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The Woodlanders ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 A Romance ^^^i§^i§^^ig^ 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ by Thomas Hardy 
 
 Chicago and New York « « « 
 Rand, McNally & Company 
 *************** 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 BY THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 eHAPTER I. 
 
 The rambler who, for old association or other reasons, 
 should trace the forsaken coach-road running almost in a 
 meridional line from Bristol to the south shore of England, 
 would find himself during the latter half of his journey in 
 the vicinity of some extensive woodlands, interspersed with 
 apple-orchards. Here the trees, timber or fruit-bearing as 
 the case may be, make the wayside hedges ragged by their 
 drip and shade, stretching over the road with easeful hori- 
 zontality, as if they found the unsubstantial air an adequate 
 support for their limbs. At one place, where a hill is 
 crossed, the largest of the woods shows itself bisected by the 
 highway, as a head of thick hair is bisected by the white line 
 of its parting. The spot is lonely. 
 
 The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses soli- 
 tude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, 
 and bespeaks a tomblike stillness more emphatic than that 
 of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what 
 might be probably accounts for this. To step, for instance, 
 at the place under notice, from the hedge of the plantation 
 into the adjoining pale thoroughfare, and pause amid its 
 emptiness for a moment, was to exchange by the act of a 
 single stride the simple absence of human companionship 
 for an incubus of the forlorn. 
 
 At this spot, on the lowering evening of a by-gone win- 
 
6 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 ter's day, there stood a man who had entered upon the scene 
 much in the aforesaid manner. AHghting into the road 
 from a stile hard by, he, though by no means a "chosen 
 vessel" for impressions, was temporarily influenced by some 
 such feeling of being suddenly more alone than before lie 
 had emerged upon the highway. 
 
 It could be seen by a glance at his rather finical style of 
 dress that he did not belong to the country proper; and from 
 his air, after awhile, that though there might be a somber 
 beauty in the scenery, music in the breeze, and a wan pro- 
 cession of coaching ghosts in the sentiment of this old turn- 
 pike-road, he was mainly puzzled about the way. The dead 
 men's work that had been expended in climbing that hill, the 
 blistered soles that had trodden it, and the tears that had 
 wetted it, were not his concern; for fate had given him no 
 time for any but practical things. 
 
 He looked north and south, and mechanically prodded the 
 ground with his walking-stick. A closer glance at his face 
 corroborated the testimony of his clothes. It was self-com- 
 placent, yet there was small apparent ground for such com- 
 placence. Nothing irradiated it; to the eye of the magician 
 in character, if not the ordinary observer, the expression 
 enthroned there was absolute submission to and belief in a 
 little assortment of forms and habitudes. 
 
 At first not a soul appeared who could enlighten him as 
 he desired, or seemed likely to appear that night. But 
 presently a slight noise of laboring wheels and the steady dig 
 of a horse's shoe-tips became audible ; and there loomed in 
 the notch of the hill and plantation that the road formed here 
 at the summit a carrier's van drawn by a single horse. 
 When it got nearer, he said, with some relief to himself, 
 " 'Tis Mrs. Dollery's— this will help me." 
 
 The vehicle was half full of passengers, mostly women. 
 He held up his stick at its approach, and the woman who 
 was driving drew rein. 
 
 "I've been trying to find a short way to Little Hintock 
 this last half-hour Mrs. DoUery," he said. "But though 
 I've been to Great Hintock and Hintock House half a dozen 
 times, I am at fault about the small village. You can help 
 me, I dare say?" 
 
 She assured him that she could — ^that as she went to 
 Great Hintock her van passed near it — ^that it was only up 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 7 
 
 the lane that branched out of the lane into which she was 
 about to turn— just ahead. "Though," continued Mrs. Dol- 
 lery, "'tis such a Httle, small place that, as a town gentleman, 
 you'd need have a candle and lantern to find it if ye don't 
 know where 'tis. Bedad ! I wouldn't live there if they'd pay 
 me to. Now at Great Hintock you do see the world a bit." 
 
 He mounted and sat beside her, with his feet outside, 
 where they were ever and anon brushed over by the horse's 
 tail. 
 
 This van, driven and owned by Mrs. Dollery, was rather 
 a movable attachment of the roadway than an extraneous 
 object, to those who knew it well. The old horse, whose 
 hair was of the roughness and color of heather, whose leg- 
 joints, shoulders, and hoofs were disordered by harness and 
 drudgery from colt-hood — ^though if all had their rights he 
 pught, symmetrical in outline, to have been picking the 
 herbage of some eastern plain instead of tugging here — had 
 trodden this road almost daily for twenty years. Even his 
 subjection was not made congruous throughout, for the 
 harness being too short, his tail was not drawn through the 
 crupper, so that the breeching slipped awkwardly to one 
 side. He knew every subtle incline of the seven or eight 
 miles of ground between Hintock and Sherton Abbas — ^the 
 market-town to which he journeyed — as accurately as any 
 surveyor could have learned it by a Dumpy level. 
 
 The vehicle had a square black tilt which nodded with the 
 motion of the wheels, and at a point in it over the driver's 
 head was a hook to which the reins were hitched at times, 
 when they formed a catenary curve from the horse's 
 shoulders. Somewhere about the axles was a loose chain, 
 whose only known purpose was to clink as it went. Mrs. 
 Dollery, having to hop up and down many times in the 
 service of her passengers, wore, especially in windy weather, 
 short leggings under her gown for modesty's sake, and in- 
 stead of a bonnet a felt hat tied down with a handkerchief, 
 to guard against an earache to which she was frequently sub- 
 ject. In the rear of the van was a glass window, which she 
 cleaned with her pocket-handkerchief every market-day be- 
 fore starting. Looking at the van from the back, the 
 spectator could thus see through its interior a square piece of 
 the same sky and landscape that he saw without, but in- 
 truded on by the profiles of the seated passengers, who, as 
 
8 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 they rumbled onward, their lips moving and heads nodding 
 in animated private converse, remained in happy uncon- 
 sciousness that their mannerisms and facial peculiarities 
 were sharply defined to the public eye. 
 
 This hour of coming home from market was the happy 
 one, if not the happiest, of the week for them. Snugly en- 
 sconced under the tilt they could forget the sorrows of the 
 world without, and survey life and recapitulate the incidents 
 of the, day with placid smiles. 
 
 The passengers in the back part formed a group to them- 
 selves, and while the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, 
 they indulged in a confidential chat about him as about 
 other people, which the noise of the van rendered inaudible 
 to himself and Mrs. Dollery, sitting forward. 
 
 " 'Tis Barber Percombe — he that's got the waxen woman 
 in his window at the top of Abbey Street," said one. "What 
 business can bring him from his shop out here at this time ; 
 and not a journeyman hair-cutter, but a master-barber 
 that's left ofif his pole because 'tis not genteel?" 
 
 They listened to his conversation, but Mr. Percombe, 
 though he had nodded and spoken genially, seemed indis- 
 posed to gratify the curiosity which he had aroused; and 
 the unrestrained flow of ideas which had animated the in- 
 side of the van before his arrival was checked thencefor- 
 ward. 
 
 Thus they rode on till they turned into a half-invisible 
 little lane, whence, as it reached the verge of an eminence, 
 could be discerned in the dusk, about half a mile to the 
 right, gardens and orchards sunk in a concave, and, as it 
 were, snipped out of the woodland. From this self-con- 
 tained place rose in stealthy silence tall stems of smoke, 
 which the eye of imagination could trace downward to their 
 root on quiet hearthstones festooned overhead with hams 
 and flitches. It was one of those sequestered spots outside 
 the gates of the world where may usually be found more 
 meditation than action, and more passivity than meditation ; 
 where reasoning proceeds on narrow premises, and results 
 in inferences wildly imaginative; yet where, from time to 
 time, no less than in other places, dramas of a grandeur and 
 imity truly Sophoclean are enacted in the real, by virtue of 
 the concentrated passions and closely knit interdependence 
 of the lives therein. 
 
THE WOOBMiNDERS. 9 
 
 This place was the Little Hintock of the master-barber's 
 search. The coming night gradually obscured the smoke 
 of the chimneys, but the position of the sequestered little 
 world could still be distinguished by a few faint lights, wink- 
 ing more or less ineffectually through the leafless boughs, 
 and the undiscerned songsters they bore, in the form of 
 balls of feathers, at roost among them. 
 
 Out of the lane followed by the van branched a yet smaller 
 lane, at the corner of which the barber alighted, Mrs. Dol- 
 lery's van going on to the larger village, whose superiority 
 to the despised smaller one as an exemplar of the world's 
 movements was not particularly apparent in its means of 
 approach. 
 
 "A very clever and learned young doctor, who, they say, 
 is in league with the devil, lives in the place you be going 
 to — not because there's anybody for'm to cure there, but 
 because 'tis the middle of his district." 
 
 The observation was flung at the barber by one of the 
 women at parting, as a last attempt to get at his errand that 
 way. 
 
 But he made no reply, and without further pause the 
 pedestrjan plunged toward the umbrageous nook, and paced 
 cautiously over the dead leaves which nearly buried the road 
 or street of the hamlet. As very few people except them- 
 selves passed this way after dark, a majority of the denizens 
 of Little Hintock deemed window-curtains unnecessary; 
 and on this account Mr. Percombe made it his business to 
 stop opposite the casements of each cottage that he came to, 
 with a demeanor which showed that he was endeavoring to 
 conjecture, from the persons and things he observed within, 
 the whereabouts of somebody or other who resided here. 
 
 Only the smaller dwellings interested him; one or two 
 houses, whose size, antiquity, and rambling appurtenances 
 signified that notwithstanding their remoteness they must 
 formerly have been, if they were not still, inhabited by peo- 
 ple of a certain social standing, being neglected by him 
 entirely. Smells of pomace, and the hiss of fermenting 
 cider, which reached him from the back quarters of other 
 tenements, revealed the recent occupation of sonie of the in- 
 habitants, and joined with the scent of decay from the perish- 
 ing leaves underfoot. 
 
 Half a dozen dwellings were passed without result. The 
 
10 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 next, which stood opposite a tall tree, was in an excep- 
 tional state of radiance, the flickering brightness from the 
 inside shining up the chimney and making a luminous mi^t 
 of the emerging smoke. The interior, as seen through the 
 window, caused him to draw up with a terminative air and 
 watch. The house was rather large for a cottage, and the 
 door, which opened immediately into the living-room, stood 
 ajar, so that a ribbon of light fell through the opening into 
 the dark atmosphere without. Every now and then a moth, 
 decrepit from the late season, would flit for a moment across 
 the out-coming rays and disappear again into the night. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 In the room from which this cheerful blaze proceeded he 
 beheld a girl seated on a willow chair, and busily occupied 
 by the light of the fire, which was ample and of wood. 
 With a bill-hook in one hand and a leather glove, much too 
 large for her, on the other, she was making spars, such as 
 are used by thatchers, with great rapidity. She wore a 
 leather apron for this purpose, which was also much too 
 large for her figure. On her left hand lay a bundle of the 
 straight, smooth sticks called spar-gads — the raw material 
 of her manufacture; on her right, a heap of chips and ends 
 — ^the refuse — with which the fire was maintained; in front, 
 a pile of the finished articles. To produce them she took 
 up each gad, looked critically at it from end to end, cut it to 
 length, split it into four, and sharpened each of the quarters 
 with dexterous blows, which brought it to a triangular point 
 precisely resembling that of a bayonet. 
 
 Beside her, in case she might require more light, a brass 
 candlestick stood on a little round table, curiously formed 
 of an old coffin-stool, with a deal top nailed on, the white 
 surface of the latter contrasting oddly with the black carved 
 oak of the substructure. The social position of the house- 
 hold in the past was almost as definitively shown by the 
 presence of this article as that of an esquire or nobleman 
 by his old helmets or shields. It had been customary for 
 every well-to-do villager, whose tenure was by copy of court- 
 roll, or in any way more permanent than that of the mere 
 
THE WOODLANDERS, 11 
 
 cotter, to keep a pair of these stools for the use of his own 
 dead; but for the last generation or two, a feeling of cui bono 
 had led to the discontinuance of the custom, and the stools 
 were frequently made use of in the manner described. 
 
 The young woman laid down the bill-hook for a moment 
 and examined the palm of her right hand, which, unlike the 
 other, was ungloved, and showed little hardness or rough- 
 ness about it. The palm was red and blistering, as if this 
 present occupation were not frequent enough with her to 
 subdue it to what it worked in. As with so many right 
 hands born to manual labor, there was nothing in its funda- 
 mental shape to bear out the physiological conventionalism 
 that gradations of birth, gentle or mean, show themselves 
 primarily in the form of this member. Nothing but a cast 
 of the die of destiny had decided that the girl should handle 
 the tool; and the fingers which clasped the heavy ash haft 
 might have skillfully guided the pencil or swept the string, 
 had they only been set to do it in good time. 
 
 Her face had the usual fullness of expression which is de- 
 veloped by a life of solitude. Where the eyes of a multitude 
 beat like waves upon a countenance they seem to wear away 
 its individuality; but in the still water of privacy every 
 tentacle of feeling and sentiment shoots out in visible lux- 
 uriance, to be interpreted as readily as a child's look by an 
 intruder. In years she was not more than nineteen or 
 twenty, but the necessity of taking thought at a too early 
 period of life had forced the provisional curves of her child- 
 hood's face to a premature finality. Thus she had but little 
 pretension to beauty, save in one prominent particular — 
 her hair. Its abundance made it almost unmanageable ; its 
 color was, roughly speaking, and as seen here by firelight, 
 brown, but careful notice, or an observation by day, would 
 have revealed that its true shade was a rare and beautiful ap- 
 proximation to chestnut. 
 
 On this one bright gift of Time to the particular victim 
 of his now before us the new-comer's eyes were fixed; 
 meanwhile the fingers of his right hand mechanically played 
 over something sticking up from his waistcoat pocket — the 
 bows of a pair of scissors, whose polish made them feebly 
 responsive to the light within. In her present beholder's 
 mind the scene formed by the girlish spar-maker composed 
 itself into a post-Rafifaelite picture of extremest quality. 
 
12 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 wherein the girl's hair alone, as the focus of observation, was 
 depicted with intensity and distinctness, and her face, shoul- 
 ders, hands, and figure in general, being a blurred mass of 
 unimportant detail lost in haze and obscurity. 
 
 He hesitated no longer, but tapped at the door and en- 
 tered. The young woman turned at the crunch of his boots 
 on the sanded floor, and exclaiming, "Oh, Mr. Percombe, 
 how you frightened me!" quite lost her color for a moment. 
 
 He replied, "You should shut your door — then you'd hear 
 folk open it." 
 
 "I can't," she said; "the chimney smokes so. Mr. Per- 
 combe, you look as unnatural out of your shop as a canary 
 in a thorn-hedge. Surely you have not come out here on 
 my account — for " 
 
 "Yes — to have your answer about this." He touched her 
 head with his cane, and she winced. "Do you agree?" he 
 continued. "It is necessary that I should know at once, as 
 the lady is soon going away, and it takes time to make up." 
 
 "Don't press me — it worries me. I was in hopes you had 
 thought no more of it. I cannot part with it — so there!" 
 
 "Now, look here, Marty," said the barber, sitting down on 
 the coffin-stool table. "How much do you get for making 
 these spars?" 
 
 "Hush — father's up-stairs awake, and he don't know that 
 I am doing his work." 
 
 "Well, now tell me," said the man, more softly. "How 
 much do you get?" 
 
 "Eighteenpence a thousand," she said, reluctantly. 
 
 "Who are you making them for?" 
 
 "Mr. Melbury, the timber dealer, just below here." 
 
 "And how many can you make in a day?" 
 
 "In a day and half the night, three bundles — ^that's a 
 thousand and a half." 
 
 "Two and threepence." The barber paused. "Well, look 
 here," he continued, with the remains of a calculation in 
 his tone, which calculation had been the reduction to figures 
 of the probable monetary magnetism necessary to overpower 
 the resistant force of her present purse and the woman's 
 love of comeliness, "here's a sovereign — a gold sovereign, 
 almost new." He held it out between his finger and thumb. 
 "That's as much as you'd earn in a week and a half at that 
 
THE WOODLANDBHS. 13 
 
 rough man's work, and it's yours for just letting me snip off 
 what you've got too much of." 
 
 The girl's bosom moved a very little. "Why can't the 
 lady send to some other girl who don't value her hair — not 
 to me?" she exclaimed. 
 
 "Why, simpleton, because yours is the exact shade of her 
 own, and 'tis a shade you can't match by dyeing. But you 
 are not going to refuse me now I've come all the way from 
 Sherton o' purpose?" 
 
 "I say I won't sell it — ^to you or anybody." 
 
 "Now listen," and he drew up a little closer beside her. 
 "The lady is very rich, and won't be particular to a few 
 shillings; so I will advance to this on my own responsibility 
 — I'll make the one sovereign two, rather than go back 
 empty-handed." 
 
 "No, no, no!" she cried, beginning to be much agitated. 
 "You are a-tempting me, Mr. Percombe. You go on like 
 the devil to Dr. Faustus in the penny book. But I don't 
 want your money, and won't agree. Why did you come? 
 I said when you got me into your shop and urged me so 
 much that I didn't mean to sell my hair!" The speaker 
 was hot and stern. 
 
 "Marty, now hearken. The lady that wants it wants it 
 badly. And, between you and me, you'd better let her have 
 it. 'Twill be bad for you if you don't." 
 
 "Bad for me? Who is she, then?" 
 
 The barber held his tongue, and the girl repeated the 
 question. 
 
 "I am not at liberty to tell you. And as she is going 
 abroad soon it makes no difference who she is at all." 
 
 "She wants it to go abroad wi'?" 
 
 Percombe assented by a nod. The girl regarded him re- 
 flectively. "Barber Percombe," she said, "I know who 'tis. 
 'Tis she at the House — Mrs. Charmond !" 
 
 "That's my secret. However, if you agree to let me have 
 it, I'll tell you in confidence." 
 ' "I'll certainly not let you have it unless you tell me the 
 truth. It is Mrs. Charmond." 
 
 The barber dropped his voice. "Well — it is. You sat in 
 front of her in church the other day, and she noticed how 
 exactly your hair matched her own. Ever since then she's 
 been hankering for it, and at last decided to get it. As she 
 
14 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 won't wear it till she goes off abroad, she knows nobody 
 will recognize the change. I'm commissioned to get it for 
 her, and then it is to be made up. I shouldn't have vamped 
 all these miles for any less important employer. Now, mind 
 — 'tis as much as my business with her is worth if it should 
 be known that I've let out her name; but honor between 
 us two, Marty, and you'll say nothing that would injure 
 me?" 
 
 "I don't wish to tell upon her," said Marty, coolly. "But 
 my hair is my own, and I'm going to keep it." 
 
 "Now, that's not fair, after what I've told you," said the 
 nettled barber. "You see, Marty, as you are in the same 
 parish, and in one of her cottages, and your father is ill, and 
 wouldn't like to turn out, it would be as well to oblige her. 
 I say that as a friend. But I won't press you to make up 
 your mind to-night. You'll be coming to market to-mor- 
 row, I dare say, and you can call then. If you think it over 
 you'll be inclined to bring what I want, I know." 
 
 "I've nothing more to say," she answered. 
 
 Her companion saw from her manner that it was useless 
 to urge her further by speech. "As you are a trusty young 
 woman," he said, "I'll put these sovereigns up here, for orna- 
 ment, that you may see how handsome they are. Bring the 
 hair to-morrow, or return the sovereigns." He stuck them 
 edgewise into the frame of a small mantel looking-glass. "I 
 hope you'll bring it, for your sake and mine. I should have 
 thought she could have suited herself elsewhere ; but as it's 
 her fancy, it must be indulged if possible. If you cut it off 
 yourself, mind how you do it so as to keep all the locks one 
 way." He showed her how this was to be done. 
 
 "But I sha'n't," she replied with laconic indifference. "I 
 value my looks too much to spoil 'em. She wants my hair to 
 get another lover with ; though if stories are true she's broke 
 the heart of many a noble gentleman already." 
 
 "Lord, it's wonderful how you guess things, Marty," said 
 the barber. "I've had it from them that know, that there 
 certainly is some foreign gentleman in her eye. However, 
 mind what I ask." 
 
 "She's not going to get him through me." 
 
 Percombe had retired as far as the door; he came back, 
 planted his cane on the coffin-stool and looked her in the 
 face. "Marty South," he said, with deliberate emphasis. 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 15 
 
 "you've got a lover yourself, and that's why you won't let 
 it go."' 
 
 She reddened so intensely as to pass the mild blush that 
 suffices to heighten beauty; she put the yellow leather gloive 
 on one hand, took up the hook with the other, and sat down 
 doggedly to her work without turning her face to him again. 
 He regarded her head for a moment, went to the door, and 
 with one look back at her, departed on his way homeward. 
 
 Marty pursued her occupation for a few minutes, then 
 suddenly laying down the bill-hook, she jumped up and 
 went to the back of the room, where she opened a door 
 which disclosed a staircase so whitely scrubbed that the 
 grain of the wood was well-nigh sodden away by such 
 cleansing. At the top she gently approached a bedroom, 
 and without entering, said, "Father, do you want anything?" 
 
 A weak voice inside answered in the negative; adding, 
 "I should be all right by to-morrow if it were not for the 
 tree!" 
 
 "The tree again — always the tree! Oh, father, don't 
 worry so about that. You know it can do you no harm." 
 
 "Who have ye had talking to ye down-stairs?" 
 
 "A Sherton man called — nothing to trouble about," she 
 said, soothingly. Father," she went on, "can Mrs. Char- 
 mond turn us out of our house if she's minded to?" 
 
 "Turn us out. No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor 
 soul is turned out of my body. 'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose 
 Winterbone's. But when my life drops 'twill be hers — not 
 till then." His words on this subject so far had been ra- 
 tional and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his moan- 
 ing strain : "And the tree will do it — ^that tree will soon be 
 the death of me." 
 
 "Nonsense, you know better. How can it be?" She re- 
 frained from further speech, and descended to the ground- 
 floor again. 
 
 "Thank Heaven, then," she said to herself, "what belongs 
 to me I keep." 
 
16 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The lights in the village went out, house after house, till 
 there only remained two in the darkness. One of these 
 came from a residence on the hillside, of which there is 
 nothing to say at present; the other shone from the window 
 of Marty South. Precisely the same outward effect was 
 produced here, however, by her rising when the clock struck 
 ten and hanging up a thick cloth curtain. The door it was 
 necessary to keep ajar in hers, as in most cottages, because 
 of the smoke; but she obviated the efSfect of the ribbon of 
 light through the chink by hanging a cloth over that also. 
 She was one of those people who, if they have to work 
 harder than their neighbors, prefer to keep the necessity a 
 secret as far as possible; and but for the slight sounds of 
 wood-splintering which came from within no wayfarer 
 would have perceived that here the cottager did not sleep as 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Eleven, twelve, one o'clock struck; the heap of spars 
 grew higher, and the pile of chips and ends more bulky. 
 Even the light on the hill had now been extinguished; but 
 still she worked on. When the temperature of the flight 
 without had fallen so low as to make her chilly, she opened 
 a large blue umbrella to ward off the draught from the door. 
 The two sovereigns confronted her from the looking-glass 
 in such a manner as to suggest a pair of jaundiced eyes on 
 the watch for an opportunity. Whenever she sighed for 
 weariness she lifted her gaze toward them, but withdrew it 
 quickly, stroking her tresses with her fingers for a moment, 
 as if to assure herself that they were still secure. When the 
 clock struck three she arose and tied up the spars she had 
 last made in a bundle resembling those that lay against the 
 wall. 
 
 She wrapped round her a long red woolen cravat and 
 opened the door. The night in all its fullness met her flatly 
 on the threshold, like the very brink of an absolute void, or 
 the ante-mundane Ginnung-Gap believed in by her Teuton 
 forefathers. For her eyes were fresh from the blaze, and 
 here there was no street-lamp or lantern to form a kindly 
 transition between the inner glare and the outer dark. A 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 17 
 
 lingering wind brought to her ear the creaking sound of 
 two over-crowded branches in the neighboring wood, which 
 were rubbing each other into wounds, and other vocalized 
 sorrows of the trees, together with the screech of owls, and 
 the fluttering tumble of some awkward wood-pigeon ill- 
 balanced on its roosting-bough. 
 
 But the pupils of her young eyes soon expanded, and she 
 could see well enough for her purpose. Taking a bundle of 
 spars under eaqh arm, and guided by the serrated line of 
 tree-tops against the sky, she went some hundred yards or 
 more down the lane till she reached a long open shed, car- 
 peted around with the dead leaves that lay about every- 
 where. Night, that strange personality, which within walls 
 brings ominous introspectiveness and self-distrust, but un- 
 der the open skies banishes such subjective anxieties as too 
 trivial for thought, inspired Marty South with a less per- 
 turbed and brisker manner now. She laid the spars on the 
 ground within the shed and returned for more, going to and 
 fro till her whole manufactured stock were deposited here. 
 
 This erection was the wagon-house of the chief man of 
 business hereabout, Mr. George Melbury, the timber, bark, 
 and copse-ware merchant for whom Marty's father did work 
 of this sort by the piece. It formed one of the many 
 rambling outhouses which surrounded his dwelling, an 
 equally irregular block of building whose immense chim- 
 neys could just be discerned even now. The four huge 
 wagons under the shed were built on those ancient Unes 
 Whose proportions have been ousted by modern patterns, 
 their shapes bulging and curving at the base and ends like 
 Trafalgar line-of-battle ships, with which venerable hulks, 
 indeed, these vehicles evidenced a constructed spirit curious- 
 ly in harmony. One was laden with sheep-cribs, another 
 with hurdles, another -with ash poles, and the fourth, at the 
 foot of which she had placed her thatching-spars, was half 
 full of similar bundles. 
 
 She was pausing a moment with that easeful sense of 
 accomplishment which foUpws work done that has been a 
 hard struggle in the doing, when she heard a woman's voice 
 on the other side of the hedge say, anxiously: "George!" 
 In a moment the name was repeated, with "Do come in- 
 doors! What are you doing there?" 
 
 The cart-house adjoined the garden, and before Marty 
 a 
 
18 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 had moved she saw enter the latter from the timber-mer- 
 chant's back door an elderly woman, sheltering a candle 
 with her hand, the light from which cast a moving thorn- 
 pattern of shade on Marty's face. Its rays soon fell upon a 
 man whose clothes were roughly thrown on, standing in 
 advance of the speaker. He was a thin, slightly stooping 
 figure, with a small, nervous mouth and a face cleanly 
 shaven; and he walked along the path with his eyes bent 
 on the ground. In the pair Marty Smith recognized her 
 employer Melbury and his wife. She was the second Mrs. 
 Melbury, the first having died shortly after the birth of the 
 timber-merchant's only child. 
 
 " 'Tis no use to stay in bed," he said, as soon as she came 
 up to where he was pacing restlessly about. "I can't sleep 
 — I keep thinking of things, and worrying about the girl, 
 till I'm quite in a fever of anxiety." He went on to say that 
 he could not think why "she" (Marty knew he was speaking 
 of his daughter) "did not answer his letter. She must be 
 ill — she must, certainly," he said. 
 
 "No, no. 'Tis all right, George," said his wife; and she 
 assured him that such things always did appear so gloomy 
 in the night-time, if people allowed their minds to run on 
 them ; that when morning came it was seen that such fears 
 were nothing but shadows. "Grace is as well as you or I," 
 she declared. 
 
 But he persisted that she did not see all — that she did not 
 see so much as he. His daughter's not writing was only 
 one part of his worry. On account of her he was anxious 
 concerning money affairs, which he would never alarm his 
 mind about otherwise. The reason he gave was that, as 
 she had nobody to depend upon for a provision but himself, 
 he wished her, when he was gone, to be securely out of risk 
 of poverty. 
 
 'To this Mrs. Melbury replied that Grace would be sure 
 to marry well, and that hence a hundred pounds more or less 
 from him would not make much difference. 
 
 Her husband said that that was what she, Mrs. Melbury, 
 naturally thought; but there she was wrong, and in that lay 
 the source of his trouble. "I have a plan in my head about 
 her," he said ; "and according to my plan she won't marry 
 a rich man." 
 
 "A plan for her not to marry well?" said his wife, sur- 
 prised. 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 19 
 
 "Well, in one sense it is that," replied Melbury. "It is a 
 plan for her to marry a particular person, and as he has not 
 so much money as she might expect, it might be called as 
 you call it. I may not be able to carry it out; and even if 
 I do, it may not be a good thing for her. I want her to 
 marry Giles Winterborne." 
 
 His companion repeated the name. "Well, it is all right," 
 she said, presently. "He adores"the very ground she vi^alks 
 on; only he's close, and won't show it much." 
 
 Marty South appeared startled, and could not tear herself 
 away. 
 
 Yes, the timber-merchant asserted, he knew that well 
 enough. Winterborne had been interested in his daughter 
 for years; that was what had led him into the notion of 
 their union. And he knew that she used to have no objec- 
 tion to him. But it was not any difficulty about that which 
 embarrassed him. It was that, since he had educated her so 
 well, and so long, and so far above the level of daughters 
 thereabout, it was "wasting her" to give her to a man of no 
 higher standing than the young man in question. 
 
 "That's what I have been thinking," said Mrs. Melbury. 
 
 "Well, then, Lucy, now you've hit it," answered the tim- 
 ber-merchant, with feeling. "There lies my trouble. I 
 vowed to let her marry him, and to make her as valuable as 
 I could to him by schooling her as many years and as thor- 
 oughly as possible. I mean to keep my vow. I made it 
 because I did his father a terrible wrong; and it was a 
 weight on my conscience ever since that time till this scheme 
 of making amends occurred to me through seeing that Giles 
 liked her." 
 
 "Wronged his father?" asked Mrs. Melbury. 
 
 "Yes, grievously wronged him," said her husband. 
 
 "Well, don't think of it to-night," she urged. "Come in- 
 doors." 
 
 "No, no, the air cools my head. I shall not stay long." 
 He was silent awhile ; then he told her, as nearly as Marty 
 could gather, that his first wife, his daughter Grace's mother, 
 was first the sweetheart of Winterborne's father, who loved 
 her tenderly, till he, the speaker, won her away from him by 
 a trick, because he wanted to marry her himself. He sadly 
 went on to say that the other man's happiness was ruined 
 by it; that though he married Winterborne's mother, it was 
 
20 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 but a half-hearted business with him. Melbury added that 
 he was afterward very miserable at what he had done; but 
 that as time went on, and the children grew up, and seemed 
 to be attached to each other, he determined to do all he 
 could to right the wrong by letting his daughter marry the 
 lad; not only that, but to give her the best education he 
 could afford, so as to make the gift as valuable a one as it lay 
 in his power to bestow. "I still mean to do it," said Mel- 
 bury. 
 
 "Then do," said she. 
 
 "But all these things trouble me," said he; "for I feel I 
 am sacrificing her for my own sin; and I think of her, and 
 often come down here and look at this." 
 
 "Look at what?" asked his wife. 
 
 He took the candle from her hand, held it to the ground, 
 and removed a tile which lay in the garden-path. " 'Tis the 
 track of her shoe that she made when she ran down here 
 the day before she went away all those months ago. I cov- 
 ered it up when she was gone; and when I come here and 
 look at it, I ask myself again, why should she be sacrificed 
 to a poor man?" 
 
 "It is not altogether a sacrifice," said the woman. "He is 
 in love with her, and he's honest and upright. If she en- 
 courages him what can you wish for more?" 
 
 "I wish for nothing definite. But there's a lot of things 
 possible for her. Why, Mrs. Charmond is wanting some 
 refined young lady, I hear, to go abroad with her — as com- 
 panion or something of the kind. She'd jump at Grace." 
 
 "That's all uncertain. Better stick to what's sure." 
 
 "True, true," said Melbury; "and I hope it will be for 
 the best. Yes, let me get 'em married up as soon as I can, 
 so as to have it over and done with." He continued look- 
 ing at the imprint while he added, "Suppose she should be 
 dying, and never make a track on this path any more?" 
 
 "She'll write soon, depend upon't. Come, 'tis wrong to 
 stay here and brood so." 
 
 He admitted it, but said he could not help it. "Whether 
 she write or no, I shall fetch her in a few days." And thus 
 speaking, he covered the track, and preceded his wife in- 
 doors. 
 
 Melbury perhaps was an unlucky man in having within 
 him the sentiment which could indulge in this foolish fond- 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 21 
 
 ness about the imprint of a daughter's footstep. Nature does 
 not carry on her government with a view to such feelings, 
 and when advancing years render the open hearts of those 
 who possess them less dexterous than formerly in shutting 
 against the blast, they must suffer "buffeting at will by rain 
 and storm" no less than Little Celandines. 
 
 But her own existence, and not Mr. Melbury's, was the 
 center of Marty's consciousness, and it was in relation to this 
 that the matter struck her as she slowly withdrew. 
 
 "That, then, is the secret of it all," she said. "And Giles 
 Winterborne is not for me, and the less I think of him the 
 better." 
 
 She returned to her cottage. The sovereigns were star- 
 ing at her from the looking-glass as she had left them. 
 With a preoccupied countenance, and with tears in her eyes, 
 she got a pair of scissors, and began mercilessly cutting off 
 the long locks of her hair, arranging and tying them with 
 their points all one way as the barber had directed. Upon 
 the pale scrubbed deal of the coffin-stool table they stretched 
 like waving and ropy weeds over the washed gravel-bed of a 
 clear stream. 
 
 She would not turn again to the little looking-glass out 
 of humanity to herself, knowing what a deflowered visage 
 would look back at her, and almost break her heart; she 
 dreaded it as much as did her own ancestral goddess Sif the 
 reflection in the pool after the rape of her locks by Loke the 
 malicious. She steadily stuck to business, wrapped the hair 
 in a parcel, and sealed it up ; after which she raked out the 
 fire and went to bed, having first set up an alarum made of 
 a candle and piece of thread, with a stone attached. 
 
 But such a reminder was unnecessary to-night. Having 
 tossed till about five o'clock, Marty heard the sparrows 
 walking down their long holes in the thatch above her slop- 
 ing ceiHng to their orifice at the eaves ; whereupon she also 
 arose, and descended to the ground-floor again. 
 
 It was still dark, but she began moving about the house 
 in those automatic initiatory acts and touches which repre- 
 sent among housewives the installation of another day. 
 While thus engaged she heard the rumbUng of Mr. Mel- 
 bury's wagons, and knew that there, too, the da/s toil had 
 begun. 
 
 An armful of gads thrown on the still hot embers caused 
 
22 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 them to blaze up cheerfully and bring her diminished head- 
 gear into sudden prominence as a shadow. At this a step 
 approached the door. 
 
 "Are folk astir here yet?" inquired a voice she knew well. 
 "Yes, Mr. Winterborne," said Marty, throwing on a tilt 
 bonnet, which completely hid the recent ravages of the scis- 
 sors. "Come in!" 
 
 The door was flung back, and there stepped in upon the 
 mat a man not particularly young for a lover, nor particularly 
 mature for a person of affairs. There was reserve in his 
 glance, and restraint upon his mouth. He carried a horn 
 lantern which hung upon a swivel, and wheeling as it dangled 
 marked grotesque shapes upon the shadier part of the walls. 
 He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell 
 her that they did not expect her father to make up his con- 
 tract if he was not well. Mr. Melbury would give him an- 
 other week, and they would go their journey with a short 
 load that day. 
 
 "They are done," said Marty, "and lying in the cart- 
 house." 
 
 "Done?" he repeated. "Your father has not been too ill 
 to work after all, then?" 
 
 She made some evasive reply. "I'll show you where they 
 be, if you are going down," she added. 
 
 They went out and walked together, the pattern of the 
 air-holes in the top of the lantern being thrown upon the 
 mist overhead where they appeared of giant size, as if reach- 
 ing the tent-shaped sky. They had no remarks to make to 
 each other, and they uttered none. Hardly anything could 
 be more isolated or more self-contained than the lives of 
 these two walking here in the lonely antelucan hour, when 
 gray shades, material and mental, are so very gray. And 
 yet, looked at in a certain way, their lonely courses formed 
 no detached design at all, but were part of the pattern in the 
 great web of human doings then weaving in both hemis- 
 pheres, from the White Sea to Cape Horn. 
 
 The shed was reached, and she pointed out the spars. 
 Winterborne regarded them silently, then looked at her. 
 
 "Now, Marty, I believe " he said, and shook his head. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "That you've done the work yourself." 
 
 "Don't tell anybody, will you, Mr. Winterborne?" she 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 23 
 
 pleaded, by way of answer. "Because I am afraid Mr. Mel- 
 bury may refuse my work if he knows it is mine." 
 
 "But how could you learn to do it? 'Tis a trade." 
 
 "Trade!" said she. "I'd be bound to learn it in two 
 hours." 
 
 "Oh no, you wouldn't, Mrs. Marty." Winterborne held 
 down his lantern, and examined the cleanly-split hazels as 
 they lay. "Marty," he said, with dry admiration, "your 
 father with his forty years of practice never made a spar 
 better than that. They are too good for the thatching of 
 houses — ^they are good enough for the furniture. But I 
 won't tell. Let me look at your hands — ^your poor hands !" 
 
 He had a kindly manner of a quietly severe tone; and 
 when she seemed reluctant to show her hands he took hold 
 of one and examined it as if it were his own. Her fingers 
 were blistered. 
 
 "They'll get harder in time," she said. "For if father 
 continues ill, I shall have to go on wi' it. Now I'll help put 
 'em up in wagon." 
 
 Winterborne without speaking set down his lantern, 
 lifted her as she was about to stoop over the bundles, placed 
 her behind him, and began throwing up the bundles him- 
 self. "Rather than you should do it I will," he said. "But 
 the men will be here directly. Why, Marty — ^whatever has 
 happened to your head. Lord, it has shrunk to nothing — 
 it looks like an apple upon a gate-post!" 
 
 Her heart swelled, and she could not speak. At length 
 she managed to groan, looking on the ground, "I've made 
 myself ugly — and hateful — ^that's what I've done !" 
 
 "No, no," he answered. "You've only cut your hair — I 
 see now." 
 
 "Then why must you needs say that about apples and 
 gate-posts?" 
 
 "Let me see?" 
 
 "No, no!" She ran ofif into the gloom of the sluggish 
 dawn. He did not attempt to follow her. When she 
 reached her father's door, she stood on the step and looked 
 back. Mr. Melbury's men had arrived and were loading up 
 the spars, and their lanterns appeared from the distance at 
 which she stood to have wan circles round them, like eyes 
 weary with watching. She observed them for a few sec- 
 onds as they set about harnessing the horses, and then went 
 indoors. 
 
24 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the 
 air, and presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter 
 day emerged like a dead-born child. The villagers every- 
 where had already bestirred themselves, rising at this time of 
 the year at the far less dreary hour of absolute darkness. 
 It had been above an hour earlier, before a single bird had 
 untucked his head, that twenty lights were struck in as many 
 bedrooms, twenty pair of shutters opened, and twenty pair 
 of eyes stretched to the sky to forecast the weather for the 
 day. 
 
 Owls that had been catching mice in the outhouses, rab- 
 bits that had been eating the winter-greens in the gardens, 
 and stoats that had been sucking the blood of the rabbits, 
 discerning that their human neighbors were on the move, 
 discreetly withdrew from publicity, and were seen and heard 
 no more that day. 
 
 The daylight revealed the whole of Mr. Melbury's home- 
 stead, of which the wagon sheds had been an outlying erec- 
 tion. It formed three sides of an open quadrangle, and 
 consisted of all sorts of buildings, the largest and central 
 one being the dwelling itself. The fourth side of the quad- 
 rangle was the public road. 
 
