 XXVIII. A week had passed, and Mrs. Sharman had left Hintock House. Middleton Abbey, the place of her sojourn, was about twenty miles distant by road, eighteen by bridal paths and footways. This 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 Rubdown Hill, the gate at which Winterborne had once been standing, and which opened on the brink of a steep, slanting down directly into Blackmore Vale, or the Vale of the White Heart, 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. Though I was contemplating her old place of Buckbury, in my idle way, he said. It it seemed to her that he was looking much to the right of that cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity, but she had 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-grey 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 oscillity 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 practice 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. Charman'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 Hagrid, 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 stable 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 indoors, and 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. Sharman 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. Sharman. 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 forum. In truth her anti-nuptial 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, and of his professional skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was demolished by the intimacy of common life, and she found them as merely human as the Hintock people themselves, a new foundation was in demand for an enduring and staunch 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 mayor being brought around. "'I'll walk with you to the hill, if you are not in a great hurry,' she said, rather low that her all to let him go. "'Do, there is 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 to rub down hill to the gate he had been leaning over when she surprised them ten days before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade her a dew 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 to-night since succession already.' "'I must go,' he answered, almost gloomily. "'Don't wade 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 he got out from the shade of the hill. Notwithstanding his untoward proceeding, she 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 a never-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 winter-born 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 and 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. So the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous autumn landscape of Whiteheart 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 halls and blackberries, acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of chestnuts lay exposing their all-burnt contents, as if arranged by anxious sellers in a fruit market. In all this proud show some kernels were unsound as their own situation, and she wondered if there were one world in the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow. Her tan-houser 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 lodestar of my one desire I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the outlet 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 on the fruity district of low meat clay, the character and herbage of the two formations being so distinct, that the calcerous upland appeared but as a deposit of a few years antiquity upon the level veil. He kept along the edge of this high, unenclosed country, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she could still see white darling and relief upon it, a mere speck now, a wooverman's eccentricity reduced to microscopic dimensions. Upon this high ground he gradually disappeared. Thus she had beheld a pet animal purchased for her own use, and 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 there were Giles winter-born with his two horses and cider apparatus, conducted by Robert Creadle. Up, upward they crept, a stray beam of the sun, alighting every now and then, like a star, on the blades of the pommel shovels, which had been converted to steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened the gate when they 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 them. He replied with much more reserve. "'You're going for a walk, Mrs. Fitzpiers?' he added. "'It is pleasant, just now.' "'No, I am returning,' said she. The vehicles passed through, the gates slammed, and winter-born walked by her side, in the rear of the apple-mill. He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburned to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his boots and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with his 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 reveled in the sudden laps back to nature unadorned. The consciousness of having to beat Gentile 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 bear undiluted manliness, had risen 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? Winter-born with some hesitation. Yes? Where did you meet him? At Café Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey. I have been making cider 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. Sharman had gone there to stay. Yes, I've 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 the 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, logon stones, stalactites, and stalagmites 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 illusage, 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 wear, 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'm coming to. He exclaimed savagely, ah, I was not once like this. Tears of excation 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 scant 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. 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 cops, and Grace opened a gate and entered it. CHAPTER XXIX She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either hand by nutbushes, 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 book some Suki 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 Tang, standing near her, engaged in the same pleasant meal. Crack! Crack! went Suki's jaws every second or two. By an automatic chain of taut, 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, Suki'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, Suki, she said. Good evening, Miss Melbury. Crack! Mrs. Fitzpiers. Oh, yes, ma'am, Mrs. Fitzpiers said Suki with a peculiar smile. Grace not to be daunted continued. You take care of your teeth, Suki, and that accounts for your toothache. I don't know what an ache is. Either in tooth, ear, or head, thanked the Lord. Crack! There's a lot of one, either. You see, for yourself, ma'am, she parted her red lips and exhibited the whole double low, full 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 feel-on-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 had been betrothed had told her about Tsuki. 