sleeves,
+others in their leather aprons, and all much stained--just as they
+had come from their work of barking, and not in their Sherton
+marketing attire; while Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and
+air of impending tragedy, had added melancholy to gawkiness.
+
+"Now, neighbors," said Melbury, on joining them, "as it is getting
+late, we'll leg it home again as fast as we can.  I ought to tell
+you that there has been some mistake--some arrangement entered
+into between Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn't quite
+understand--an important practice in the Midland counties has come
+to him, which made it necessary for her to join him to-night--so
+she says.  That's all it was--and I'm sorry I dragged you out."
+
+"Well," said the hollow-turner, "here be we six mile from home,
+and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creeping thing to
+our name.  I say, we'll have a mossel and a drop o' summat to
+strengthen our nerves afore we vamp all the way back again?  My
+throat's as dry as a kex.  What d'ye say so's?"
+
+They all concurred in the need for this course, and proceeded to
+the antique and lampless back street, in which the red curtain of
+the Three Tuns was the only radiant object.  As soon as they had
+stumbled down into the room Melbury ordered them to be served,
+when they made themselves comfortable by the long table, and
+stretched out their legs upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. 
+Melbury himself, restless as usual, walked to the door while he
+waited for them, and looked up and down the street.
+
+"I'd gie her a good shaking if she were my maid; pretending to go
+out in the garden, and leading folk a twelve-mile traipse that
+have got to get up at five o'clock to morrow," said a bark-ripper;
+who, not working regularly for Melbury, could afford to indulge in
+strong opinions.
+
+"I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner, "but if
+'tis right for couples to make a country talk about their
+separating, and excite the neighbors, and then make fools of 'em
+like this, why, I haven't stood upon one leg for five-and-twenty
+year."
+
+All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot-lathe in
+these enigmatic terms, the speaker meant to be impressive; and
+Creedle chimed in with, "Ah, young women do wax wanton in these
+days! Why couldn't she ha' bode with her father, and been
+faithful?" Poor Creedle was thinking of his old employer.
+
+"But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matrimony,"
+said Farmer Bawtree.  "I knowed a man and wife--faith, I don't
+mind owning, as there's no strangers here, that the pair were my
+own relations--they'd be at it that hot one hour that you'd hear
+the poker and the tongs and the bellows and the warming-pan flee
+across the house with the movements of their vengeance; and the
+next hour you'd hear 'em singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as
+peaceable as two holy twins; yes--and very good voices they had,
+and would strike in like professional ballet-singers to one
+another's support in the high notes."
+
+"And I knowed a woman, and the husband o' her went away for four-
+and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper.  "And one night he came
+home when she was sitting by the fire, and thereupon he sat down
+himself on the other side of the chimney-corner.  'Well,' says
+she, 'have ye got any news?'  'Don't know as I have,' says he;
+'have you?'  'No,' says she, 'except that my daughter by my second
+husband was married last month, which was a year after I was made
+a widow by him.'  'Oh! Anything else?' he says.  'No,' says she. 
+And there they sat, one on each side of that chimney-corner, and
+were found by their neighbors sound asleep in their chairs, not
+having known what to talk about at all."
+
+"Well, I don't care who the man is," said Creedle, "they required
+a good deal to talk about, and that's true.  It won't be the same
+with these."
+
+"No.  He is such a projick, you see.  And she is a wonderful
+scholar too!"
+
+"What women do know nowadays!" observed the hollow-turner.  "You
+can't deceive 'em as you could in my time."
+
+"What they knowed then was not small," said John Upjohn.  "Always
+a good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife
+that is now, the skilfulness that she would show in keeping me on
+her pretty side as she walked was beyond all belief.  Perhaps
+you've noticed that she's got a pretty side to her face as well as
+a plain one?"
+
+"I can't say I've noticed it particular much," said the hollow-
+turner, blandly.