 It was a dwelUng-house of respectable, roomy, almost 
 dignified aspect; which, taken with the fact that there were 
 the remains of other such buildings thereabout, indicated 
 that Little Hintock had at some time orother been of greater 
 importance than now, as its old name of Hintock St. Os- 
 mond also testified. The house was of no marked antiquity, 
 yet of well-advanced age ; older than a stale novelty, but no 
 canonized antique; faded, not hoary; looking at you from 
 the still distinct middle distance of the early Georgian time, 
 and awakening on that account the instincts of reminiscence 
 more decidedly than the remoter and far grander memorials 
 which have to speak from the misty reaches of mediaevalism. 
 The faces, dress, passions, gratitudes, and revenges of the 
 great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers who had been 
 the first to gaze from those rectangular windows, and had 
 steed under that keystoned doorway, could be divined and 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 25 
 
 measured by homely standards of to-day. It was a house in 
 whose reverberations queer old personal tales were yet 
 audible if properly listened for; and not, as with those of the 
 castle and cloister, silent beyond the possibility of echo. 
 
 The garden-front remained much as it had always been, 
 and there was a porch and entrance that way. But the prin- 
 cipal house-door opened on the square yard or quadrangle 
 toward the road, formerly a regular carriage entrance, 
 though the middle of the area was now made use of for stack- 
 ing timber, fagots, bundles, and other products of the wood. 
 It was divided from the lane by a lichen-coated wall, in 
 which hung a pair of gates, flanked by piers out of the per- 
 pendicular, with a round white ball on the top of each. 
 
 The building on the left of the inclosure was a long- 
 backed erection, now used for spar-making, sawing, crib- 
 framing, and copse-ware manufacture in general. Oppo- 
 site were the wagon-sheds where Marty had deposited her 
 spars. 
 
 Here Winterborne had remained after the girl's abrupt 
 departure, to see that the wagon-loads were properly made 
 up. Winterborne was connected with the Melbury family 
 in various ways. In addition to the sentimental relation- 
 ship which arose from his father having been the first Mrs. 
 Melbury's lover, Winterborne's aunt had married and emi- 
 grated with the brother of the timber-merchant many years 
 before — an alliance that was sufficient to place Winterborne, 
 though the poorer, on a footing of social intimacy with the 
 Melburys. As in most villages so secluded as this, inter- 
 marriages were of Hapsburgian frequency among the in- 
 habitants, and there were hardly two houses in Little Hin- 
 tock unrelated by some matrimonial tie or other. 
 
 For this reason a curious kind of partnership existed be- 
 tween Melbury and the younger man — a partnership based 
 upon an unwritten code, by which each acted in the way he 
 thought fair toward the other, on a give-and-take principle. 
 Melbury, with his timber and copse-ware business, found 
 that the weight of his labor came in winter and spring. 
 Winterborne was in the apple and cider trade, and his re- 
 quirements in cartage and other work came in the autumn of 
 each year. Hence horses, wagons, and in some degree men, 
 were handed over to him when the apples began to fall; 
 
26 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 he, in return, lending his assistance to Melbury in the busiest 
 wood-cutting season, as now. 
 
 Before he had left the shed a boy came from the house to 
 ask him to remain till Mr. Melbury had seen him. Winter- 
 borne thereupon crossed over to the spar-house where two 
 or three men were already at work, two of them being 
 traveling spar-makers from White-hart Lane, who, when 
 this kind of work began, made their appearance regularly, 
 and when it was over disappeared in silence till the season 
 came again. 
 
 Firewood was the one thing abundant in Little Hintock ; 
 and a blaze of gad-cuds made the outhouse gay with its 
 light, which vied with that of the day as yet. In the hollow 
 shades of the roof could be seen dangling etiolated arms of 
 ivy which had crept through the joints of the tiles, and were 
 groping in vain for some support, their leaves being 
 dwarfed and sickly for want of sunlight ; others were push- 
 ing in with such force at the eaves as to lift from their sup- 
 ports the shelves that were fixed there. 
 
 Besides the itinerant journey-workers there were also 
 present John Upjohn, engaged in the hollow-turnery trade, 
 who lived hard by ; old Timothy Tangs and young Timothy 
 Tangs, top and bottom sawyers at work in Mr. Melbury's pit 
 outside; Father Bawtree, who kept the cider-house, and 
 Robert Creedle, an old man who worked for Winterborne, 
 and stood warming his hands ; these latter being enticed in 
 by the ruddy blaze, though they had no particular business 
 there. None of them call for any remark, except, perhaps, 
 Creedle. To have completely described him it would have 
 been necessary to write a military memoir, for he wore 
 under his smock-frock a cast-off soldier's jacket that had 
 seen hot service, its collar showing just above the flap of the 
 frock; also a hunting memoir, to include the top-boots that 
 he had picked up by chance; also chronicles of voyaging 
 and shipwreck, for his pocket-knife had been given him by 
 a weather-beaten sailor. But Creedle carried about with 
 him on his uneventful rounds these silent testimonies of 
 war, sport, and adventure, and thought nothing of their 
 associations or their stories. 
 
 Copse-work, as it was called, being an occupation which 
 the secondary intelligence of the hands and arms could car- 
 ry on without requiring the sovereign attention of th? head, 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 27 
 
 the minds of its professors wandered considerably from the 
 objects before them ; hence the tales, chronicles, and ramifica- 
 tions of family history which were recounted here were of a 
 very exhaustive kind, and sometimes so interminable as to 
 defy description. 
 
 Winterborne, seeing that Melbury had not arrived, stepped 
 back again outside the door; and the conversation inter- 
 rupted by his momentary presence flowed anew, reaching 
 his ears as an accompaniment to the regular dripping of the 
 fog from the plantation boughs around. 
 
 The topic at present handled. was a highly popular and 
 frequent one — the personal character of Mrs. Charmond, 
 the owner of the surrounding woods and groves. 
 
 "My brother-in-law told me, and I have no reason to 
 doubt it," said Creedle, "that she'd sit down to her dinner 
 with a frock hardly higher than her elbows. 'Oh, you wicked 
 woman !' he said to himself when he first see her, 'you go to 
 your church, and sit, and kneel, as if your knee-jints were 
 greased with very saint's anointment, and tell off your hear- 
 us-good- Lords like a business man counting money; and 
 yet you can eat your victuals in such a figure as that!' 
 Whether she's 3 reformed character by this time I can't say ; 
 but i don't care, who the man is, that's how she went on 
 when my brother-in-law lived there." 
 
 "Did she do it in her husband's time?" 
 
 "That I don't know — hardly, I should think, considering 
 his temper. Ah !" Here Creedle threw grieved re- 
 membrance into physical form by slowly resigning his head 
 to obliquity and letting his eyes water. "That man ! 'Not 
 if the angels of heaven come down, Creedle,' he said, 'shall 
 you do another day's work for me!' Yes — he'd say any- 
 thing — anything: and would as soon take a winged creat- 
 ure's name in vain as yours or mine! Well, now I must 
 get these spars home-along, and to-morrow, thank God, 1 
 must see about using 'em." 
 
 An old woman now entered upon the scene. She was 
 Mr. Melbury's servant, and passed a great part of her time 
 in crossing the yard between the house-door and the spar- 
 shed, whither she had come now for fuel. She had two 
 facial aspects — one, of a soft and flexible kind, she used in- 
 doors when assisting about the parlor or up-stairs; th§ 
 
28 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 Other, with stiff lines and corners, when she was bustling 
 among the men in the spar-house or out-of-doors. 
 
 "Ah, Grammer Oliver," said John Upjohn, "it do do my 
 heart good to see a old woman like you so dapper and stir- 
 ring, when I bear in mind that after fifty one year counts 
 as two did afore! But your smoke didn't rise this morning 
 till twenty minutes past seven by my beater; and that's late, 
 Grammer Oliver." 
 
 "If you was a full-sized man, John, people might take 
 notice of your scornful meanings. But your growing up 
 was such a scrimped and scanty business that really a woman 
 couldn't feel hurt if you were to spit fire and brimstone itself 
 at her. Here," she added, holding out a spar-gad to one of 
 the workmen, from which dangled a long black-pudding, 
 "here's something for thy breakfast, and if you want tea 
 you must fetch it from in-doors." 
 
 "Mr. Melbury is late this morning," said the bottom- 
 sawyer. 
 
 "Yes. 'Twas a dark dawn," said Mrs. Oliver. "Even 
 when I opened the door, so late as I was, you couldn't have 
 told poor men from gentlemen, or John from a reasonable- 
 sized object. And I don't think maister's slept at all well to- 
 night. He's anxious about his daughter; and I know what 
 that is, for I've cried bucketfuls for my own." 
 
 When the old woman had gone Creedle said: 
 
 "He'll fret his gizzard green if he don't soon hear from 
 that maid of his. Well, learning is better than houses and 
 lands. But to keep a maid at school till she is' taller out of 
 pattens than her mother was in 'em — 'tis tempting Provi- 
 dence." 
 
 "It seems no time ago that she was a little playward girl," 
 said young Timothy Tangs. 
 
 "I can mind her mother," said the hollow-turner. "Al- 
 ways a teuny, delicate piece; her touch upon your hand 
 was as soft and cool as wind. She was inoculated for the 
 small-pox and had it beautifully fine, just about the time that 
 I was out of my apprenticeship — ay, and a long apprentice- 
 ship 'twas. I served that master of mine six years and three 
 hundred and fourteen days." 
 
 The hollow-turner pronounced the days with emphasis, 
 as if, considering their number, they were a rather more 
 remarkable fact than the years, 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 29 
 
 "Mr. Wintcrborne's father walked with her at one time," 
 sftid old Timothy Tangs. "But Mr. Melbury won her. She 
 was a child of a woman, and would cry like rain if so be he 
 huffed her. Whenever she and her husband came to a pud- 
 dle in their walks together he'd take her up like a half-penny 
 doll and put her over without dirting her a speck. And if he 
 keeps the daughter so long at boarding-school he'll make 
 her as nesh as her mother was. But here he comes." 
 
 Just before this moment Winterborne had seen Melbury 
 crossing the court from his door. He was carrying an open 
 letter in his hand, and came straight to Winterborne. His 
 gloom of the preceding night had quite gone. 
 
 "I'd no sooner made up my mind, Giles, to go and see 
 why Grace didn't come or write than I got a letter from her 
 — 'Clifton: Wednesday. My dear father,' says she, 'I'm 
 coming home to-morrow (that's to-day), but I didn't think 
 it worth while to write long beforehand.' The little rascal, 
 and didn't she! Now, Giles, as you are going to Sherton 
 market to-day with your apple-trees, why not join me and 
 Grace there, and we'll drive home all together?" 
 
 He made the proposal with cheerful energy; he was hard- 
 ly the same man as the man of the small, dark hours. Ever 
 it happens that even among the moodiest, the tendency to be 
 cheered is stronger than the tendency to be cast down ; and 
 a soul's specific gravity stands permanently less than that of 
 the sea of troubles into which it is thrown. 
 
 Winterborne, though not demonstrative, replied to this 
 suggestion with something like alacrity. There was not 
 much doubt that Marty's grounds for cutting off her hair 
 were substantial enough, if Ambrose's eyes had been a rea- 
 son for keeping it on. As for the timber-merchant, it was 
 plain that his invitation had been given solely in pursuance 
 of his scheme for uniting the pair. He had made up his 
 mind to the course as a duty, and was strenuously bent upon 
 following it out. 
 
 Accompanied by Winterborne, he now turned toward the 
 door of the spar-house, when his footsteps were heard by the 
 men as aforesaid. 
 
 "Well, John and Lot," he said, nodding, as he entered. 
 "A rimy morning." 
 
 "'Tis, sir!" said Creedle, energetically, for not having as 
 yet been able to summon force sufficient to go away and 
 
30 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 begin work he felt the necessity of throwing some into liis 
 speech. "I don't care who the man is, 'tis the rimiest morn- 
 ing we've had this fall." 
 
 "I heard you wondering why I've kept my daughter so 
 long at boarding-school," resumed Mr. Melbury, looking 
 up from the letter which he was reading anew by the fire, 
 and turning to them with the suddenness that was a trait 
 in him. "Hey?" he asked, with affected shrewdness. "But 
 you did, you know. Well, now, though k is my own busi- 
 ness more than anybody else's, I'll tell ye. When I was a 
 boy another boy — the pa'son's son — along with a lot of 
 others, asked me: 'Who dragged Whom around the walls 
 of What?' and I said, 'Sam Barrett, who dragged his wife in 
 a chair round the tower corner when she went to be 
 churched.' They laughed at me with such torrents of scorn 
 that I went home ashamed, and couldn't sleep for shame; 
 and I cried that night till my pillow was wet; till at last I 
 thought to myself there and then — 'They may laugh at me 
 for my ignorance, but that was father's fault, and none o' 
 my making, and I must bear it. But they shall never laugh 
 at my children, if I have any; I'll starve first!' Thank God, 
 I've been able to keep her at school without sacrifice; and 
 her scholarship is such that she stayed on as governess for 
 a time. Let 'em laugh now if they can; Mrs. Charmond 
 herself is not better informed than my girl Grace." 
 
 There was something between high indifference and 
 humble emotion in his delivery, which made it difficult for 
 them to reply. Winterborne's interest was of a kind which 
 did not show itself in words; listening, he stood by the fire, 
 mechanically stirring the embers with a spar-gad. 
 
 "You'll be, then, ready, Giles?" Melbury continued, awak- 
 ing from a reverie. "Well, what was the latest news at 
 Shottsford yesterday, Mr. Bawtree?" 
 
 "Well, Shottsford is Shottsford still — you can't victual 
 your carcass there unless you've got money; and you can't 
 buy a cup of genuine there, whether or no. But as the say- 
 ing is, 'Go abroad and you'll hear news of home.' It seems 
 that our new neighbor, this young Dr. What's-his-name, 
 is a strange, deep, perusing gentleman; and there's good 
 reason for supposing he has sold his soul to the wicked 
 
 one. 
 
 Od name it all," murmured the timber-merchant, un- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 31 
 
 impressed by the news, but reminded of other things by the 
 subject of it; "I've got to meet a gentleman this very morn- 
 ing, and yet I've planned to go to Sherton Abbas for the 
 maid." 
 
 "I won't praise the doctor's wisdom till I hear what sort 
 of bargain he's made," said the top-sawyer. 
 
 '"Tis only an old woman's tale," said Bawtree. "But 
 it seems that he wanted certain books on some mysterious 
 science or black art, and in order that the people hereabout 
 should not know anything about his dark readings, he or- 
 dered 'em direct from London, and not from the Sherton 
 bookseller. The parcel was delivered by mistake at the 
 pa'son's, and he wasn't at home ; so his wife opened it, and 
 went into hysterics when she read 'em, thinking her hus- 
 band had turned heathen, and 'twould be the ruin of the 
 children. But when he came he said he knew no more 
 about 'em than she ; and found they were this Mr. Fitzpiers' 
 property. So he wrote 'Beware!' outside, and sent 'em on 
 by the sexton." 
 
 "He must be a curious young man," mused the hollow- 
 turner. 
 
 "He must," said Timothy Tangs. 
 
 "Nonsense," said Mr. Melbury, authoritatively, "he's only 
 a gentleman fond of science, and philosophy, and poetry, 
 and in fact every kind of knowledge; and being lonely here, 
 he passes his time in making such matters his hobby." 
 
 "Well," said old Timothy, " 'tis a strange thing about doc- 
 tors that the worse they be the better they be. I mean that if 
 you hear anything of this sort about 'em, ten to one they 
 can cure ye as nobody else can." 
 
 "True," said Bawtree, emphatically. "And for my part 
 I shall take my custom from old Jones and go to this one 
 directly I've anything the matter with me. The last medi- 
 cine old Jones gave me had no taste in it at all." 
 
 Mr. Melbury, as became a well-informed man, did not 
 listen to these recitals, being moreover preoccupied with 
 the business appointment which had come into his head. 
 He walked up and down, looking on the floor — his usual 
 custom' when undecided. That stiffness about the arm, hip, 
 and knee-joint, which Avas apparent when he walked, was 
 the net product of the divers sprains and over-exertions 
 that had been required of him in handling trees and timber 
 
32 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 when a young man, for he was of the sort called self-made, 
 and had worked hard. He knew the origin of every one of 
 these cramps; that in his left shoulder had come of carrying 
 a pollard, unassisted, from Tutcombe Bottom home; that 
 in one leg was caused by the crash of an elm against it when 
 they were felling; that in the other was from lifting a bole. 
 On many a morrow after wearying himself by these prodigi- 
 ous muscular efforts, he had risen from his bed fresh as 
 usual; his lassitude had departed, apparently forever; and 
 confident in the recuperative power of his youth, he had 
 repeated the strains anew. But treacherous time had been 
 only hiding ill results when they could be guarded against, 
 for greater accumulation when they could not. In his de- 
 clining years the store had been unfolded in the form of 
 rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in every one of which 
 Melbury recognized some act which, had its consequence 
 been contemporaneously made known, he would' wisely have 
 abstained from repeating. 
 
 On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left 
 the shed. Reaching the kitchen, where the family break- 
 fasted in winter to save house-labor, he sat down by the fire, 
 and looked a long time at the pair of dancing shadows cast 
 by each fire-iron and dog-nob on the whitewashed chimney- 
 corner — a. yellow one from the window, and a blue one from 
 the fire. 
 
 "I don't quite know what to do to-day," he said to his wife 
 at last. "I've recollected that I promised to meet Mrs. 
 Charmond's steward in Round Wood at twelve o'clock, and 
 yet I want to go for Grace." 
 
 "Why not let Giles fetch her by himself? 'Twill bring 
 'em together all the quicker." 
 
 "I could do that — but I should like to go myself. I al- 
 ways have gone, without fail, every time hitherto. It has 
 been a great pleasure to drive into Sherton, and wait and 
 see her arrive; and perhaps she'll be disappointed if I stay 
 away." 
 
 "You may be disappointed, but I don't think she will, if 
 you send Giles," said Mrs. Melbury, dryly. 
 
 "Very well— I'll send him." 
 
 Melbury was often persuaded by the quietude of his wife's 
 words when strenuous argument would have had no effect. 
 This second Mrs. Melbury was a placid woman, who had 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. S3 
 
 been nurse to his child, Grace, before her mother's death. 
 After that melancholy event little Grace had clung to the 
 nurse with much affection; and ultimately Melbury, in dread 
 lest the only woman who cared for the girl should be in- 
 duced to leave her, persuaded the mild Lucy to marry him. 
 The arrangement — for it was little more — had worked 
 satisfactorily enough; Grace had thriven, and Melbury had 
 not repented. 
 
 He returned to the spar-house and found Giles near at 
 hand, to whom he explained the change of plan. "As she 
 won't arrive till five o'clock, you can get your business yery 
 well over in time to receive her," said Melbury. "The 
 green gig will do for her; you'll spin along quicker with 
 that, and won't be late upon the road. Her boxes can be 
 called for by one of the wagons." 
 
 Winterborne, knowing nothing of the timber-merchant's 
 restitutory aims, quietly thought all this to be a kindly 
 chance. Wishing, even more than her father, to dispatch 
 his apple-tree business in the market before Grace's arrival, 
 he prepared to start at once. 
 
 Melbury was careful that the turnout should be seemly. 
 The gig-wheels, for instance, were not always washed dur- 
 ing winter-time before a journey, the muddy roads render- 
 ing that labor useless; but they were washed to-day. The 
 harness was blacked, and when the rather elderly white 
 horse had been put in, and Winterborne was in his seat 
 ready to start, Mr. Melbury stepped out with a blacking- 
 brush, and with his own hands touched over the yellow 
 hoofs of the animal. 
 
 "You see, Giles," he said, as he blacked, "coming from 
 a fashionable school, she might feel shocked at the homeli- 
 ness of home ; and 'tis these little things that catch a dainty 
 woman's eye if they are neglected. We, living here alone, 
 don't notice how the whitey-brown creeps out of the earth 
 over us; but she, fresh from a city — why, she'll notice every- 
 thing!" 
 
 "That she will," said Giles. 
 
 "And scorn us if we don't mind." 
 
 "Not scorn us." 
 
 "No, no, no — ^that's only words. She's too good a girl 
 to do that. But when we consider what she knows, and 
 what she has seen since she last saw us, 'tis as well to me^t 
 
34 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 hef views as nearly as possible. Why, 'tis a year since she 
 was in this old place, owing to her going abroad in the sum- 
 mer, which I agreed to, thinking it best for her; and 
 naturally we shall look small, just at first — I only say just 
 at first." 
 
 Mr. Melbury's tone evinced a certain exultation in the 
 very sense of that inferiority he affected to deplore ; for this 
 advanced and refined being, was she not his own all the 
 time? Not so Giles; he felt doubtful — perhaps a trifle 
 cynical — for that strand was wound into him with the rest. 
 He looked at his clothes with misgiving, then with indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 It was his custom during the planting season to carry a 
 specimen apple-tree to market with him as an advertisement 
 of what he dealt in. This had been tied across the gig; and 
 as it would be left behind in the town, it would cause no 
 inconvenience to Miss Grace Melbury coming home. 
 
 He drove away, the twigs nodding with each step of the 
 horse; and Melbury went in-doors. Before the gig had 
 passed out of sight, Mr. Melbury reappeared and shouted 
 after: 
 
 "Here, Giles," he said, breathlessly, following with some 
 wraps, "it may be very chilly to-night, and she may want 
 something extra about her. And, Giles," he added, when 
 the young man, having taken the articles, put the horse in 
 motion once more, "tell her that I should have come myself, 
 but I had particular business with Mrs. Charmond's agent 
 which prevented me. Don't forget." 
 
 He watched Winterborne out of sight, saying, with a jerk 
 — a shape into which emotion with him often resolved itself 
 — "There, now, I hope the two will bring it to a point and 
 have done with it! 'Tis' a pity to let such a girl throw her- 
 self away upon him — a thousand pities! And yet 'tis my 
 duty for his father's sake. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Winterborne sped on his way to Sherton Abbas without 
 elation and without discomposure. Had he regarded his 
 inner self spectacularly, as lovers are now daily more wont 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 35 
 
 to do, he might have felt pride in the discernment of a some- 
 what rare power in him — that of keeping not only judgment 
 but emotion suspended in difificult cases. But he noted it 
 not. Neither did he observe what was also the fact, that 
 though he cherished a true and warm feeling toward Grace 
 Melbury, he was not altogether her fool just now. It must 
 be remembered that he had not seen her for a year. 
 
 Arrived at the entrance to a long flat lane, which had 
 taken the spirit out of many a pedestrian in times when, 
 with the majority, to travel meant to walk, he saw before 
 him the trim figure of a young woman in pattens, journey- 
 ing with that steadfast concentration which means purpose 
 and not pleasure. He was soon near enough to see that she 
 was Marty South. Click, click, click, went the pattens, and 
 she did not turn her head. 
 
 She had, however, become aware before this that the 
 driver of the approaching gig was Giles. She had shrunk 
 from being overtaken by him thus ; but as it was inevitable, 
 she had braced herself up for his inspection by closing her 
 lips so as to make her mouth quite unemotional, and by 
 throwing an additional firmness into her tread. 
 
 "Why do you wear pattens, Marty? The turnpike is 
 clean enough, although the lanes are muddy." 
 
 "They save my boots." 
 
 "But twelve miles in pattens — 'twill twist your feet ofif. 
 Come, get up and ride with me." 
 
 She hesitated, removed her pattens, knocked the gravel 
 out of them against the wheel, and mounted in front of the 
 nodding specimen apple-tree. She had so arranged her 
 bonnet with a full border and trimmings that her lack of long 
 hair did not much injure her appearance; though Giles of 
 course saw that it was gone, and may have guessed her mo- 
 tive in parting with it, such sales, though infrequent, being 
 not unheard of in that locality. 
 
 But nature's adornment was still hard by — in fact, within 
 two feet of him, though he did not know it. In Marty's 
 basket was a brown paper packet, and in the packet the 
 chestnut locks, which, by reason of the barber's request for 
 secrecy, she had not ventured to intrust to other hands. 
 
 Giles asked, with some hesitation, how her father was 
 getting on. 
 
 He was better, she said; he would be able to work in a 
 
36 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 day or two; he would be quite well but for his craze about 
 the tree falling on him. 
 
 "You know why I don't ask for him so often as I might, 
 I suppose?" said Winterborne. "Or don't you know?" 
 
 "I think I do." 
 
 "Because of the houses?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Yes. I am afraid it may seem that my anxiety is about 
 those houses which I should lose by his death, more than 
 about him. Marty, I do feel anxious about the houses, since 
 half my income depends upon them; but I do likewise care 
 for him; and it almost seems wrong that houses should be 
 leased for lives, so as to lead to such mixed feelings." 
 
 "After father's death they will be Mrs. Charmond's?" 
 
 "They'll be hers." 
 
 "They are going to keep company with my hair," she 
 thought. 
 
 Thus talking they reached the town. By no pressure 
 would she ride up the street with him. "That's the right 
 of another woman," she said, with playful malice, as she 
 put on her pattens. "I wonder what you are thinking of! 
 Thank you for the lift in that handsome gig. Good-bye." 
 
 He blushed a little, shook his head at her, and drove on 
 ahead into the streets: the churches, the abbey, and other 
 buildings on this clear bright morning having the liny dis- 
 tinctness of architectural drawings, as if the original dream 
 and vision of the conceiving master-mason, some mediaeval 
 Vilars or other unknown to fame, were for a few, minutes 
 flashed down through the centuries to an unappreciative age. 
 Giles saw their eloquent look on this day of transparency, 
 but could not construe it. He turned into the inn yard. 
 
 Marty, following the same track, marched promptly to 
 the hairdresser's, Mr. Percombe's. Percombe was the chief 
 of his trade in Sherton Abbas. He had the patronage of 
 such county offshoots as had been obliged to seek the shel- 
 ter of small houses in that ancient town, of the local clergy, 
 and so on, for some of whom he had made wigs, while 
 others among them had compensated for neglecting him in 
 their lifetime by patronizing him when they were dead, and 
 letting him shave their corpses. On the strength of all 
 this he had taken down his pole, and called Himself "Per- 
 ruquier to the aristocracy." 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 37 
 
 Nevertheless, this sort of support did not quite fill his 
 children's mouths, and they had to be filled. So behind 
 his house there was a little yard, reached by a passage from 
 the back street, and in that yard was a pole, and under the 
 pole a shop of quite another description than the orna- 
 mental one in the front street. Here on Saturday nights 
 from seven till ten he took an almost innumerable succes- 
 sion of twopences from the farm laborers who flocked thither 
 in crowds from the country. And thus he lived. 
 
 Marty, of course, went to the front shop, and handed 
 her packet to him silently. "Thank you," said the barber, 
 quite joyfully. "I hardly expected it after what you said 
 last night." 
 
 She turned aside, while a tear welled up and stood in 
 each eye at this reminder. 
 
 "Nothing of what I told you," he whispered, there being 
 others in the shop. "But I can trust you, I see." 
 
 She had now reached the end of this distressing business, 
 and went listlessly along the street to attend to other er- 
 rands. These occupied her till four o'clock, at which time 
 she recrossed the market-place. It was impossible to avoid 
 rediscovering Winterborne every time she passed that way, 
 for standing as he always did at this season of the year, 
 with his specimen apple-tree in the midst, the boughs rose 
 above the heads of the crowd, and brought a delightful sug- 
 gestion of orchards among the crowded buildings there. 
 When her eye fell upon him for the last time he was stand- 
 ing somewhat apart, holding the tree-like an ensign, and 
 looking on the ground instead of pushing his produce as 
 he ought to have been doing. He was, in fact, not a very 
 successful seller either of his trees or of his cider, his habit 
 of speaking his mind when he spoke at all, militating against 
 this branch of his business. 
 
 While she regarded him he suddenly lifted his eyes in a 
 direction away from Marty, his face simultaneously kind- 
 ling with recognition and surprise. She followed his gaze, 
 and saw walking across to him a flexible young creature 
 in whom she perceived the features of her she had known 
 as Miss Grace Melbury, but now looking glorified and re- 
 fined above her former level. Winterborne, being fixed to 
 the spot by his apple-tree, could not advance to meet her; 
 he held out his spare hand with his hat in it, and with some 
 
38 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 embarrassment beheld her coming on tiptoe through the 
 mud to the middle of the square where he stood. 
 
 Miss Melbury's arrival so early was, as Marty could see, 
 unexpected by Giles, which accounted for his not being 
 ready to receive her. Indeed, her father had named five 
 o'clock as her probable time, for which reason that hour 
 had been looming out all the day in his forward perspec- 
 tive, like an important edifice on a plain. Now, here she 
 was come, he knew not how, and his arranged welcome 
 stultified. 
 
 His face became gloomy at her necessity for stepping 
 into the road, and more still at the little look of embar- 
 rassment which appeared on hers at having to perform the 
 meeting with him under an apple-tree ten feet high in the 
 middle of the market-place. Having had occasion to take 
 off the new gloves which she had bought to come home in, 
 she held out to him a hand graduating from pink at the 
 tips of the fingers to white at the palm; and the recep- 
 tion formed a scene, with the tree over their heads, which 
 was not by any means an ordinary one in Sherton Abbas' 
 streets. 
 
 Nevertheless, the greeting on her looks and lips was of 
 a restrained type, which, perhaps, was not unnatural. For 
 true it was that Giles Winterborne, well-attired and well- 
 mannered as he was for a yeoman, looked rough beside her. 
 It had sometimes dimly occurred to him, in his ruminating 
 silence at Little Hintock, that external phenomena — such 
 as the lowness or height or color of a hat, the fold of a coat, 
 the make of a boot, or the chance attitude or occupation 
 of a limb at the instant of view — may have a great influence 
 upon feminine opinion of a man's worth — so frequently 
 founded upon non-essentials; but a certain causticity of 
 mental tone toward himself and the world in general had pre- 
 vented to-day, as always, any enthusiastic action on the 
 strength of that reflection; and her momentary instinct of 
 reserve at first sight of him was the penalty he paid for his 
 laxness. 
 
 He gave away the tree to a by-stander, as soon as he 
 could find one who would accept the cumbersome gift, and 
 the twain moved on toward the inn at which he had put 
 up. Marty made as if to step forward for the pleasure of 
 being recognized by Miss Melbury; but abruptly checking 
 
THE WOODLANDESRS. 39 
 
 herself, she glided behind a carrier's van, saying dryly, 
 "No; I baint wanted there," and critically regarded Winter- 
 borne's companion. 
 
 It would have been very difficult to describe Grace Mel- 
 bury with precision, either now or at any time. Nay, from 
 the highest point of view, to precisely describe a human 
 being, the focus of a universe — how impossible ! But, apart 
 from transcendentalism, there never probably lived a per- 
 son who was in herself more completely a reductio ad ab- 
 surdum of attempts to appraise a woman, even externally, 
 by items of face and figure. Speaking generally, it may be 
 said that she was sometimes beautiful, at other times not 
 beautiful, according to the state of her health and spirits. 
 
 In simple corporeal presentment she was of a fair and 
 clear complexion, rather pale than pink, slim in build and 
 elastic in movement. Her look expressed a tendency to 
 wait for others' thoughts before uttering her own ; possibly 
 also to wait for others' deeds before her own doing. In her 
 small, delicate mouth, which had perhaps hardly settled 
 down to its matured curves, there was a gentleness that 
 might hinder sufficient self-assertion for her own good. 
 She had well-formed eyebrows, which, had her portrait been 
 painted, would probably have been done in Front's or Van- 
 dyke brown. 
 
 There was nothing remarkable in her dress just now, 
 beyond a natural fitness and a style that was recent for 
 the streets of Sherton. But, indeed, had it been the re- 
 verse, and quite striking, it would have meant just as lit- 
 tle. For there can be hardly anything less connected with 
 a woman's personality than drapery which she has neither 
 designed, manufactured, cut, sewed, or even seen, except 
 by a glance of approval when told that such and such a 
 shape and color must be had because it had been decided 
 by others as imperative at that particular time. 
 
 What people, therefore, saw of her in a cursoiy view 
 was very little; in truth, mainly something that was not 
 she. The woman herself was a shadowy, conjectural 
 creature who had little to do with the outlines presented 
 to Sherton eyes ; a shape in the gloom, whose true descrip- 
 tion could only be approximated by putting together a 
 movement now and a glance then in that patient and long- 
 
40 THE WOODLANDERS 
 
 continued attentiveness which nothing but watchful, loving 
 kindness ever troubles to give. 
 
 * * ^: :}: sii * * * 
 
 There was a little delay in their setting out from the town, 
 and Marty South took advantage of it to hasten forward, 
 with the view of escaping them on the way, lest they should 
 feel compelled to spoil their tete-a-tete by askmg her to ride. 
 She walked fast, and one-third of the journey was done, and 
 the evening rapidly darkening, before she perceived any 
 sign of them behind her. Then, while ascending a hill, she 
 dimly saw their vehicle drawing near the lowest parts of the 
 incline, their heads slightly bent toward each other: drawn 
 together, no doubt, by their souls, as the heads of a pair of 
 horses well in hand are drawn in by the rein. She walked 
 still faster. 
 
 But between these and herself there was a carriage, ap- 
 parently a brougham, coming in the same direction, with 
 lighted lamps. When it overtook her, which was not 
 soon, on account of her pace — ^the scene was much darker, 
 and the lights glared in her eyes sufficiently to hide the de- 
 tails of the equipage. 
 
 It occurred to Marty that she might take hold behind 
 this carriage, and so keep along with it, to save herself the 
 mortification of being overtaken and picked up for pity's 
 sake by the coming pair. Accordingly, as the carriage 
 drew abreast of her in cUmbing the long ascent, she walked 
 close to the wheels, the rays of the nearest lamp penetrating 
 her very pores. She had only just dropped behind when 
 the carriage stopped, and to her surprise the coachman 
 asked her, over his shoulder, if she would ride. What made 
 the question more surprising was that it came in obedience 
 to an order from the interior of the vehicle. 
 
 Marty gladly assented, for she was weary, very weary, 
 after working all night and keeping afoot all day. She 
 mounted beside the coachman, wondering why this good 
 fortune had happened to her. He was rather a great man 
 in aspect, and slae did not like to inquire of him for some 
 time. 
 
 At last she said, "Who has been so kind as to ask me to 
 ride?" 
 
 "Mrs. Charmond," replied her statuesque companion. 
 
 Marty was stirred at the name, so closely connected with 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 41 
 
 her last night's experience. "Is this her carriage?" she whis- 
 pered. 
 
 "Yes; she's inside." 
 
 Marty reflected, and perceived that Mrs. Charmond must 
 have recognized her plodding up the hill under the blaze 
 of the lamp; recognized, probably, her stubby poll (since 
 she had kept away her face), and thought that those stub- 
 bles were the result of her own desire. 
 
 Marty South was not so very far wrong. Inside the car- 
 riage a pair of bright eyes looked from a ripely handsome 
 face, and though behind those bright eyes was a mind of 
 unfathomed mysteries, beneath them there beat a heart 
 capable of quick extempore warmth — a heart which could, 
 indeed, be passionately and imprudently warm on certain 
 occasions. At present, after recognizing the girl, she had 
 acted on a mere impulse, possibly feeling gratified at the 
 denuded appearance which signified the success of her agent 
 in obtaining what she had required. 
 
 "'Tis wonderful that she should ask ye," observed the 
 magisterial coachman, presently. "I have never known 
 her to do it before, for as a rule she takes no interest in the 
 village folk at all." 
 
 Marty said no more, but occasionally turned her head to 
 see if she could get a glimpse of the Olympian creature 
 who, as the coachman had truly observed, hardly ever de- 
 scended from her clouds into the Tempe of the parishion- 
 ers. But she could discern nothing of the lady. She also 
 looked for Miss Melbury and Winterborne. The nose of 
 their horse sometimes came quite near the back of Mrs. 
 Charmond's carriage. But they never attempted to pass 
 it till the latter conveyance turned toward the park gate, 
 when they sped by. Here the carriage drew up that the gate 
 might be opened, and in the momentary silence Marty 
 heard a gentle oral sound, soft as a breeze. 
 
 "What's that?" she whispered. 
 
 "Mis'ess yawning." 
 
 "Why should she yawn?" 
 
 "Oh, because she's been used to such wonderfully good 
 life, and finds it dull here. She'll soon be off again on ac- 
 count of it." 
 
 "So rich and so powerful, and yet to yawn!" the girl 
 
42 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 murmured. "Then things don't fay with she any more 
 than with we!" 
 
 Marty now ahghted ; the lamp again shone upon her, and 
 as the carriage rolled on, a soft voice said to her from the 
 interior, "Good-night." 
 
 "Good-night, ma'am," said Marty. But she had not been 
 able to see the woman who began so greatly to interest her 
 — the second person of her own sex who had operated 
 strongly on her mind that day. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Meanwhile, Winterborne and Grace Melbury had also 
 undergone their little experiences of the same homeward 
 journey. 
 
 As he drove off with her out of the town the glances of 
 people fell upon them,, the younger thinking that Mr. Win- 
 terborne was in a pleasant place, and wondering in what 
 relation he stood toward her. Winterborne himself was 
 unconscious of this. Occupied solely with the idea of hav- 
 ing her in charge, he did not notice much with outward eye, 
 neither observing how she was dressed, nor the effect of 
 the picture they together composed in the landscape. 
 
 Tlieir conversation was in briefest phrase for some time, 
 Grace being somewhat disconcerted, through not having 
 understood till they were about to start that Giles was to 
 be her sole conductor in place of her father. When they 
 were in the open country he spoke. 
 
 "Don't Brownley's farm-buildings look strange to you 
 now they have been moved bodily from the hollow where 
 the old ones stood to the top of the hill?" 
 
 She admitted that they did, though she should not have 
 seen any difference in them if he had not pointed it out. 
 
 "They had a good crop of bitter-sweets; they couldn't 
 grind them all" (nodding toward an orchard where some 
 heaps of apples had been left lying ever since the gathering). 
 
 She said "Yes," but looking at another orchard. 
 
 "Why, you are looking at John-apple-trees! You know 
 bitter-sweets — you used to well enougli!" 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 43 
 
 "I am afraid I have forgotten, and it is getting too dark 
 to distinguish." 
 
 Winterborne did not continue. It seemed as if the knowl- 
 edge and interest which had formerly moved Grace's mind 
 had quite died away from her. He wondered whether the 
 special attributes of his image in the past had evaporated 
 like these other things. 
 
 However that might be, the fact at present was merely 
 this: that where he was seeing John-apple-trees and farm- 
 buildings she was beholding a far remoter scene — a scene 
 no less innocent and simple, indeed, but much contrasting, 
 a broa.d lawn in the fashionable suburb of a fast city, the 
 evergreen leaves shining in the evening sun, amid which 
 bounding girls, gracefully clad in artistic arrangements of 
 blue, brown, red, black and white, were playing at 
 games, with laughter and chat, in all the pride of life, the 
 notes of piano and harp trembling in the air from the open 
 windows adjoining. Moreover, they were girls — and this 
 was a fact which Grace Melbury's delicate femininity could 
 not lose sight of — whose parents Giles would have addressed 
 with a deferential sir or madam. Beside this visioned scene 
 the homely farmsteads did not quite hold their own from 
 hcT present twenty-year point of survey. For all his 
 woodland sequestration Giles knew the primitive simplicity 
 of the subject he had started, and now sounded a deeper 
 note. 
 
 " 'Twas very odd what we said to each other years ago ; 
 I often think of it. I mean our saying that if we still liked 
 each other when you were twenty and I was twenty-five, 
 we'd " 
 
 "It was child's tattle." 
 
 "H'm?" said Giles, suddenly. 
 
 "I mean we were young," said she, more considerately. 
 That gruf? manner of his in making inquiries reminded her 
 that he was unaltered in much. 
 
 "Yes; I beg your pardon. Miss Melbury; your father 
 sent me to meet you to-day." 
 
 "I know it, and I am glad of it." 
 
 He seemed satisfied with her tone and went on: "At 
 that time you were sitting beside me at the back of your 
 father's covered car, when we were coming home from, 
 gypsying, all the party being squeezed in together as tight 
 
44 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 as sheep in an auction-pen. It got darker and darker, and 
 I said — I forget the exact words — but I put my arm round 
 your waist, and there you let it stay till your father, sit- 
 ting in front, suddenly stopped telling his story to Farmer 
 Bollen, to light his pipe. The flash shone into the car, and 
 showed us all up distinctly; my arm flew from your waist 
 like lightning; yet not so quickly but that some of 'em had 
 seen and laughed at us. Yet your father, to our amaze- 
 ment, instead of being angry, was mild as milk, and seemed 
 quite pleased. Have you forgot all that, or haven't you?" 
 