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 of 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, a far-involved conjecture that if he had not loved her, his only motive for making her his wife must have been her little fortune. But here Grace made a mistake, for the love of men like Fitzpiers is unquestionably of such quality as the 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 lowest 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-barreled hearts were naturally beyond her conception. Of poor Suki Damson Grace thought no more. She had had her day. If he did 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 the 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, and at last she got up, put on her dressing-gown, and went downstairs. The mother, who slept lightly, heard her descend and came to the stair-head. "'Are you Grace? What's the matter?' said he. Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is detained by a case at Owlscombe in Whiteheart Vale. By how is that? I saw the woman's husband at great Hintock just before 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 be soon 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-fare. 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 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. Sharman 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 the fencing-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 is 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 vivid bloom in her face over and above her uneasiness, and did not like the look of it. Telling the men he would be with him again soon, he walked beside her to the turnpike road, and partly up the hill when she had watched Fitzpiers the night before, across the great white heart, or Blackmore Vale. They halted beneath the half-dead oak, hollow and disfigured with white tumours. Its roots spread out like accipitrant claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighbouring 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 or sound of Fitzpiers. It's no use standing here, said our father. He may come home fifty ways. Why, look here! Here be Darlan'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 to 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. No, not among your gentle people. That's true. They entered the stable and saw the pale shape of Darlan standing in the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her back, sound as sleep. Darlan was munching hay as well as she could with the bit in her mouth, 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, the lease! Oh, it's Grace. I cannot 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. And I was riding along home or through the Vale, very, very sleepy, having been up so much of late. When I came opposite Holy Well 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 Alscum Church struck twelve, and I distinctly remember counting the strokes. From that moment I positively recollect nothing till I saw you here by my side. The name. If I had been any other horse, he'd have a broken neck, murmured Melbury. It is wonderful, sure, how a quiet horse will bring a man home at such times, said John Up John. And what's more wonderful than keeping your seat in a deep, slumbering sleep? I've known men drows off walking home from Randy's when the mead and other liquors have gone round Well, and keep walking for more than a mile an end without waking. Well, doctor, I don't care who the man is till the mercy you wasn't adorned, or a splintered, or hanged up to a tree like Absalom, also a handsome gentleman like yourself, as the Prophet say. True, murmured old Timothy, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him. Or, at least wise, you might have been a wounded to tires almost, and no doctor to join up your few limbs together within seven mile. While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, and, taking Grace's arm, walked stiffly indoors 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 Hintox just now, only in the clammy hollows of the Vale beyond Elscombe, the stiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the uplands were dry. While there 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' 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 ringing question that her visit to Middleton had been undertaken less because of the invalid relative, than in shame-faced 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 that laid so many years. His was the selfish passion of Congraves Millamont, to whom love supreme delight lay in, the 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 bake-house 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 heart 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-cott. 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 the 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 in 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 fateless. That he could sweep to the heights of Mrs. Charman's position, lift the veil of ice, 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 bed. 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 hostility 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 dullness 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 veil, 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 willom, truthful girl, brought to the humiliation of having to talk like that. That night, karking care sat beside Melbury's pillow and his stiff limbs tossed at its presence. I can't lie here any longer, he muttered. Striking alight he wondered 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 you 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 laugh at 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 them. Even supposing she has encouraged a great many, she can have no motive to do it now. What's so likely is that she is not quite well and doesn't care to let another doctor come near her. He did not heed. Grace used to be very 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 out of her. However, why not make inquiries? And then do you wait and see more? There be plenty of opportunity. Time enough to cry when you know to the cry of matter, and it is 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 wiles with much fear. End of CHAPTER XXIX Examined 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 brought almost a miraculous change in Melbury's nature. No man so fertile for the time as the ingenuous countryman who finds that his ingenuousness has been abused. Melbury's heretofore confidential candour 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 of 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. Sharmon had returned, but Hintock House scarcely gave forth signs of life so quietly had she re-entered 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. Sharmon, 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 mortal ones their eyes met. At the end Fitzpiers so timed his movement into the aisle that it exactly coincided with Felice Sharmon'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 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 