+
+"Well," continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, "she has.  All women
+under the sun be prettier one side than t'other.  And, as I was
+saying, the pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty
+side were unending! I warrant that whether we were going with the
+sun or against the sun, uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth,
+that wart of hers was always towards the hedge, and that dimple
+towards me.  There was I, too simple to see her wheelings and
+turnings; and she so artful, though two years younger, that she
+could lead me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram; for that was
+in the third climate of our courtship.  No; I don't think the
+women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise."
+
+"How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Upjohn?"
+inquired a youth--the same who had assisted at Winterborne's
+Christmas party.
+
+"Five--from the coolest to the hottest--leastwise there was five
+in mine."
+
+"Can ye give us the chronicle of 'em, Mr. Upjohn?"
+
+"Yes--I could.  I could certainly.  But 'tis quite unnecessary. 
+They'll come to ye by nater, young man, too soon for your good."
+
+"At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your mis'ess
+could lead you," the hollow-turner remarked.  "She's got him quite
+tame.  But how long 'twill last I can't say.  I happened to be
+setting a wire on the top of my garden one night when he met her
+on the other side of the hedge; and the way she queened it, and
+fenced, and kept that poor feller at a distance, was enough to
+freeze yer blood.  I should never have supposed it of such a
+girl."
+
+Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having declared
+themselves refreshed, they all started on the homeward journey,
+which was by no means cheerless under the rays of the high moon. 
+Having to walk the whole distance they came by a foot-path rather
+shorter than the highway, though difficult except to those who
+knew the country well.  This brought them by way of Great Hintock;
+and passing the church-yard they observed, as they talked, a
+motionless figure standing by the gate.
+
+"I think it was Marty South," said the hollow-turner,
+parenthetically.
+
+"I think 'twas; 'a was always a lonely maid," said Upjohn.  And
+they passed on homeward, and thought of the matter no more.
+
+It was Marty, as they had supposed.  That evening had been the
+particular one of the week upon which Grace and herself had been
+accustomed to privately deposit flowers on Giles's grave, and this
+was the first occasion since his death, eight months earlier, on
+which Grace had failed to keep her appointment.  Marty had waited
+in the road just outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim
+had been wont to join her, till she was weary; and at last,
+thinking that Grace had missed her and gone on alone, she followed
+the way to Great Hintock, but saw no Grace in front of her.  It
+got later, and Marty continued her walk till she reached the
+church-yard gate; but still no Grace.  Yet her sense of
+comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave alone, and
+still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, she stood there
+with her little basket of flowers in her clasped hands, and her
+feet chilled by the damp ground, till more than two hours had
+passed.
+
+She then heard the footsteps of Melbury's men, who presently
+passed on their return from the search.  In the silence of the
+night Marty could not help hearing fragments of their
+conversation, from which she acquired a general idea of what had
+occurred, and where Mrs. Fitzpiers then was.
+
+Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered the church-
+yard, going to a secluded corner behind the bushes, where rose the
+unadorned stone that marked the last bed of Giles Winterborne.  As
+this solitary and silent girl stood there in the moonlight, a
+straight slim figure, clothed in a plaitless gown, the contours of
+womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks
+of poverty and toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched
+sublimity at points, and looked almost like a being who had
+rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the loftier
+quality of abstract humanism.  She stooped down and cleared away
+the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the
+previous week, and put her fresh ones in their place.
+
+"Now, my own, own love," she whispered, "you are mine, and on'y
+mine; for she has forgot 'ee at last, although for her you died. 
+But I--whenever I get up I'll think of 'ee, and whenever I lie
+down I'll think of 'ee.  Whenever I plant the young larches I'll
+think that none can plant as you planted; and whenever I split a
+gad, and whenever I turn the cider-wring, I'll say none could do
+it like you.  If ever I forget your name, let me forget home and
+Heaven!--But no, no, my love, I never can forget 'ee; for you was
+a GOOD man, and did good things!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Woodlanders, by Thomas Hardy
+
+
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