 She owned that she remembered it very well, now that 
 he mentioned the circumstances. "But, goodness, I must 
 have been in short frocks," she said. 
 
 "Come, now, Miss Melbury, that won't do! Short frocks, 
 indeed! You know better, as well as I." 
 
 Grace thereupon declared that she would not argue with 
 an old friend she valued so highly as she valued him, say- 
 ing the words with the easy elusiveness that will be polite 
 at all costs. It might possibly be true, she added, that she 
 was getting on in girlhood when that event took place ; but 
 if it were so, then she was virtually no less than an old 
 woman now, so far did the time seem removed from her 
 present. "Do you ever look at things philosophically in- 
 stead of personally?" she asked. 
 
 "I can't say that I do," answered Giles, his eyes linger- 
 ing far ahead upon a dark spot, which proved to be a 
 brougham. 
 
 "I think you may, sometimes, with advantage," said 
 she. "Look at yourself as a pitcher drifting on the stream 
 with other pitchers, and consider what contrivances are most 
 desirable for avoiding cracks in general, and not only for 
 saving your poor one. Shall I tell you all about Bath or 
 Cheltenham, or places on the Continent that I visited last 
 summer?" 
 
 "With all my heart." 
 
 She then described places and persons in such terms as 
 might have been used for that purpose by any woman to 
 any man within the four seas, so entirely absent from that 
 description was everything specially appertaining to her 
 own existence. When she had done she said, gayly, "Now, 
 do you tell me in return what has happened in IJintock since 
 I have been away." 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 45 
 
 "Anything to keep the conversation away from her and 
 me," said Giles within him. 
 
 It was true, cultivation had so far advanced in the soil, of 
 Miss Melbury's mind as to lead her to talk by rote of any- 
 thing save of that she knew well, and had the greatest in- 
 terest in developing — ^that is to say, herself. 
 
 He had not proceeded far with his somewhat bald narra- 
 tion, when they drew near the carriage which had been pre- 
 ceding them for some time. Miss Melbury inquired if he 
 knew whose carriage it was. 
 
 Winterborne, although he had seen it, had not taken it 
 into account. On examination he said it was Mrs. Char- 
 mond's. 
 
 Grace watched the vehicle and its easy roll, and seemed 
 to feel more nearly akin to it than the one she was in. 
 
 "Pooh! We can poHsh oS the mileage as well as they, 
 come to that," said Winterborne, reading her mind; and, 
 rising to emulation at what it bespoke, he whipped on the 
 horse. This it was which had brought the nose of Mr. Mel- 
 bury's old gray close to the back of Mrs. Charmond's much 
 eclipsing vehicle. 
 
 "There's Marty South sitting up with the coachman," 
 said he, discerning her by her dress. 
 
 "Ah, poor Marty! I must ask her to come to see me 
 this very evening. How does she happen to be riding 
 there?" 
 
 "I don't know. It is very singular." 
 
 Thus these people with converging destinies went along 
 the road together, till Winterborne, leaving the track of 
 the carriage, turned into Little Hintock, where almost the 
 first house was the timber merchant's. Pencils of dancing 
 light streamed out of the windows sufficiently to show the 
 white laurestinus flowers, and glance over the polished 
 leaves of laurel. The interior of the rooms could be seen 
 distinctly, warmed up by the fire-flames, which in the par- 
 lor were reflected from the glass of the pictures and book- 
 case, and in the kitchen from the utensils and ware. 
 
 "Let us look at the dear place for a moment before we 
 call them," she said. 
 
 In the kitchen dinner was preparing; for though Mel- 
 bury dined at one o'clock at other times, to-day the meal 
 had been kept back for Grace. A rickety old spit was in 
 motion, its end being fixed in the fire-dog, and the whole 
 
46 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 kept going by means of a cord conveyed over pulleys 
 along the ceiling to a large stone suspended in a corner of 
 the room. Old Grammer Oliver came and wound it up with 
 a rattle like that of a mill. 
 
 In the parlor a large shade of Mrs. Melbury's head fell 
 on the wall and ceiling; but before the girl had regarded 
 this room many moments their presence was discovered, 
 and her father and step-mother came out to welcome her. 
 
 The character of the Melbury family was of that kind 
 which evinces some shyness in showing strong emotion 
 among each other: a trait frequent in rural households, and 
 one which stands in curiously inverse relation to most of 
 the peculiarities distinguishing villagers from the people of 
 towns. Thus hiding their warmer feelings under common- 
 place talk all round, Grace's reception produced no extr.i- 
 ordinary demonstrations. But that more was felt than was 
 enacted appeared from the fact that her father, in taking her 
 indoors, quite forgot the presence of Giles without, as did 
 also Grace herself. He said nothing, but took the gig round 
 to the yard and called out from the spar-house the man who 
 particularly attended to these matters when there was no 
 conversation to draw him oflf among the copse-workers in- 
 side. Winterborne then returned to the door with the in- 
 tention of entering the house. 
 
 The family had gone into the parlor, and were still ab- 
 sorbed in themselves. The fire was, as before, the only 
 light, and it irradiated Grace's face and hands so as to make 
 them look wondrously smooth and fair beside those of the 
 two elders; shining also through the loose hair about her 
 temples as sunlight through a brake. Her father was survey- 
 ing her in a dazed conjecture, so much had she developed 
 and progressed in manner and stature since he last had set 
 eyes on her. 
 
 Observing these things, Winterborne remained dubious 
 by the door, mechanically tracing with his fingers certain 
 time-worn letters carved in the jambs — initials of by-gone 
 generations of households who had lived and died there. 
 
 No, he declared to himself, he would not enter and join 
 the family; they had forgotten him, and it was enough for 
 to-day that he had brought her home. Still, he was a lit- 
 tle surprised that her father's eagerness to send him for 
 Grace should have resulted in such an anti-climax as this. 
 
THE WOODL/INDBRS. 47 
 
 He walked softly away into the lane toward his own 
 house, looking back when he reached the turning, from 
 which he could get a last glimpse of the timber merchant's 
 roof. He hazarded guesses as to what Grace was saying 
 just at that moment, and murmured, with some self-derision, 
 "nothing about me !" He looked also in the other direction, 
 and saw against the sky the thatched hip and solitary chim- 
 ney of Marty's cottage, and thought of her too, struggling 
 bravely along under that humble shelter, among her spar- 
 gads and pots and skimmers. 
 
 At the timber merchant's, in the meantime, the conver- 
 sation flowed; and, as Giles Winterborne had rightly 
 enough deemed, on subjects in which he had no share. 
 Among the excluding matters there was, for one, the effect 
 upon Mr. Melbury of the womanly mien and manners of 
 his daughter, which took him so much unawares that, 
 though it did not make him absolutely forget the existence 
 of her conductor homeward, thrust Giles' image back into 
 quite the obscurest cellarage of his brain. Another was 
 his interview with Mrs. Charmond's agent that morning, 
 at which the lady herself had been present for a few min- 
 utes. Melbury had purchased some standing timber from 
 her a long time before, and now that the date had come for 
 felling it he was left to pursue almost his own course. Tliis 
 was what the household were actually talking of during 
 Giles' cogitation without; and Melbury's satisfaction with 
 the clear atmosphere that had arisen between himself and 
 the deity of the groves which inclosed his residence was the 
 cause of a counterbalancing mistiness on the side toward 
 Winterborne. 
 
 "So thoroughly does she trust me," said Melbury, "that 
 I might fell, top, or lop, on my own judgment, any stick o' 
 timber whatever in her wood, and fix the price o't, and set- 
 tle the matter. But name it all, I won't do such a thing. 
 However, it may be useful to have this good understand- 
 ing with her. ... I wish she took more interest in the 
 place, and stayed here all the year round." 
 
 "I am afraid 'tis not her regard for you, but her dislike 
 of Hintock, that makes her so easy about the trees," said 
 Mrs. Melbury. 
 
 iWhen dinner was over, Grace took a candle and began 
 
48 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 to ramble pleasurably through the rooms of her old home, 
 from which she had latterly become well-nigh an alien. Each 
 nook and each object revived a memory, and simultaneous- 
 ly modified it. The chambers seemed lower than they had 
 appeared on any previous occasion of her return, the sur- 
 faces of both walls and ceilings standing in such relations 
 to the eye that it could not avoid taking microscopic note 
 of their irregularities and old fashion. Her own bedroom 
 wore at once a look more familiar than when she had left it, 
 and yet a face estranged. The world of little things therem 
 gazed at her in helpless stationariness, as though they had 
 tried and been unable to make any progress without her pres- 
 ence. Over the place where her candle had been accustomed 
 to stand, when she had used to read in bed till the midnight 
 hour, there was still the brown spot of smoke. She did not 
 know that her father had taken especial care to keep it from 
 being cleaned off. 
 
 Having concluded her perambulation of this now use- 
 lessly commodious edifice, Grace began to feel that she had 
 come a long journey since the morning; and when her 
 father had been up himself, as well as his wife, to see that 
 her room was comfortable and the fire burning, she pre- 
 pared to retire for the night. No sooner, however, was she 
 in bed than her momentary sleepiness took itself off, and 
 she wished she had stayed up longer. She amused herself 
 by listening to the old familiar noises that she could hear 
 to be still going on down-stairs, and by looking toward the 
 window as she lay. The blind had been drawn up, as she 
 used to have it when a girl, and she could just discern the 
 dim tree-tops against the sky on the neighboring hill. Be- 
 neath this meeting-line of light and shade nothing was visi- 
 ble save one solitary point of light, which blinked as the 
 tree-twigs waved to and fro before its beams. From its 
 position it seemed to radiate from the window of a house 
 on the hillside. The house had been empty when she was 
 last at home, and she wondered who inhabited the place 
 now. 
 
 Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, 
 and she was watching the light quite idly, when it gradu- 
 ally changed color, and at length shone blue as sapphire. 
 Thus it remained several minutes, and then it passed 
 through violet to red. 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 49 
 
 Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenome- 
 non that she sat up in bed, and stared steadily at the shine. 
 An appearance of this sort, sufficient to excite attention any- 
 where, was no less than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had 
 known the hamlet. Almost every diurnal and nocturnal 
 effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct 
 result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the 
 season's changes ; but here was something dissociated from 
 these normal sequences, and foreign to local habit and 
 knowledge. 
 
 It was about this moment that Grace heard the house- 
 hold below preparing to retire, the most emphatic noise in 
 the proceeding being that of her father bolting the doors. 
 Then the stairs creaked, and her father and mother passed 
 her chamber. The last to come was Grammer Oliver. 
 
 Grace slid out of bed, ran across the room, and lifting 
 the latch, said, "I am not asleep, Grammer. Come in and 
 talk to me." 
 
 Before the old woman had entered, Grace was again 
 under the bedclothes. Grammer set down her candlestick, 
 and seated herself on the edge of Miss Melbury's coverlet. 
 
 "I want you to tell me what light that is I see on the 
 hill-side," said Grace. 
 
 Mrs. Oliver looked across. "Oh, that," she said, "is from 
 the doctor's. He's often doing things of that sort. Perhaps 
 you don't know that we've a doctor living here now — Mr. 
 Fitzpiers by name?" 
 
 Grace admitted that she had not heard of him. 
 
 "Well, then, miss, he's come here to get up a practice. 
 I know him very well, through going there to help 'em 
 scrub sometimes, which your father said I might do, if I 
 wanted to, in my spare time. Being a bachelor-man, he've 
 only a lad in the liouse. Oh, yes, I know him very well. 
 Sometimes he'll talk to me as if I were his own mother." 
 
 "Indeed." 
 
 "Yes. 'Grainmer,' he said one day, when I asked him 
 why he came here where there's hardly anybody living, 
 'I'll tell you why I came here. I took a map, and I marked 
 on it where Dr. Jones' practice ends to the north of this dis- 
 trict, and where Mr. Taylor's ends on the south, and little 
 Jimmy Green's on the east, and somebody else's to the 
 west. Then I took a pair of compasses, and found the exact 
 
50 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 middle of the country that was left between these bounds 
 and that middle was Little Hintock; so here I am.' But 
 Lord, there: poor young man!" 
 "Why?" 
 
 "He said, 'Grammer Oliver, I've been here three months 
 and although there are a good many people in the Hintocki 
 and the villages round, and a scattered practice is often < 
 very good one, I don't seem to get many patients. Anc 
 there's no society at all; and I'm pretty near melanchol) 
 mad,' he said, with a great yawn. 'I should be quite if i1 
 were not for my books, and my lab — laboratory, and what 
 not. Grammer, I was made for higher things.' And then 
 he'd yawn and yawn again." 
 
 "Was he really made for higher things, do you think; 
 I mean, is he clever?" 
 
 "Well, no. How can he be clever? He may be able to 
 jine up a broken man or woman after a fashion, and put 
 his finger upon an ache if you tell him nearly where 'tis; 
 but these young men — ^they should live to my time of life, 
 and then they'd see how clever they were at five-and-twenty! 
 And yet he's a projick, a real projick, and says the oddest 
 of rozums. 'Ah, Grammer,' he said, at another time, 'let 
 me tell you that Everything is Nothing. There's only Me 
 and not Me in the whole world.' And he told me that no 
 man's hands could help what they did, any more than the 
 hands of a clock. Yes, he's a man of strange meditations, 
 and his eyes seem to see as far as the north star." 
 "He will soon go away, no doubt." 
 "I don't think so." Grace did not say "Why?" and Gram- 
 mer hesitated. At last she went on : "Don't tell your father 
 or mother, miss, if I let you know a secret?" 
 Grace gave the required promise. 
 
 "Well, he talks of buying me ; so he won't go away just 
 yet." 
 
 "Buying you! how?" 
 
 "Not my soul — my body, when I'm dead. One day when 
 I was there cleaning, he said, 'Grammer, you've a large 
 brain — a very large organ of brain,' he said. 'A woman's 
 is usually four ounces less than a man's; but yours is man's 
 size.' Well, then — hee, hee! — after he'd flattered me a bit 
 like that, he said he'd give me ten pounds to have me as a 
 natomy after my death. Well, knowing I'd no chick nor 
 4 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 51 
 
 chiel left, and nobody with any interest in me, I thought, 
 faith, if I could be of any use to my fellow-creatures after 
 I'm gone they are welcome to my services ; so I said I'd think 
 it over, and would most likely agree and take the ten pounds. 
 Now this is a secret, miss, between us two. The money 
 would be very useful to me ; and I see no harm in it." 
 
 "Of course there's no harm. But, oh, Grammer — how 
 can you think to do it! I wish you hadn't told ifte." 
 
 "I' wish I hadn't — if you don't Uke to know it, miss. 
 But you needn't mind. Lord — hee, hee ! — I shall keep him 
 waiting many a year yet, bless ye !" 
 
 "I hope you will, I am sure." 
 
 The girl thereupon fell into such deep reflection that con- 
 versation languished, and Grammer Oliver, taking her can- 
 dle, wished Miss Melbury good-night. The latter's eyes 
 rested on the distant glimmer, around which she allowed 
 her reasoning fancy to play in vague eddies that shaped the 
 doings of the philosopher behind that light on the lines of 
 intelligence just received. It was strange to her to come 
 back from the world to Little Hintock and find in one of 
 its nooks, like a tropical plant in a hedge-row, a nucleus 
 of advanced ideas and practices which had nothing in com- 
 mon with the life around. Chemical experiments, anatomi- 
 cal projects, and metaphysical conceptions had found a 
 strange home here. 
 
 Thus she remained thinking, the imagined pursuits of 
 the man behind the light intermingling with conjectural 
 sketches of his personality, till her eyes fell together with 
 their own heaviness, and she slept. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Kaleidoscopic dreams of a weird alchemist-surgeon, 
 Grammer Oliver's skeleton, and the face of Giles Winter- 
 borne, brought Grace Melbury to the morning of the next 
 day. It was fine. A north wind was blowing — ^that not 
 unacceptable compromise between the atmospheric cutlery 
 of the eastern blast and the spongy gales of the west quarter. 
 She looked from her window in the direction of the light 
 of the previous evening, and could just discern through the 
 
52 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 trees the shape of the surgeon's house. Somehow, in the 
 broad, practical daylight, that unknown and lonely gentle- 
 man seemed to be shorn of much of the interest which had 
 invested his personality and pursuits in the hours of dark- 
 ness, and as Grace's dressing proceeded he faded from her 
 mind. 
 
 Meanwhile, Winterborne, though half assured of her 
 father's favor, was rendered a little restless by Miss Mel- 
 buiV's behavior. Despite his dry self-control, he could not 
 help looking continually from his own door toward the tim- 
 ber merchant's, in the probability of somebody's emergence 
 therefrom. His attention was at length justified by the ap- 
 pearance of two figures, that of Mr. Melbury himself, and 
 Grace beside him. They stepped out in a direction toward 
 the densest quarter of the wood, and Winterborne walked 
 contemplatively behind them, till all three were soon under 
 the trees. 
 
 Although the time of bare boughs had now set in, there 
 were sheltered hollows amid the Hintock plantations and 
 copses in which a more tardy leave-taking than on windy 
 summits was the rule with the foliage. This caused here 
 and there an apparent mixture of the seasons; so that in 
 some of the dells that they passed by holly-berries in full 
 red were found growing beside oak and hazel whose leaves 
 were as yet not far removed from green, and brambles 
 whose verdure was rich and deep as in the month of August. 
 To Grace these well-known peculiarities were as an old 
 painting restored. 
 
 Now could be beheld that change from the handsome to 
 the curious which the features of a wood undergo at the 
 ingress of the winter months. Angles were taking the place 
 of curves, and reticulations of surfaces — a change constitut- 
 ing a sudden lapse from the ornate to the primitive on Na- 
 ture's canvas, and comparable to a retrogressive step from 
 the art of an advanced school of painting to that of the Pa- 
 cific Islander. 
 
 Winterborne followed, and kept his eye upon the two 
 figures as they threaded their way through these sylvan 
 phenomena. Mr. Melbury's long legs, and gaiters drawn 
 in to the bone at the ankles, his slight stoop, his habit of 
 getting lost in thought and arousing himself with an ex- 
 clamation of "Hah!" accompanied with an upward jerk" 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 53 
 
 of the head, composed a personage recognizable by his 
 neighbors as far as he could be seen. It seemed as if the 
 squirrels and birds knew him. One of the former would oc- 
 casionally run from the path to hide behind the arm of 
 some tree, which the little animal carefully edged round pari 
 passu with Melbury and his daughter's movement onward, 
 assuming a mock manner^ as though he were saying: "Ho, 
 ho; you are only a timber merchant, and carry no gun!" 
 
 They went noiselessly over mats of starry moss, rustled 
 through interspersed tracts of leaves, skirted trunks with 
 spreading roots, whose mossed rinds made them like hands 
 wearing green gloves; elbowed old elms and ashes with 
 great forks, in which stood pools of water that overflowed 
 on rainy days, and ran down their stems in green cascades. 
 On older trees still than these, huge lobes of fungi grew 
 like lungs. Here, as everywhere, the unfulfilled intention, 
 which makes life what it is, was as obvious as it could be 
 among the depraved- crowds of a city slum. The leaf was 
 deformed, the curve was crippled, the taper was inter- 
 rupted; the lichen ate the vigor out of the stalk, and the 
 ivy slowly strangled to death the promising sapling. 
 
 They dived amid beeches under which nothing grew, the 
 younger boughs still retaining their hectic leaves, that rus- 
 tled in the breeze with a sound almost metallic, like the 
 sheet-iron foliage of the fabled Jamvid wood. Some flecks 
 of white in Grace's drapery had enabled Giles to keep her 
 and her father in view till this time ; but now he lost sight 
 of them, and was obliged to follow by ear — no difficult 
 matter, for on the line of their course every wood-pigeon 
 rose from its perch with a continued clash, dashing its wings 
 against the branches with well-nigh force enough to break 
 every quill. By taking the track of this noise he soon came 
 to a stile. 
 
 Was it worth while to go further? He examined the 
 doughy soil at the foot of the stile, and saw among the 
 large sole-and-heel tracks an impression of a slighter kind 
 from a boot that was obviously not local, for Winterborne 
 knew all the cobblers' patterns in that district, because they 
 were very few to know. The mud-picture was enough to 
 make him swing himself over and proceed. 
 
 The character of the woodland now changed. The bases 
 of the smaller trees were nibbled bare by rabbits, and at 
 
54 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 divers points heaps of fresh-made chips, and the newly-cut 
 stool of a tree, stared white through the undergrowth. There 
 had been a large fall of timber this year, which explained the 
 meaning of some sounds that soon reached him. 
 
 A voice was shouting intermittently in a sort of human 
 bark, which reminded Giles that there was a sale of trees 
 and fagots that very day. Melbury would naturally be pres- 
 ent. Thereupon Winterborne remembered that he himself 
 wanted a few fagots, and entered upon the scene. 
 
 A large group of buyers stood round the auctioneer, or 
 followed him, when, between his pauses, he wandered on 
 from one lot of plantation produce to another, like some 
 philosopher of the Peripatetic school delivering his lectures 
 in the shady groves of the Lyceum. His companions were 
 timber-dealers, yeomen, farmers, villagers, and others; 
 mostly woodland men, who on that account could afford 
 to be curious in their walking-sticks, which consequently 
 exhibited various monstrosities of vegetation, the chief being 
 corkscrew shapes in black and white thorn, brought to that 
 pattern by the slow torture of an encircling woodbine dur- 
 ing their growth, as the Chinese have been said to mold hu- 
 man beings into grotesque toys by continued compression in 
 infancy. Two women, wearing men's jackets on their gowns, 
 conducted in the rear of the halting procession a pony-cart 
 containing a tapped barrel of beer, from which they drew and 
 replenished horns that were handed round, with bread and 
 cheese from a basket. 
 
 The auctioneer adjusted himself to circumstances by using 
 his walking-stick as a hammer, and knocked down the lot 
 on any convenient object that took his fancy, such as the 
 crown of a little boy's head, or the shoulders of a bystander 
 who had no business there except to taste the brew ; a pro- 
 ceeding which would have been deemed humorous but for 
 the air of stern rigidity which that auctioneer's face pre- 
 served, tending to show that the eccentricity was a result of 
 that absence of mind which is engendered by the press of 
 affairs, and no freak of fancy at all. 
 
 Mr. Melbury stood slightly apart from the rest of the 
 peripatetics, and Grace beside him, clinging closely to his 
 arm, her modern attire looking almost odd where every- 
 thing else was old-fashioned, and throwing over the famil- 
 iar garniture of the trees a homeliness that seemed to de- 
 
THE WOOJDLANDBRS. 65 
 
 mand improvement by the addition of a few contemporary 
 novelties also. Grace seemed to regard the selling' with 
 the interest which attaches to memories revived after an 
 interval of obliviousness. 
 
 Winterborne went and stood close to them; the timber 
 merchant spoke, and continued his buying; Grace merely 
 smiled. To justify his presence there Winterborne began 
 bidding for timber and fagots that he did not want, pursu- 
 ing the occupation in an abstracted mood, in which the 
 auctioneer's voice seemed to become one of the natural 
 sounds of the woodland. A few flakes of snow descended, 
 at the sight of which a robin, alarmed at these signs of im- 
 minent winter, and seeing that no offense was meant by 
 the human invasion, came and perched on the tip of the 
 fagots that were being sold, and looked into the auction- 
 eer's face, while waiting for some chance crumb from the 
 bread-basket. Standing a little behind Grace, Winter- 
 borne observed how one flake would sail downward and 
 settle on a curl of her hair, and how another would choose 
 her shoulder, and another the edge of her bonnet, which took 
 up so much of his attention that his biddings proceeded 
 incoherently; and when the auctioneer said every now and 
 then, with a nod toward him, "Yoiu's, Mr. Winterborne," 
 he had no idea whether he had bought fagots, poles or log- 
 wood. 
 
 He regretted, with some causticity of humor, that her 
 father should show such inequalities of temperament as to 
 keep Grace tightly on his arm to-day, when he had quite 
 lately seemed anxious to recognize their betrothal as a 
 fact. And thus musing, and joining in no conversation 
 with other buyers except when directly addressed, he fol- 
 lowed the assemblage hither and thither till the end of the 
 auction, when Giles for the first time realized what his pur- 
 chases had been. Hundreds of fagots, and divers lots of 
 timber, had been set down to him, when all he had required 
 had been a few bundles of spray for his odd man Robert 
 Creedle's use in baking and Hghting fires. 
 
 Business being over, he turned to speak to the timber 
 merchant. But Melbury's manner was short and distant; 
 and Grace, too, looked vexed and reproachful. Winter- 
 !;orne then discovered that he had been unwittingly bidding 
 ? gainst her father, and picking up his favorite lots in spite 
 
S6 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 of him. With a very few words they left the spot and pur- 
 sued their way homeward. 
 
 Giles was extremely sorry at what he had done, and re- 
 mained standing under the trees, all the other men having 
 strayed silently away. He saw Melbury and his daughter 
 pass down a glade without looking back. While they moved 
 slowly through it a lady appeared on horseback in the mid- 
 dle distance, the line of her progress converging upon that 
 of Melbury's. They met, Melbury took off his hat, and she 
 reined in her horse. A conversation was evidently in pro- 
 gress between Grace and her father and this equestrian, 
 in whom he was almost sure that he recognized Mrs. Char- 
 mond, less by her outline than by the livery of the groom 
 who had halted some yards off. 
 
 The interlocutors did not part till after a prolonged pause, 
 during which much seemed to be said. When Melbury 
 and Grace resumed their walk it was with something of a 
 lighter tread than before. 
 
 Winterborne then pursued his own course homeward. 
 He was unwilling to let coldness grow up between himself 
 and the Melburys for any trivial reason, and in the even- 
 ing he went to their house. On drawing near the gate his 
 attention was attracted by the sight of one of the bedrooms 
 blinking into a state of illumination. In it stood Grace 
 lighting several candles, her right hand elevating the taper, 
 her left hand on her bosom, her face thoughtfully fixed on 
 each wick as it kindled, as if she saw in every flame's growth 
 the rise of a life to maturity. He wondered what such un- 
 usual brilliancy could mean to-night On getting indoors he 
 found her father and stepmother in a state of suppressed 
 excitement, which at first he could not comprehend. 
 
 "I am sorry about my biddings to-day," said Giles. "I 
 don't know what I was doing. I have come to say that any 
 of the lots you may require are yours." 
 
 "Oh, never mind — never mind," replied the timber mer- 
 chant, with a slight wive of his hand. "I have so much else 
 to think of that I nearly had forgot it. Just now, too, there 
 are matters of a dififerent kind from trade to attend to, so 
 don't let it concern ye." 
 
 As the timber merchant spoke, as it were, down to him 
 from a higher moral plane than his own, Giles turned to 
 Mrs. Melbury. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 57 
 
 "Grace is going to the House to-morrow," she said, quiet- 
 ly. 'She is looking out her things now. I dare say she is 
 wanting me this minute to assist her." Thereupon Mrs. Mel- 
 bury left the room. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the independent per- 
 sonality of the tongue now and then. Mr. Melbury knew 
 that his words had been a sort of boast. He decried boast- 
 ing, particularly to Giles; yet whenever the subject was 
 Grace, his judgment resigned the ministry of speech in spite 
 of him. 
 
 Winterborne felt surprise, pleasure, and also a little ap- 
 prehension at the news. He repeated Mrs. Melbury's words. 
 
 "Yes," said paternal pride, not sorry to have dragged 
 out of him what he could not in any circumstances have 
 kept in. "Coming home from the woods this afternoon 
 we met Mrs. Charmond out for a ride. She spoke to me 
 on a little matter of business, and then got acquainted with 
 Grace. 'Twas wonderful how she took to Grace in a few- 
 minutes; that freemasonry of education made 'em close at 
 once. Naturally enough she was amazed that such an arti- 
 cle — ha, ha! — could come out of my house. At last it led 
 on to Mis'ess Grace being asked to the House. So she's 
 busy hunting up her frills and furbelows to go in." As Giles 
 remained in thought without responding, Melbury con- 
 tinued: "But I'll call her down-stairs?" 
 
 "No, no; don't do that, since she's busy," said Winter- 
 tiorne. i 
 
 Melbury, feeling" from the young man's manner that his 
 own talk had been too much at Giles and too little to him, 
 repented at once. His face changed, and he said, in lower 
 tones, with an effort: "She's yours, Giles, as far as I am 
 concerned." 
 
 "Thanks, my best thanks. But I think, since it is all 
 right between us abotit the biddings, that I'll not interrupt 
 her now. I'll step homeward and call another time." 
 
 On leaving the house he looked up at the bedroom again. 
 Grace, surrounded by a sufficient number of candles to an- 
 swer all purposes of self-criticism, was standing before a 
 clieval glass that her father had lately bought expressly 
 for her use; she was bonneted, cloaked, and gloved, and 
 glanced over her shoulder into the mirror, estimating her 
 ■aspect. Her face was lit with the natural elation of a young 
 
58 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 girl hoping to inaugurate on the morrow an intimate ac- 
 quaintance, with a new, interesting and powerful friend. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The inspiriting appointment which had led Grace Mel- 
 bury to indulge in a six-candle illumination for the arrange- 
 ment of her attire, carried her over the ground the next 
 morning with a springy tread. Her sense of being properly 
 appreciated on her own native soil seemed to brighten the 
 atmosphere and herbage around her, as the glowworm's 
 lamp irradiates the grass. Thus she moved along, a vessel 
 of emotion going to empty itself on she knew not what. 
 
 Twenty minutes' walking through copses, over a stile, and 
 along an upland lawn, brought her to the verge of a deep 
 glen, at the bottom of which Hintock House appeared im- 
 mediately beneath her eye. To describe it as standing in a 
 hollow would not express the situation of the manor-house ; 
 it stood in a hole, notwithstanding that the hole was full of 
 beauty. From the spot which Grace had reached a stone 
 could easily have been thrown over, or into the birds'-nested 
 chimneys of the mansion. Its walls were surmounted by a 
 battlemented parapet; but the gray lead roofs were quite visi- 
 ble behind, with their gutters, laps, rolls, and skylights, to- 
 gether with incised letterings and shoe-patterns cut by idlers 
 thereon. 
 
 The front of the house exhibited an ordinary manorial 
 representation of Elizabethan windows, muUioned and 
 hooded, worked in rich snuiif-colored freestone from local 
 quarries. The ashlar of the walls, where not overgrown 
 with ivy and other creepers, was coated with lichen of 
 every shade, intensifying its luxuriance with its nearness 
 to the ground, till, below the plinth, it merged in moss. 
 
 Above the house to the back was a dense plantation, the 
 roots of whose trees were above the level of the chimneys. 
 The corresponding high ground on which Grace stood was 
 richly grassed, with only an old tree here and there. A 
 few sheep lay about, which, as they ruminated, looked quiet- 
 ly into the bedroom windows. The situation of the house, 
 prejudicial to htim^nity, was a stimulus to vegetation, on 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 69 
 
 which account an endless shearing of the heavy-armed ivy 
 was necessary, and a continual lopping of trees and shrubs. 
 It was an edifice built in times when human constitutions 
 were damp-proof, when shelter from the boisterous was all 
 that men thought of in choosing a dwelling-place, the insid- 
 ious being beneath their notice; and its hollow site was an 
 ocular reminder, by its unfitness for modern lives, of the 
 fragility to which these have declined. The highest archi- 
 tectural cunning could have done nothing to make Hintock 
 House dry and salubrious: and ruthless ignorance could 
 have done little to make it unpicturesque. It was vegetable 
 nature's own home ; a spot to inspire the painter and poet of 
 still life — if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing 
 atmosphere — and to draw groans from the gregariously 
 disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a zig- 
 zag path into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope. 
 The exterior of tke house had been familiar to her from her 
 childhood, but she had never been inside, and the approach 
 to knowing an old thing in a new way was a lively experi- 
 ence. It was with a little flutter that she was shown in; but 
 she recollected that Mrs. Charmond would probably be 
 alone. Up to a few days before this time that lady had been 
 accompanied in her comings, stayings, and goings by a 
 relative believed to be her aunt; latterly, however, these 
 two ladies had separated, owing, it was supposed, to a quar- 
 rel, and Mrs. Charmond had been left desolate. Being pre- 
 sumably a woman who did not care for solitude, this depriva- 
 tion might possibly account for her sudden interest in Grace. 
 
 Mrs._ Charmond was at the end of a gallery opening from 
 the hall when Miss Melbury was announced, and saw her 
 through the glass doors between them. She came forward 
 with a smile on her face, and told the young girl it was 
 good of her to come. 
 
 "Ah! you have noticed those," she said, seeing that 
 Grace's eyes were attracted by some curious objects 
 against the walls. "They are man-traps. My husband was 
 a connoisseur in man-traps and spring-guns and such arti- 
 ticles, collecting them from all his neighbors. He knew 
 the histories of all these — which gin had broken a man's 
 leg, which gun had killed a man. That one, I remember 
 his saying, had been set by a game-keeper in the track of 
 a notorious poacher; but the keeper, forgetting what he had 
 
60 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 done, went that way himself, received the charge in the 
 lower part of his body, and died of the wound. I don't 
 like them here, but I've never yet given directions for them 
 to be taken away." She added, playfully, "Man-traps are 
 of rather ominous significance where a person of our sex 
 lives, are they not?" 
 
 Grace was bound to smile, but that side of womanliness 
 ■was one which her inexperience had no great zest in con- 
 templating. 
 
 "They are interesting, no doubt, as relics of a barbarous 
 time happily past," she said, looking thoughtfully at the 
 varied designs of these instruments of torture — some witli 
 semicircular jaws, some with rectangular; most of them 
 with long, sharp teeth, but a few with none, so that their 
 jaws looked Hke the blank gums of old age. 
 
 "Well, we must not take them too seriously,'' said Mrs. 
 Charmond, with an indolent turn of her head, and they 
 moved on inward. When she had shown her visitor differ- 
 ent articles in cabinets that she deemed likely to interest 
 her, some tapestries, wood-carvings, ivories, miniatures, and 
 so on — always with a mien of listlessness which might either 
 have been constitutional, or partly owing to the situation of 
 the place — ^they sat down to an early cup of tea. 
 
 "Will you pour it out, please? Do," she said, leaning 
 back in her chair, and placing her hand above her fore- 
 head, while her almond eyes — ^those long eyes so common 
 to the angelic legions of early Italian art — became longer, 
 and her voice more languishing. She showed that oblique- 
 mannered softness which is, perhaps, most frequent in wom- 
 en of darker complexion and more lymphatic temperament 
 than Mrs. Charmond's was; who lingeringly smile their 
 meanings to men rather than speak them, who inveigle 
 rather than prompt, and take advantage of currents rather 
 than steer. 
 
 "I am the most inactive woman when I am here," she 
 said. "I think sometimes I was born to live and do noth- 
 ing, nothing, nothing but float about, as we fancy we do 
 sometimes in dreams. But that cannot be really my des- 
 tiny, and I must struggle against such fancies." 
 
 "I am so sorry you do not enjoy exertion — it is quite sad ! 
 I wish I could tend you and make you very happy." 
 
 There was something so sympathetic, so appreciative, in 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. Gl 
 
 the sound- of Grace's voice, that it impelled people to play 
 havoc with their customary reservations irt talking to her. 
 "It is tender and kind of you to feel that," said Mrs. Char- 
 mond. "Perhaps I have given you the notion that my 
 languor is more than it really is. But this place oppresses 
 me, and I have a plan of going abroad a good deal. I used 
 to go with a relative, but that arrangement has dropped 
 through." Regarding Grace with a final glance of criticism, 
 she seemed to make up her mind to consider the young girl 
 satisfastoiy, and continued: "Now, I am often impelled 
 to record my impression of times and places. I have often 
 thought of writing a 'New Sentimental Journey.' But I 
 cannot find energy enough to do it alone. When I am at 
 different places in the south of Europe I feel a crowd of 
 ideas and fancies thronging upon me continually, but tq 
 unfold writing materials, take up a cold steel pen, and put 
 these impressions down systematically oncold, smoothpaper 
 — that I cannot do. So I have thought that if I always could 
 have somebody at my elbow with whom I am in sympathy, 
 I might dictate any ideas that come into my head. And 
 directly I had made your acquaintance the other day it struck 
 me that you would suit me so well. Would you like to un- 
 dertake it? You might read to me, too, if desirable. Will 
 you think it over, and ask your parents if they are willing?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Grace. "I am almost sure they would 
 be very glad." 
 
 "You are so accomplished, I hear; I should be quite 
 honored by such intellectual company." 
 
 Grace, modestly blushing, deprecated any such idea. 
 
 "Do you keep up your lucubrations at Little Hintock?" 
 
 "Oh, no. Lucubrations are not unknown at Little Hin- 
 tock; but they are not carried on by me." 
 
 "What — another student in that retreat?" 
 
 "There is a surgeon lately come, and I have heard that 
 he reads a great deal — I see his light sometimes through 
 the trees late at night." 
 
 "Oh, yes — a doctor — I believe I was told of him. It is a 
 strange place for him to settle in." 
 
 "It is a convenient center for a practice, they say. But 
 he does not confine his studies to medicine, it seems. He 
 investigates theology and metaphysics, and all sorts of sub- 
 jects." 
 
62 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 "What is his name?" 
 
 "Fitzpiers. He represents a very old family, I believe, 
 the Fitzpierses of Buckbury-Fitzpiers — not a great many 
 miles from here." 
 
 "I am not sufficiently local to know the history of the 
 family. I was never in the county till my husband brought 
 me here." Mrs. Charmond did not care to pursue this line 
 of investigation. Whatever mysterious merit might attach 
 to family antiquity, it was one which, though she herself 
 could claim it, her adaptable wandering weltburgerliche 
 nature had grown tired of caring about — a peculiarity 
 that made her a contrast to her neighbors. "It is of 
 rather more importance to know what the man is himself 
 than what his family is," she said, "if he is going to practice 
 upon us as a surgeon. Have you seen him?" 
 
 Grace had not. "I think he is not a very old man," she 
 added. 
 
 "Has he a wife?" 
 
 "I am not aware that he has." 
 
 "Well, I hope he will be useful here. I must get to know 
 him when I come back. It will be very convenient to have 
 a medical man — if he is clever — in one's own parish. I get 
 dreadfully nervous sometimes, living in such an outlandish 
 place; and Sherton is so far to send to. No doubt you feel 
 Hintock to be a great change after watering-place life." 
 
 "I do. But it is home. It has its advantages and its dis- 
 advantages." Grace was thinking less of the solitude than 
 of the attendant circumstances. 
 
 They chatted on for some time, Grace being set quite at 
 her ease by her entertainer. Mrs. Charmond was far too 
 well-practiced a woman not to know that to show a marked 
 patronage to a sensitive young girl who would probably be 
 very quick to discern it, was to demolish her dignity rather 
 than to establish it in that young girl's eyes. So, being vio- 
 lently possessed with her idea of making use of this gentle 
 acquaintance, ready and waiting at her own door, she took 
 great pains to win her confidence at starting. 
 
 Just before Grace's departure the two chanced to pause be- 
 fore a mirror which reflected their faces in immediate juxta- 
 position, so as to bring into prominence their resemblance 
 and their contrasts. Both looked attractive as glassed back 
 by the faithful reflector; but Grace's countenance had the 
 
THE V\rOODLANDERS. 68 
 
 effect of making Mrs. Charmond appear more than her full 
 age. There are complexions which set off each other to 
 great advantage, and there are those which antagonize, the 
 one killing or damaging its neighbor unmercifully. This 
 was unhappily the case here. Mrs. Charmond fell into a 
 meditation, and replied abstractedly to a cursory remark of 
 her companion's. However, she parted from her young 
 friend in the kindliest tones, promising to send and let her 
 know as soon as her mind was made up on the arrangement 
 she had suggested. 
 