colour for nothing, was a threatening development. The mere presence of Fitzpiers in the building after his statement was well-nigh 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 colours 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 feature in Mrs. Jarman'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-studney. His lamp never shone from his new dwelling as from his old. If the suspected ones met it was by such a droid contrivance 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 Jarman was under someones 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 for their existence. Felice almost simultaneously trotted down the lane towards the timber-dealer 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 the sixty years. Mrs. Jarman 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 blew me smile reading her lips. Fitzpiers clasped her hanging hand and while she 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 mouth. She still reclining passively watching him as she might have watched her fly upon her dress. At last she said, Elcer, 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 a whip and left him standing there holding the reversed glove. Melbury's first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitzpiers and up-braid 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 but that scene might be the surface and fraught 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 of 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 had 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 laterally 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 colourless. 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 are free to soar. But I could not rest till I had done it. Why do I never recognise an opportunity till I have missed it? Not a good or ill love a step till it is irrevocable. I fell in love. Love indeed! Love's but a frailty of the mind when it is 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 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 there 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 to 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 coexist with attainments of an exceptional order there was a revulsion in her sentiments she had formerly clung to in this kind. Honestly, 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, born 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 her 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 Philly's Charmond on dubious enrosse though, 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 his 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, or she not indignant? But a natural delicacy restrained him. You were 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 its peers in the last few 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 if 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, she said? Well, if I must speak plain, dear Grace, to ask her, to 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 hot sure. I shall not think of going to her father. Of course I could not. She answered. Why, don't you want to be happier than you be a 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 already. Your husband would have gone away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had not been for this. Although it has gone on such a little way, it is poisoning your future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thought to be bad, not bad by calculation, and just a word to her now might save you a peg 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've got a very good position to start with. You've 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 gentilife, 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. It 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? Would you like to have grown up as we be here at Hintock? No one 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 let you all here in the woods 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 taught her in gratitude 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 with Winterborne and given her to him according to his original plan, but he was not prepared for her deprecation of those attainments whose contemplation had been a labour 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 him I won'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 31 As February merged in March and lighter evenings broke the gloom of the woodman's homeward journey, the Hintox great and little began to have ears for a rumour 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. Tatlising phenomena, at once showing and concealing the real relationship of the person's 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-burgers of Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady. Rumour, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, in fact, in this case as in thousands, the well-worn incident sold as the hills, with individual variations, made a mourner of Ariadne, a byword of Vashti, and a corpse of the Countess Amy. There were encounters accidental and contrived, stealthy correspondence, sudden misgivings on one side, self-approaches on the other. The inner state of the twain was one as of confused noise that would not allow the accents of karma reason to be heard. Determinations to go in this direction and headlong plunges and 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 winter-born 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 spaciousness 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 rhymy 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 colour, and the trees rose before him as haggard grey phantoms, whose days of substantiality were past. Melbury seldom saw winter-born 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-merchants' 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 eye 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 winter-born 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 neighbourhood. 