 When Grace had ascended nearly to the top of the adjoin- 
 ing slope she looked back, and saw that Mrs. Charmond 
 still stood at the door, meditatively regarding her. 
 
 :1c ^ :}; ^ 9i< ^ :]: :}c 
 
 Often during the previous night, after his call on the Mel- 
 burys, Winterborne's thoughts ran upon Grace's announced 
 visit to Hintock House. Why could he not have proposed 
 to walk with her part of the way? Something told him that 
 she might not, on such an occasion, care for his company. 
 
 He was still more of that opinion when, standing in his 
 garden next day, he saw her go past on the journey with 
 such a pretty pride in the event. He wondered if her 
 father's ambition, which had purchased for her the means of 
 intellectual light and culture far beyond those of any other 
 native of the village, would conduce to the flight of her 
 future interests above and away from the local life which 
 was once to her the movement of the world. 
 
 Nevertheless, he had her father's permission to win her if 
 he could; and to this end it became desirable to bring mat- 
 ters soon to a crisis, if he ever hoped to do so. If she should 
 think herself too good for him, he could let her go and make 
 the best of his loss ; but until he had really tested her he could 
 not say that she despised his suit. The question was how 
 to quicken events toward an issue. 
 
 He thought and thought, and at last decided that as good 
 a way as any would be to give a Christmas party, and ask 
 Grace and her parents to come as chief guests. 
 
 These ruminations were occupying him when there be- 
 came audible a sUght knocking at his front door. He de- 
 scended the path and looked out, and beheld Marty South, 
 dressed for out-door work. 
 
 "Why didn't you come, Mr. Winterborne?" she said. "I've 
 
64 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 been waiting there hours and hours, and at last I thought 
 I must try to find you." 
 
 "Bless my soul, I'd quite forgot," said Giles. 
 
 What he had forgotten was that there was a thousand 
 young fir-trees to be planted in a neighboring spot which 
 had been cleared by the wood-cutters, and that he had ar- 
 ranged to plant them with his own hands. He had a mar- 
 velous power of making trees grow. Although he would 
 seem to shovel the earth in quite carelessly, there was a sort 
 of sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that 
 he was operating on, so that the roots took hold of the soil 
 in a few days. When, on the other hand, any of the journey- 
 men planted, although they seemed to go through an identi- 
 cally similar process, one-quarter of the trees would die away 
 during the ensuing August. 
 
 Hence Winterborne found delight in the work, even when, 
 as at present, he contracted to do it on portions of the wood- 
 land in which he had no personal interest. Marty, who 
 turned her hand to anything, was usually the one who per- 
 formed the part of keeping the trees in a perpendicular 
 position while he threw in the mold. 
 
 He accompanied her toward the spot, being stimulated 
 yet further to proceed with the work by the knowledge that 
 the ground was close to the wayside along which Grace must 
 pass on her return from Hintock House. 
 
 "You've a cold in the head, Marty," he said, as they 
 walked. "That comes of cutting off your hair." 
 
 "I suppose it do. Yes ; I've three headaches going on in 
 my head at the same time." 
 
 "Three headaches?" 
 
 "Yes, a rheumatic headache in my poll, a sick head- 
 ache over my eyes, and a misery headache in the middle of 
 my brain. However, I came out, for I thought you might 
 be waiting and grumbling like anything if I was not there." 
 
 The holes were already dug, and they set to work. Win- 
 terborne's fingers were endowed with a gentle conjurer's 
 touch in spreading the roots of each little tree, resulting in 
 a sort of caress, under which the delicate fibers all laid them- 
 selves out in their proper directions for growth. He put 
 most of these roots toward the southwest; for, he said, in 
 forty years' time, when some great gale is blowing from that 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 65 
 
 quarter, the trees will require the strongest holdfast on that 
 side to stand against it and not fall. 
 
 "How they sigh directly we put 'em upright, though 
 while they are lying down they don't sigh at all," said Marty. 
 
 "Do they?" said Giles. "I've never noticed it." 
 
 She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held 
 up her finger; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, 
 which was not to cease, night or day, till the grown ti-ee 
 should be felled — ^probably long after the two planters should 
 be felled themselves. 
 
 "It seems to me," the girl continued, "as if they sigh be- 
 cause they are very sorry to begin life in earnest — ^just as 
 we be." 
 
 "Just as we be?" He looked critically at her. "You 
 ought not to feel like that, Marty." 
 
 Her only reply was turning to take up the next tree; and 
 they planted on through a great part of the day, almost with- 
 out another word. Winterborne's mind ran on his con- 
 templated evening party, his abstraction being such that 
 he hardly was conscious of Marty's presence beside him. 
 From the nature of their employment, in which he handled 
 the spade and she merely held the tree, it followed that he 
 got good exercise and she got none. But she was an heroic 
 girl, and though her outstretched hand was chill as a stone, 
 and her cheeks blue, and her cold worse than ever, she would 
 not complain while he was disposed to continue work. But 
 when he paused she said: "Mr. Winterborne, can I run 
 down the lane and back to warm my feet?" 
 
 "Why, yes, of course," he said, awakening anew to her 
 existence. "Though I was just thinking what a mild day it 
 is for the season. Now I warrant that cold of yours is twice 
 as bad as it was. You had no business to chop that hair 
 off, Marty; it serves you almost right. Look here, cut ofif 
 home at once." 
 
 "A run down the lane will be quite enough." 
 
 "No, it won't. You ought not to have come out to-day 
 at all." 
 
 "But I should like to finish the " 
 
 "Marty, I tell you to go home," said he, peremptorily. 
 "I can manage to keep the rest of them upright with a stick 
 or something." 
 
 She went away without saying any more. When she had 
 s 
 
ee THE WOODLANDERg. 
 
 gone down the orchard a little distance she looked back. 
 Giles suddenly went after her. 
 
 "Marty, it was for your good that I was rough, you 
 know. But warm yourself in your own way, I don't care." 
 
 When she had run off he fancied he discerned a woman's 
 dress through the holly bushes which divided the coppice 
 from the road. It was Grace at last, on her way back from 
 the interview with Mrs. Charmond. He threw down the tree 
 he was planting, and was about to break through the belt 
 of holly, when he suddenly became aware of the presence 
 of another man, who was looking over the hedge on the 
 opposite side of the way, upon the figure of the unconscious 
 Grace. He appeared as a handsome and gentlemanly per- 
 sonage of six or eight-and-twenty, and was quizzing her 
 through an eye-glass. Seeing that Winterborne was notic- 
 ing him, he let his glass drop with a click upon the rail which 
 protected the hedge, and walked away in the opposite direc- 
 tion. Giles knew in a moment that this must be Mr. Fitz- 
 piers. When he was gone, Winterborne pushed through the 
 hollies, and emerged close beside the interesting object of 
 their contemplation. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 "I heard the bushes move long before I saw you," she 
 began. "I said first, 'it is some terrible beast'; next, 'it is a 
 poacher' ; next, 'it is a friend !' " 
 
 He regarded her with a slight smile, weighing, not her 
 speech, but the question whether he should tell her that she 
 had been watched. He decided in the negative. 
 
 "You have been to the house?" he said. "But I need 
 not ask." The fact was that there shone upon Miss Mel- 
 bury's face a species of exaltation, which saw no environ- 
 ing details nor his own occupation; nothing more than his 
 bare presence. 
 
 "Why need you not ask?" 
 
 "Your face is like the face of Moses when he came down 
 from the Mount." 
 
 She reddened a little and said: "How can you be so 
 profane, Giles Winterborne?" 
 
 "How can you think so much of that class of people? 
 
THE WOODLAN0ERS, 67 
 
 Well, I beg pardon, I didn't mean to speak so fi^eely. How 
 do you like her house and her?" 
 
 "Exceedingly. I had not been inside the walls since I 
 was a child, when it used to be let to strangers, before Mrs. 
 Charmond's late husband bought the property. She is so 
 nicel" And Grace fell into such an abstracted gaze at the 
 imaginary image of Mrs. Charmond and her niceness that 
 it, almost conjured up a vision of that lady in mid-air before 
 them. 
 
 "She has only been here a month or two, it seems, and 
 cannot stay much longer because she finds it so lonely and 
 damp in winter. She is going abroad. Only think, she 
 would like me to go with her." 
 
 Giles' features stififened a little at the news. "Indeed; 
 what for? But I won't keep you standing here. Hoi, Rob- 
 ert!" he cried to a swaying collection of clothes in the dis- 
 tance, which was the figure of Creedle, his man. "Go on 
 filling in there till I come back." 
 
 "I'm a-coming, sir; I'm a-coming." 
 
 "Well, the reason is this," continued she, as they went 
 on together — "Mrs. Charmond has a delightful side to her 
 character — a desire to record her impressions of travel, like 
 Alexandre Dumas, and Mery, and Sterne, and others. But 
 she cannot find energy enough -to do it herself." And 
 Grace proceeded to explain Mrs. Charmond's proposal at 
 large. "My notion is that Mery's style will suit her best, 
 because he writes in that soft, emotional, luxurious way she 
 has," Grace said, musingly. 
 
 "Indeed!" said Winterborne, with mock awe. "Suppose 
 you talk over my head a little longer, Miss Grace Melbury?" 
 
 "Oh, I didn't mean it!" she said repentantly, looking into 
 his eyes. "And as for myself, I hate French books. And 
 I love dear old Hintock, and the people in it, fifty times bet- 
 ter than all the Continent. But the scheme; I think it an 
 enchanting notion, don't you, Giles?" 
 
 "It is well enough in one sense, but it will take you away," 
 said he, mollified. 
 
 "Only for a short time. We should return in May." 
 
 "Well, Miss Melbury, it is a question for your father." 
 
 Winterborne walked with her nearly to her house. He 
 had awaited her coming, mainly with the view of mention- 
 ing to her his proposal to have a Christmas party; but 
 
68 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 homely Christmas gatherings in the venerable and jovial 
 Hintock style seemed so primitive and uncouth beside the 
 lofty matters of her converse and thought, that he refrained. 
 
 As soon as she was gone he turned back toward the scene 
 of his planting, and could not help saying to himself as he 
 walked, that this engagement of his was a very unpromising 
 business. Her outing to-day had not improved it. A wom- 
 an who could go to Hintock House and be friendly with its 
 mistress, enter into the views of its mistress, talk like her, and 
 dress not much unlike her, why, she would hardly be con- 
 tented with him, a yeoman, now immersed in tree-planting, 
 even though he planted them well. "And yet she's a true- 
 hearted girl," he said, thinking of her words about Hintock. 
 "I must bring matters to a point, and there's an end of it." 
 
 When he reached the plantation he found that Marty had 
 come back, and dismissing Creedle, he went on planting 
 silently with the girl as before. 
 
 "Suppose, Marty," he said, after awhile, looking at her 
 extended arm, upon which old scratches from briers showed 
 themselves purple in the cold wind — "suppose you know a 
 person, and want to bring that person to a good understand- 
 ing with you, do you think a Christmas party of some sort 
 is a warming-uj^ thing, and likely to be useful in hastening 
 on the matter?" 
 
 "Is there to be dancing?" 
 
 "There might be, certainly." 
 
 "Will He dance with She?" 
 
 "Well, yes." 
 
 "Then it might bring things to a head, one way or the 
 other; I won't be the one to say which." 
 
 "It shall be done," said Winterborne, not to her, though 
 he spoke the words quite loudly. And as the day was nearly 
 ended, he added, "Here, Marty, I'll send up a man to plant 
 the rest to-morrow. I've other things to think of just now." 
 
 She did not inquire what other things, for she had seen 
 him walking with Grace Melbury. She looked toward the 
 western sky, which was now aglow like some vast foundry 
 wherein new worlds were being cast. Across it the bare 
 bough of a tree stretched horizontally, revealing every twig 
 against the red, and showing in dark profile every beck and 
 movement of three pheasants that were settling themselves 
 down on it in a row to roost. 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 69 
 
 "It will be fine to-morrow," said Marty, observing them 
 with the Vermillion light of the sun in the pupils of her eyes, 
 "for they are a-croupied down nearly at the end of the 
 bough. If it were going to be stormy they'd squeeze close 
 to the trunk. The weather is almost all they have to think 
 of, isn't it, Mr. Winterborne? and so they must be lighter- 
 hearted than we." 
 
 "I dare say they are," said Winterborne. 
 
 Before taking a single step in the preparations, Winter- 
 borne, with no great hopes, went across that evening to the 
 timber merchant's to ascertain if Grace and her parents 
 would honor him with their presence. Having first to set 
 his nightly gins in the garden, to catch the rabbits that ate 
 his winter-greens, his call was delayed till just after the ris- 
 ing of the moon, whose rays reached the Hintock houses 
 but fitfully as yet, on account of the trees. Melbury was 
 crossing his yard on his way to call on some one at the 
 larger village, but he readily turned and walked up and 
 down the path with the young man. 
 
 Giles, in his self-deprecatory sense of living on a much 
 smaller scale than the Melburys did, would not for the 
 world imply that his invitation was to a gathering of any 
 importance. So he put it in the mild form of "Can you come 
 in for an hour when you have done business, the day after 
 to-morrow; and Mrs. and Miss Melbury, if they have noth- 
 ing more pressing to do?" 
 
 Melbury would give no answer at once. "No, I can't 
 tell you to-day," he said. "I must talk it over with the wom- 
 en. As far as I am concerned, my dear Giles, you know 
 I'll come with pleasure. But how do I know what Grace's 
 notions may be? You see, she has been away among cul- 
 tivated folks a good while; and now this acquaintance with 
 
 Mrs. Charmond Well, I'll ask her. I can say no 
 
 more." 
 
 When Winterborne was gone the timber-merchant went 
 on his way. He knew very well that Grace, whatever her 
 own feelings, would either go or not go, according as he 
 suggested; and his instinct was, for the moment, to suggest 
 the negative. His errand took him past the church, and the 
 way to his destination was either across the churchyard or 
 
70 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 alongside it, the distances being the same. For some rea- 
 son or other he chose the former way. 
 
 The moon was faintly lighting up the grave-stones, and 
 the path, and the front of the building. Suddenly Mr. Mel- 
 bury paused, turned in upon the grass, and approached a 
 particular headstone, where he read, "In memory of John 
 Winterborne," with the subjoined date and age. It was the 
 grave of Giles' father. 
 
 The timber-merchant laid his hand upon the stone, and 
 was humanized. "Jack, my wronged friend!" he said. "I'll 
 be faithful to my plan of making amends to 'ee." 
 
 When he reached home that evening, he said to Grace 
 and Mrs. Melbury, who were working at a little table by 
 the fire, "Giles wants us to go down and spend an hour with 
 him the day after to-morrow ; and I'm thinking, that as 'tis 
 Giles who asks us, we'll go." 
 
 They assented without demur, and accordingly the timber- 
 merchant sent Giles the next morning an answer in the af- 
 firmative. 
 
 -K T* ^ ^ ^ 'P T^ 'l^ *!» 
 
 Winterborne, in his modesty, or indifference, had men- 
 tioned no particular hour in his invitation; and, according- 
 ly, Mr. Melbury and his family, expecting no other guests, 
 chose their own time, which chanced to be rather early in 
 the afternoon, by reason of the somewhat quicker dispatch 
 than usual of the timber-merchant's business that day. To 
 show their sense of the importance of the occasion, they 
 walked quite slowly to the house, as if they were merely out 
 for a ramble, and going to nothing special at all; or at most 
 intending to pay a casual call and take a cup of tea. 
 
 At this hour stir and bustle pervaded the interior of Win- 
 terborne's domicile from cellar to apple-loft. He had 
 planned an elaborate high tea for six o'clock or thereabouts, 
 and a good roaring supper to come on about eleven. Be- 
 ing a bachelor of rather retiring habits, the whole of the 
 preparations devolved upon himself and his trusty man and 
 farniliar, Robert Creedle, who did everything that required 
 doing, from making Giles' bed to catching moles in his field. 
 He was a survival from the days when Giles' father held 
 the homestead, and Giles was a playing boy. 
 
 These two, with a certain dilatoriousness which apper- 
 tained to both, were now in the heat of preparation in the 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. H 
 
 bajcehouse, expecting nobody before six o'clock. Winter- 
 borne was standing before the brick oven in his shirt-sleeves, 
 tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass 
 with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelze^bub kind of fork, 
 the heat shining out upon his streaming face and making 
 his eyes like furnaces, the thorns crackling and sputtering; 
 while Creedle, having ranged the pastry dishes in a row on 
 the table till the oven should be ready, was pressing out the 
 crust of a final apple-pie with a rolling-pin. A great pot 
 boiled on the fire, and through the open door of the back 
 kitchen a boy was seen seated on the fender, emptying the 
 snufifers and scouring the candle-sticks, a row of the latter 
 standing upside down on the hob to melt out the grease. 
 
 Looking up from the rolling-pin, Creedle saw passing the 
 window first the timber merchant, in his second-best suit, 
 Mrs. Melbury in her best silk, and Grace in the fashionable 
 attire which, in part brought home with her from the Con- 
 tinent, she had worn on her visit to Mrs. Charmond's. The 
 eyes of the three had been attracted to the proceedings with- 
 in by the fierce illumination which the oven threw out upon 
 the operators and their utensils. 
 
 "Lord, Lord! if they baint come a'ready!" said Creedle. 
 
 "No — hey?" said Giles, looking round aghast; while the 
 boy in the background waved a reeking candlestick in his 
 delight. As there was no help for it, Winterborne went to 
 meet them in the doorway. 
 
 "My dear Giles, I' see we have made a mistake in the 
 time," said the timber-merchant's wife, her face lengthening 
 with concern. 
 
 "Oh, it is not much difiference. I hope you'll come in." 
 
 "But this means a regular randyvoo !" said Mr. Melbury, 
 accusingly, glancing round and pointing toward the bake- 
 house with his stick. 
 
 "Well, yes," said Giles. 
 
 "And — not Great Hintock Band, and dancing surely?" 
 
 "I told three of 'em they might drop in if they'd nothing 
 else to do," Giles mildly admitted. 
 
 "Now, why the name didn't ye tell us 'twas going to be 
 a serious kind of thing before? How should I know what 
 folk mean if they don't say? Now, shall we come in, or 
 shall we go home, and come back along in a couple of 
 hours.?" 
 
72 THE WOODLANDERS 
 
 "I hope you'll stay, if you'll be so good as not to mind, 
 now you are here. I shall have it all right and tidy in a very 
 little time. I ought not to have been so backward." Giles 
 spoke quite anxiously for one of his undemonstrative tem- 
 perament; for he feared that if the Melburys once were 
 back in their own house they would not be disposed to turn 
 out again. 
 
 " 'Tis we ought not to have been so forward; that's what 
 'tis," said Mr. Melbury, testily. "Don't keep us here in the 
 sitting-room; lead on to the bakehouse, man. Now we 
 are here we'll help ye get ready for the rest. Here, mis'ess, 
 take ofiE your things, and help him out in his baking, or he 
 won't get done to-night. I'll finish heating the oven, and 
 set you free to go and skiver up them ducks." His eye 
 had passed with pitiless directness of criticism into yet re- 
 mote recesses of Winterborne's awkwardly built premises, 
 where the aforesaid birds were hanging. 
 
 "And I'll help finish the tarts," said Grace, cheerfully. 
 
 "I don't know about that," said her father. " 'Tisn't quite 
 so much in your line as it is your mother-in-law's and 
 mine." 
 
 "Of course I couldn't let you, Grace!" said Giles, with 
 some distress. 
 
 "I'll do it, of course," said Mrs. Melbury, taking off her 
 silk train, hanging it up to a nail, carefully rolling back 
 her sleeves, pinning them to her shoulders, and stripping 
 Giles of his apron for her own use. 
 
 So Grace pottered idly about, while her father and his wife 
 helped on the preparations. A kindly pity of his house- 
 hold management, which Winterborne saw in her eyes when- 
 ever he caught them, depressed him much more than her 
 contempt would have done. 
 
 Creedle met Giles at the pump after awhile, when each of 
 the others was absorbed in the difificulties of a cuisine based 
 on utensils, cupboards, and provisions that were strange to 
 them. He groaned to the young man in a whisper, "This is 
 a bruckle het, maister, I'm much afeared! Who'd ha' 
 thought they'd ha' come so soon!" 
 
 The bitter placidity of Winterborne's look adumbrated 
 the misgivings he did not care to express. "Have you got 
 the celery ready?" he asked, quickly. 
 
 "Now that's a thing I never could mind; no, not if you'd 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 73 
 
 pay me in silver and gold. And I don't care who the man 
 is, I says that a stick of celery that is not scrubbed with the 
 scrubbing-brush is not clean." 
 
 "Very well, very well! I'll attend to it. You go and get 
 'em comfortable indoors." 
 
 He hastened to the garden, and soon returned, tossing 
 the stalks to Creedle, who was still in a tragic mood. "If 
 ye'd ha' married, d'ye see, maister," he said, "this caddie 
 couldn't have happened to us !" 
 
 Everything being at last under way, the oven set, and all 
 done that could insure the supper turning up ready at some 
 time or other, Giles and his friends entered the parlor, where 
 the Melburys again dropped into position as guests, though 
 the room was not nearly so warm and cheerful as the blazing 
 bakehouse. Others now arrived, among them Farmer 
 Bawtree and the hollow-turner, and tea went off very well. 
 
 Grace's disposition to make the best of everything, and to 
 wink at deficiencies in Winterborne's menage, was so uni- 
 form and persistent that he suspected her of seeing even 
 more deficiencies than he was aware of. That suppressed 
 sympathy which had showed in her face ever since her ar- 
 rival told him as much too plainly. 
 
 "This muddling style of housekeeping is what you've not 
 lately been used to, I suppose?" he said, when they were a 
 little apart. 
 
 "No; but I like it; it reminds me so pleasantly that every- 
 thing here in dear old Hintock is just as it used to be. The 
 oil is — not quite nice; but everything else is." 
 
 "The oil?" 
 
 "On the chairs, I mean; because it gets on one's dress. 
 Still, mine is not a new one." 
 
 Giles found that Creedle, in his zeal to make things look 
 bright, had smeared the chairs with some greasy kind of 
 furniture-polish, and refrained from rubbing it dry in order 
 not to diminish the mirror-like effect that the mixture pro- 
 duced as laid on. Giles apologized and called Creedle; but 
 he felt that the Fates were against him. 
 
74 THE WOODLrANDBRS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Supper-time came, and with it the hot-baked from the 
 oven, laid on a snowy cloth fresh from the press, and re- 
 ticulated with folds, as in Flemish "Last Suppers." Creedle 
 and the boy fetched and carried with amazing alacrity, the 
 latter, to mollify his superior and make things pleasant, ex- 
 pressing his admiration of Creedle's cleverness when they 
 were alone. 
 
 "I s'pose the time when you learned all these knowing 
 things, Mr. Creedle, was when you was in the militia?" 
 
 "Well, yes. I seed the world at that time somewhat, cer- 
 tainly, and many ways of strange, dashing life. Not but 
 that Giles has worked hard in helping me to bring things to 
 such perfection to-day. 'Giles,' says I, though he's maister. 
 Not that I should call'n maister by rights, for his father 
 growed up side by side with me, as if one mother had twinned 
 us and been our nourishing." 
 
 "I s'pose your memory can reach a long way back into 
 history, Mr. Creedle?" 
 
 "Oh, yes. Ancient days, when there was battles and 
 famines and hang-fairs and other pomps, seem to me as yes- 
 terday. Ah, many's the patriarch I've seed come and go in 
 this parish! There, he's calling for more plates. Lord, 
 why can't 'em turn their plates bottom upward for pudding, 
 as they used to do in former days !" 
 
 Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, Giles was presiding in 
 a half-unconscious state. He could not get over the initial 
 failures in his scheme for advancing his suit, and hence he 
 did not know that he was eating mouthfuls of bread and 
 nothing else, and continually snuffing the two candles next 
 him till he had reduced them to mere glimmers drowned in 
 their own grease. Creedle now appeared with a specially 
 prepared dish, which he served by elevating the little three- 
 legged pot that contained it, and tilting the contents into a 
 dish, exclaiming, simultaneously, "Draw back, gentlemen 
 and ladies, please!" 
 
 A splash followed. Grace gave a quick, involuntary nod 
 and blink, and put her handkerchief to her face. 
 
 "Good heavens, what did you do that for, Creedle?" said 
 Giles, sternly, and jumping up. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. T5. 
 
 " 'Tis how I do it when they baint here, maister," mildly 
 expostulated Creedle, in an aside audible to the company. 
 
 "Well, yes — but " replied Giles. He went over to 
 
 Grace, and hoped none of it had gone into her eye. 
 
 "Oh, no," she said. "Only a sprinkle on my face. It 
 was nothing." 
 
 "Kiss it and make it well," gallantly observed Mr. Baw- 
 tree. 
 
 Miss Melbury blushed. 
 
 The timber-merchant said, quickly, "Oh, it is nothing! 
 She must bear these little mishaps." But there could be 
 discerned in his face something which said, "I ought to have 
 foreseen this." 
 
 Giles himself, since the untoward beginning of the feast, 
 had not quite liked to see Grace present. He wished he 
 had not asked such people as Bawtree and the hollow-turner. 
 He had done it, in dearth of other friends, that the room 
 might not appear empty. In his mind's eye, before the 
 event, they had been the mere background or padding of the 
 scene, but somehow in reality they were the most prominent 
 personages there. 
 
 After supper they played cards, Bawtree and the hollow- 
 turner monopolizing the new packs for an interminable 
 game, in which a lump of chalk was incessantly used — a 
 game those two always played where they were, taking a 
 solitary candle and going to a private table in a corner 
 with the mien of persons bent on weighty matters. The 
 rest of the company on this account were obliged to put up 
 with old packs for their round game, that had been lying 
 by in a drawer ever since the time that Giles' grandmother 
 was alive. Each card had a great stain in the middle of its 
 back, produced by the touch of generations of damp and 
 excited thumbs now fleshless in the grave; and the kings 
 and queens wore a decayed expression of feature, as if they 
 were rather an impecunious, dethroned race of monarchs 
 hiding in obscure slums than real regal characters. Every 
 now and then the comparatively few remarks of the players 
 at the round game were harshly intruded on by the measured 
 jingle of Farmer Bawtree and the hollow-turner from the 
 back of the room : 
 
 "And I will hold a wa-ger with you 
 That alj these marks are tbirt-y two!" 
 
76 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 accompanied by rapping strokes with the chalk on the table ; 
 then an exclamation, an argument, a dealing of the cards; 
 then the commencement of the rhymes anew. 
 
 The timber-merchant showed his feelings by talking with 
 a satisfied sense of weight in his words, and by praising the 
 party in a patronizing tone, when Winterborne expressed 
 his fear that he and his were not enjoying themselves. 
 
 "Oh, yes, yes; pretty much. What handsome glasses 
 those are. I didn't know you had such glasses in the house. 
 Now, Lucy" (to his wife), "you ought to get some like them 
 for ourselves." And when they had abandoned cards, and 
 Winterborne was talking to Melbury by the fire, it was the 
 timber-merchant who stood with his back to the mantel in 
 a proprietory attitude, from which post of vantage he critical- 
 ly regarded Giles' person, rather as a superficies than as a 
 solid with ideas and feelings inside it, saying, "What a 
 splendid coat that one is you have on, Giles. I can't get 
 such coats. You dress better than I." 
 
 After supper there was a dance, the bandsmen from Great 
 Hintock having arrived some time before. Grace had been 
 away from home so long that she had forgotten the old fig- 
 iires, and hence did not join in the movement. Then Giles 
 felt that all was over. As for her, she was thinking, as she 
 watched the gyrations, of a very different measure that she 
 had been accustomed to tread with a bevy of sylph-like 
 creatures in muslin, in the music-room of a large house, most 
 of whom were now moving in scenes widely removed from 
 this, both as regarded place and character. 
 
 A woman she did not know came and offered to tell her 
 fortune with the abandoned cards. Grace assented to the 
 proposal, and the woman told her tale unskillfully, for want 
 of practice, as she declared. 
 
 Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, con- 
 temptuously, "Tell her fortune, indeed! Her fortune has 
 been told by men of science — ^what do you call 'em? 
 Phrenologists. You can't teach her anything new. She's 
 been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at any- 
 thing she can hear among us folks in Hintock." 
 
 At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his 
 family being the earliest to leave, the two card-players still 
 pursuing their game doggedly in the comer, where they had 
 completely covered Giles' mahogany table with chalk 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 11 
 
 scratches. The three walked home, the distance being 
 short and the night clear. 
 
 "Well, Giles is a very good fellow," said Mr. Melbury, 
 as they struck down the lane under boughs which formed a 
 black filigree in which the stars seemed set. 
 
 "Certainly he is," said Grace, iquickly, and in such a tone 
 as to show that he stood no lower, if no higher, in her regard 
 than he had stood before. 
 
 When they were opposite an opening through which, by 
 day, the doctor's house could be seen, they observed a light 
 in one of his rooms, although it was now about two o'clock. 
 
 "The doctor is not abed yet," said Mrs. Melbury. 
 
 "Hard study, no doubt," said her husband. 
 
 "One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to 
 do about here by day, he could at least afford to go to bed 
 early at night. 'Tis astonishing how little we see of him." 
 
 Melbury's mind seemed to turn with much relief to the 
 contemplation of Mr. Fitzpiers after the scenes of the even- 
 ing. "It is. natural enough," he replied. "What can a man 
 of that sort find to interest him in Hintock? I don't expect 
 he'll stay here long." 
 
 His mind reverted to Giles' party, and when they were 
 nearly home he spoke again, his daughter being a few steps 
 in advance: "It is hardly the line of life for a girl like 
 Grace, after what she's been accustomed to. I didn't fore- 
 see that, in sending her to boarding-school, and letting her 
 travel, and what not, to make her a good bargain for Giles, 
 I should be really spoiling her for him. Ah, 'tis a thousand 
 pities ! But he ought to have her — he ought !" 
 
 At this moment the two exclusive, chalk-mark men, hav- 
 ing at last really finished their play, could be heard coming 
 along in the rear, vociferously singing a song to march- 
 time, and keeping vigorous step to the same in far-reaching 
 strides : 
 
 "She may go, oli! 
 
 She may go, oh! 
 
 She may go to the d for me!" 
 
 The timber-merchant turned indignantly to Mrs. Mel- 
 bury. "That's the sort of society we've been asked to meet," 
 he said. "For us old folk it didn't matter; but for Grace — 
 Giles should have known better!" 
 
7S THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 jNIcanwhile, in the empty house from which the guests 
 had just cleared out, the subject of their discourse was walk- 
 ing from room to room surveying the general displacement 
 of furniture with no ecstatic feeling; rather the reverse, in- 
 deed. At last he entered the bakehouse, and found there 
 Robert Creedle sitting over the embers, also lost in con- 
 templation. Winterborne sat down beside him. 
 
 "Well, Robert, you must be tired. You'd better get on to 
 bed." 
 
 "Ay, ay, Giles — what do I call ye? Maister, I would say. 
 But 'tis well to think the day is done, when 'tis done." 
 
 Winterborne had abstractedly taken the poker, and with 
 a wrinkled forehead, was plowing abroad the wood-embers 
 on the broad hearth, till it was like a vast scorching Sahara, 
 with red-hot bowlders lying about everywhere. "Do you 
 think it went off well, Creedle?" he asked. 
 
 "The victuals did; that I know. And the drink did; that 
 I steadfastly believe, from the hollow sound of the barrels. 
 Good honest drink 'twere, the headiest mead I ever brewed ; 
 and the best wine that berries could rise to ; and the briskest 
 Horner-and-Cleves cider ever wrung down, leaving out the 
 spice and sperrits I put into it, while that egg-flip would ha' 
 passed through muslin, so little curdled 'twere. 'Twas good 
 enough to make any king's heart merry — ay, to make his 
 whole carcass smile. Still, I don't deny I'm afeared some 
 things didn't go well with he and his." Creedle nodded in 
 a direction which signified where the Melburys lived. 
 
 "I'm afraid, too, that it was a failure there!" 
 
 "If so, 'twere doomed to be so. Not but what that snail 
 might as well have come upon anybody else's plate as hers." 
 
 "What snail?" 
 
 "Well, maister, there was a little one upon the edge of 
 her plate when I brought it out; and so it must have been 
 in her few leaves of winter-green." 
 
 "How the deuce did a snail get there?" ) 
 
 "That I don't know no more than the dead ; but there my 
 gentleman was." 
 
 "But, Robert, of all places, that was where he shouldn't 
 have been!" 
 
 "Well, 'twas his native home, come to that; and where 
 else could we expect him to be? I don't care who the man 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 79 
 
 is, snails and caterpillars always will lurk in close to the 
 stump of cabbages in that tantalizing way." 
 
 "He wasn't alive, I suppose?" said Giles, with a shudder 
 on Grace's account. 
 
 "Oh, no. He was well boiled. I warrant him well boiled. 
 God forbid that a live snail should be seed on any plate of 
 victuals that's served by Robert Creedle. But Lord, there ! 
 I don't mind 'em myself — ^them small ones; for they were 
 born on cabbage, and they've lived on cabbage, so they must 
 be made of cabbage. But she, the close-mouthed little lady, 
 she didn't say a word about it; though 'twould have made 
 good small conversation as to the nater of such creatures; 
 especially as wit ran short among us sometimes." 
 
 "Oh, yes — 'tis all over!" murmured Giles to himself, shak- 
 ing his head over the glooming plain of embers, and lining 
 his forehead more than ever. "Do you know, Robert," he 
 said, "that she's been accustomed to servants and every- 
 thing superfine these many years? How, then, could she 
 stand our ways!" 
 
 "Well, all I can say is, then, that she ought to hob-and- 
 nob elsewhere. They shouldn't have schooled her so mon- 
 strous high, or else bachelor men shouldn't give randys, or 
 if they do give 'em, only to their own race." 
 
 "Perhaps that's true," said Winterborne, rising and yawn- 
 ing a sigh. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " 'Tis a pity — a thousand pities !" her father kept saying 
 next morning at breakfast, Grace being still in her bed- 
 room. 
 
 But how could he, with any self-respect, obstruct Winter- 
 borne's suit at this stage, and nullify a scheme he had labored 
 to promote — was, indeed, mechanically promoting at this 
 moment? A crisis was approaching, mainly as a result of 
 his contrivances, and it would have to be met. 
 
 But here was the fact, which could not be disguised: 
 since seeing what an immense change her last twelve months 
 of absence had produced in his daughter, after the heavy 
 sum per annum that he had been spending for several years 
 upon her education, he was reluctant to let her marry Giles 
 
80 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 Winterborne, indefinitely occupied as woodsman, cider- 
 merchant, apple-farmer, and what-not, even were she will- 
 ing to marry him herself. 
 
 "She will be his wife if you don't upset her notion that 
 she's bound to accept him as an understood thing," said 
 Mrs. Melbury. "Bless ye, she'll soon shake down here in 
 Hintock, and be content with Giles' way of living, which 
 he'll improve with what money she'll have from you. 'Tis 
 the strangeness after her genteel life that makes her feel un- 
 comfortable at first. Why, when I saw Hintock the first 
 time I thought I never could like it. But things gradually 
 get familiar, and stone floors seem not so very cold and hard, 
 and the hooting of the owls not so very dreadful, and loneli- 
 ness not so very lonely, after awhile." 
 
 "Yes, I believe ye. That's just it. I know Grace will 
 gradually sink down to our level again, and catch our man- 
 ners and way of speaking, and feel a drowsy content in being 
 Giles' wife. But I can't bear the thought of dragging down 
 to that old level as promising a piece of maiden-hood as ever 
 lived — fit to ornament a palace wi', that I've taken so much 
 trouble to lift up. Fancy her white hands getting redder 
 every day, and her tongue losing ita pretty up-country curl 
 in talking, and her bounding walk becoming the regular 
 Hintock shall and wamble!" 
 
 "She may shall, but she'll never wamble," replied his wife, 
 decisively. 
 
 When Grace came down-stairs he complained of her ly-, 
 ing in bed so late; not so much moved by a particular ob- 
 jection to that form of indulgence as discomposed by these 
 other reflections. 
 
 The corners of her pretty mouth dropped a little down. 
 "You used to complain with justice when I was a girl," she 
 said; "but I am a woman now, and can judge for myself. 
 But it is not that; it is something else!" Instead of sitting 
 down, she went outside the door. 
 
 He was sorry. The petulance that relatives show toward 
 each other is in truth directed against that intangible causal- 
 ity which has shaped the situation no less for the offenders 
 than the offended, but is too elusive to be discerned and cor- 
 nered by poor humanity in irritated mood. Melbury fol- 
 lowed her. She had rambled on to the paddock, where 
 the white frost lay, and where starlings in flocks of twenties 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 81 
 
 and thirties were walking about, watched by a comfortable 
 company of sparrows perched in a line along the string- 
 course of the chimney, preening themselves in the rays of the 
 sun. 
 
 "Come in to breakfast, my girl," he said. "And as to 
 Giles, use your own mind. Whatever pleases you will please 
 me." 
 
 "I am promised to him, father; and I cannot help think- 
 ing that in honor I ought to marry him, whenever I do 
 marry." 
 
 He had a strong suspicion that somewhere in the bottom 
 of her heart there pulsed an old simple indigenous feeling 
 favorable to Giles, though it had become overlaid with im- 
 planted tastes. But he would not distinctly express his 
 views on the promise. "Very well," he said. "But I hope 
 I sha'n't lose you yet. Come in to breakfast. What did 
 you think of the inside of Hintock House the other day?" 
 
 "I liked it much." 
 
 "Different from friend Winterborne's ?" 
 
 She said nothing; but he who knew her was aware that 
 she meant by her silence to reproach him with drawing 
 cruel comparisons. 
 
 "Mrs. Charmond has asked you to come again — ^when 
 did you say?" 
 
 "She thought Tuesday, but would send the day before 
 to let me know if it suited her." And with this subject upon 
 their lips they entered to breakfast. 
 
 Tuesday came, but no message from Mrs. Charmond. 
 Nor was there any on Wednesday. In brief, a fortnight 
 slipped by without a sign, and it looked suspiciously as if 
 Mrs. Charmond were not going further in the direction of 
 "taking up" Grace at present. 
 
 Her father reasoned thereon. Immediately after his 
 daughter's two indubitable successes with Mrs. Charmond 
 — ^the interview in the wood and the visit to the House — 
 she had attended Winterborne's party. No doubt the out- 
 and-out joviality of that gathering had made it a topic in 
 the neighborhood, and that every one present as guests had 
 been widely spoken of — Grace, with her exceptional quali- 
 ties, above all. What, then, so natural as that Mrs. Char- 
 mond should have heard the village news, and become quite 
 disappointed in her expectations of Grace at finding she kept 
 such company? 
 e 
 
82 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 Full of this post hoc argument, Mr. Melbury overlooked 
 the infinite throng of other possible reasons and unreasons 
 for a woman changing her mind. For instance, while 
 knowing that his Grace was attractive, he quite forgot that 
 Mrs. Charmond had also great pretensions to beauty. In 
 his simple estimate, an attractive woman attracted all 
 around. 
 
 So it was settled in his mind that her sudden mingling 
 with the villagers at the unlucky Winterborne's was the 
 cause of her most grievous loss, as he deemed it, in the di- 
 rection of Hintock House. 
 
 " 'Tis a thousand pities !" he would repeat to himself. "I 
 am ruining her for conscience' sake!" 
 
 It was one morning later on, while these things were agi- 
 tating his mind, that, curiously enough, something dark- 
 ened the window just as they finished breakfast. Looking 
 up, they saw Giles in person, mounted on horseback, and 
 straining his neck forward, as he had been doing for some 
 time, to catch their attention through the window. Grace 
 had been the first to see him, and involuntarily exclaimed, 
 "There he is — and a new horse!" 
 
 On their faces, as they regarded Giles, were written their 
 suspended thoughts and compound feelings concerning 
 him, could he have read them through those old panes. But 
 he saw nothing; his features just now were, for a wonder, 
 lit up with a red smile at some other idea. So they rose 
 from breakfast and went to the door, Grace with an anxious, 
 wistful manner, her father in a reverie, Mrs. Melbury placid 
 and inquiring. "We have come out to look at your horse," 
 she said. 
 