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 cops-ware, for which purpose he had been obliged to buy several acres of bush-wood standing. He was now engaged in the cutting and manufacture of the same, proceeding with the work daily like an automaton. The hazeltree did not be Lyatt's name to-day. The whole of the cops-wood where the mist had cleared returned purest tints of that hue, amid which winter-born himself was in the act of making a hurdle. The stakes being driven firmly into the ground in a row in 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 cops-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, burnt 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 winter-born 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 winter-born 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. Winter-born explained, just as briefly, without raising his eyes from his occupation of chopping a bow, that he held in front of him. "'To have you up in April before you get it all cleared,' said Melbury. "'Yes, there are thereabouts,' said Winter-born, a chop of the bill-hook jerking the last word into two pieces. There was another interval. Melbury still looked on. A chip from Winter-born'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.' Winter-born 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. Winter-born told one of his men to pack up the tools for the night and walked after Melbury. "'Heaven forbid 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 a smooth trunk of a young ashtray 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 to what he desires.' "'Now,' said Winter-born, "'don't be in a hurry to go home. I put some cider down to warm in my shelter-hair, and we 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-munk 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 Winter-born, as with great relief, the story of how he had won away Giles's father's chosen one by nothing worse than lovers' cajoleries if 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 Winter-born the father by giving grace to Winter-born the son, till the devil tempted him in the person of its peers, and he broke his virtuous vow. "'How highly you thought that man to be sure? Who would 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 to it.' Winter-born 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 and short. I couldn't have surrounded her with the refinement 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 refinement and such like. All that my trouble and money bought for her in that way is thrown away upon her quite. She'd faint be more like Marty South. Think of that. That's the top of her ambition. Perhaps she's right. Giles she loved you, under the rind, and what more she loves you still, worse look for the poor maid.' If Melbury only had known what fires he was recklessly stirring up he might have held his peace. Winter-born was silent a long time. The darkness had closed in around 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 you,' said the other, obstinately. However, that's all vain talk and now. While I come to ask you about what is a more practical matter, how to make the best of things as they are. I'm thinking of a desperate step, of calling on the woman's charmant. I'm going to appeal to her, since Grace will not, to 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 notion-dreamer. And how long she'll do it depends upon her whim. Did she 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 of quietude as he regarded the red coals. One who was smiled where she is not loved, and loved where she is not married. Before Mr. Charman made her his wife, she was a play actress. Hey, but how close you've kept all this, Giles? What besides? When Mr. Charman was a rich man, engaged in the iron trade in the North, twenty or thirty years older than she, he married her in the tired and came down here and bought this property as it do nowadays. Yes, yes, I know all about that, but the other I did not know. I feared 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 a trade for years? I thank you, Giles, for finding 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. Charman 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 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. Charman I'll go. He was the more impelled to go at once by the absence of a 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. Charman 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 cops on the next hill, where he and his men were working. Knowing his mission, the younger man hastened down from the cops and managed to intercept the timber-merchant. I had been thinking of this, sir," he said, and I am of the 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, and 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 tradesman'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 neighbourly way that between themselves she was in bed asleep. Never mind," said Melbury, retreating into the court, I'll stand about here. Charred 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 hither. 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 marveled at his temerity, for though most of the tongues which had been let loose attributed the chief blameworthiness 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, torn 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 his vision the incidents of the moment would gleamed confusedly here and there, as an outer landscape through the high-coloured 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 to tell her you are here. What? Have 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 trantes, 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 and timber. Phyllis was, indeed, the only woman in the parish who had not heard the rumour of her own weaknesses. She was, at this moment, living in a fool's paradise in respect of that rumour, 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 affair 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 a stick, he began. Mrs. Sharman, 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 them down to my want of practice, and not my want of care. Mrs. Sharman 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 had order. 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 a 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 as the law of nature that it 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 a dear friend, and to make amends I determined to give her my most precious possession to my friend's son, seeing that I liked each other well. Things came about which made me doubt if it would be for my daughter's happiness to do this, in as much as the young man was poor, and she was delicately rare. Another man came and paid court to her, one or 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 staunch of heart, and that therein lay a danger of great sorrow for my daughter. Madam, he saw you, and you know the rest. I had come to make no demands, to other no threats. I had come simply as a father in great grief about his 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 doing so. 