 It could be seen that he was pleased with their attention, 
 and explained that he had ridden a mile or two to try the 
 animal's paces. "I bought her," he added, with warmth 
 so severely repressed as to seem indifference, "because she 
 has been used to carry a lady." 
 
 Still, Mr. Melbury did not brighten. Mrs. Melbury said : 
 "And is she quiet?" 
 
 Winterborne assured her that there was no doubt of it. 
 "I took care of that. She's five-and-twenty, and very clever 
 for her age." 
 
 "Well, get off and come in," said Melbury, brusquely; and 
 Giles dismounted accordingly. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 83 
 
 This event was the concrete result of Winterborne's 
 thoughts during the past week or two. The want of suc- 
 cess with his evening party he had accepted in as philosophic 
 a mood as he was capable of; but there had been enthusi- 
 asm enough left in him one day at Sherton Abbas market 
 to purchase this old mare, which had belonged to a neigh- 
 boring parson with several daughters, and was offered him 
 to carry either a gentleman or a lady, and to do odd jobs 
 of carting and agriculture at a, pinch. This obliging quad- 
 ruped seemed to furnish Giles with means of reinstating him- 
 self in Melbury's good opinion as a man of considerateness 
 by throwing out future possibilities to Grace. 
 
 The latter looked at him with intensified interest this 
 morning, in the mood which is altogether peculiar to wom- 
 an's nature, and which, when reduced into plain words 
 seems as impossible as the penetrability of matter — ^that of 
 entertaining a tender pity for the object of her own unneces- 
 sary coldness. The imperturbable poise which marked 
 Winterborne in general, was enlivened now by a freshness 
 and animation that set a brightness in his eye and on his 
 cheek. Mrs. Melbury asked him to have some breakfast, 
 and he pleasurably replied that he would join them, with his 
 usual lack of tactical observation, not perceiving that they 
 had all finished the meal, that the hour was inconveniently 
 late, and that the note piped by the kettle denoted it to be 
 nearly empty; so that fresh water had to be brought in, 
 trouble taken to make it boil, and a general renovation of 
 the table carried out. Neither did he know, so full was he 
 of his tender ulterior object in buying that horse, how many 
 cups of tea he was gulping down one after another, nor how 
 the morning was slipping, nor how he was keeping the fam- 
 ily from dispersing about their duties. 
 
 Then he told throughout the humorous story of the 
 horse's purchase, looking particularly grim at some fixed 
 object in the room, a way he always looked when he nar- 
 rated anything that amused him. While he was still think- 
 ing of the scene he had described, Grace rose and said, "I 
 have to go and help my mother now, Mr. Winterborne." 
 
 "H'm?" he ejaculated, turning his eyes suddenly upon 
 her. 
 
 She repeated her words with a slight blush of awkward- 
 ness; whereupon Giles, becoming suddenly conscious, too 
 
«4 THE_WOODLANDERS. 
 
 conscious, jumped up, spying, "To be sure, to be sure!" 
 wished them quickly good-morning, and bolted out of the 
 house. 
 
 Nevertheless he had, upon the whole, strengthened his 
 position, with her at least. Time, too, was on her side, for 
 (as her father saw with some regret) already the homeli- 
 ness of Hintock life was fast becoming effaced from her ob- 
 servation as a singularity; just as the first strangeness of 
 a face from^ which we have for years been separated insen- 
 sibly passes off with renewed intercourse, and tones itself 
 down into simple identity with the lineaments of the past. 
 
 Thus Mr. Melbury went out of the house still unreconciled 
 to the sacrifice of the gem he had been at such pains in 
 mounting. He fain could hope, in the secret nether cham- 
 ber of his mind, that something would happen, before the 
 balance of her feeling had quite turned in Winterborne's 
 favor, to relieve his conscience and preserve her on her ele- 
 vated plane. 
 
 He could not forget that Mrs. Charmond had apparently 
 abandoned all interest in his daughter as suddenly as she 
 had conceived it, and was as firmly convinced as ever that 
 the comradeship which Grace had shown with Giles and 
 his crew by attending his party had been the cause. 
 
 Matters lingered on thus. And then, as a hoop by gentle 
 knocks on this side and on that is made to travel in specific 
 directions, the little touches of circumstance in the life of 
 this young girl shaped the curves of her career. 
 
 CHAPTER Xn. 
 
 It was a day of rather bright weather for the season. Miss 
 Melbury went out for a morning walk, and her ever-regard- 
 ful father, having an hour's leisure, offered to walk with 
 her. The breeze was fresh and quite steady, filtering itself 
 through the denuded mass of twigs without swaying them, 
 but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks scratch 
 its underlying neighbor restlessly. Grace's lips sucked in 
 this native air of hers like milk. They soon reached a place 
 where the wood ran down into a corner, and went outside 
 it toward comparatively open ground. Having looked 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 85 
 
 round about, they were intending to re-enter the copse when 
 a fox quietly emerged with a dragging brush, trotted past 
 them, tamely as a domestic cat, and disappeared amid some 
 dead fern. They walked on, her father merely observing, 
 after watching the animal, "They are hunting somewhere 
 near." 
 
 Further up they saw in the mid-distance the hounds run- 
 ning hither and thither, as if there were little or no scent 
 that day. Soon divers members of the hunt appeared on 
 the scene, and it was evident from their movements that 
 the chase had been stultified by general puzzle-headedness 
 as to the whereabouts of the intended victim. In a minute 
 a farmer rode up to the two pedestrians, panting with ac- 
 teonic excitement, and Grace being a few, steps in advance, 
 he addressed her, asking if she had seen the fox. 
 
 "Yes," said she. "We saw him some time ago — ^just out 
 there." 
 
 "Did you cry halloo?" 
 
 "We said nothing." 
 
 "Then why the d didn't you, or get the old buffer to 
 
 do it for you?" said the man, as he cantered away. 
 
 She looked rather disconcerted at this reply, and observ- 
 ing her father's face, saw that it was quite red. 
 
 "He ought not to have spoken to ye like that!" said the 
 old man, in the tone of one whose heart was bruised, though 
 it was not by the epithet applied to himself. "And he 
 wouldn't if he had been a gentleman. 'Twas not the lan- 
 guage to use to a woman of any niceness. You, so well 
 read and cultivated — ^how could he expect ye to know what 
 tomboy field-folk are in the habit of doing? If so be you 
 had just come from trimming swedes or mangolds — ^joking 
 with the rough work-folk and all that — I could have stood 
 it. But hasn't it cost me near a hundred a year to lift you 
 out of all that, so as to show an example to the neighbor- 
 hood of what a woman can be? Grace, shall I tell you the 
 secret of it? 'Twas because I was in your company. If a 
 black-coated squire or pa'son had been walking with you 
 instead of me he wouldn't have spoken so." 
 
 "No, no, father; there's nothing in you rough or ill- 
 mannered !" 
 
 "I tell you it is that! I've noticed, and I've noticed it 
 many times, that a woman takes her color from the man 
 
8S THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 she's walking with. The woman who looks an unquestion- 
 able lady when she's with a polished-up fellow, looks a mere 
 tawdry imitation article when she's bobbing and nobbing 
 with a homely blade. You sha'n't be treated like that for 
 long, or at least your children sha'n't. You shall have 
 somebody to walk with you who looks more of a dandy than 
 I — please God you shall!" 
 
 "But, my dear father," she said, much distressed, "I don't 
 mind at all. I don't wish for more honor than I already 
 have!" 
 
 "A perplexing and ticklish possession is a daughter," 
 according to Menander or some old Greek poet, and to no- 
 body was one ever more so than to Melbury, by reason of 
 her very dearness to him. As for Grace, she began to feel 
 troubled; she did not perhaps wish there and then to un- 
 ambitiously devote her life to Giles Winterborne, but she 
 was conscious of more and more uneasiness at the possibil- 
 ity of being the social hope of the family. 
 
 "You would like to have more honor, if it pleases me?" 
 asked her father, in continuation of the subject. 
 
 Despite her feeling she assented to this. His reasoning 
 had not been without its weight upon her. 
 
 "Grace," he said, just before they had reached the house, 
 "if it costs me my life you shall marry well! To-day has 
 shown me that whatever a young woman's niceness, she 
 stands for norhing alone. You shall marry well." 
 
 He breathed heavily, and his breathing was caught up 
 by the breeze, which seemed to sigh a soft remonstrance. 
 
 She looked calmly at him. "And how about Mr. Win- 
 terborne?" she asked. "I mention it, father, not as a mat- 
 ter of sentiment, but as a question of keeping faith." 
 
 The timber-merchant's eyes fell for a moment. "I don't 
 know — I don't know," he said. " 'Tis a trying strait. Well, 
 well ; there's no hurry. We'll wait and see how he gets on." 
 
 That evening he called her into his room, a snug little 
 apartment behind the large parlor. It had at one time been 
 part of the bakehouse, with the ordinary oval brick oven 
 in the wall; but Mr. Melbury, in turning it into an ofifice, 
 had built into the cavity an iron safe, which he used for 
 holding his private papers. The door of the safe was now 
 open, and his keys were hanging from it. 
 
 "Sit down, Grace, and keep me company," he said. "You 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 87 
 
 may amuse yourself by looking over these." He threw out 
 a heap of papers betore her. 
 "What are they?" she asked. 
 
 "Securities of various sorts." He unfolded them one by 
 one. "Papers worth so much money each. Now, here s 
 a lot of turnpike bonds, for one thing. Would you think 
 that each of these pieces of paper is worth two hundred 
 pounds?" 
 
 "No, indeed, if you didn't say so." 
 
 " 'Tis so, then. Now here are papers of another sort. 
 They are for different sums in the three per cents. Now 
 these are Port Breedy Harbor bonds. We have a great 
 stake in that harbor, you know, because I sent off timber 
 there. Open the rest at your pleasure. They'll interest 
 ye." 
 
 "Yes, I will, some day," she said, rising. 
 
 "Nonsense, open them now. You ought to learn a little 
 of such matters. A young lady of education should not 
 be ignorant of money affairs altogether. Suppose you 
 should be left a widow some day, with your husband's title- 
 deeds and investments thrown upon your hands " 
 
 "Don't say that, father — title-deeds; it sounds so vain!" 
 
 "It does not. Come to that, I have title-deeds myself. 
 There, that piece of parchment represents houses in Sherton 
 Abbas." 
 
 "Yes, but " She hesitated, looked at the fire, and 
 
 went on in a low voice: "If what has been arranged about 
 me should come to anything, my sphere will be quite a 
 middling one." 
 
 "Your sphere ought not to be middling," he exclaimed, 
 not in passion, but in earnest conviction. "You said you 
 never felt more at home, more in your element, anywhere 
 than you did that afternoon with Mrs. Charmond, when 
 she showed you her house and all her knickknacks, and 
 made you stay to tea so nicely in her drawing-room — surely 
 you did!" 
 
 "Yes, I did say so," admitted Grace. 
 
 "Was it true?" 
 
 "Yes, I felt so at the time. The feeling is less strong now, 
 perhaps." 
 
 "Ah! Now, though you don't see it, your feeling at the 
 , time was the right one, because your mind and body were 
 
88 THE WOODLANDERS. - 
 
 just in full and fresh cultivation, so that going there with her 
 was like meeting like.. Since then yott've been biding with 
 us, and have fallen back a little, and so you don't feel your 
 place so strongly. Now, do as I tell ye, and look over these 
 papers and see what you'll be worth some day. For they'll 
 all be yours, you know ; who have I got to leave 'em to but 
 you? Perhaps, when your education is backed up by what 
 these papers represent, and that backed up by another such a 
 set and their owner, men such as that fellow was this morn- 
 ing may think you a little more than a buffer's girl." 
 
 So she did as commanded, and opened each of the folded 
 representatives of hard cash that her father put before 
 her. To sow in her heart cravings for social position was 
 obviously his strong desire, though in direct antagonism 
 to a better feeling which had hitherto prevailed with him, 
 and had, indeed, only succumbed that morning during the 
 ramble. 
 
 She wished that she was not his worldly hope; the re- 
 sponsibility of such a position was too great. She had 
 made it for herself mainly by her appearance and attrac- 
 tive behavior to him since her return. "If I had only come 
 home in a shabby dress, and tried to speak roughly, this 
 might not have happened," she thought. She deplored less 
 the fact than the sad possibilities that might lie hidden 
 therein. 
 
 Her father then insisted upon her looking over his check- 
 book and reading the counterfoils. This, also, she obedi- 
 ently did, and at last came to two or three which had been 
 drawn to defray some of the late expenses of her clothes, 
 board, and education. 
 
 "I, too, cost a good deal, like the horses and wagons and 
 corn," she said, looking up sorrily. 
 
 "I didn't want you to look at those; I merely meant to 
 give you an idea of my investment transactions. But if you 
 do cost as much as they, never mind. You'll yield a better 
 return." 
 
 "Don't think of me like that!" she begged. "A mere 
 chattel." 
 
 "A what? Oh, a dictionary word. Well, as that's in 
 your line I don't forbid it, even if it tells against me," he 
 said, good-humoredly. And he looked her proudly up and 
 down. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 89 
 
 A few minjites later Grammer Oliver came to tell them that 
 supper was ready, and in giving the information she added, 
 incidentally, "So we shall soon lose the mistress of Hintock 
 House for some time, I hear, Maister Melbury. Yes, she's 
 going off to foreign parts to-morrow for the rest of the win- 
 ter months; and be-chok'd if I don't wish I could do the 
 same, for my wynd-pipe is furred like a flue." 
 
 When the old woman had left the room, Melbury turned 
 to his daughter and said, "So Grace, you've lost your new 
 friend, and your chance of keeping her company and writ- 
 ing her travels is quite gone from you!" 
 
 Grace said nothing. 
 
 "Now," he went on, emphatically, "'tis Winterborne's 
 affair has done this. Oh, yes, 'tis. So let me say one word. 
 Promise me that you will not meet him again without my 
 knowledge." 
 
 "I never do meet him, father, either without your knowl- 
 edge or with it." 
 
 "So much the better. I don't like the look of this at all. 
 And I say it not out of harshness to him, poor fellow, but 
 out of tenderness to you. For how could a woman, brought 
 up delicately as you have been, bear the roughness of a life 
 with him?" 
 
 She sighed; it was a sigh of sympathy with Giles, com- 
 plicated by a sense of the intractability of circumstances. 
 
 At that same hour, and almost at that same minute, there 
 was a conversation about Winterborne in progress in the 
 village street, opposite Mr. Melbury's gates, where Timothy 
 Tangs the older and Robert Creedle had accidentally met. 
 
 The sawyer was asking Creedle if he had heard what was 
 all over the parish, the skin of his face being drawn two 
 ways on the matter — ^toward brightness in respect of it as 
 news, and toward concern in respect of it as circumstance. 
 
 "Why, that poor little lonesome thing, Marty South, is 
 likely to lose her father. He was almost well, but is much 
 worse again. A man all skin and grief he ever were, and if 
 he leave Little Hintock for a better land, won't it make 
 some difference to your Maister Winterborne, neighbor 
 Creedle?" 
 
 "Can I be a prophet in Israel?" said Creedle. "Won't it? 
 I was only shaping of such a thing yesterday in my poor, 
 
90 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 long-seeing way, and all the work of the house upon my 
 shoulders! You know what it means? It is upon John 
 South's life that all Mr. 'Winterborne's houses hang. If so 
 be South die, and so make his decease, thereupon the law 
 is that the houses fall without the least chance of absolution 
 into Her hands at the House. I told him so ; but the words 
 of the faithful be only as wind !" 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 The news was true. The life — the one fragile life — that 
 had been used as a measuring-tape of time by law, was in 
 danger of being frayed away. It was the last of a group 
 of lives which had served this purpose, at the end of whose 
 breathings the small homestead occupied by South himself, 
 the larger one of Giles Winterborne, and half a dozen others 
 that had been in the possession of various Hintock village 
 families for the previous hundred years, and were now Win- 
 terborne's, would fall in and become part of the encom- 
 passing estate. 
 
 Yet a short two months earlier Marty's father, aged fifty- 
 five years, though something of a fidgety, anxious being, 
 would have been looked on as a man whose existence was as 
 far removed from hazardous as any in the parish, and as 
 bidding fair to be prolonged for another quarter of a century. 
 
 Winterborne walked up and down his garden next day 
 thinking of the contingency. The sense that the paths he 
 was pacing, the cabbage-plots, the apple-trees, his dwelling, 
 cider-cellar, wring-house, stables and weather-cock, were all 
 slipping away over his head and beneath his feet, as if they 
 were painted on a magic-lantern slide, was curious. In spite 
 of John South's late indisposition he had not anticipated 
 danger. To inquire concerning his health had been to show 
 less sympathy than to remain silent, considering the ma- 
 terial interest he possessed in the woodman's life, and he had, 
 accordingly, made a point of avoiding Marty's house. 
 
 While he was here in the garden somebody came to fetch 
 him. It was Marty herself, and she showed her distress by 
 her unconsciousness of a cropped poll. 
 
 "Father is still so much troubled in his mind about that 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 91 
 
 tree," she said. " You know the tree I mean, Mr. Winter- 
 borne ? the tall one in front of the house, that he thinks 
 will blow down and kill us. Can you come and see if you 
 can persuade him out of his notion ? I can do nothing." 
 
 He accompanied her to the cottage, and she conducted 
 him up-stairs. John South was pillowed up in a chair 
 between the bed and the window, exactly opposite the 
 latter, toward which his face was turned. 
 
 "Ah, neighbor Winterbome," he said. "I wouldn't 
 have minded if my life had only been my own to lose; I 
 don't vallie it in much of itself, and can let it go if 'tis 
 required of me. But to think what 'tis worth to you, a 
 young man rising in life, that do trouble me! It seems a 
 trick of dishonesty toward ye to go off at fifty-five. I 
 could bear up, I know I could, if it were not for the tree 
 — yes, the tree, 'tis that's killing me. There he stands, 
 threatening my life every minute that the wind do blow. 
 He'll come down upon us and squat us dead; and what 
 will ye do when the life on your property is taken away?" 
 
 " Never you mind me — that's of no consequence," said 
 Giles. "Think of yourself alone." 
 
 He looked out of the window in the direction of the 
 woodman's gaze. The tree was a tall elm, familiar to him 
 from childhood, which stood at a distance of two-thirds its 
 own height from the front of South's dwelling. When- 
 ever the wind blew, as it did now, the tree rocked, natu- 
 rally enough; and the sight of its motion and sound of its 
 sighs had gradually bred the terrifying illusion in the 
 woodman's mind that it would descend and kill him. 
 Thus he would sit all day, in spite of persuasion, watch- 
 ing its every sway, and listening to the melancholy Gre- 
 gorian melodies which the air wrung out of it. This fear 
 it apparently was, rather than any organic disease, which 
 was eating away the health of John South. 
 
 As the tree waved. South waved his head, making it his 
 flugelman with abject obedience. "Ah, when it was quite 
 a small tree," he said, "and I was a little boy, I thought one 
 day of chopping it off with my hook to make a clothes- 
 line prop with. But I put off doing it, and then I again 
 thought that I would; but I forgot it and didn't. And at 
 last it got too big, and now 'tis my enemy, and will be the 
 death o' me. Little did I think, when I let that sapling stay, 
 
92 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 that a time would come when it would torment me, and dash 
 me into my grave." 
 
 "No, no," said Winterborne and Marty, soothingly. But 
 they thought it possible that it might hasten him into his 
 grave, though in another way than by falling. 
 
 "I tell you what," added Winterborne, "I'll climb up this 
 afternoon, and shroud ofi the lower boughs, and then it 
 won't be so heavy, and the wind won't affect it so." 
 
 "She won't allow it — a strange woman come from no- 
 body knows where — she won't have it done." 
 
 "You mean Mrs. Charmond? Oh, she doesn't know 
 there's such a tree on her estate. Besides, shrouding is not 
 felling, and I'll risk that much." 
 
 He went out, and when afternoon came he returned, took 
 a bill-hook from the woodman's shed, and with a ladder 
 climbed into the lower part of the tree, where he began 
 lopping off — "shrouding" as they called it at Hintock — 
 the lowest boughs. Each of these quivered under his at- 
 tack, bent, cracked, and fell into the hedge. Having cut 
 away the lowest tier, he stepped off the ladder, climbed a 
 few steps higher, and attacked those at the next level. Thus 
 he ascended with the progress of his work far above the top 
 of the ladder, cutting away his perches as he went, and leav- 
 ing nothing but a bare stem below him. 
 
 The work was troublesome, for the tree was large. The , 
 afternoon wore on,, turning dark and misty about four 
 o'clock. From time to time Giles cast his eyes across to- 
 ward the bedroom window of South, where, by the flicker- 
 ing fire in the chamber, he could see the old man watching 
 him, sitting motionless with a hand upon each arm of the 
 chair. Beside him sat Marty, also straining her eyes toward 
 the skyey field of his operations. 
 
 A curious question suddenly occurred to Winterborne, 
 and he stopped his chopping. He was operating on an- 
 other person's property to prolong the years of a lease by 
 whose termination that person would considerably benefit. 
 In that aspect of the case he doubted if he ought to go on. 
 On the other hand he was working to save a man's life, and 
 this seemed to empower him to adopt arbitrary measures. 
 
 The wind had died down to a calm, and while he was 
 weighing the circumstances he saw coming along the road 
 through the increasing mist a figure which, indistinct as it 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 98 
 
 was, he knew well. It was Grace Melbury, on her way out 
 from the house, probably for a short evening walk be- 
 fore dark. He arranged himself for a greeting from her, 
 since she could hardly avoid passing immediately beneath 
 the tree. 
 
 But Grace, though she looked up and saw him, was just 
 at that time too full of the words of her father to give him 
 any encouragement. The years-long regard that she had 
 had for him was not kindled by her return into a flame 
 of sufficient brilliancy to make her rebellious. Thinking 
 that she might not see him, he cried : "Miss Melbury, here 
 I am." 
 
 She looked up again. She was near enough to see the 
 expression of his face, and the nails in his soles, silver- 
 bright with constant walking. But she did not reply; and 
 dropping her glance again, went on. 
 
 Winterborne's face grew strange; he mused, and pro- 
 ceeded automatically with his work. Grace meanwhile had 
 not gone far. She had reached a gate, whereon she had 
 leaned sadly, and whispered to herself, "What shall I do?" 
 
 A sudden fog came on, and she curtailed her walk, pass- 
 ing under the tree again on her return. Again he addressed 
 her. "Grace," he said, when she was close to the trunk, 
 "speak to me." She shook her head without stopping, and 
 went on to a little distance, where she stood observing him 
 ' from behind the hedge. 
 
 Her coldness had been kindly meant. If it was to be 
 done, she had said to herself it should be begun at once. 
 While she stood out of observation Giles seemed to recog- 
 nize her meaning; with a sudden start he worked on, climb- 
 ing higher, and cutting himself off more and more from all 
 intercourse with the sublunary world. At last he had 
 worked himself so high up the elm, and the mist had so 
 thickened, that he could only just be discerned as a dark- 
 gray spot on the light-gray sky; he would have been alto- 
 gether out of notice but for the stroke of his bill-hook and 
 the flight of a bough downward, and its crash upon the 
 hedge at intervals. 
 
 It was not to be done thus, after all; plainness and can- 
 dor were best. She went back a third time ; he did not see 
 her now, and she lingeringly gazed up at his unconscious 
 figure, loath to put an end to any kind of hope that might 
 live on in him still. "Giles — Mr. Winterbome," she said. 
 
94 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 He was so high amid the fog that he did not hear. "Mr. 
 Winterborne !" she cried again, and this time he stoppej^, 
 looked down, and repHed. 
 
 "My silence just now was not accident," she said, in an 
 unequal voice. "My father says it is better for us not to 
 think too much of that — engagement, or understanding be- 
 tween us, that you know of. I, too, think that upon the 
 whole he is right. But we are friends, you know, Giles, and 
 almost relations." 
 
 "Very well," he answered, as if without surprise, in a 
 voice which barely reached down the tree. "I have nothing 
 to say in objection — I cannot say anything till I've thought 
 awhile." 
 
 She added, with emotion in her tone, "For myself, I 
 would have married you — some day — I think. But I give 
 way, for I see it would be unwise." 
 
 He made no reply, but sat back upon a bough, placed his 
 elbow in a fork, and rested his head upon his hand. Thus 
 he remained till the fog and the night had completely in- 
 closed him from her view. 
 
 Grace heaved a divided sigh, with a tense pause between, 
 and moved onward, her heart feeling uncomfortably big 
 and heavy, and her eyes wet. Had Giles, instead of re- 
 maining still, immediately come down from the tree to her, 
 would she have continued in that filial acquiescent frame 
 of mind which she had announced to him as final? If it be 
 true, as women themselves have declared, that one of their 
 sex is never so much inclined to throw in her lot with a man 
 for good and all as five minutes after she has told him such a 
 thing cannot be, the probabilities are that something might 
 have been done by the appearance of Winterborne on the 
 ground beside Grace. But he continued motionless and 
 silent in that gloomy Niflheim or fogland which involved 
 him, and she proceeded on her way. 
 
 The spot seemed now to be quite deserted. The light 
 from South's window made rays on the fog, but did not 
 reach the tree. A quarter of an hour passed, and all was 
 blackness overhead. Giles had not yet come down. 
 
 Then the tree seemed to shiver, then to heave a sigh; a 
 movement was audible, and Winterborne dropped almost 
 noiselessly to the ground. He had thought the matter out, 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 95 
 
 and having returned the ladder and bill-hook to their places, 
 pursued his way homeward. He would not allow this in- 
 cident to affect his outer conduct any more than the danger 
 to his leaseholds had done, and went to bed as usual. Two 
 simultaneous troubles do not always make a double trouble ; 
 and thus it came to pass that Giles' practical anxiety about 
 his houses, which would have been enough to keep him 
 awake half the night at any other time, was displaced and 
 not reinforced by his sentimental trouble about Grace Mel- 
 bury. This severance was in truth more like a burial of 
 her than a rupture with her; but he did not realize so much at 
 present; even when he arose in the morning he felt quite 
 moody and stern. As yet the second note in the gamut of 
 such emotions, a tender regret for his loss, had not made 
 itself heard. 
 
 A load of oak timber was to be sent away that morning 
 to a builder whose works were in a town many miles off. 
 The proud trunks were taken up from the silent spot which 
 had known them through the buddings and sheddings of 
 their growth for the foregoing hundred years, chained down 
 like slaves to a heavy timber carriage with enormous red 
 wheels, and four of the most powerful of Melbury's horses 
 were harnessed in front to draw them. 
 
 The horses wore their bells that day. There were six- 
 teen to the team, carried on a frame above each animal's 
 shoulders, and tuned to scale, so as to form two octaves, 
 running from the highest note on the right or off-side of 
 the leader to the lowest on the left or near-side of the shaft- 
 horse. Melbury was among the last to retain horse-bells in 
 that neighborhood; for, living at Little Hintock, where the 
 lanes yet remained as narrow as before the days of turnpike 
 roads, these sound-signals were still as useful to him and his 
 neighbors as they had ever been in former times. Much 
 backing was saved in the course of a year by the warning 
 tones they cast ahead ; moreover, the tones of all the teams 
 in the district being known to the carters of each, they could 
 tell a long way off on a dark night whether they were about 
 to encounter friends or strangers. 
 
 The fog of the previous c vening still lingered so heavily 
 over the woods that the morning could not penetrate the 
 trees till long after its time. The load being a ponderous 
 ©ne, the lane crooked, and the air so thick, Winterborne 
 
96 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 set out, as he often did, to accompany the team as far as the 
 corner, where it would turn into a wider road. 
 
 So they rumbled on, shaking the foundations of the road- 
 side cottages by the weight of their progress, the sixteen 
 bells chiming harmoniously over all, till they had risen out 
 of the valley and were descending toward the more open 
 route, the sparks rising from their creaking skid and nearly 
 setting fire to the dead leaves along-side. 
 
 Then occurred one of the very incidents against which 
 the bells were an endeavor to guard. Suddenly there 
 beamed into their eyes, quite close to them, the two lamps 
 of a carriage, shorn of rays by the fog. Its approach had 
 been quite unheard, by reason of their own noise. The car- 
 riage was a covered one, while behind it could be discerned 
 another vehicle laden with luggage. 
 
 Winterborne went to the head of the team, and heard the 
 coachman telling the carter that he must turn back. The 
 carter declared that this was impossible. 
 
 "You can turn if you unhitch your string-horses," said 
 the coachman. 
 
 "It is much easier for you to turn than for us," said 
 Winterborne. "We've five tons of timber on these wheels 
 if we've an ounce." 
 
 "But I've another carriage with luggage at my back." 
 
 Winterborne admitted the strength of the argument. 
 "But even with that," he said, "you can back better than 
 we. And you ought to, for you could hear our bells half 
 a mile off." 
 
 "And you could see our lights." 
 
 "We couldn't, because of the fog." 
 
 "Well, our time's precious," said the coachman, haught- 
 ily. "You are only going to some trumpery little village or 
 other in the neighborhood, while we are going straight to 
 Italy." 
 
 "Driving all the way, I suppose," said Winterborne, sar- 
 castically. 
 
 The argument continued in these terms till a voice from 
 the interior of the carriage inquired what was the matter. 
 It was a lady's. 
 
 She was briefly informed of the timber people's ob- 
 stinacy; and then Giles could hear her telling the footman 
 to direct the timber people to turn their horses' heads. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 97 
 
 The message was brought, and Winterborne sent the 
 bearer back to say that he begged the lady's pardon, but 
 that he could not do as she requested; that though he 
 would not assert it to be impossible, it was impossible by 
 comparison with the slight difficulty to her party to back 
 their light carriages. As fate would have it, the incident 
 with Grace Melbury on the previous day made Giles less 
 gentle than he might otherwise have shown himself, his 
 confidence in the sex being rudely shaken. 
 
 In fine, nothing could move him, and the carriages were 
 compelled to back till they reached one of the sidings or 
 turnouts constructed in the bank for the purpose. Then 
 the team came on ponderously, and the clang of its six- 
 teen bells as it passed the discomfited carriages, tilted up 
 against the bank, lent a particularly triumphant tone to 
 the team's progress — a tone which, in point of fact, did not 
 at all attach to its conductor's feelings. 
 
 Giles walked behind the timber, and just as he had got 
 past the yet stationary carriages, he heard a soft voice say, 
 "Who is that rude man? Not Melbury?" The sex of the 
 speaker was so prominent in the voice that Winterborne 
 felt a pang of regret. 
 
 "No, ma'am. A younger man, in a smaller way of busi- 
 ness in Little Hintock. Winterborne is his name." 
 
 Thus they parted company. "Why, Mr. Winterborne," 
 said the wagoner, when they were out of hearing, "that 
 was She — Mrs. Charmond! Who'd ha' thought it? What 
 in the world can a woman that does nothing be cock- 
 watching out here at this time o' day for? Oh, going to 
 Italy — yes, to be sure; I heard she was going abroad; she 
 can't endure the winter here." 
 
 Winterborne was vexed at the incident; the more so that 
 he knew Mr. Melbury, in his adoration of Hintock House, 
 would be the first to blame him, if it became known. But 
 saying no more, he accompanied the load to the end of the 
 lane, and then turned back with an intention to call at 
 South's to learn the result of the experiment of the preceding 
 evening. 
 
 It chanced that a few minutes before this time Grace 
 
 Melbury, who now rose soon enough to breakfast with her 
 
 father, in spite of the unwontedness of the hour, had been 
 
 commissioned by him to make the same inquiry at South's. 
 
 7 
 
98 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 Marty had been standing at the door when Miss Melbury 
 arrived. Almost before the latter had spoken, Mrs. Char- 
 mond'^ carriage, released from the obstruction up the lane, 
 came bowling along, and the two girls turned to regard the 
 spectacle. 
 
 Mrs. Charmond did not see them, but there was sufficient 
 light for them to discern her outline from the carriage win- 
 dows. A noticeable feature in her tournure was a magnifi- 
 cent mass of braided locks. 
 
 "How well she looks this morning!" said Grace, forget- 
 ting Mrs. Charmond's slight in her generous admiration. 
 "Her hair so becomes her worn that way. I have never 
 seen any more beautiful!" 
 
 "Nor have I, miss," said Marty, dryly, unconsciously 
 stroking her crown. 
 
 Grace watched the carriages with Ungering regret till 
 they were out of sight. She then learned of Marty that 
 South was no better. Before she had come away Winter- 
 borne approached the house, but seeing that one of the 
 two girls standing on the doorstep was Grace, he suddenly 
 turned back again, and sought the shelter of his own home 
 till she should have gone away. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The encounter with the carriages having sprung upon 
 Winterborne's mind the image of Mrs. Charmond, his 
 thoughts by a natural channel went from her to the fact 
 that several cottages and other houses in the two Hintocks, 
 now his own, would fall into her possession in the event of 
 South's death. He marveled what people could have been 
 thinking about in the past to invent such precarious ten- 
 ures as these; still more, what could have induced his an- 
 cestors at Hintock, and other village people, to exchange 
 their old copy-folds for life-leases. But having naturally suc- 
 ceeded to these properties through his father, he had done 
 his best to keep them in order, though he was much struck 
 with his father's negligence in not insuring South's life. 
 
 After breakfast, still musing on the circumstances, he 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 99 
 
 went upstairs, turned over his bed, and drew out a flat 
 canvas bag, which lay between the mattress and the sack- 
 ing. In this he kept his leases, which had remained there 
 unopened ever since his father's death. It was the usual 
 hiding-place among rural lifeholders for such documents. 
 Winterborne sat down on the bed and looked them over. 
 They were ordinary leases for three lives, which a member 
 of the South family, some fifty years before this time, had 
 accepted of the lord of the manor in lieu of certain copy- 
 holds and other rights, in consideration of having the 
 dilapidated houses rebuilt by said lord. They had come 
 into his father's possession chiefly through his mother, who 
 was a South. 
 
 Pinned to the parchment of one of the indentures was a 
 letter, which Winterborne had never seen before. It bore 
 a remote date, the handwriting being that of some solicitor 
 or agent, and the signature the landholder's. It was to the 
 effect that at any time before the last of the stated lives 
 should drop, Mr. Giles Winterborne, senior, or his represen- 
 tative, should have the privilege of adding his own and 
 his son's life to the life remaining on payment of a merely 
 nominal sum; the concession being in consequence of the 
 elder Winterborne's consent to demolish one of the houses 
 and relinquish its site, which stood at an awkward corner of 
 the lane and impeded the way. 
 
 The house had been pulled down years before. Why 
 Giles' father had not taken advantage of his privilege to 
 insert his own and his son's lives it was impossible to say. 
 The likelihood was that death alone had hindered him in 
 the execution of his project, as it surely was, the elder Win- 
 terborne having been a man who took much pleasure in 
 dealing with house property in his small way. 
 
 Since one of the Souths still survived, there was not 
 much doubt that Giles could do what his father had left 
 undone, as far as his own life was concerned. This possi- 
 bility cheered him much, for by those houses hung many 
 things. Melbury's doubt of the young man's fitness to be 
 the husband of Grace had been based not a little on the pre- 
 cariousness of his holdings in Little and Great Hintock. 
 He resolved to attend to the business at once, the fine for 
 renewal being a sum that he could easily muster. His 
 scheme, however, could not be carried out in a day; and 
 
100 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 meanwhile, he would run up to South's as he had intended 
 to do, to learn the result of the experiment with the tree. 
 
 Marty met him at the door. "Well, Marty, he said, and 
 was surprised to read in her face that the case was not so 
 hopeful as he had imagined. 
 
 "I am sorry for your labor," she said. "It is all lost. He 
 says the tree seems taller than ever." 
 
 Winterbome looked round at it. Taller the tree certain- 
 ly did seem, the gauntness of its now naked stem being more 
 marked than before. 
 
 "It quite terrified him when he first saw what you had 
 done to it this morning," she added. "He declares it will 
 come down upon us and cleave us, like 'the sword of the 
 Lord and of Gideon.' " 
 
 "Well, can I do anything else?" asked he. 
 
 "The doctor says the tree ought to be cut down." 
 
 "Oh — you've had the doctor?" 
 
 "I didn't send for him. Mrs. Charmond, before she left, 
 heard that father was ill, and told him to attend him at 
 her expense." 
 
 "That was very good of her. And he says it ought to be 
 cut down. We mustn't cut it down without her knowledge, 
 I suppose." 
 
 He went upstairs. There the old man sat, staring at the 
 now gaunt tree as if his gaze were frozen on to its trunk. 
 Unluckily the tree waved afresh by this time, a wind hav- 
 ing sprung up and blown the fog away, and his eyes turned 
 with its wavings. 
 
 They heard footsteps — a. man's," but of a lighter type than 
 usual. "There is Dr. Fitzpiers again," she said, and de- 
 scended. Presently his tread was heard on the naked stairs. 
 
 Mr. Fitzpiers entered the sick-chamber just as a doctor 
 is more or less wont to do on such occasions, and pre-emi- 
 nently when the room is that of the humble cottager, look- 
 ing around toward the patient with that preoccupied gaze 
 which so plainly reveals that he has well-nigh forgotten all 
 about the case and the whole circumstances since he dis- 
 missed them from his mind at his last exit from the same 
 apartment. He nodded to Winterborne, with whom he was 
 already a little acquainted, recalled the case to his thoughts, 
 and went leisurely on to where South sat. 
 
 Fitzpiers was, on the whole, a finely formed, handsome 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 101 
 
 man. His eyes were dark and impressive, and beamed 
 with the Hght either of energy or susceptivity — it was diffi- 
 cult to say which; it might have been a little of both. That 
 quick, glittering, practical eye, sharp for the surface of 
 things and for nothing beneath it, he had not. But whether 
 his apparent depth of vision was real, or only an artistic 
 accident of his corporeal molding, nothing but his deeds 
 could reveal. 
 
 His face was rather soft than stern, charming than 
 grand, pale than flushed; his nose — if a sketch of his fea- 
 tures be de rigueur for a person of his pretensions — was 
 artistically beautiful enoug}L„to have heei^ worth-doiag- in 
 marble by any sculptor not over-busy, and was hence de- 
 void of those knotty irregularities which often mean power; 
 while the double-cyma or classical curve of his mouth was 
 not without a looseness in its close. IN evertheless, either 
 from his readily appreciative mien, or his reflective manner, 
 or the instinct toward profound things which was said to 
 possess him, his presence bespoke the philosopher rather 
 than the dandy or macaroni — an effect which was helped 
 by the absence of trinkets or other trivialities from his at- 
 tire, though this was more finished and up to date than is 
 usually the case among rural practitioners^ 
 
 Strict people of the highly respectable class, knowing a 
 little about him by report, might have said that he seemed 
 likely to err rather in the possession of too many ideas 
 than too few; to be a dreamy 'ist of some sort, or too 
 deeply steeped in some false kind of 'ism. However this 
 may be, it will be seen that he was undoubtedly a some- 
 what rare kind of gentleman and doctor to have descended, 
 as from the clouds, upon Little Hintock. 
 
 "This is an extraordinary case," he said at last to Win- 
 terborne, after examining South by conversation, look, and 
 touch, and learning that the craze about the elm was strong- 
 er than ever. "Come down-stairs, and I'll tell you what I 
 think." 
 
 They accordingly descended, and the doctor continued: 
 "The tree must be cut down, or I won't answer for his life." 
 
 " 'Tis Mrs. Charmond's tree, and I suppose we must get 
 permission?" said Giles. "If so, as she is gone away, I must 
 speak to her agent." 
 
 "Oh — never mind whose tree it is — what's a tree beside 
 
102 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 a life! Cut it down. I have not the honor of knowing 
 Mrs. Charmond as yet, but I am disposed to risk that much 
 with her." 
 
 " 'Tis timber," rejoined Giles, more scrupulous than he 
 would have been had not his own interests stood so closely 
 involved. "They'll never fell a stick about here without 
 it being marked first, either by her or the agent." 
 
 "Then we'll inaugurate a new era forthwith. How long 
 has he complained of the tree?" asked the doctor of Marty. 
 
 "Weeks and weeks, sir. The shape of it seems to haunt 
 him like an evil spirit. He says that it is exactly his own 
 age, that it has got human sense, and sprouted up when he 
 was born on purpose to rule him, and keep him as its slave. 
 Others have been like it afore in Hintock." 
 
 They could hear South's voice upstairs. "Oh, he's rock- 
 ing this way; he must come! And then my poor life, that's 
 worth houses upon houses, will be squashed out o' me. Oh! 
 oh!" 
 
 "That's how he goes on," she added. "And he'll never 
 look anywhere else but out of the window, and scarcely 
 have the curtains drawn." 
 
 "Down with it, then, and hang Mrs. Charmond," said 
 Mr. Fitzpiers. "The best plan will be to wait till the even- 
 ing, when it is dark, or early in the morning before he is 
 awake, so that he doesn't see it fall, for that would terrify 
 him worse than ever. Keep the blind down till I come, and 
 then I'll assure him and show him that his trouble is over." 
 
 The doctor then departed, and they waited till the even- 
 ing. When it was dusk, and the curtains drawn. Winter- 
 borne directed a couple of woodmen to bring a cross-cut 
 saw, and the tall, threatening tree was soon nearly ofif at 
 its base. He would not fell it completely then, on account 
 of the possible crash, but next morning, before South was 
 awake, they went and lowered it cautiously, in a direction 
 away from the cottage. It was a business difficult to do 
 quite silently; but it was done at last, and the elm of the 
 same birth-year as the woodman's lay stretched upon the 
 ground. The weakest idler that passed could now set foot 
 on marks formerly made in the upper forks by the shoes of 
 adventurous climbers only; once inaccessible nests could 
 be examined miscroscopically; and on swaying extremi- 
 ties where birds alone had perched, the bystanders sat down. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 103 
 
 As soon as it was broad daylight the doctor came, and 
 Winterborne entered the house with him. Marty said that 
 her father was wrapped up and ready, as usual, to be put 
 into his chair. They ascended the stairs, and soon seated 
 him. He began at once to complain of the tree, and the 
 danger to his life and Winterborne's house-property in 
 consequence. 
 
 The doctor signaled to Giles, who went and drew back 
 the printed cotton curtains. " 'Tis gone, see," said Mr. Fitz- 
 piers. 
 
 As soon as the old man saw the vacant patch of sky in 
 place of the branched column so familiar to his gaze, he 
 sprung up, speechless, his eyes rose from their hollows till 
 whites showed all round, he fell back, and a bluish-white- 
 ness overspread him. 
 
 Greatly alarmed, they put him on the bed. As soon as 
 he came a little out of his fit, he gasped. "Oh, it is gone ! — 
 where ? — ^where ?" 
 
 His whole system seemed paralyzed by amazement. They 
 were thunder-struck at the result of the experiment, and did 
 all they could. Nothing seemed to avail. Giles and Fitz- 
 piers went and came, but uselessly. He lingered through 
 the day, and died that evening as the sun went down. 
 
 "D d if my remedy hasn't killed him!" murmured the 
 
 doctor. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 When Melbury heard what had happened he seemed 
 much moved, and walked thoughtfully about the premises. 
 On South's own account he was genuinely sorry; and on 
 Winterborne's he was the more grieved in that this catas- 
 trophe had so closely followed the somewhat harsh dismis- 
 sal of Giles as the betrothed of his daughter. 
 
 He was quite angry with circumstances for so heedlessly 
 inflicting on Giles a second trouble when the needful one 
 inflicted by himself was all that the proper order of events 
 deinanded. "I told Giles' father when he came into those 
 houses not to spend too much money on lifehold property 
 held neither for his own life nor his son's," he exclaimed. 
 
104 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "But he wouldn't listen to me. And now Giles has to suf- 
 fer for it." 
 
 "Poor Giles," murmured Grace. 
 
 "Now, Grace, between us two, it is very, very remark- 
 able. It is almost as if I had foreseen this ; and I am thank- 
 ful for your escape, though I am sincerely sorry for Giles. 
 Had we not dismissed him already, we could hardly have 
 found it in our hearts to dismiss him now. So I say, be 
 thankful. I'll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a 
 pretender to the position of my son-in-law, that can never 
 be thought of more." 
 
 And yet at that very moment the impracticability to 
 which poor Winterborne's suit had been reduced was touch- 
 ing Grace's heart to a warmer sentiment on his behalf than 
 she had felt for years concerning him. 
 
 He, meanwhile, was sitting down alone in the old familiar 
 house which had ceased to be his; taking a calm if some- 
 what dismal survey of affairs. The pendulum of the clock 
 bumped every now and then against one side of the case in 
 which it swung, as the muffled drum to his worldly march. 
 Looking out of the window he could perceive that a paral- 
 ysis had come over Creedle's occupation of manuring the 
 garden, owing, obviously, to a conviction that they might 
 not be living there long enough to profit by next season's 
 crop. 
 
 He looked at the leases again, and the letter attached. 
 There was no doubt that he had lost his houses by an acci- 
 dent which might easily have been circumvented if he had 
 known the true conditions of his holding. The time for per- 
 formance had now lapsed in strict law; but might not the 
 intention be considered by the landholder when she became 
 aware of the circumstances, and his moral right to retain 
 the holdings for the term of his life be conceded? 
 
 His heart sank within him when he perceived that, de- 
 spite all the legal reciprocities and safeguards prepared and 
 written, the upshot of the matter amounted to this, that it 
 depended upon the mere caprice — good or ill — of the woman 
 he had met the day before in such an unfortunate way, 
 whether he was to possess his houses for life or no. 
 
 While he was sitting and thinking a step came to the 
 door, and Melbury appeared, looking very sorry for his 
 position. Winterborne welcomed him by a word and a 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 105 
 
 look, and went on with his examination of the parchments. 
 His visitor sat down. 
 
 "Giles," he said, "this ^s very awkward, and I am sorry 
 for it. What are you going to do?" 
 
 Giles informed him of the real state of affairs, and how 
 barely he had missed availing himself of his chance of re- 
 newal. 
 
 "What a misfortune! Why was this neglected? Well, 
 the best thing you can do is to write and tell her all about 
 it, and throw yourself upon her generosity." 
 
 "I would rather not," murmured Giles. 
 
 "But you must," said Melbury. 
 
 In short, he argued so cogently that Giles allowed him- 
 self to be persuaded, and the letter to Mrs. Charmond was 
 written and sent to Hintock House, whence, as he knew, 
 it would at once be forwarded to her. 
 
 Melbury, feeling that he had done so good an action in 
 coming as almost to extenuate his previous arbitrary con- 
 duct to nothing, went home; and Giles was left alone to 
 the suspense of waiting for a reply from the divinity who 
 shaped the ends of the Hintock population. By this time 
 all the villagers knew of the circumstances, and being well- 
 nigh like one family, a keen interest was the result all round. 
 
 Everybody thought of Giles; nobody thought of Marty. 
 Had any of them looked in upon her during those moon- 
 light nights which preceded the burial of her father, they 
 would have seen the girl absolutely ,alone in the house with 
 the dead man. Her own chamber being nearest the stairs, 
 the coffin had been placed there for convenience; and at a 
 certain hour of the night, when the moon arrived opposite 
 the window, its beams streamed across the still profile of 
 South, sublimed by the august presence of death, and on- 
 ward a few feet further upon the face of his daughter, lying 
 in her little bed in the stillness of a repose almost as dignified 
 as that of her companion — ^the repose of a guileless soul that 
 had nothing more left on earth to lose, except a life which 
 she did not over-value. 
 
 South was buried, and a week passed, and Winterborne 
 watched for a reply from Mrs. Charmond. Melbury was 
 very sanguine as to its tenor; but Winterborne had not 
 told him of the encounter with her carriage, when, if ever 
 he had heard an affronted tone on a woman's lips, he had 
 {i^^rd it on h?rs, 
 
106 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 The postman's time for passing was just after Melbury's 
 men had assembled in the spar-house; and Winterborne, 
 who when not busy on his own account would lend assist- 
 ance there, used to go out into the lane every morning and 
 meet the postman at the end of one of the green rides 
 through the hazel copse, in the straight stretch of which 
 his laden figure could be seen a long way ofif. Grace also 
 was very anxious; more anxious than her father; more, 
 perhaps, than Winterborne himself. This anxiety led her 
 into the spar-house on some pretext or other almost evei-y 
 morning whilst they were awaiting the reply. 
 
 Fitzpiers, too, though he did not personally appear, was 
 much interested, and not altogether easy in his mind; for 
 he had been informed by an authority of what he had him- 
 self conjectured, that if the tree had been allowed to stand, 
 the old man would have gone on complaining, but might 
 have lived for twenty years. 
 
 Eleven times had Winterborne gone to that corner of the 
 ride, and looked up its long, straight slope through the wet 
 grays of winter dawn. But though the postman's bowed 
 figure loomed in view pretty regularly, he brought nothing 
 for Giles. On the twelfth day the man of missives, while 
 yet in the extreme distance, held up his hand, and Winter- 
 borne saw a letter in it. He took it into the spar-house be- 
 fore he broke the seal, and those who were there gathered 
 round him while he read, Grace looking in at the door. 
 
 The letter was not from Mrs. Charmond herself, but her 
 agent at Sherton. Winterborne glanced it over and looked 
 up. 
 
 "It's all over," he said. 
 
 "Ah!" said they altogether. 
 
 "Her lawyer is instructed to say that Mrs. Charmond 
 sees no reason for disturbing the natural course of things, 
 particularly as she contemplates pulling the houses down," 
 he said, quietly. 
 
 "Only think of that," said several. 
 
 Winterborne had turned away, and said vehemently to 
 himself, "Thenilet her pull 'em down, and be d d to her!" 
 
 Creedle looked at him with a face of seven sorrows, say- 
 ing, "Ah, 'twas that sperrit that lost 'em for ye, maister!" 
 
 Winterborne subdued his feelings, and from that hour, 
 whatever they were, kept them entirely to himself, There 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 107 
 
 could be no doubt that, up to this last momewt, he liad 
 nourished a feeble hope of regaining Grace in the event of 
 this negotiation turning out a success. Not being aware 
 of the fact that her father could have settled upon her a 
 fortune sufficient to enable both to live in comfort, he deemed 
 it now an absurdity to dream any longer of such a vanity 
 as making her his wife, and sank into silence forthwith. 
 
 Yet whatever the value of taciturnity to a man among 
 strangers, it is apt to express more than talkativeness when 
 it dwells among friends. The countryman who is obliged 
 to judge the time of day from changes in external nature 
 sees a thousand successive tints and traits in the landscape 
 which are never discerned by him who hears the regular 
 chime of a clock, because they are never in request. In like 
 manner do we use our eyes on our taciturn comrade. The 
 infinitesimal movement of muscle, curve, hair, and wrinkle, 
 which, when accompanied by a voice, goes unregarded, is 
 watched and translated in the lack of it, till virtually the 
 whole surrounding circle of familiars is charged with the re- 
 served one's moods and meanings. 
 
 This was the condition of affairs between Winterborne 
 and his neighbors after his stroke of ill-luck. He held his 
 tongue; and they observed him, and knew that he was dis- 
 composed. 
 
 Mr. Melbury, in his compunction, thought more of the 
 matter than any one else, except his daughter. Had Win- 
 terborne been going on in the old fashion, Grace's father 
 could have alluded to his disapproval of the alliance every 
 day with the greatest frankness; but to speak any further 
 on the subject he could not find it in his heart to do now. 
 He hoped that Giles would, of his own accord, make some 
 final announcement that he entirely withdrew his preten- 
 sions to Grace, and so get the thing past and done with. 
 For, though Giles had in a measure acquiesced in the wish 
 of her family, he could make matters unpleasant if he chose 
 to work upon Grace; and hence, when Melbury saw the 
 young man approaching along the road one day, he kept 
 friendliness and frigidity exactly balanced in his eye till he 
 could see whether Giles' manner was presumptive or not. 
 
 His manner was that of a man who abandoned all claims. 
 "I am glad to meet ye, Mr. Melbury," he said, in a low 
 voice, whose quality he endeavored to make as practical as 
 
108 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 possible. "I am afraid I shall not be able to keep that mare 
 I bought, and as I don't care to sell her, I should like — if 
 you don't object — to give her to Miss Melbury. The horse 
 is very quiet, and would be quite safe for her." 
 
 Mr. Melbury was rather afifected at this. "You sha'n't 
 hurt your pocket like that on our account, Giles. Grace 
 shall have the horse, but I'll pay you what you gave for 
 her, and any expense you may have been put to for her 
 keep." 
 
 He would not hear of any other terms, and thus it was 
 arranged. They were now opposite Melbury's house, and 
 the timber merchant pressed Winterborne to enter, Grace 
 being out of the way. 
 
 "Pull round the settle, Giles," said the timber merchant, 
 as soon as they were within. "I should like to have a seri- 
 ous talk with you." 
 
 Thereupon he put the case to Winterborne frankly, and 
 in quite a friendly way. He declared that he did not like 
 to be hard on a man when he was in difficulty; but he really 
 did not see how Winterborne could marry his daughter 
 now, without even a house to take her to. 
 
 Giles quite acquiesced in the awkwardness of his situa- 
 tion. But from a momentary feeling that he would like to 
 know Grace's mind from her own lips, he did not speak 
 out positively there and then. He accordingly departed 
 somewhat abruptly, and went home to consider whether he 
 would seek to bring about a meeting with her. 
 
 In the evening, while he sat quietly pondering, he fancied 
 that he heard a scraping on the wall outside his house. 
 The boughs of a monthly rose which grew there made such 
 a noise sometimes, but as no wind was stirring he knew 
 that it could not be the rose-tree. He took up the candle 
 and went out. Nobody was near. As he turned, the light 
 flickered on the whitewashed rough case of the front, and 
 he saw words written thereon in charcoal, which he read 
 as follows: 
 
 "O Giles, you've lost your dwelling place. 
 And therefore, Giles, you'll lose your Grace." 
 
 Giles went indoors. He had his suspicions as to the scraw- 
 ler of those lines, but he could not be sure. What sud- 
 denly filled his heart far more than curiosity about their 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 169 
 
 authorship was a terrible belief that they were turning out 
 to be true, try to see Grace as he might. They decided the 
 question for him. He sat down and wrote a formal note to 
 Melbury, in which he briefly stated that he was placed in 
 such a position as to make him share to the full Melbury's 
 view of his own and his daughter's promise, made some 
 years before; to wish that it should be considered as can- 
 celled, and they themselves quite released from any obliga- 
 tion on account of it. 
 
 Having fastened up this their plenary absolution, he de- 
 termined to get it out of his hands and have done with it; 
 to which end he went off to Melbury's at once. It was now 
 so late that the family had all retired; he crept up to the 
 house, thrust the note under the door, and stole away as 
 silently as he had come. 
 
 Melbury himself was the first to rise the next morning, 
 and when he had read the letter his relief was great. "Very 
 honorable of Giles; very honorable," he kept saying to 
 himself. "I shall not forget him. Now to keep her up 
 to her own true level." 
 
 It happened that Grace went out for an early ramble 
 that morning, passing through the door and gate while her 
 father was in the spar-house. To go in her customary di- 
 rection, she could not avoid passing Winterborne's house. 
 The morning sun was shining flat upon its white surface, 
 and the words, which still remained, were immediately visi- 
 ble to her. She read them. Her face flushed to crimson. 
 She could see Giles and Creedle talking together at the 
 back; the charred spar-gad with which the lines had been 
 written lay on the ground beneath the wall. Feeling pretty 
 sure that Winterborne would observe her action, she quick- 
 ly went up to the wall, rubbed out "lose" and inserted "keep" 
 in its stead. Then she made the best of her way home with- 
 out looking behind her. Giles could draw an inference now 
 if he chose. 
 
 There could not be the least doubt that gentle Grace was 
 warming to more sympathy with, and interest in, Giles Win- 
 terborne than ever she had done while he was her prom- 
 ised lover; that since his misfortune, those social shortcom- 
 ings of his, which contrasted so awkwardly with her later 
 experiences of life, had become obscured by the generous 
 revival of an old romantic attachment to him. Though men- 
 
110 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 tally trained and tilled into foreignness of view, as compared 
 with her youthful time, Grace was not an ambitious girl, 
 and might, if left to herself, have declined Winterborne with- 
 out much discontent or unhappiness. Her feelings just 
 now were so far from latent that the writing on the wall had 
 thus quickened her to an unusual rashness. 
 
 Having returned from her walk she sat at breakfast 
 silently. When her stepmother had left the room she said 
 to her father, "I have made up my mind that I should like 
 my engagement to Giles to continue, for the present, at any 
 rate, till I can see further what I ought to do." 
 
 Melbury looked much surprised. 
 
 "Nonsense," he said, sharply. "You don't know what 
 you are talking about. Look here." 
 
 He handed across to her the letter received from Giles. 
 
 She read it, and said no more. Could he have seen her 
 write on the wall? She did not know. Fate, it seemed, 
 would have it this way, and there was nothing to do but to 
 acquiesce. 
 
 It was a few hours after this that Winterborne, who, curi- 
 ously enough, had not perceived Grace writing, was clear- 
 ing away the tree from the front of South's late dwelling. 
 He saw Marty standing in her doorway, a slim figure in 
 meager black, almost without womanly contours as yet. 
 He went up to her and said: "Marty, why did you write 
 that on my wall last night? It was you, you know." 
 
 "Because it was the truth. I didn't mean to let it stay, 
 Mr. Winterborne ; but when I was going to rub it out you 
 came, and I was obliged to run of?." 
 
 "Having prophesied one thing, why did you alter it to 
 another? Your predictions can't be worth much." 
 
 "I have not altered it." 
 
 "But you have." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "It is altered. Go and see." 
 
 She went, and read that, in spite of losing his dwelling- 
 place, he would keep his Grace. Marty came back surprised. 
 
 "Well, I never," she said. "Who can have made such non- 
 sense out of it?" 
 
 "Who, indeed?" said he. 
 
 "I have rubbed it all out, as the point of it is quite gone." 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. Ill 
 
 "You'd no business to rub it out. I didn't tell you- to. 
 I meant to let it stay a little longer." 
 
 "Some idle boy did it, no doubt," she murmured. 
 
 As this seemed very probable, and the actual perpetra- 
 tor was unsuspected, Winterborne said no more, and dis- 
 missed the matter from his mind. 
 
 From this day of his life onward for a considerable time, 
 Winterborne, though not absolutely out of his house as yet, 
 retired into the background of human life and action there- 
 about — a feat not particularly difificult of performance any- 
 where when the doer has the assistance of a lost prestige. 
 Grace, thinking that Winterborne saw her write, made no 
 further sign, and the frail bark of fidelity that she had thus, 
 timidly launched was stranded and lost. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Dr. Fitzpiers lived on the slope of the hill, in a house of 
 much less pretension, both as to architecture and as to mag- 
 nitude, than the timber merchant's. The latter had, with- 
 out doubt, been once the manorial residence appertaining to 
 the snug and modest domain of Little Hintock, of which 
 the boundaries were now lost by its absorption with others 
 of its kind to the adjoining estate of Mrs. Charmond. 
 Though the Melburys themselves were unaware of the fact, 
 there was every reason to believe — ^at least so the parson said 
 — ^that the owners of the little manor had been Melbury's 
 own ancestors, the family name occurring in numerous docu- 
 ments relating to transfers of land about the time of the civil 
 wars. 
 
 Mr. Fitzpiers' dwelling, on the contrary, was small, cot- 
 tage-like, and comparatively modern. It had been occu- 
 pied, and was in part occupied still, by a retired farmer and 
 his wife, who, on the surgeon's arrival in quest of a home, 
 had accommodated him by receding from their front rooms 
 into the kitchen quarter, whence they administered to his 
 wants, and emerged at regular intervals to receive from him 
 a not unwelcome addition to their income. 
 
 The cottage and its garden were r,o regular in their ar- 
 rangement that they might have been laid out by a Dutch 
 
112 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 designer of the time of William and Mary. In a low, 
 dense hedge, cut to wedge-shape, was a door, over which 
 the hedge formed an arch, and from the inside of the door 
 a straight path, bordered with clipped box, ran up the slope 
 of the garden to the porch, which was exactly in the mid- 
 dle of the house front, with two windows on each side. Right 
 and left of the path were, first, a bed of gooseberry bushes, 
 next of currant, next of raspberry, next of strawberry, 
 next of old-fashioned flowers, at the corners opposite the 
 porch being spheres of box resembling a pair of school 
 globes. Over the roof of the house could be seen the 
 orchard, on yet higher ground, and behind the orchard 
 the forest trees, reaching up to the crest of the hill. 
 
 Opposite the garden door and visible from the parlor 
 window was a swing-gate leading into a field, across which 
 ran a footpath. The swing-gate had just been repainted, 
 and on one fine afternoon, before the paint was dry, and 
 while gnats were still dying thereon, the surgeon was stand- 
 ing in his sitting-room abstractedly looking out at the dif- 
 ferent pedestrians who passed and repassed along that route. 
 Being of a philosophical stamp, he perceived that the char- 
 acter of each of these travelers exhibited itself in a some- 
 what amusing manner by his or her method of handling 
 the gate. 
 
 As regarded the men, there was not much variety; they 
 gave the gate a kick and passed through. The women were 
 more contrasting. To them the sticky woodwork was a 
 barricade, a disgust, a menace, a treachery, as the case might 
 be. 
 
 The first that he noticed was a bouncing woman with her 
 skirts tucked up and her hair uncombed. She grasped the 
 gate without looking, giving it a supplementary push with 
 her shoulder, when the white imprint drew from her an 
 exclamation in language not too refined. She went to the 
 green bank, sat down and rubbed herself in the grass, curs- 
 ing the while. 
 
 "Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the doctor. 
 
 The next was a girl, with her hair cropped short, in whom 
 the surgeon recognized the daughter of his late patient, 
 the woodman Sovith. Moreover, a black bonnet that she 
 wore by way of mourning unpleasantly reminded him that 
 he had ordered the felling of a tree which had caused her 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 113 
 
 parent's death and Winterborne's losses. She walked and 
 thought, and not recklessly; but her preoccupation led her 
 to grasp unsuspectingly the bar of the gate, and touch it 
 with her arm. Fitzpiers felt sorry that she should have soiled 
 that new black frock, poor as it was, for it was probably her 
 only one. She looked at her hand and arm, seemed but lit- 
 tle surprised, wiped off the disfigurement with an almost un- 
 moved face, and as if without abandoning her original 
 thoughts. Thus she went on her way. 
 
 Then there came over the green quite a different sort of 
 personage. She walked as delicately as if she had been 
 bred in town, and as firmly as if she had been bred in the 
 country; she seemed one who dimly knew her appearance 
 to be attractive, but who retained some of the charm of being 
 ignorant of that fact by forgetting it in a general pensive- 
 ness. She approached the gate. To let such a creature 
 touch it even with the tip of her glove was to Fitzpiers almost 
 like letting her proceed to tragical self-destruction. He 
 jumped up and looked for his hat, but was unable to find the 
 right one; glancing again out of the window he saw that he 
 was too late. Having come up, she stopped, looked at the 
 gate, picked up a little stick, and using it as a bayonet,pushed 
 open the obstacle without touching it at all. 
 
 He steadily watched her till she passed out of sight, recog- 
 nizing her as the very young lady whom he had seen once 
 before and been unable to identify. Whose could that emo- 
 tional face be? All the others he had seen in Hintock as 
 yet oppressed him with their crude rusticity; the contrast of- 
 fered by this suggested that she hailed from elsewhere. 
 
 Precisely these thoughts had occurred to him at the first 
 time of seeing her; but he now went a little further with 
 them, and considered that as there had been no carriage seen 
 or heard lately in that spot she could not have come a very 
 long distance. She must be somebody staying at Hintock 
 House? Possibly Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard 
 so much — at any rate an inmate, and this probability was 
 sufficient to set a mild radiance in the surgeon's somewhat 
 dull sky. 
 
 Fitzpiers set down the book he had been perusing. It 
 happened to be that of a German metaphysician, for the 
 doctor was not a practical man, except by fits, and mucji 
 preferred the ideal world to the real,, and the discovery of 
 
114 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 principles to their application. The young lady remained 
 in his thoughts. He might have followed her; but he was 
 not constitutionally active, and preferred a conjectural pur- 
 suit. However, when he went out for a ramble just before 
 dusk, he insensibly took the direction of Hintock House, 
 which was the way that Grace had been walking, it having 
 happened that her mind had run on Mrs. Charmond that 
 day, and she had walked to the brow of a hill whence the 
 house could be seen, returning by another route. 
 
 Fitzpiers in his turn reached the edge of the glen, over- 
 looking the manor house. The shutters were shut, and 
 only one chimney smoked. The mere aspect of the place 
 was enough to inform him that Mrs. Charmond had gone 
 away, and that nobody else was staying there. Fitzpiers 
 felt a vague disappointment that the young lady was not 
 Mrs. Charmond, of whom he had heard so much ; and with- 
 out pausing longer to gaze at a carcass from which the 
 spirit had flown, he bent his steps homeward. 
 
 Later in the evening Fitzjfters was summoned to visit a 
 cottage patient about two miles distant. Like the major- 
 ity of young practitioners in his position he was far from 
 having assumed the dignity of being driven his rounds by 
 a servant in a brougham that flashed the sunlight like a 
 mirror; his way of getting about was by means of a gig, 
 which he drove himself, hitching the rein of the horse to 
 the gate-post, shutter-hook, or garden paling of the domi- 
 cile under visitation, or giving pennies to little boys to hold 
 the animal during his stay — ^pennies which were well earned 
 when the cases to be attended were of a certain cheerful 
 kind, that wore out the patience of the little boys. 
 
 On this account of traveling alone, the night journeys 
 which Fitzpiers had frequently to take were dismal 
 enough, a serious apparent perversity in nature ruling that 
 whenever there was to be a birth in a particularly inacces- 
 sible and lonely place, that event should occur in the night. 
 The surgeon, having been of late years a town man, hated 
 the solitary midnight woodland. He was not altogether 
 skillful with the reins, and it often occurred to his mind 
 that if in some remote depths of the trees an accident were 
 to happen, the fact of his being alone might be the death 
 of him. Hence he made a practice of picking up any coun- 
 tryman or lad whom he chanced to pass by, and under the 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 115 
 
 disguise of treating him to a nice drive obtain his com- 
 panionship on the journey, and his convenient assistance in 
 opening gates. 
 
 The doctor had started on his way out of the village on 
 the night in question when the light of his lamps fell upon 
 the musing form of Winterborne, walking leisurely along, 
 as if he had no object in life. Winterborne was a better 
 class of companion than the doctor usually could get, and 
 he at once pulled up and asked him if he would like a drive 
 through the wood that fine night. 
 
 Giles seemed rather surprised at the doctor's friendli- 
 ness, but said that he had no objection, and accordingly 
 mounted beside Mr. Fitzpiers. 
 
 They drove along under the black boughs which formed 
 a network upon the stars, all the trees of a species alike in 
 one respect, and no two of them ahke in another. Looking 
 up as they passed under a horizontal bough they sometimes 
 saw objects like large tadpoles lodged diametrically across 
 it, which Giles explained to be pheasants there at roost; 
 and they sometimes heard the report of a gun, which re- 
 minded him that others knew what those tadpole shapes 
 represented as well as he. 
 
 Presently the doctor said what he had been going to say 
 for some time : 
 
 "Is there a young lady staying in this neighborhood — a 
 very attractive girl — ^with a little white boa round her neck, 
 and white fur round her gloves?" 
 
 Winterborne of course knew in a moment that Grace, 
 whom he had caught the doctor peering at, was represented 
 by these accessories. With a wary grimness, partly in his 
 character, partly induced by the circumstances, he evaded 
 an answer by saying, "I saw a young lady talking to Mrs. 
 Charmond the other day; perhaps it was she." 
 
 Fitzpiers concluded from this that Winterborne had not 
 seen him looking over the hedge. "It might have been," 
 he said. "She is quite a gentlewoman — ^the one I mean. 
 She cannot be a permanent resident in Hintock or I should 
 have seen her before. Nor does she look like one." 
 
 "She is not staying at Hintock House?" 
 
 "No; it is closed." 
 
 "Then perhaps she is staying at one of the cottages, or 
 farm-houses?" 
 
116 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 "Oh, no — you mistake. She was a different sort of girl 
 altogether." As Giles was nobody, Fitzpiers treated him ac- 
 cordingly, and apostrophized the night in continuation : 
 
 "She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, 
 A power, that from its objects scarcely drew 
 One impulse of her being — in her lightness 
 Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, 
 Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue. 
 To nourish some far desert; she did seem 
 Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew. 
 Like the bright shade of some Immortal dream 
 Which walks, when tempests sleep, the wave of life's dark 
 stream." 
 
 The consummate charm of the lines seemed to Winter- 
 borne, though he divined that they were a quotation, to 
 be somehow the result of his lost love's charms upon Fitz- 
 piers. 
 
 "You seem to be mightily in love with her, sir," he said, 
 with a sensation of heartsickness, and more than ever re- 
 solved not to mention Grace by name. 
 
 "Oh, no — I am not that, Winterborne: people living in- 
 sulated, as I do by the solitude of this place, get charged 
 with emotive fluid like a Leyden-jar with electric, for want 
 of some conductor at hand to disperse it. Human love is 
 a subjective thing — the essence itself of man, as that great 
 thinker, Spinoza, the philosopher, says — psa hominis es- 
 sentia — it is joy accompanied by an idea which we project 
 against any suitable object in the line of our vision, just 
 as the rainbow iris is projected against an oak, ash, or elm 
 tree indifferently. So that if any other young lady had 
 appeared instead of the one who did appear, I should have 
 felt just the same interest in her, and have quoted precisely 
 the same lines from Shelley about her as about this one I 
 saw. Such miserable creatures of circumstances are we all!' 
 
 "Well, it is what we call being in love down in these parts, 
 whether or no," said Winterborne. 
 
 "You are right enough if you admit that I am in love 
 with something in my own head, and nothing in itself out- 
 side it at all." 
 
 "Is it part of a country doctor's duties to learn that view 
 of things, may I ask, sir?" said Winterborne, with such well- 
 assumed simplicity that Fitzpiers answered, readily: 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 117 
 
 "Oh, no. The real truth is, Winterborne, that medical 
 practice in places like this is a very rule of thumb matter; 
 a bottle of bitter stuff for this and that old woman — ^the 
 bitterer the better — compounded from a few simple stereo- 
 typed prescriptions; occasional attendance at births, where 
 mere presence is almost sufficient, so healthy and strong 
 are the people; and a lance for an abscess now and then. 
 Investigations and experiment cannot be carried on without 
 more appliances than one has here — ^though I have attempt- 
 ed it a little." 
 
 Giles did not enter into this view of the case; what he 
 had been struck with was the curious parallelism between 
 Mr. Fitzpiers' manner and Grace's, as shown by the fact of 
 both of them straying into a subject of discourse so en- 
 grossing to themselves that it made them forget it was for- 
 eign to him. 
 
 Nothing further passed between himself and the doctor 
 in relation to Grace till they were on their way back. They 
 had stopped at a wayside inn for a glass of brandy and cider 
 hot, and when they were again in motion, Fitzpiers, possibly 
 a little warmed by the liquor, resumed the subject by saying: 
 "I should like very much to know who that young lady was." 
 
 "What difference can it make if she's only the tree your 
 rainbow falls on?" 
 
 "Ha! ha! True." 
 
 "You have no wife, sir?" 
 
 "I have no wife, and no idea of one. I hope to do better 
 things than marry and settle in Hintock. Not but that it is 
 well for a medical man to be married, and sometimes, begad, 
 'twould be pleasant enough in this place, with the wind roar- 
 ing round the house, and the rain and the boughs beating 
 against it. I hear that you lost your life-holds by the death of 
 South?" 
 
 "I did. I lost in more ways than one." 
 
 They had reached the top of Hintock Lane or Street, if it 
 could be called such, where three-quarters of the road-side 
 consisted of copse and orchard. One of the first houses 
 to be passed was Melbury's. A light was shining from a 
 bedroom window, facing lengthwise of the lane. Winter- 
 borne glanced at it, and saw what was coming. He had 
 withheld an answer to the doctor's inquiry to hinder his 
 knowledge of Grace; but, as he thought to himself, "who 
 
118 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 hath gathered the wind in his fists? who hath bound the 
 waters in a garment?" He could noi hinder what was 
 doomed to arrive, and might just as well have been out- 
 spoken. As they came up to the house Grace's figure was 
 distinctly visible, drawing the two white curtains together 
 which were used here instead of blinds. 
 
 "Why, there she is!" said Fitzpiers. "How does she come 
 there?" 
 
 "In the most natural way in the world. It is her home. 
 Mr. Melbury is her father." 
 
 "Oh, indeed — indeed — indeed! How comes he to have 
 a daughter of that stamp?" 
 
 Winterborne laughed coldly. "Won't money do any- 
 thing," he said, "if you've promising material to work upon? 
 Why shouldn't a Hintock girl, taken early from home, 
 and put under proper instruction, become as finished as 
 any other young lady, i£ she's got brains and good looks 
 to begin with?" 
 
 "No reason at all why she shouldn't," murmured the sur- 
 geon, with reflective disappointment. "Only I didn't anti- 
 cipate quite that kind of origin for her." 
 
 "And you think an inch or two less of her now." There 
 was a little tremor in Winterborne's voice as he spoke. 
 
 "Well," said the doctor, with recovered warmth, "I am 
 not so sure that I think less of her. At first it was a sort 
 of blow; but, dammy! I'll stick up for her. She's charm- 
 ing, every inch of her!" 
 
 "So she is," says Winterborne, "but not to me." 
 
 From this ambiguous expression of the reticent wood- 
 lander's. Dr. Fitzpiers inferred that Giles disliked Miss 
 Melbury because of some haughtiness in her bearing 
 toward him, and had, on that account, withheld her name. 
 The supposition did not tend to diminish his admiration for 
 her. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Grace's exhibition of herself, in the act of pulling to the 
 window curtains, had been the result of an unfortunate in- 
 cident in the house that day — nothing less than the illness 
 of Grammer Oliver, a woman who had never till now lain 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. U9 
 
 down for such a reason in her Hfe. Like others to whom 
 unbroken years of health has made the idea of keeping 
 their bed almost as repugnant as death itself, she had con- 
 tinued on foot till she literally fell on the floor; and though 
 she had, as yet, been scarcely a day off duty, she had sick- 
 ened into quite a different personage from the independent 
 Grammer of the yard and spar-house. Ill as she was, on 
 one point she was firm. On no account would she see a 
 doctor; in other words, Fitzpiers. 
 
 The room in which Grace had been discerned was not her 
 own, but the old woman's. On the girl's way to bed she 
 had received a message from Grammer, to the effect that 
 she would much like to speak to her that night. 
 
 Grace entered, and set the candle on a low chair beside 
 the bed, so that the profile of Grammer as she lay cast it- 
 self in a keen shadow upon the whitened wall, her large 
 head being still further magnified by an enormous turban, 
 which was, really, her petticoat wound in a wreath round 
 her temples. Grace put the room a little in order, and ap- 
 proaching the sick woman, said: "I am come, Grammer, 
 as you wish. Do let us send for the doctor before it gets 
 later." 
 
 "I will not have him," said Grammer Oliver, decisively. 
 
 "Then somebody to sit up with you." 
 
 "Can't abear it! No; I wanted to see you, Miss Grace, 
 because 'ch have something on my mind. Dear Miss Grace, 
 I took that money of the doctor, after all." 
 
 "What money?" 
 
 "The ten pounds." 
 
 Grace did not quite understand. 
 
 "The ten pounds he offered me for my head, because 
 I've a large brain. I signed a paper when I took the 
 money, not feeling concerned about it at all. I have not 
 liked to tell ye that it was really settled with him, because 
 you showed such horror at the notion. Well, having 
 thought it over more at length, I wish I hadn't done it; 
 and it weighs upon my mind. John South's death of fear 
 about the tree makes me think that I shall die of this. 
 'Ch have been going to ask him again to let me off, but I 
 hadn't the face." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I've spent some of the money — more'n two pounds o't. 
 
X20 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 It do wherrit me terribly; and I shall die o' the thought of 
 that paper I signed with my holy cross, as South died of 
 his trouble." 
 
 "If you ask him to burn the paper he will, I'm sure, and 
 think no more of it." 
 
 " 'Ch have done it once already, miss. But he laughed 
 cruel Uke. 'Yours is such a fine brain, Grammer,' er said, 
 'that science couldn't afiford to lose you. Besides, you've 
 taken my money.' Don't let your father know of this, 
 please, on no account whatever!" 
 
 "No, no. I will let you have the money to return to him." 
 
 Grammer rolled her head negatively tipon the pillow. 
 "Even if I should be well enough to take it to him, he won't 
 like it. Though why he should so particular want to look 
 into the works of a poor old woman's head piece Hke mine, 
 when there's so many other folks about, I don't know. I 
 know he'll answer me : 'A lonely person like you, Grammer,' 
 er woll say. 'What difference is it to you what becomes of ye 
 when the breath's out of your body?' Oh, it do trouble me! 
 If you only know how he do chevy me round the chimmer 
 in my dreams, you'd pity me. How I could do it I can't 
 think. But 'ch was always so rackless ! If I only had any- 
 body to plead for me !" 
 
 "Mrs. Melbury would, I am sure." 
 
 "Ay; but he wouldn't hearken to she! It wants a 
 younger face than hers to work upon such as he." 
 
 Grace started with comprehension. "You don't think 
 he would do it for me?" she said. 
 
 "Oh, wouldn't he!" 
 
 "I couldn't go to him, Grammer, on any account. I don't 
 know him at all." 
 
 "Ah, if I were a young lady," said the artful Grammer, 
 "and could save a poor old woman's skellington from a 
 heathen doctor instead of a Christian grave, I would do it, 
 and be glad to. But nobody will do anything for a poor old 
 familiar friend but push her out of the way." 
 
 "You are very ungrateful, Grammer, to say that. But you 
 are ill, I know, and that's why you speak so. Now be- 
 lieve me, you are not going to die yet. Remember, you told 
 me yourself that you meant to keep him waiting many 
 a year." 
 
 "Ay, one can joke when one is well, even in old age; 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 121 
 
 but in sickness one's gayety falters to grief; and that which 
 seemed small looks large ; and the grim far-off seems near." 
 
 Grace's eyes had tears in them. "I don't like to go to 
 him on such an errand, Grammer," she said brokenly. 
 "But I will, to ease your mind." 
 
 It was with extreme reluctance that Grace cloaked her- 
 self next morning for the undertaking. She was all the 
 more indisposed to the journey by reason of Grammer's al- 
 lusion to the effect of a pretty face upon Dr. Fitzpiers ; and 
 hence she most illogically did that which, had the doctor 
 never seen her, would have operated to stultify the sole 
 motive of her journey; that is to say, she put on a woolen 
 veil which hid all her face except an occasional spark of her 
 eyes. 
 
 Her own wish that nothing should be known of this 
 strange and grewsome proceeding, no less than Grammer 
 Oliver's own desire, led Grace to take every precaution 
 against being discovered. She went out by the garden 
 door as the safest way, all the household having occupa- 
 tions at the other side. The morning looked forbidding 
 enough when she stealthily opened it. The battle between 
 frost and thaw was continuing in mid-air : the trees dripped 
 on the garden-plots, where no vegetables would grow for 
 the dripping, though they were planted year after year 
 with that curious mechanical regularity of country people 
 in the face of hopelessness; the moss which covered the 
 once broad gravel terrace was swamped; and Grace stood 
 irresolute. Then she thought of poor Grammer, and her 
 dreams of the doctor running after her, scalpel in hand, 
 and the possibility of a case so curiously similar to South's 
 ending in the same way; thereupon she stepped out into 
 the drizzle. 
 