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 calamities 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 show 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 gods in heaven, ma'am, that's not true. I made no pretense, 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 the facts right and the scandal will write itself. But pardon me, I speak roughly, and I came to speak to you 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 you. But you were within your right as a 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 formal 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 her pride and vexation mingled with better sentiments. Mrs. Sharman's mobile spirit was subject to these first 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, lunchtime 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 slope to the nearest burl 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 today 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 little reasoning and enquiry 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 network of boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the larger trees behind her, and swept round into the coppers where Winterbourne 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 over 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 her old friendship was quite restored, on which she guessed the rest. Oh, I am glad indeed that due to her 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 from 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, four-mantle and black hat, having a white veil tied picturesquely round it. She spoke to Marty, who turned and curtsied, 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 coppers, she listlessly observed Marty at work, threw away her cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, chop went Marty's little bill-hook with never more assiduity, till Mrs. Charmond spoke. "'Who is that young lady I see talking to the wood-man yonder?' she asked. "'Mrs. Fitzpiers' mam,' said Marty. "'Oh,' said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start, for she had not recognised grace at that distance. "'And the man she is talking to?' asked Mr. Winterborne. A redness stolen to 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, mam,' 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 but in 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 results than all Melbury's remonstances 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's coming to you. It is a good omen. She dislikes me, so we'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, and she came near. "'Dear Mrs. Fitzpiers,' said Philly 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, and first confronting a mirror or other puzzling product of civilisation. Was it really Mrs. Charmond speaking to her thus? If it was, she could no longer form any guess as to what had signified. "'I want to talk to 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 they moved on evenly side by side into the deeper recesses of the wood. 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 said at length, 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 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 his speaker's tongue touched this dangerous subject, a vivid look of self-consciousness flashed over her, in which her heart revealed, as by a lightning-lame, 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. This 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 do 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 suffer most.' Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. "'I ought not 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 tried 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 them than one usually does of one's doctor. I was lonely. I talked—well, I travelled with him. I am very sorry of 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 is 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 belier 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 coquettet, and I do not love him.' But Grace clung to her position, like a limpet. You may have trifled with others, but you love him as you never loved another man.' "'Oh, well, I won't argue,' said Mrs. Sherman, laughing faintly, and you come to reproach me for a 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 bitter a 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. Sherman had grown quite weak and pale under this prophecy. It was extraordinary that Grace, whom almost everyone would have characterised as a gentle girl, should be of stronger fibre than her interlocutor. "'You exaggerate, cruel, silly young woman,' she reiterated, writhing with the lagonies. 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 more to my name.' "'I question if you refuse to see him again,' said Grace dryly, as with eyes as scant 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 in 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 accommodate 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 eloquence,' returned the other, struggling to restore a dignity which had completely collapsed. My acts would 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 each had judged me more respectfully, and left me alone. As it is, I wish never to see your speech in madam any more.' Grace bowed, and Mrs. Sherman turned away. The two went apart in directly opposite courses, and were soon hidden from each other by their unbridled surroundings and by the shadows of Eve. In the excitement of the long argument they had walked onward and zigzagged about, without regarding direction or distance. All sounds 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 at 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 ones 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 hither in random courses. Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind voices, and still no recognisable spot or outlet of any kind appeared, nor any sound of the hint oaks 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 counter-marches, 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 sowing 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 someone sent to search for her. She accordingly shouted a rather timid, "'Oi!' 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 recognised 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 I am nearly dead with terror and misery and fatigue.' "'So am I,' said Grace. "'What shall we do?' "'You won't go away from me,' asked her companion anxiously. "'No, indeed. Are you very tired?' "'I could scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully about the ankles.' Grace reflected. "'Perhaps as it is dry underfoot, 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 its springtime, and hence was not so warmly clad as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore her winter fur. But after sitting awhile 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 frightened at the wood, but I am at other things.' Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, and a younger woman could feel her neighbour's breathing 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 is 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?' Phyllis Charmond denoted a scent 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 Phyllis. "'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.' "'Gee, must I tell verbatim, you simple child?' "'Oh, I suppose I must. I shall lead away my heart if I do not let it all out, 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 Phyllis Sharman's sobs came to her ear. Deep darkness circled her about. The funerial trees rocked and chanted their dirges and placebo's 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. Sharman slowly rose. "'You mean to betray me?' she said from the bitterest depths of her soul. "'Oh, fool! Fool-eye!' "'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 glowing wet, and treading down wood-bine, 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 hilltop on which the Sherton man had waited for Mrs. Dollary'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 Cops 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. Sharman 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 a 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 rumour 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. Charmant wore her hair. It was poor Marty's only card, and she played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and tinking a revelation of fatal one for a lover. End of Chapter 33 It is at the beginning of April, a few days after the meeting between Grace and Mrs. Charmant 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 impressed 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 patience up to Fitzpiers's very door. Fitzpiers knew only too well the latest and greatest cause of his unpopularity, and yet so illogical as man the second branch of his sadness grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first, a letter from Felice Charmant imploring him not to see her again. To bring about her 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. Winterboard'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 bode 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 to visit an acquaintance at Shotford Forum three days earlier, that tidings 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 upstairs again and the little drawing-room now lighted by a solitary candle was not rendered more cheerful by the entrance of Grammar Oliver with an apron full of wood, which he 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 a thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of smoke rising from the top of Suki Damson's chimney, signifying that the young woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper. He became conscious of a discussion and progress on the opposite side of the court. Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to the sawers and was telling them in a loud voice news in which the name of Mrs. Charmond soon arrested his ears. Grammar, don't make so much noise with that grate, said the surgeon, at which Grammar reared herself upon her knees and held a fuel suspended in her hand, whilst Fitzpiers half-opened the casement. She is also foreign lands again at last, have made her mind quite sudden-like, and it is thought that she'd 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 had reproached her own soul. She's the wrong sort of woman for Hintock, hardly known a beach from an oak, 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 tomorrow was the Sabbath day, and without charity we are both 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 a 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 she 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 two 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 his 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 to 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. Sherman's supplementary locks, and enclosed a sample from the native stock which had grown considerably by this time. It was our 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 centered 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 rain under a group of dark oaks commanding a view of the front and reflected awhile. 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 at the event of her not being alone. Thereupon he dismounted, hitched darling to a stray bow heading a little below the general browsing-line of the trees, and proceeded to the door unfot. In the meantime Melbury had returned from Shotsford Forum. The great court, a 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 of the lower gate on his way to the Manor House, he 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 to not observe his father-in-law, ambling slowly and silently under the trees, though his horse, too, was a grey one. "'How is Grace?' said his wife as soon as he entered. Melbury looked gloomy. "'She 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 to laugh at her 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 should be here in a couple of hours or less. I rode on ahead to tell you to get her room ready. "'But I see your husband has come back.' "'Yes,' said Mrs. Melbury. She expressed her concern that her husband had hired a carriage all the way from Shotford. "'What will it 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 home,' 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 manna-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 Shotsford Road to meet his ailing wife, he should be doing the spy tour by going elsewhere. The old man went out of doors again, and his horse, being hardly unsettled as yet, he told up John 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 mains, 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 countered 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 bowels, he found to be darling, as left by Fitzpiers. Dam'em, 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. He 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 beam, flashed mockingly on the somewhat showy Versailles 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 Théliece 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 a down-lighter fire and pervaded by a cold atmosphere which signified that she had not dined there at 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 its peers or with anybody. The comparative statelyness 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 suspicions were justified his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into the house might end in confounding its inhabitants 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 in you 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 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' married 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 a small gate in the corner of the park he met a labourer who in reply to Melbury's inquiry if he had seen any person on a grey horse said that he had only met Doctor Fitzpiers. It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect. Fitzpiers had mounted the bear 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 grey-horse by day. He hastened back and did what seemed best in the circumstances, got upon old darling and rode rapidly out of Fitzpiers. Melbury had just entered the wood and was winding along the cartway which led through it, channelled deep in the leaf-mold with large ruts that were formed by the timber-wagons in fetching the spoil of the plantations. When all at once he described in front, at a point where the road took a turning around a large chestnut-tree, the form of his own horse blossomed, at which Melbury quickened darling's pace thinking to come up with Fitzpiers. Near review revealed that the horse had no rider. At Melbury's approach it galloped friscally away under the trees in a homo-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 Shotford 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 this dried 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.