 The nature of her errand, and Grammer Oliver's account 
 of the compact she had made, lent a fascinating horror to 
 Grace's conception of Fitzpiers. She knew that he was a 
 young man; but her single object in seeking an interview 
 with him put all considerations of his age and social aspect 
 from her mind. Standing, as she stood, in Grammer Oli- 
 ver's shoes, he was simply a remorseless Jove of the sci- 
 ences, who would not have mercy, and would have sacri- 
 fice ; a man whom, save for this, she would have preferred to 
 avoid knowing. But since, in such a small village, it was 
 
122 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 impossible that any long time could pass without their meet- 
 ing, there was not much to deplore in her having to meet 
 him now. 
 
 But, as need hardly be said. Miss Melbury's view of the 
 doctor as a merciless, unwavering, irresistible scientist was 
 not quite in accordance with the fact. The real Dr. Fitzpiers 
 was a man of too many hobbies to show likelihood of rising 
 to any great eminence in the profession he had chosen, or 
 even to acquire any wide practice in the rural district he 
 had marked out as his field of survey for the present. In 
 the course of a year his mind was accustomed to pass in a 
 grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intel- 
 lectual heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes 
 in the Bull; one month he would be immersed in alchemy, 
 another in poesy, one month in the Twins of astrology and 
 astronomy, then in the Crab of German literature and meta- 
 physics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such 
 studies as were immediately related to his own profession in 
 turn with the rest, and it had been in a month of anatomical 
 ardor without the possibility of a subject that he had pro- 
 posed to Grammer Oliver the terms she had mentioned to 
 her mistress. 
 
 As may be inferred from the tone of his conversation 
 with Winterborne, he had lately plunged into abstract philos- 
 ophy with much zest; perhaps his keenly appreciative, 
 modern, unpractical mind found this a realm more to his 
 taste than any other. Though his aims were desultory, Fitz- 
 piers' mental constitution was not without its admirable 
 side ; a keen inquirer he honestly was, even if the midnight 
 rays of his lamp, visible so far through the trees of Hintock, 
 lighted rank literatures of emotion and passion as often as, 
 or oftener, than the books and material of science. 
 
 But whether he meditated the Muses or the philosophers, 
 the loneliness of Hintock life was beginning to tell upon his 
 impressionable nature. Winter in a solitary house in the 
 country, without society, is tolerable, nay, even enjoyable 
 and delightful given certain conditions; but these are not 
 the conditions which attach to the life of a professional man 
 who drops down into such a place by mere accident. They 
 were present to the lives of Winterborne, Melbury and 
 Grace ; but not to the doctor's. They are old association — 
 an almost exhaustive biographical or historical acquaintance 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 123 
 
 with every object, animate and inanimate, within the observ- 
 er's horizon. He must know all about those invisible ones 
 of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the fields 
 which look so gray from his windows; recall whose creaking ' 
 plow has turned those sods from time to time ; whose hands 
 planted the trees that form a crest to the opposite hill; 
 whose horses and hounds have torn through that under- 
 wood; what birds affect that particular brake ; what domestic 
 dramas of love, jealousy, revenge, or disappointment have 
 been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, the street, or on 
 the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur, salubrity, 
 convenience; but if it lack memories it will ultimately pall 
 upon him who settles there without opportunity of inter- 
 course with his kind. 
 
 In such circumstances, maybe, an old man dreams of an 
 ideal friend, till he throws himself into the arms of any im- 
 postor who chooses to wear that title on his face. A young 
 man may dream of an ideal friend likewise, but some humor 
 of the blood will probably lead him to think rather of an 
 ideal mistress, and at length the rustle of a woman's dress, 
 the sound of her voice, or the transit of her' form across the 
 field of his vision will enkindle his soul with a flame that 
 blinds his eyes. 
 
 The discovery of the attractive Grace's name and family 
 would have been enough in other circumstances to lead the 
 doctor, if not to put her personality out of his head, to 
 change the character of his interest in her. Instead of 
 treasuring her image as a rarity, he would at most have 
 played with it as a toy. He was that kind of a man. But 
 situated here he could not go so far as amative cruelty. He 
 dismissed all reverential thought about her, but he could not 
 help taking her seriously. 
 
 He went on to imagine the impossible. So far, indeed, 
 did he go in this futile direction that, as others are wont to 
 do, he constructed dialogues and scenes in which Grace 
 had turned out to be mistress of Hintock Manor-house, the 
 mysterious Mrs. Charmond, particularly ready and willing 
 to be wooed by himself and nobody else. "Well, she isn't 
 that," he said finally. "But she's a very sweety nice, ex- 
 ceptional girl." 
 
 The next morning he breakfasted alone, as usual. It was 
 snowing with a fine-flaked desultoriness just sufficient to 
 
124 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 make the woodland gray, without ever achieving whiteness. 
 There was not a single letter for Fitzpiers, only a medical 
 circular and a weekly newspaper. 
 
 To sit before a large fire on such mornings, and read, and 
 gradually acquire energy till the evening came, and then, 
 with lamp alight, and feeling full of vigor, to pursue some 
 engrossing subject or other till the small hours, had hitherto 
 been his practice. But to-day he could not settle into his 
 chair. That self-contained position he had lately occupied, 
 in which the only attention demanded was the concentra- 
 tion of the inner eye, all outer regard being quite gratuitous, 
 seemed to have been taken by insidious stratagem, and for 
 the first time he had an interest outside the house. He 
 walked from one window to another, and became aware that 
 the most irksome of solitudes is not the solitude of remote- 
 ness, but that which is just outside desirable company. 
 
 The breakfast hour went by heavily enough, and the next 
 followed, in the same half-snowy, half-rainy style, the 
 weather now being the inevitable relapse which sooner or 
 later succeeds a time too radiant for the season, such as they 
 had enjoyed in the late midwinter at Hintock. To people 
 at home there these changeful tricks had their interests; the 
 strange mistakes that some of the more sanguine trees had 
 made in budding before their month, to be incontinently 
 glued up by frozen thawings now ; the similar sanguine er- 
 rors of impulsive birds in framing nests that were now 
 swamped by snow-water, and other such incidents, pre- 
 vented any sense of wearisomeness in the minds of the na- 
 tives. But these were features of a world not familiar to 
 Fitzpiers, and the inner visions to which he had almost ex- 
 clusively attended having suddenly failed in their power to 
 absorb him, he felt unutterably dreary. 
 
 He wondered how long Miss Melbury was going to stay 
 in Hintock. The season was unpropitious for accidental 
 encounters with her out-of-doors, and except by accident 
 he saw not how they were to become acquainted. One 
 thing was clear — any acquaintance with her could only, with 
 a due regard to his future, be casual, at most of the nature 
 of a flirtation; for he had high aims, and they would some 
 day lead him into other spheres than this. 
 
 Thus desultorily thinking he flung himself down upon 
 the couch, which, as in many draughty old-country houses, 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 12S 
 
 was constructed with a hood, being in fact a legitimate 
 development from the settle. He tried to read as he re- 
 clined, but having sat up till three o'clock that morning, 
 the book slipped from his hand and he fell asleep. 
 
 CHAPTER XVHI. 
 
 It was at this time that Grace approached the house. Her 
 knock, always soft in virtue of her nature, was softer to-day 
 by reason of her strange errand. However, it was heard by 
 the farmer's wife who kept the house, and Grace was ad- 
 mitted. Opening the door of the doctor's room the housewife 
 glanced in, and imagining Fitzpiers absent, asked Miss 
 Melbury to enter and wait a few minutes whilst she should 
 go and find him, believing him to be somewhere on the 
 premises. Grace acquiesced, went in, and sat down close to 
 the door. 
 
 As soon as the door was shut upon her she looked round 
 the room, and started at perceiving a handsome man snug- 
 ly ensconced in the couch, like the recumbent figure within 
 some canopied mural tomb of the fifteenth century, except 
 that his hands were by no means clasped in prayer. She 
 had no doubt that this was the doctor. Awaken him her- 
 self she could not, and her immediate impulse was to go and 
 pull the broad ribbon with a brass rosette which hung at 
 one side of the fireplace. But expecting the landlady to re- 
 enter in a moment she abandoned this intention, and stood 
 gazing in great embarrassment at the reclining philosopher. 
 
 The windows of Fitzpiers' soul being at present shuttered, 
 he probably appeared less impressive than in his hours of 
 animation ; but the light abstracted from his material pres- 
 ence by sleep was more than counterbalanced by the mys- 
 terious influence of that state, in a stranger, upon the con- 
 sciousness of a beholder so sensitive. So far as she could 
 criticise at all, she became aware that she had encountered 
 a specimen of creation altogether unusual in that locality. 
 The occasions on which Grace had observed men of this 
 stamp were when she had been far removed away from 
 Hintock, and even then such examples as had met her eye 
 
126 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 were at a distance, and mainly of coarser fibre than the one 
 who now confronted her. 
 
 She nervously wondered why the woman had not discov- 
 ered her mistake and returned, and went again toward the 
 bell-pull. Approaching the chimney her back was to Fitz- 
 piers, but she could see him in the glass. An indescribable 
 thrill passed through her as she perceived that the eyes of 
 the reflected image were open, gazing wonderingly at her, 
 and under the curious unexpectedness of the sight she be- 
 came as if spellbound, almost powerless to turn her head 
 and regard the original. However, by an effort she did 
 turn, when there he lay asleep the same as before. 
 
 Her startled perplexity as to what he could be meaning 
 was sufficient to lead her to precipitately abandon her er- 
 rand. She crossed quickly to the door, opened and closed 
 it noiselessly, and went out of the house unobserved. By 
 the time she had gone down the path and through the gar- 
 den door into the lane she had recovered her equanimity. 
 Here, screened by the hedge, she stood and considered 
 awhile. 
 
 Drip, drip, drip, fell the rain upon her umbrella and 
 around; she had come out on such a morning because of 
 the seriousness of the matter in hand; yet now she had al- 
 lowed her mission to be stultified by a momentary 
 tremulousness concerning an incident which perhaps had 
 meant nothing after all. 
 
 In the meantime her departure from the room, stealthy 
 as it had been, had roused Fitzpiers, and he sat up. In 
 the reflection from the mirror which Grace had beheld there 
 was no mystery ; he had opened his eyes for a few moments, 
 but had immediately relapsed into unconsciousness, if, in- 
 deed, he had ever been positively awake. That somebody 
 had just left the room he was certain, and that the lovely 
 form which seemed to have visited him in a dream was no 
 less than the real presentation of the person departed he 
 could hardly doubt. 
 
 Looking out of the window a few minutes later, down 
 the box-edged gravel-path which led to the bottom, he saw 
 the garden door gently open, and through it enter the young 
 girl of his thoughts, Grace having just at this juncture de- 
 termined to return and attempt the interview a second time. 
 That he saw her coming instead of going made him ask 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 127 
 
 himself if his first impression of her were not a dream indeed. 
 She came hesitatingly along, carrying her umbrella so low 
 over her head that he could hardly see her face. When she 
 reached the point where the raspberry bushes ended and the 
 strawberry bed began, she made a little pause. 
 
 Fitzpiers feared that she might not be coming to him 
 even now, and hastily quitting the room, he ran down the 
 path to meet her. The nature of her errand he could not 
 divine, but he was prepared to give her any amount of en- 
 couragement. 
 
 "I beg pardon. Miss Melbury," he said. "I saw you 
 from the window, and fancied you might imagine that I was 
 not at home — if it is I you were coming for." 
 
 "I was coming to speak one word to you, nothing more," 
 she replied. "And I can say it here." 
 
 "No, no. Please do come in. Well, then, if you will not 
 come into the house, come so far as the porch." 
 
 Thus pressed she went on to the porch, and they stood 
 together inside it, Fitzpiers closing her umbrella for her. 
 
 "I have merely a request or petition to make," she said. 
 "My father's servant is ill — a woman you know — and her 
 illness is serious." 
 
 "I am sorry to hear it. You wish me to come and see 
 her at once?" 
 
 "No ; I particularly wish you not to come." 
 
 "Oh, indeed." 
 
 "Yes; and she wishes the same. It would make her 
 seriously worse if you were to come. It would almost kill 
 her. My errand is of a peculiar and awkward nature. It is 
 concerning a subject which weighs on her mind — ^that unfor- 
 tunate arrangement she made with you, that you might have 
 her body — after death." 
 
 "Oh! Grammer Oliver, the old woman with the fine head. 
 Seriously ill, is she?" 
 
 "And so disturbed by her rash compact! I have brought 
 the money back — ^will you please return to her the agree- 
 ment she signed?" Grace held out to him a couple of five- 
 pound notes which she had kept ready tucked in her gloye. 
 
 Without replying or considering the notes Fitzpiers al- 
 lowed his thoughts to follow his eyes, and dwell upon Grace's 
 personality, and the sudden close relation in which he stood 
 to her. The porch was narrow; the rain increased. It ran 
 
128 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 off the porch and dripped on the creepers, and from the 
 creepers upon the edge of Grace's cloak and skirts. 
 
 "The rain is wetting your dress; please do come in," he 
 said. "It really makes my heart ache to let you stay here." 
 
 Immediately inside the front door was the door of his 
 sitting-room ; he flung it open, and stood in a coaxing atti- 
 tude. Try how she would, Grace could not resist the sup- 
 plicatory mandate written in the face and manner of this 
 man, and distressful resignation sat on her as she glided past 
 him into the room — ^brushing his coat with her elbow by 
 reason of the narrowness. 
 
 He followed her, shut the door — ^which she somehow 
 had hoped he would leave open — and placing a chair for 
 her sat down. The concern which Grace felt at the de- 
 velopment of these commonplace incidents was, of course, 
 mainly owing to the strange effect upon her nerves of that 
 view of him in the mirror gazing at her with open eyes when 
 she had thought him sleeping, which made her fancy that 
 his slumber might have been a feint based on inexplicable 
 reasons. 
 
 She again proffered the notes ; he awoke from looking at 
 her as at a piece of live statuary, and listened deferentially 
 as she said, "Will you then reconsider, and cancel the bond 
 which poor Grammer Oliver so foolishly gave?" 
 
 "I'll cancel it without reconsideration. Though you will 
 allow me to have my own opinion about her foolishness. 
 Grammer is a very wise woman, and she was as wise in that 
 as in other things. You think there was something very 
 fiendish in the compact, do you not. Miss Melbury? But 
 remember that the most eminent of our surgeons in past 
 times have entered into such agreements." 
 
 "Not fiendish — strange." ^ 
 
 "Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature 
 of a thing, but in its relation to something extrinsic — in this 
 case an unessential observer." 
 
 He went to his desk, and searching awhile found a paper, 
 which he unfolded and brought to her. A thick cross ap- 
 peared in ink at the bottom — evidently from the hand of 
 Grammer. Grace put the paper in her pocket with a look 
 of much relief. 
 
 As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which 
 had come from Grace's own purse), she pushed it a little 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 129 
 
 t 
 
 nearer to him. "No, no. I shall not take it from the old 
 woman," he said. "It is more strange than the fact of a 
 surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection that 
 our acquaintance should be formed out of it." 
 
 "I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dis- 
 like to the notion. But I did not mean to be." 
 
 "Oh, no, no." He looked at her, as he had done before, 
 with puzzled interest. "I cannot think, I cannot think," 
 he murmured. "Something bewilders me greatly." He 
 still reflected and hesitated. "Last night I sat up very late," 
 he at last went on, "and on that account I fell into a little 
 nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And during my 
 few minutes of unconsciousness I dreamt — ^what do you 
 think? — that you stood in the room." 
 
 Should she tell? She merely blushed. 
 
 "You may imagine," Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded 
 that it had indeed been a dream, "that I should not have 
 dreamt of you without considerable thinking about you 
 first." 
 
 He could not be acting; of that she felt assured. 
 
 "I fancied in my vision that you stood there," he said, 
 pointing to where she had paused. "I did not see you di- 
 rectly, but reflected in the glass. I thought, what a lovely 
 creature! The design is for once carried out. Nature has 
 at last recovered her lost union with the idea! My 
 thoughts ran in that direction because I had been reading 
 the work of a transcendental philosopher last night; and I 
 dare say it was the dose of idealism that I received from it 
 that made me scarcely able to distinguish between reality 
 and fancy. I almost wept when I awoke, and found that 
 you had appeared to me in time, but not in space, alas!" 
 
 At moments there was something theatrical in the de- 
 livery of Fitzpiers' effusion ; yet it would have been inexact 
 to say that it was intrinsically theatrical. It often happens 
 that in situations of unrestraint, where there is no thought 
 of the eyes of criticism, real feeling glides into a mode of 
 manifestation not easily distinguishable from rodomontade. 
 A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth, with the 
 evil consequence, if perceived, that the substance is esti- 
 mated by the superficies, and the whole rejected. 
 
 Grace, however, was no specialist in men's manners, and 
 she admired the sentiment without thinking of the form. 
 9 
 
130 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 And she was embarrassed ; "lovely creature" made explana- 
 tion awkward to her gentle modesty. 
 
 "But can it be," said he, suddenly, "that you really were 
 here?" 
 
 "I have to confess that I have been in the room once 
 before," faltered she. "The woman showed me in, and went 
 away to fetch you; but as she did not return, I left." 
 
 "And you saw me asleep," he murmured, with the faint- 
 est show of humiliation. 
 
 "Yes — if you were asleep, and did not deceive me." 
 
 "Why do you say if?" 
 
 "I saw your eyes open in the glass, but as they were closed 
 when I looked round upon you, I thought you were, per- 
 haps, deceiving me." 
 
 "Never," said Fitzpiers, fervently — "never could I deceive 
 you." 
 
 Foreknowledge to the distance of a year or so in either 
 of them might have spoilt the effect of that pretty speech. 
 Never deceive her! But they knew nothing, and the phrase 
 had its day. 
 
 Grace began now to be anxious to terminate the inter- 
 view, but the compelling power of Fitzpiers' atmosphere 
 still held her there. She was like an inexperienced actress 
 who, having at last taken up her position on the boards, 
 and spoken her speeches, does not know how to move off. 
 The thought of Grammer occurred to her. "I'll go at once 
 and tell poor Grammer of your generosity," she said. "It 
 will relieve her at once." 
 
 "Grammer's a nervous disease, too — how singular!" he 
 answered, accompanying her to the door. "One mo- 
 ment; look at this — it is something which may interest 
 you." 
 
 He had thrown open the door on the other side of the 
 passage, and she saw a microscope on the table o£ the con- 
 fronting room. "Look into it, please, you'll be interested," 
 he repeated. 
 
 She applied her eye, and saw the usual circle of light 
 patterned all over with a cellular tissue of some inde- 
 scribable sort. "What do you think that is?" said Fitz- 
 piers. 
 
 She did not know. 
 
 "That's a fragment of old John South's brain, which I am 
 investigating.'* 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 131 
 
 She started back, not with aversion, but with wonder as 
 to how it should have got there. Fitzpiers laughed. 
 
 "Here am I," he said, "endeavoring to carry on simul- 
 taneously the study of physiology and transcendental phi- 
 losophy, the material world and the ideal, so as to discover 
 if possible a point of contrast between them; and your finer 
 sense is quite offended!" 
 
 "Oh, no, Mr. Fitzpiers," said Grace, earnestly. "It is not 
 so at all. I know from seeing yourlight at night how deeply 
 you meditate and work. Instead of condemning you for 
 your studies, I admire you very much!" 
 
 Her face, upturned from the microscope, was so sweet, 
 sincere, and self-forgetful in its aspect that the susceptible 
 Fitzpiers more than wished to annihilate the lineal yard 
 which separated it from his own. Whether anything of 
 the kind showed in his eyes or not, Grace remained no 
 longer at the microscope, but quickly went her way into 
 the rain. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Instead of resuming his investigation of South's brain — 
 which, perhaps, was not so interesting under the micro- 
 scope as might have been expected from the importance of 
 that organ in life — Fitzpiers rechned and ruminated on the 
 interview. Grace's curious susceptibility to his presence — 
 though it was as if the currents of her life were disturbed 
 rather than attracted by him — added a special interest to 
 her general charm. Fitzpiers was in a distinct degree 
 scientific, being ready and zealous to interrogate all physical 
 manifestations, but primarily he was an idealist. He be- 
 lieved that behind the imperfect lay the perfect; that rare 
 things were to be discovered amidst a bulk of common- 
 place ; that results in a new and untried case might be difier- 
 ent from those in other cases where the conditions had been 
 precisely similar. Regarding his own personality as one 
 of unbounded possibilities, because it was his own — not- 
 withstanding that the factors of his life had worked out a 
 sorry product for thousands — he saw nothing but what was 
 reguiaf in his discovery at Hintock of an altogether excep- 
 
132 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 tional being of the other sex, who for nobody else would 
 have had any existence. 
 
 One habit of Fitzpiers' — common in dreamers of more 
 advanced age than of men in his years — ^was that of talk- 
 ing to himself. He paced round his room with a selective 
 tread upon the more prominent blooms of the carpet, and 
 murmured, "This phenomenal girl will be the light of my 
 life while I am at Hintock; and the special beauty of the 
 situation is that our attitude and relations to each other will 
 be purely spiritual. Socially, we can never be intimate. 
 Anything like matrimonial intentions toward her, charming 
 as she is, would be absurd. They would spoil the ethereal 
 character of my regard. And, indeed, I have other aims on 
 the practical side of my life." 
 
 Fitzpiers bestowed a regulation thought on the advan- 
 tageous marriage he was bound to make with a woman of 
 family as good as his own, and of purse much longer. But 
 as an object of contemplation for the present, as objective 
 spirit rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would 
 serve to keep his soul alive and to reUeve the monotony of 
 his days. 
 
 His first notion — acquired from the mere sight of her, 
 without converse — that of an idle and vulgar flirtation with 
 a timber-merchant's pretty daughter, grated painfully upon 
 him, now that he had found what Grace intrinsically was. 
 Personal intercourse with such as she could take no lower 
 form than intellectual communion, and mutual explorations 
 of the world of thought. Since he could not call at her 
 father's, having no practical views, cursory encounters in 
 the lane, in the wood, coming and going to and from church, 
 or in passing her dwelling, were what the acquaintance 
 would have to feed on. 
 
 Such anticipated glimpses of her now and then realized 
 themselves in the event. Re-encounters of not more than a 
 minute's duration, frequently repeated, will build up mutual 
 interest, even an intimacy, in a lonely place. Theirs grew 
 as imperceptibly as the tree twigs budded. There never was 
 a particular moment at which it could be said they became 
 friends; yet a delicate understanding now existed between 
 two who in the winter had been strangers. 
 
 Spring weather came on rather suddenly, the unsealing 
 of buds that had long been swollen accomplishing itself in 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 133 
 
 the space of one warm night. The rush of sap in the veins 
 of the trees could almost be heard. The flowers of late 
 April took up a position unseen, and looked as if they had 
 been blooming a long while, though there had been no 
 trace of them the day before yesterday; birds began not to 
 mind getting wet. In-door people said they had heard the 
 nightingale, to which out-door people replied contemptuous- 
 ly that they had heard him a fortnight before. 
 
 The young doctor's practice being scarcely so large as a 
 London surgeon's, he frequently walked in the wood. In- 
 deed, such practice as he had he did not follow up with the 
 assiduity that would have been necessary for developing it to 
 exceptional proportions. One day, book in hand, he walked 
 in a part of the wood where the trees were mainly oaks. It 
 was a calm afternoon, and there was everywhere around that 
 sign of great undertakings on the part of vegetable nature 
 which is apt to fill reflective human beings who are not un- 
 dertaking much themselves with a sudden uneasiness at the 
 contrast. He heard in the distance a curious sound, some- 
 thing like the quack of a duck, which, though it was com- 
 mon enough here about this time, was not common to him. 
 
 Looking through the trees, Fitzpiers soon perceived the 
 origin of the noise. The barking season had just com- 
 menced, and what he had heard was the tear of the rip- 
 ping-tool as it plowed its way along the sticky parting be- 
 tween the trunk and the rind. Melbury did a large busi- 
 ness in bark, and as he was Grace's father, and possibly 
 might be found on the spot, Fitzpiers was attracted to the 
 scene even more than he might have been by its intrinsic 
 interest. When he got nearer he recognized among the 
 workmen the two Timothys, and Robert Creedle, who prob- 
 ably had been "lent" by Winterborne; Marty South also 
 assisted. 
 
 Each tree doomed to this flaying process was first at- 
 tacked by Creedle; with a small bill-hook he carefully freed 
 the collar of the tree from twigs and patches of moss which 
 incrusted it to the height of a foot or two above the ground, 
 an operation comparable to the Uttle toilet of the execu- 
 tioner's victim. After this it was barked in its erect position 
 to a point as high as a man could reach. If a fine product 
 of vegetable nature could ever be said to look ridiculous, it 
 was the case now, when the oak stood naked-legged, and 
 
134 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 as if ashamed, till the axemen came and cut a ring round 
 it, and the two Timothys finished the work with the crosscut 
 saw. 
 
 As soon as it had fallen the barkers attacked it like lo- 
 custs, and in a short time not a particle of rind was left on 
 the trunk and larger limbs. Marty South was an adept at 
 peeling the upper parts, and there she stood encaged amid 
 the mass of twigs and buds like a great bird, running her 
 tool into the smallest branches, beyond the furthest points 
 to which the skill and patience of the men enabled them to 
 proceed — branches which, in their lifetime, had swayed high 
 above the bulk of the wood, and caught the latest and 
 earliest rays of the sun and moon while the lower part of the 
 forest was still in darkness. 
 
 "You seem to have a better instrument than they, Marty," 
 said Fitzpiers. 
 
 "No, sir," she said, holding up the tool — a horse's leg- 
 bone fitted into a handle and filed to an edge — " 'tis only that 
 they've less patience with the twigs, because their time is 
 worth more than mine." 
 
 A little shed had been constructed on the spot, of thatched 
 hurdles and boughs, and in front of it was a fire, over which 
 a kettle sang. Fitzpiers sat down inside the shelter, and 
 went on with his reading, except when he looked up to ob- 
 serve the scene and the actors. The thought that he might 
 settle here and become welded in with this sylvan life by 
 marrying Grace Melbury crossed his mind for a moment. 
 Why sl iould b e go further into the world than where he 
 was? The secret of quiet happiness lay in limiting the ideas 
 and aspirations; these men's thoughts were conterminous 
 with the margin of the Hintock woodlands, and why should 
 not his be likewise limited, a small practice among the peo- 
 ple around him being the bound of his desires? 
 
 Presently Marty South discontinued her operations upon 
 the quivering boughs, came out from the reclining oak, 
 and prepared tea. When it was ready, the men were called ; 
 and Fitzpiers being in a mood to join, sat down with 
 them. 
 
 The latent reason of his lingering here so long revealed 
 itself when the faint creaking ot the joints of a vehicle be- 
 came audible, and one of the men said, "Here's he." Turn- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 135 
 
 ing their heads, they saw Melbury's gig approaching, tlie 
 wheels muffled by the yielding moss. 
 
 The timber-merchant was on foot leading the horse, look- 
 ing back at every few steps to caution his daughter, who 
 kept her seat, where and how to duck her head so as to 
 avoid the overhanging branches. They stopped at the spot 
 where the bark-ripping had been temporarily suspended; 
 Melbury cursorily examined the heaps of bark, and drawing 
 near to where the workmen were sitting down, accepted 
 their shouted invitation to have a dish of tea, for which pur- 
 pose he hitched the horse to a bough. Grace dechned to 
 take any of their beverage, and remained in her place hi 
 the vehicle, looking dreamily at the sunlight that came in 
 thin threads through the hollies with which the oaks were 
 interspersed. 
 
 When Melbury stepped up close to the shelter, he for the 
 first time perceived that the doctor was present, and warmly 
 appreciated Fitzpiers' invitation to sit down on the log be- 
 side him. 
 
 "Bless my heart, who would have thought of finding you 
 here !" he said, obviously much pleased at the circumstance. 
 "I wonder, now, if my daughter knows you are so nigh at 
 hand? I don't expect she do." 
 
 He looked out toward the gig wherein Grace sat, her 
 face still turned in the opposite direction. "She doesn't see 
 us. Well, never mind; let her be." 
 
 Grace was indeed quite unconscious of Fitzpiers' propin- 
 quity. She was thinking of something which had little con- 
 nection with the scene before her — ^thinking of her friend, 
 lost as soon as found, Mrs. Charmond; of her capricious 
 conduct, and of the contrasting scenes she was possibly en- 
 joying at that very moment in other climes, to which Grace 
 herself had hoped to be introduced by her friend's means. 
 She wondered if this patronizing lady would return to Hin- 
 tock during the summer, and whether the acquaintance 
 which had been nipped on the last occasion of her residence 
 there would develop on the next. 
 
 Melbury told ancient timber-stories as he sat, relating 
 them directly to Fitzpiers, and obliquely to the men, who 
 had heard them often before. Marty, who poured out the 
 tea, was just saying, "I think I'll take out a cup to Miss 
 Grace," when they heard a clashing of the gig harness, and 
 
136 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 turning round, Melbury saw that the horse had become 
 restless, and was jerking about the vehicle in a way which 
 alarmed its occupant, though she refrained from screaming. 
 Melbury jumped up immediately, but not more quickly than 
 Fitzpiers; and while her father ran to the horse's head and 
 speedily began to control him, Fitzpiers was alongside the 
 gig assisting Grace to descend. Her surprise at his appear- 
 ance was so great that, far from making a calm and inde- 
 pendent descent, she was very nearly lifted down in his arms. 
 He relinquished her when she touched ground, and hoped 
 she was not frightened. 
 
 "Oh, no, not much," she managed to say. "There was 
 no danger — unless he had run under the trees where the 
 boughs are low enough to hit my head." 
 
 "Which was by no means an impossibility, and justifies 
 any amount of alarm." 
 
 He referred to what he thought he saw written in her 
 face, and she could not tell him that this had little to do 
 with the horse, but much with himself. His contiguity had, 
 in fact, the same effect upon her as those former occasions 
 on which he had come closer to her than usual — ^that of 
 producing in her an unaccountable tendency to tearfulness. 
 Melbury soon put the horse to rights, and seeing that Grace 
 was safe, turned again to the work-people. His daughter's 
 nervous distress had passed ofif in a few moments, and she 
 said quite gayly to Fitzpiers, as she walked with him toward 
 the group: "There's destiny in it, you see. I was doomed 
 to join in your picnic, although I did not intend to do so." 
 
 Marty prepared her a comfortable place, and she sat down 
 in the circle and listened to Fitzpiers while he drew from 
 her father and the bark-rippers sundry narratives, their 
 fathers', their grandfathers' and their own adventures in 
 these woods ; of the mysterious sights they had seen — only 
 to be accounted for by supernatural agency ; of white witches 
 and black witches; and the standard story of the spirits of 
 the two brothers who had fought and fallen, and had 
 haunted Hintock House till they were exorcised by the 
 priest, and compelled to retreat to a swamp in this very wood, 
 whence they were returning to their old quarters at the rate 
 of a cock's stride every New Year's Day; hence the local 
 saying, "On New Year's tide, a cock's stride." 
 
 It was a pleasant time. The smoke from the little fire 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 137 
 
 of peeled sticks rose between the sitters and the sunlight, 
 and behind its blue veil stretched the naked arms of the 
 prostrate trees. The smell of the uncovered sap mingled 
 with the smell of the burning wood, and the sticky inner 
 surface of the scattered bark glistened as it revealed its pale 
 madder hues to the eye. Melbury was so highly satisfied 
 at having Fitzpiers as a sort of guest that he would have sat 
 on for any length of time, but Grace, on whom Fitzpiers' 
 eyes only too frequently alighted, seemed to think it in- 
 cumbent upon her to make a show of going; and her father 
 accompanied her to the vehicle. 
 
 . As the doctor had helped her out of it, he appeared to 
 think that he had excellent reasons for helping her in, and 
 performed the attention lingeringly enough. 
 
 "What were you almost in tears about just now?" he 
 asked, softly. 
 
 "I don't know," she said; and the words were strictly 
 true. 
 
 Melbury mounted on the other side, and they drove on out 
 of the grove, their wheels silently crushing deUcately-pat- 
 terned mosses, hyacinths, primroses, lords-and-ladies, and 
 other strange plants, and cracking up little sticks that lay 
 across the track. Their way homeward ran along the crest 
 of a lofty hill, whence on the right they beheld a wide valley, 
 differing both in feature and atmosphere from that of the 
 Hintock precincts. It was the cider country, which met 
 the woodland district on the axis of this hill. Over the vale 
 the air was blue as sapphire — such a blue as outside that ap- 
 ple valley was never seen. Under the blue the orchards 
 were in a blaze of bloom, some of the richly-flowered trees 
 running almost up to where they drove along. Over a gate, 
 which opened down the incline, a man leant on his arms, 
 regarding this fair promise so intently that he did not ob- 
 serve their passing. 
 
 "That was Giles," said Melbury, when they had gone by. 
 
 "Was it? Poor Giles," said she. 
 
 "All that blooth means heavy autumn work for him and 
 his hands. If no blight happens before the setting, the ap- 
 ple yield will be such as we have not had for years." 
 
 Meanwhile in the wood they had come from, the men 
 had sat on so long that they were indisposed to begin work 
 again that evening; they were paid by the ton, and their 
 
138 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 time for labor was as they chose. They placed the last 
 gatherings of bark in rows for the curers, which led them 
 further and further away from the shed; and thus they 
 gradually withdrew as the sun went down. 
 
 Fitzpiers lingered yet. He had opened his book again, 
 though he could hardly see a word in it, and sat before the 
 dying fire, scarcely knowing of the men's departure. He 
 dreamed and mused till his consciousness seemed to occupy 
 the whole space of woodland around, so little was there of 
 jarring sight or sound to hinder perfect unity with the senti- 
 ment of the place. The idea returned upon him of sacrific- 
 ing all practical aims to live in calm contentment here, and . 
 instead of going on elaborating new conceptions with in- 
 finite pains, to accept quiet domesticity according to oldest 
 and homeliest notions. These reflections detained him till 
 the wood was embrowned with the coming night, and the 
 shy little bird of this dusky time had begun to pour out all 
 the intensity of his eloquence from a bush not very far ofif. 
 
 Fitzpiers' eyes commanded as much of the ground in 
 front as was open. Entering upon this he saw a figure, 
 whose direction of movement was toward the spot where 
 he sat. The surgeon was quite shrouded from observation 
 by the recessed shadow of the hut, and there was no reason 
 why he should move till the stranger had passed by. The 
 . shape resolved itself into a woman's ; she was looking on 
 the ground, and walking slowly as if searching for some- 
 thing that had been lost, her course being precisely that of 
 Mr. Melbury's gig. Fitzpiers, Ijy a sort of divination, 
 jumped to the idea that the figure was Grace's; her nearer 
 approach made the guess a certainty. 
 
 Yes, she was looking for something; and she came round 
 by the prostrate trees that would have been invisible but 
 for the white nakedness which enabled her to avoid them 
 easily. Thus she approached the heap of ashes, and acting 
 upon what was suggested by a still shining ember or two, 
 she took a stick and stirred the heap, which thereupon burst 
 into a flame. On looking around by the light thus obtained 
 she for the first time saw the illumined face of Fitzpiers, pre- 
 cisely in the spot where she had left him. 
 
 Grace gave a start and a scream; tlie place had been as- 
 sociated with him in her thoughts, but she had not ex- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 139 
 
 pected to find him there still. Fitzpiers lost not a moment 
 in rising and going to her side. 
 
 "I frightened you dreadfully, I know," he said. "I ought 
 to have spoken; but I did not at first expect it to be you. I 
 have been sitting here ever since." 
 
 He was actually supporting her by his arm as thowgh 
 under the impression that she was quite overcome, and in 
 danger of falling. As soon as she could collect her ideas 
 she gently withdrew from his grasp, and explained what 
 she had returned for; in getting up or down from the gig, 
 or when sitting by the hut-fire, she had dropped her purse. 
 
 "Now we will find it," said Fitzpiers. 
 
 He threw an armful of last year's leaves on to the fire, 
 which made the flame leap higher, and the encompassing 
 shades to weave themselves into a denser contrast, turning 
 eve into night in a moment. By this radiance they groped 
 about on their hands and knees, till Fitzpiers rested on his 
 elbow and looked at Grace. "We almost always meet in 
 odd circumstances," he said; "and this is one of the oddest. 
 I wonder if it means anything?" 
 
 "Oh, no, I am sure it doesn't," said Grace in haste, quickly 
 assuming an erect posture. "Pray don't say it any more." 
 
 "I hope there was not much money in the purse," said 
 Fitzpiers, rising to his feet more slowly, and brushing the 
 leaves from his trousers. 
 
 "Scarcely any. I cared most about the purse itself, be- 
 cause it was given me. Indeed, money is of little more use 
 at Hintock than on Crusoe's island ; there's hardly any way 
 of spending it." 
 
 They had given up the search when Fitzpiers discerned 
 something by his foot. "Here it is," he said, "so that your 
 father, mother, friend, or admirer will not have his or her 
 feelings hurt by a sense of your negligence, after all." 
 
 "Oh, he knows nothing of what I do now." 
 
 "The admirer?" said Fitzpiers, slyly. 
 
 "I don't know if you would call him that," said Grace, with 
 simplicity. "The admirer is a superficial, conditional 
 creature and this person is quite different." 
 
 "He has all the cardinal virtues." 
 
 "Perhaps, though I don't know them precisely." 
 
 "You unconsciously practice them. Miss Melbury, which 
 is better. According to Schleiermacher they are fortitude, 
 
140 THB3 WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 discretion, wisdom, and love ; and his is the best list that I 
 know." 
 
 "I am afraid poor — " She was going to say that she 
 feared Winterborne — the giver of the purse years before — 
 had not much discretion, though he had all the other three ; 
 but she determined to go no further in this direction, and 
 was silent. 
 
 These half-revelations made a perceptible difference in 
 Fitzpiers. His sense of personal superiority wasted away, 
 and Grace assumed in his eyes the true aspect of a mistress 
 in her lover's regard. 
 
 "Miss Melbury," he said, suddenly, "I divine that this 
 virtuous man you mention has been refused by you?" 
 
 She could do no otherwise than admit it. 
 
 "I did not inquire without good reason. God forbid that 
 I should kneel in another's place at any shrine unfairly. 
 But, my dear Miss Melbury, now that he is gone, may I 
 draw near?" 
 
 "I — I can't say anything about that!" she cried, quickly, 
 "Because when a man has been refused you feel pity for 
 him, and like him more than you did before." 
 
 This increasing complication added still more value to 
 Grace in the surgeon's eyes ; it rendered her adorable. "But 
 cannot you say?" he pleaded, distractedly. 
 
 "I'd rather not; I think I must go home at once." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Fitzpiers. But as he did not move she 
 felt it awkward to walk straight away from him; and so 
 they stood silently together. A diversion was created by 
 the accident of two birds, that had either been roosting above 
 their heads or nesting there, tumbling one over the other 
 into the hot ashes at their feet, apparently engrossed in a 
 desperate quarrel that prevented the use of their wings. 
 They speedily parted, however, and flew up, and were seen 
 no more. 
 
 "That's the end of what is called love!" said some one. 
 
 The speaker was neither Grace nor Fitzpiers, but Marty 
 South, who approached with her face turned up to the sky 
 in her endeavor to trace the birds. Suddenly perceiving 
 Grace, she exclaimed, "Oh — Miss Melbury! — I have been 
 following the pigeons, and didn't see you. And here's Mr. 
 Winterborne!" she continued, shyly, as she looked toward 
 Fitzpiers, who stood in the background, 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 141 
 
 "Marty," Grace interrupted, "I want you to walk home 
 with me — ^will you? Come along." And without lingering 
 longer she took hold of Marty's arm and led her away. 
 
 They went between the spectral arms of the peeled trees 
 as they lay, and onward among the growing trees, by a path 
 where there were no oaks, and no barking, and no Fitzpiers 
 — nothing but copse-wood, between which the primroses 
 could be discerned in pale bunches. "I — didn't know Mr. 
 Winterborne was there," said Marty, breaking the silence 
 when they had nearly reached Grace's door. 
 
 "Nor was he," said Grace. 
 
 "But, Miss Melbury — I saw him." 
 
 "No," said Grace. "It was somebody else. Giles Win- 
 terborne is nothing to me." 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The leaves over Hintock grew denser in their substance, 
 and the woodland seemed to change from an open filigree 
 to a solid opaque body of infinitely larger shape and import- 
 ance. The boughs cast green shades, which hurt the com- 
 plexion of the girls who walked there ; and a fringe of them 
 which overhvmg Mr. Melbury's garden dripped on his seed- 
 plots when it rained, pitting their surface all over as with 
 pock-marks, till Melbury declared that gardens in such a 
 place were no good at all. The two trees that had creaked 
 all the winter left off creaking, the whirr of the night jar, 
 however, forming a very satisfactory continuation of un- 
 canny music from that quarter. Except at midday the sun 
 was not seen complete by the Hintock people, but rather in 
 the form of numerous little stars staring through the leaves. 
 
 Such an appearance it had on Midsummer Eve of this 
 year, and as the hour grew later, and nine o'clock drew on, 
 the irradiation of the daytime became broken up by weird- 
 shadows and ghostly nooks of indistinctness. Iraagination 
 could trace upon the trunks and boughs strange faces and 
 figures shaped by the dying lights ; the surfaces of the holly 
 leaves would here and there shine like peeping eyes, while 
 such fragments of the sky as were visible between the trunks 
 assumed the aspect of sheeted forms and cloven tongues. 
 
142 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 This was before the moonrise. Later on, when that planet 
 was getting command of the upper heaven, and consequent- 
 ly shining with an unbroken face into such open glades as 
 there were in the neighborhood of the hamlet, it became ap- 
 parent that the margin of the wood which approached the 
 timber-merchant's premises was not to be left to the cus- 
 tomary stillness of that reposeful time. 
 
 Fitzpiers having heard a voice, or voices, was looking 
 over his garden gate — where he now looked more frequently 
 than into his books — fancying that Grace might be abroad 
 with some friends. He was now irretrievably committed in 
 heart to Grace Melbury, though he was by no means sure 
 that she was so far committed to him. That the idea had, 
 for once, completely fulfilled itself in the objective sub- 
 stance — which he had, hitherto, deemed an impossibility — 
 he was enchanted enough to fancy must be the case at last. 
 It was not Grace who had passed, however, but several of the 
 ordinary village girls in a group — some steadily walking, 
 some in a mood of wild gayety. He quietly asked his land- 
 lady, who was also in the garden, what these girls were in- 
 tending, and she informed him that it being old Midsummer 
 Eve, they were about to attempt some spell or enchantment 
 which would afford them a glimpse of their future partners 
 for life. She declared it to be an ungodly performance, and 
 one which she, for her part, would never countenance; say- 
 ing which she entered her house and retired to bed. 
 
 The young man lit a cigar and followed the bevy of 
 maidens slowly up the road. They had turned into the 
 wood at an opening between Melbury's and Marty South's ; 
 but Fitzpiers could easily track them by their voices, low as 
 they endeavored to keep their tones. 
 
 In the meantime other inhabitants of Little Hintock had 
 become aware of the nocturnal experiment about to be tried, 
 and were also sauntering stealthily after the frisk)' maidens. 
 Miss Melbury had been informed by Marty South during the 
 day of the proposed peep into futurity, and, being only a 
 girl like the rest, she was sufficiently interested to wish to see 
 the issue. The moon was so bright and the night so calm 
 that she had no difficulty in persuading Mrs. Melbury to 
 accompany her; and thus, joined by Marty, these went on- 
 ward in the same direction. 
 
 Passing Winterborne's house, they heard a noise of ham- 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 143 
 
 mering. Marty explained it. This was the last night on 
 which his paternal roof would shelter him, the days of grace 
 since it fell into hand having expired; and Giles was taking 
 down his cupboards and bedsteads with a view to an early 
 exit next morning. His encounter with Mrs. Charmond 
 had cost him' dearly. 
 
 When they had proceeded a little further, Marty was 
 joined by Grammer Oliver (who was as young as the young- 
 est in such matters), and Grace and Mrs. Melbury went 
 on by themselves till they had arrived at the spot chosen by 
 the village daughters, whose primary intention of keeping 
 their expedition a secret had been quite defeated. Grace 
 and her step-mother paused by a holly-tree, and at a Utile 
 distance stood Fitzpiers under the shade of a young oak, 
 intently observing Grace, who was in the full rays of the 
 moon. 
 
 He watched her without speaking, and unperceived by 
 any but Marty and Grammer, who had drawn up on the 
 dark side of the same holly which sheltered Mrs. and Miss 
 Melbury on its bright side. The two former conversed in 
 low tones. 
 
 "If they two come up in wood next Midsummer Night, 
 they'll come as one," said Grammer, signifying Fitzpiers 
 and Grace. "Instead of my skellinton he'll carry home her 
 living carcass before long. But though she's a lady in her- 
 self, and worthy of any such as he, it do seem to me that he 
 ought to marry somebody more of the sort of Mrs. Char- 
 mond, and that Miss Grace should make the best of Win- 
 terborne." 
 
 Marty returned no comment; and at that minute the 
 girls, some of whom were from Great Hintock, were seen 
 advancing to work the incantation, it being now about mid- 
 night. 
 
 "Directly we see anything we'll run home as fast as we 
 can," said one, whose courage had begun to fail her. To 
 this the rest assented, not knowing that a dozen neighbors 
 lurked in the bushes around. 
 
 "I wish we had not thought of trying this," said another, 
 "but had contented ourselves with the hole-digging to- 
 morrow at twelve, and hearing our husbands' trades. It is 
 too much like having dealings with the Evil One to try to 
 raise their forms." 
 
144 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 However, they had gone too far to recede, and slowly 
 began to march forward in a skirmishing line through the 
 trees toward the deeper recesses of the wood. As far as 
 the listeners could gather, the particular form of black-art 
 to be practiced on this occasion was one connected with the 
 sowing of hemp-seed, a handful of which was carried by 
 each girl. At the moment of their advance they looked 
 back and discerned the figure of Miss Melbury, who, alone 
 of all the observers, stood in the full face of the moonlight 
 deeply engrossed in the proceedings. By contrast with her 
 life of late years they made her feel as if she had receded 
 a couple of centuries in the world's history. She was ren- 
 dered doubly conspicuous by her light dress, and after a 
 few whispered words, one of the girls — a bouncing maiden, 
 pUghted to young Timothy Tangs — asked her if she would 
 join in. Grace, with some excitement, said that she would, 
 and moved on a little in the rear of the rest. 
 
 Soon the listeners could hear nothing of their proceed- 
 ings beyond the faintest occasional rustle of leaves. Gram- 
 mer whispered again to Marty: 
 
 "Why didn't ye go and try your luck with the rest of the 
 maids?" 
 
 "I don't believe in it," said Marty, shortly. 
 
 "Why, half the parish is here — ^the silly hussies should 
 have kept it quiet. I see Mr. Winterborne through the 
 leaves, just come up with Robert Creedle. Marty, we 
 ought to act the part o' Providence sometimes. Do go and 
 tell him that if he stands just behind the bush at the bottom 
 of the slope, Miss Grace must pass down it when she comes 
 back, and she will most likely rush into his arms, for as soon 
 as the clock strikes they'll bundle back home — along like 
 hares. I've seen such larries before." 
 
 "Do you think I'd better?" said Marty, reluctantly. 
 
 "Oh, yes; he'll bless ye for it." 
 
 "I don't want that kind of blessing!" But after a mo- 
 ment's thought she went, and delivered the information; 
 and Grammer had the satisfaction of seeing Giles walk slow- 
 ly to the bend in the leafy defile along which Grace would 
 have to return. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Melbury, deserted by Grace, had per- 
 ceived Fitzpiers and Winterborne, and also the move of 
 the latter. An improvement on Grammer's idea entered 
 the mind of Mrs, Melbury, for she had lately discerned what 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 14S 
 
 her husband had not, that Grace was rapidly fascinating the 
 surgeon. She therefore drew near to Fitzpiers. 
 
 "You should be where Mr. Winterborne is standing," she 
 said to him, significantly. "She will run down through that 
 opening much faster than she went tip it, if she is like the 
 rest of the girls." 
 
 Fitzpiers did not require to be told twice. He went 
 across to Winterbornej and stood beside him. Each knew 
 the probable purpose of the other in standing there, and 
 neither spoke — Fitzpiers scorning to look upon Winter- 
 borne as a rival, and Winterborne adhering to the off-hand 
 manner of indifference which had grown upon him since his 
 dismissal. 
 
 Neither Grammer nor Marty South had seen the sur- 
 geon's maneuver, and still to help Winterborne, as she sup- 
 posed, the old woman suggested to the wood-girl that she 
 should walk forward at the heels of Grace, and "tole" her 
 down the required way if she showed a tendency to run in 
 another direction. Poor Marty, always doomed to sacrifice 
 desire to obligation, walked forward accordingly, and waited 
 as a beacon, still and silent for the retreat of Grace and her 
 giddy companions, now quite out of hearing. 
 
 The first sound to break the silence was the distant note 
 of Great Hintock clock striking the significant hour. About 
 a minute later that quarter of the wood to which the girls 
 had v^randered resounded with the flapping of disturbed 
 birds; then two or three hares and rabbits bounded down 
 the glade from the same direction, and after these the 
 rustling and crackling of leaves and dead twigs denoted the 
 hurried approach of the adventurers, whose fluttering gowns 
 soon became visible. Miss Melbury, having gone forward 
 quite in the rear of the rest, was one of the first to return, 
 and the excitement being contagious, she ran laughing to- 
 ward Marty, who still stood as a hand-post to guide her; 
 then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush where the 
 undergrowth narrowed to a gorge. Marty arrived at her 
 heels just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly 
 stepped forward in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to 
 shift his position, had turned on his heel, and then the sur- 
 geon did what he would not have thought of doing but for 
 'Mrs. Melbury's encouragement and the sentiment of an eve 
 which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as 
 
 10 
 
146 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 the white figure burst upon him, he captured her in a mo^ 
 ment, as if she had been a bird. 
 
 "Oh!" cried Grace, in her fright. 
 
 "You are in my arms, dearest," said Fitzpiers. "And I 
 am going to claim you, and keep you there all our two 
 lives." 
 
 She rested on him like one utterly mastered, and it was 
 several seconds before she recovered from this helplessness. 
 Subdued screams and struggles, audible from neighboring 
 brakes, revealed that there had been other lurkers there- 
 about for a similar purpose. Grace, unlike most of these 
 companions of hers, instead of gasping and writhing, said, 
 in a trembling voice, "Mr. Fitzpiers, will you let me go?" 
 
 "Certainly," he said, laughing; "as soon as you have re- 
 covered." 
 
 She waited another few moments, then quietly and firmly 
 pushed him aside, and glided on her path, the moon whiten- 
 ing her hot blush away. But it had been enough ; ' new re- 
 lations between them had begun. 
 
 The case of the other girls was different, as had been said. 
 They wrestled and tittered, only escaping after a desperate 
 struggle. Fitzpiers could hear these enactments still going 
 on after Grace had left him, and he remained on the spot 
 where he had caught her, Winterborne having gone away. 
 On a sudden another girl came bounding down the same 
 descent that had been followed by Grace; a fine-framed 
 young woman with naked arms. Seeing Fitzpiers standing 
 there, she said, Vi^ith playful effrontery: "Mayst kiss me if 
 canst catch me, Tim!" 
 
 Fitzpiers recognized her as Suke Damson — a hoidenish 
 damsel of the hamlet — ^who was plainly mistaking him for 
 her lover. He was impulsively disposed to profit by her 
 error, and as soon as she began racing away he started in 
 pursuit. 
 
 On she went under the boughs, now in light, now in 
 shade, looking over her shoulder at him every few mo- 
 ments and kissing her hand, but so cunningly dodging 
 about among the trees and moonshades that she t?ever al- 
 lowed him to get dangerously near her. Thus they ran and 
 doubled, Fitzpiers warming with the chase, till the sound 
 of their companions had quite died away. He began to lose 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 147 
 
 hope of ever overtaking her, when all at once, by way of 
 encouragement, she turned to a fence, in which there was a 
 stile, and leaped over it. Outside, the scene was a changed 
 one ; a meadow, where the half-made hay lay about in heaps, 
 in the uninterrupted shine of the now high moon. 
 
 Fitzpiers saw in a moment that having taken to open 
 ground, she had placed herself at his mercy, and he prompt- 
 ly vaulted over after her. She flitted a little way down the 
 mead, when all at once her light form disappeared, as if it 
 had sunk into the earth. She had buried herself in one of 
 the haycocks. 
 
 Fitzpiers, now thoroughly excited, was not going to let 
 her escape him thus. He approached, and set about turning 
 over the heaps one by one. As soon as he paused, tan- 
 talized and puzzled, he was directed anew by an imitative 
 kiss which came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of 
 a local ballad in the smallest voice she could assume: 
 
 "Oh, come in from the foggy, foggy dew." 
 
 In a minute or two he uncovered her. 
 
 "Oh — 'tis not Tim !" said she, burying her face. 
 
 Fitzpiers, however, disregarded her resistance by reason 
 of its mildness, stooped, and imprinted the purposed kiss, 
 then sank down on the next haycock, panting with his race. 
 
 "Whom do you mean by Tim?" he asked, presently. 
 
 "My young man, Tim Tangs," said she. 
 
 "Now honor bright, did you really think it was he?" 
 
 "I did at first." 
 
 "But you didn't at last?" 
 
 "I didn't at last." 
 
 "Do you much mind that it was not?" 
 
 "No," she answered, slyly. 
 
 Fitzpiers did not pursue his questioning. In the moon- 
 light Suke looked very beautiful, the scratches and blem- 
 ishes incidental to her out-door occupation being invisible 
 under these pale rays. While they remained silent the coarse 
 whirr of the eternal night-jar burst sarcastically from the top 
 of a tree at the nearest corner of the wood. Besides this, 
 not a sound of any kind reached their ears, the time of night- 
 ingales being now past, and Hintock lying at a distance of 
 two miles at least. In the opposite direction the hay-field 
 
118 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 stretched away into remoteness till it was lost to the eye in a 
 soft mist. 
 
 It was daybreak before Fitzpiers and Suke Damson re- 
 entered Little Hintock. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 When the general stampede occurred Winterborne had 
 also been looking on, and encountering one of the girls, had 
 asked her what caused them all to fly. 
 
 She said with solemn breathlessness that they had seen 
 something very different from what they had hoped to see, 
 and that she for one would never attempt such unholy cere- 
 monies again. 
 
 "We saw Satan pursuing us with his hour-glass. It was 
 terrible!" 
 
 This account being a little incoherent, Giles went forward 
 toward the spot from which the girls had retreated. After 
 listening there a few minutes he heard slow footsteps 
 rustling over the leaves, and looking through a tangled 
 screen of honeysuckle which hung from a bough he saw in 
 the open space beyond a short, stout man in evening dress, 
 carrying on one arm a light overcoat and also his hat, so 
 awkwardly arranged as possibly to have suggested the 
 "hour-glass" to his timid observers — if this were the per- 
 son whom the girls had seen. With the other hand he 
 silently gesticulated, and the moonlight falling upon his bare 
 brow showed him to have dark hair and a high forehead, 
 of the shape seen oftener in old prints and paintings than in 
 real life. His curious and altogether alien aspect, his strange 
 gestures, like those of one who is rehearsing a scene to him- 
 self, and the unusual place and hour, were sufificient to ac- 
 count for any trepidation among the Hintock daughters at 
 encountering him. 
 
 He paused, and looked round, as if he had forgotten 
 where he was, not observing Giles, who was of the color 
 of his environment. The latter advanced into the light. 
 The gentleman held up his hand and came toward Giles, 
 the two meeting half-way. 
 
 "I have lost my way," said the stranger. "Perhaps you 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 149 
 
 can put me in the path again." He wiped his forehead with 
 the air of one suffering under an agitation more than that of 
 simple fatigue. 
 
 "The turnpike-road is over there," said Giles. 
 
 "I don't want the turnpike-road," said the gentleman, im- 
 patiently. "I came from that. I want Hintock House. Is 
 there not a path to it across here?" 
 
 "Well, yes, a sort of path, but it is hard to find from 
 this point. I'll show you the way, sir, with great pleasure." 
 
 "Thanks, my good friend. The truth is, that I decided to 
 walk across the country after dinner from the hotel at Sher- 
 ton, where I am staying for a day or two. But I did not 
 know it was so far." 
 
 "It is about a mile to the house from here." 
 
 They walked on together. As there was no path, Giles 
 occasionally stepped in front and bent aside the under- 
 boughs of the trees to give his companion a passage, saying 
 every now and then when the twigs, on being released, flew 
 back like whips, "Mind your eyes, sir;" to which the stranger 
 repUed, "Yes, yes," in a preoccupied tone. 
 
 So they went on, the leaf shadows running in their usual 
 quick succession over the forms of the pedestrians, till the 
 stranger said, "Is it far?" 
 
 "Not much further," said Winterborne. "The plantation 
 runs up into a comer here, close behind the house." He 
 added, with hesitation, "You know, I suppose, sir, that Mrs. 
 Charmond is not at home?" 
 
 "You mistake," said the other, quickly. "Mrs. Char- 
 mond has been away for some time, but she is at home 
 now." 
 
 Giles did not contradict him, though he felt sure that the 
 gentleman was wrong. 
 
 "You are a native of this place?" the stranger said. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well — ^you are happy in having a home. It is what I 
 don't possess." 
 
 "You come from far, seemingly?" 
 
 "I come now from the south of Europe." 
 
 "Oh, indeed, sir. You are an Italian, or Spanish, or 
 French gentleman, perhaps?" 
 
 "I am not either." 
 
 Giles did not fill the pause which ensued, and the gentle- 
 
150 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 man, who seemed of an emotional nature, unable to resist 
 friendship, at length answered the question. 
 
 "I am an Italianized American, a South Carolinian by 
 birth," he said. "I left my native country on the failure of 
 the Southern cause, and have never returned to it since." 
 
 He spoke no more about himself, and they came to the 
 verge of the wood. Here, striding over the fence out upon 
 the upland sward, they could at once see the chimneys of 
 the house in the gorge immediately beneath their position, 
 silent, still, and pale. 
 
 "Can you tell me the time?" the gentleman asked. "My 
 watch has stopped." 
 
 "It is between twelve and one," said Giles. 
 
 His companion expressed his astonishment. "I thought 
 it between nine and ten at least! Dear me! dear me!" 
 
 He now begged Giles to return, and offered him a gold 
 coin, which looked like a sovereign, for the assistance ren- 
 dered. Giles declined to accept anything, to the surprise of 
 the stranger, who, on putting the money back into his 
 pocket, said, awkwardly, "I offered it because I want you 
 to utter no word about this meeting with me. Will you 
 promise?" 
 
 Winterborne promised readily. He thereupon stood still 
 whilst the other descended the slope. At the bottom he 
 looked back dubiously. Giles would no longer remain 
 when he was so evidently desired to leave, and returned 
 through the boughs to Hintock. 
 
 He suspected that this man, who seemed so distressed 
 and melancholy, might be that lover and persistent wooer 
 of Mrs. Charmond whom he had heard so frequently spoken 
 of, and whom it was said she had treated cavalierly. But 
 he received no confirmation of his suspicion beyond a re- 
 port which reached him a few days later that a gentleman 
 had called up the servants who were taking care of Hintock 
 House at an hour past midnight; and on learning that Mrs. 
 Charmond, though returned from abroad, was as yet in 
 London, he had sworn bitterly, and gone away without leav- 
 ing a card or any trace of himself. 
 
 The girls who related the story added that he sighed three 
 times before he swore, but this part of the narrative was not 
 corroborated. Anyhow, such a gentleman had driven away 
 from the hotel at Sherton next day in a carriage hired at 
 that inn. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 151 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 The sunny, leafy week which followed the tender doings 
 of Midsummer Eve brought a visitor to Fitzpiers' door; a 
 voice that he knew sounded in the passage. Mr. Melbury 
 had called. At first he had a particular objection to enter 
 the parlor, because his boots were dusty, but as the surgeon 
 insisted, he waived the point and came in. 
 
 Looking neither to the right nor to the left, hardly at 
 Fitzpiers himself, he put his hat under his chair, and with 
 a preoccupied gaze at the floor he said: "I've called to ask 
 , you, doctor, quite privately, a question that troubles me. 
 I've a daughter, Grace, an only daughter, as you may have 
 heard. Well, she's been out in the dew — on Midsummer 
 Eve in particular she went out in thin slippers to watch 
 some vagary of the Hintock maids — and she's got a cough, 
 a distinct hemming and hacking that makes me uneasy. 
 Now I have decided to send her away to some seaside place 
 for a change — " 
 
 "Send her away!" Fitzpiers' countenance had fallen. 
 
 "Yes. And the question is, where would you advise me 
 to send her?" 
 
 The timber-merchant had happened to call at a moment 
 when Fitzpiers was at the spring-tide of a sentiment that 
 Grace was a necessity of his existence. The sudden press- 
 ure of her form upon his breast as she came headlong round 
 the bush had never, ceased to linger with him, ever since he 
 adopted the maneuver for which the hour and the moon- 
 light and the occasion had been the only excuse. Now she 
 was to be sent away. Ambition? It could be postponed. 
 Family. Culture and reciprocity of tastes have taken the 
 place of family nowadays. He allowed himself to be car- 
 ried forward on the wave of his desire. 
 
 "How strange, how very strange it is," he said, "that you 
 should have come to me about her just now. I have been 
 thinking every day of coming to you on the very same er- 
 rand." 
 
 "Ah? You have noticed too that her health — " 
 
 "I have noticed nothing the matter with her health, be- 
 cause there is nothing. But, Mr. Melbury, I have seen your 
 
152 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 daughter several times by accident. I have admired her 
 infinitely, and I was coming to ask you if 1 may become 
 better acquainted with her — pay my addresses to her." 
 
 Melbury was looking down as he listened, and did not 
 see the air of half-misgiving at his own rashness that spread 
 over Fitzpiers' face as he made this declaration. 
 
 "You have — got to know her?" said Melbury, a spell of 
 dead silence having preceded this utterance, during which 
 his emotion rose with almost visible effect. 
 
 "Yes," said Fitzpiers. 
 
 "And you wish to become better acquainted with her? 
 You mean with a view to marriage — of course that is what 
 you mean?" 
 
 "Yes," said the young man. "I mean, get acquainted with 
 her, with a view to being her accepted lover, and, if we 
 suited each other, what would naturally follow." 
 
 The timber-dealer was much surprised, and fairly agitated; 
 his hand trembled as he laid by his walking-stick. "This 
 takes me unawares," said he, his voice well-nigh breaking 
 down. "I don't mean that there is anything unexpected in a 
 gentleman being attracted by her; but it did not occur to 
 me that it would be you. I always said," continued he, with 
 a lump in his throat, "that my Grace would make a mark at 
 her own level, some day. That was why I educated her. I 
 said to myself, 'I'll do it, cost what it may;' though her 
 step-mother was pretty frightened at my paying out so 
 much money year after year. I knew it would tell in the 
 end. 'Where you've not got good material to work on, 
 such doings would be waste and vanity,' I said. 'But 
 where you have that material, it is sure to be worth while.' " 
 
 "I am glad you don't object," said Fitzpiers, almost wish- 
 ing that Grace had not been quite so cheap for him. 
 
 "If she is willing, I don't object, certainly. Indeed," 
 added the honest man, "it would be deceit if I were to pre- 
 tend to feel anything else than highly honored personally; 
 and it is a great credit to her to have drawn to her a man 
 of such good professional station and venerable old family. 
 That huntsman fellow little thought how wrong he was 
 about her. Take her, and welcome, sir." 
 
 "I'll endeavor to ascertain her mind." 
 
 "Yes, yes. But she will be agreeable, I should think. 
 She ought to be.'" 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 153 
 
 "I hope she may. Well, now you'll expect to see me fre- 
 quently." 
 
 "Oh, yes. But, name it all — about her cough and her 
 going away. I had quite forgot that that was what I came 
 about." 
 
 "I assure you," said the surgeon, "that her cough can only 
 be the result of a slight cold, and it is not necessary to ban- 
 ish her to any seaside place at all." 
 
 Melbury looked unconvinced, doubting whether he ought 
 to take Fitzpiers' professional opinion in circumstances 
 which naturally led him to wish to keep her there. The 
 doctor saw this, and honestly dreading to lose sight of her, 
 he said, eagerly, "Between ourselves, if I am successful with 
 her, r will take her away myself for a month or two, so soon 
 as we are married, which I hope will be before the chilly 
 weather comes on. This will be so very much better than 
 letting her go now." 
 
 The proposal pleased Melbury much. There could be 
 hardly any danger in postponing any desirable change of 
 air as long as the warm weather lasted, and for such a rea- 
 son. Suddenly recollecting himself, he said, "Your time 
 must be precious, doctor. I'll get home-along. I am much 
 obliged to ye. As you will see her often, you'll discover for 
 yourself if anything serious is the matter." 
 
 "I can assure you it is nothing," said Fitzpiers, who had 
 seen Grace much oftener already than her father knew of. 
 
 When he was gone, Fitzpiers paused, silent, registering 
 his sensations like a man who has made a plunge for a pearl 
 into a medium of which he knows not the density or tem- 
 perature. But he had done it, and Grace was the sweetest 
 girl alive. 
 
 As for the departed visitor, his own last words lingered 
 in Melbury's ears as he walked homeward; he felt what he 
 had said in the emotion of the moment was very stupid, 
 ungenteel, and unsuited to a dialogue with an educated gen- 
 tleman, the smallness of whose practice was more than com- 
 pensated by the former greatness of his family. He had 
 uttered thoughts before they were weighed, and almost be- 
 fore they were shaped. They had expressed in a certain 
 sense his feeling at Fitzpiers' news, but yet they were not 
 right. Looking on the ground, and planting his stick at 
 each tread as if it were a flagstaff, he reached his own pre- 
 
154 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 cincts, where, as he passed through the court he, auto- 
 matically, stopped to look at the men working in the shed 
 and around. One of them asked him a question about 
 wagon spokes. 
 
 "Hey?" said Melbury, looking hard at him. The man 
 repeated the words. 
 
 Melbury stood; then turning suddenly away without an- 
 swering, he went up the court and entered the house. As 
 time was no object with the journeymen, except as a thing 
 to get past, they leisurely surveyed the door through which 
 he had disappeared. 
 
 "What maggot has the gaffer got in his head now," said 
 Tangs the elder. "Som- to do with that chiel of his! 
 When you've got a maid of your own, John Upjohn, that 
 costs ye what she costs him, that will take the squeak out 
 of your Sunday shoes, John! But you'll never be tall 
 enough to accomplish such as she ; and 'tis a lucky thing for 
 ye, John, as things be. Well, he ought to have a dozen — 
 that would bring him to reason. I see 'em walking to- 
 gether last Sunday, and when they came to a puddle he 
 lifted her over like a halfpenny doll. He ought to have a 
 dozen; he'd let 'em walk through puddles for themselves, 
 then." 
 
 Meanwhile, Melbury had entered the house with the look 
 of a man who sees a vision before him. His wife was in 
 the room. Without taking off his hat he sat down at ran- 
 dom. 
 
 "Luce — we've done it!" he said. "Yes — ^the whole thing 
 is as I expected. The spell that I foresaw might be worked 
 has worked. She's done it, and done it well. Where is 
 she — Grace, I mean?" 
 
 "Up in her room. What has happened?" 
 
 Mr. Melbury explained the circumstances as coherently 
 as he could. "I told you so," he said. "A maid like her 
 couldn't stay hid long, even in a place like this. But where 
 is Grace? Let's have her down. Here — Gra-a-ace!" 
 
 She appeared after a reasonable interval, for she was suf- 
 ficiently spoilt by this father of hers not to put herself in a 
 hurry, however impatient his tones. "What is it, father?" 
 said she, with a smile. 
 
 "Why, you scamp, what's this you've been doing? Not 
 home here more than six months, yet instead of confining 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 155 
 
 yourself to your father's raniv, making havoc in the edu- 
 cated classes." 
 
 Though accustomed to show herself instantly appreciative 
 of her father's meanings, Grace was fairly unable to look 
 anyhow but at a loss now. 
 
 "No, no — of course you don't know what I mean, or you 
 pretend you don't. Though for my part I believe women 
 can see these things through a double hedge. But I sup- 
 pose I must tell ye. Why, you've flung your grapnel over 
 the doctor, and he's coming courting forthwith." 
 
 "Only think of that, my dear. Don't you feel it a tri- 
 umph?" said Mrs. Melbury. 
 
 "Coming courting — I've done nothing to make him!" 
 Grace exclaimed. 
 
 " 'T wasn't necessary that you should. 'Tis voluntary 
 that rules in these things. Well, he has behaved very hon- 
 orably and asked my consent. You'll know what to do 
 when he gets here, I dare say. I needn't tell you to make 
 it all smooth for him." 
 
 "You mean to lead him on to marry me?" 
 
 "I do. Haven't I educated you for it?" 
 
 Grace looked out of the window, and at the fireplace, with 
 no animation in her face. "Why is it settled off-hand in this 
 way?" said she, coquettishly. "You'll wait till you hear 
 what I think of him, I suppose?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, of course. But you see what a good thing it 
 will be." 
 
 She weighed the statement without speaking. 
 
 "You will be restored to the society you've been taken 
 away from," continued her father; "for I don't suppose he'll 
 stay here long." 
 
 She admitted the advantage ; but it was plain that though 
 Fitzpiers exercised a certain fascination over her when he 
 was present, or even more, an almost psychic influence, and 
 though his impulsive act in the wood had stirred her feelings 
 indescribably, she had never regarded him in the light of a 
 destined husband. "I don't know what to answer," she 
 said. "I have learnt that he is very clever." 
 
 "He's all right, and he's coming here to see you." 
 
 A premonition that she could not resist him if he came 
 strangely moved her. "Of course, father, you remember 
 that it is only lately that Gileg-^" 
 
156 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 "You know that you can't think of him. He has given 
 up all claim to you." 
 
 She could not explain the subtleties of her feeling as he 
 could state his opinion, even though she had skill in speech, 
 and her father had none. That Fitzpiers acted upon her 
 like a dram, exciting her, throwing her into a novel at- 
 mosphere which biased her doings until the influence was 
 over, when she felt something of the nature of regret for 
 the mood she had experienced — still more if she reflected 
 on the silent, almost sarcastic, criticism apparent in Win- 
 terborne's air toward her — could not be told to this worthy 
 couple in words. 
 
 It so happened that on this very day Fitzpiers was called 
 away from Hintock by an engagement to attend some 
 medical meetings, and his visits therefore did not begin at 
 once. A note, however, arrived from him addressed to 
 Grace, deploring his enforced absence. As a material ob- 
 ject this note was pretty and superfine, a note of a sort 
 that she had been unaccustomed to see since her return to 
 Hintock, except when a school friend wrote to her — a rare 
 instance, for the girls were respecters of persons, and many 
 cooled down toward the timber-merchant's daughter when 
 she was out of sight. Thus the receipt of it pleased her, and 
 she afterward walked about with a reflective air. 
 
 In the evening her father, who knew that the note had 
 come, said: "Why be ye not sitting down to answer your 
 letter? That's what young folks did in my time." 
 
 She replied that it did not require an answer. 
 
 "Oh, you know best," he said. Nevertheless he went 
 about his business doubting if she were right in not reply- 
 ing; possibly she might be so mismanaging matters as to 
 risk the loss of an alliance which would bring her much 
 happiness. 
 
 Melbury's respect for Fitzpiers was based less on his pro- 
 fessional position, which was not much, than on the stand- 
 ing of his family in the county in by-gone days. That im- 
 plicit faith in members of long-established families, as such, 
 irrespective of their personal condition or character, which 
 is still found among old-fashioned people in the rural dis- 
 tricts, reached its full intensity in Melbury. His daugh- 
 ter's suitor was descended from a family he had heard of 
 in his grandfather'? time as being once great, a family which 
 
THE WOODLANDEES. 157 
 
 had conferred its name upon a neighboring village; how 
 then, could anything be amiss in this betrothal? 
 
 "I must keep her up to this," he said to his wife. "She 
 sees it is for her happiness; but still she's young, and may 
 want a little prompting from an older tongue." 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 With this in view he took her out for a walk, a custom 
 of his when he wished to say anything specially impressive. 
 Their way was over the top of that lofty ridge dividing their 
 woodland from the cider district, whence they had in the 
 spring beheld the miles of apple-trees in bloom. All was 
 now deep green. The spot recalled to Grace's mind the last 
 occasion of her presence there, and she said, "The promise 
 of an enormous apple crop is fulfilling itself, is it not? I 
 suppose Giles is getting his mills and presses ready." 
 
 This was just what her father had not come there to talk 
 about. Without replying he raised his arm, and moved 
 his finger till he fixed it at a point. "There," he said, "you 
 see that plantation reaching over the hill like a great slug, 
 and just behind the hill a particularly green sheltered bot- 
 tom? That's where Mr. Fitzpiers' family were lords of the 
 manor for I don't know how many hundred years, and there 
 stands the village of Buckbury Fitzpiers. A wonderful 
 property 'twas — ^wonderful!" 
 
 "But they are not lords of the manor there now." 
 
 "Why, no. But good and great things die as well as lit- 
 tle and foolish. The only ones representing the family now, 
 I believe, are our doctor and a maiden lady living I don't 
 know where. You can't help being happy, Grace, in allying 
 yourself with such a family. You'll feel as if you've stepped 
 into history." 
 
 "We've been at Hintock as long as they've been at Buck- 
 bury; is it not so? You say our name occurs in old deeds 
 continually." 
 
 "Oh, yes — as yeomen, copyholders, and such like. But 
 think how much better this will be for 'ee. You'll be living 
 a blithe, romantical life, such as has now become natural 
 to you; and though the doctor's practice is small here, he'll 
 
158 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 no doubt go to a dashing town when he's got his hand in, 
 and keep a styHsh carriage, and you'll be brought to know 
 a good many ladies of excellent society. If you should 
 ever meet me then, Grace, you can drive past me, looking 
 the other way. I shouldn't expect you to speak to me, or 
 wish such a thing — unless it happened to be in some lonely, 
 private place where 'twouldn't lower ye at all. Don't think 
 such men as neighbor Giles your equal. He and I shall be 
 good friends enough, but he's not for the like of you. He's 
 lived our rough and homely life here, and his wife's life must 
 be rough and homely, Hkewise." 
 
 So much pressure could not but produce some displace- 
 ment. As Grace was left very much to herself, she took 
 advantage of one fine day before Fitzpiers' return to drive 
 into the aforesaid vale where stood the village of Buckbury 
 Fitzpiers. Leaving her father's man at the inn with the 
 horse and gig, she rambled onward to the ruins of a castle, 
 which stood in a field hard by. She had no doubt that it 
 represented the ancient stronghold of the Fitzpiers family. 
 
 The remains were few, and consisted mostly of remnants 
 of the lower vaulting, supported on low stout columns sur- 
 mounted by the crochet capital of the period. The two or 
 three arches of these vaults that were still in position had 
 been used by the adjoining farmer as shelter for his calves, 
 the floor being spread with straw, amid which the young 
 creatures rustled, coohng their thirsty tongues by hcking 
 the rude Norman carving, which glistened with the 
 moisture. It was a degradation of even such a rude form of 
 art as this to be treated thus, she thought, and for the first 
 time the family of Fitzpiers assumed in her imagination the 
 hues of a melancholy romanticism. 
 
 It was soon time to drive home, and she traversed the 
 distance with a preoccupied mind. The idea of so modern 
 a man in science and aesthetics as this surgeon springing 
 out of relics so ancient was a kind of novelty she had never 
 before experienced. The combination lent him a social and 
 intellectual interest which she dreaded, so much weight did 
 it add to the strange influence he exercised upon her when- 
 ever he came near her. 
 
 In an excitement which was not love, not ambition, 
 rather a fearful consciousness of hazard in the air, she 
 awaited his return. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 159 
 
 Meanwhile her father was awaiting him also. In his 
 house there was an old work on medicine, published toward 
 the end of the last century, and to put himself in harmony 
 with events, Melbury spread this work on his knees when 
 he had done his day's business, and read about Galen, Hip- 
 pocrates, and Herophilus; of the dogmatic, the empiric, the 
 hermetical, and other sects of practitioners that have arisen 
 in history; and thence proceeded to the classification of 
 maladies and the rules for their treatment, as laid down in 
 this valuable book with absolute precision. Melbury re- 
 gretted that the treatise was so old, fearing that he might 
 in consequence be unable to hold as complete a conversa- 
 tion as he could wish with Mr. Fitzpiers, primed, no doubt, 
 with more recent discoveries. 
 
 The day of Fitzpiers' return arrived, and he sent to say 
 that he would call immediately. In the little time that was 
 afforded for putting the house in order, the sweeping of 
 Melbury's parlor was as the sweeping of the par- 
 lor at the Interpreter's which well-nigh choked the 
 Pilgrim. At the end of it Mrs. Melbury sat down, folded 
 her hands and lips, and waited. Her husband restlessly 
 walked in and out from the timber-yard, stared at the in- 
 terior of the room, jerked out, "Ay, ay," and retreated again. 
 Between four and five Fitzpiers arrived, hitching his horse to 
 the hook outside the door. , 
 
 As soon as he had walked in and perceived that Grace 
 was not in the room, he seemed to have a misgiving. Noth- 
 ing less than her actual presence could long keep him to the 
 level of this impassioned enterprise, and that lacking he 
 appeared as one who wished to retrace his steps. 
 
 He mechanically talked at what he considered a woodland 
 matron's level of thought till a rustling was heard on the 
 stairs, and Grace came in. Fitzpiers was for once as agi- 
 tated as she. Over and above the genuine emotion which 
 she raised in his heart there hung the sense that he was 
 casting a die by impulse which he might not have thrown 
 by judgment. 
 
 Mr. Melbury was not in the room. Having to attend to 
 matters in the yard, he had delayed putting on his after- 
 noon coat and waistcoat till the doctor's appearance, when, 
 not wishing to be backward in receiving him, he entered 
 the parlor hastily buttoning up those garments. Grace's 
 
160 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 fastidiousness was a little distressed that Fitzpiers should 
 see by this action the strain his visit was putting upon her 
 father; and to make matters worse for her just then, old 
 Grammer seemed to have a passion for incessantly pump- 
 ing in the back kitchen while leaving the doors open so that 
 the banging and splashing should be distinct above the 
 parlor conversation. 
 
 Whenever the chat over the tea sunk into pleasant de- 
 sultoriness, Mr. Melbury broke in with speeches of labored 
 precision on very remote topics, as if he feared to let Fitz- 
 piers' mind dwell critically on the subject nearest the hearts 
 of all. In truth, a constrained manner was natural enough 
 in Melbury just now, for the greatest interest of his life 
 was reaching its crisis. Could the real have been beheld 
 instead of the corporeal merely, the corner of the room in 
 which he sat would have been filled with a form typical of 
 anxious suspense, large-eyed, tight-lipped, awaiting the is- 
 sue. That paternal hopes and fears so intense should be 
 bound up in the person of one child so peculiarly circum- 
 stanced, and not have dispersed themselves over the larger 
 field of a whole family, involved dangerous risks of future 
 happiness. 
 
 Fitzpiers did not stay more than an hour, but that time 
 had apparently advanced his sentiments toward Grace, once 
 and for all, from a vaguely liquescent to an organic shape. 
 She would not have accompanied him to the door, in re- 
 sponse to his whispered "Come!" if her mother had not said, 
 in a matter-of-fact way, "Of course, Grace; go to the door 
 with Mr. Fitzpiers." Accordingly Grace went, both her 
 parents remaining in the room. When the young pair were 
 in the great brick-floored hall the lover took the girl's hand 
 in his, drew it under his arm, and thus led her on to the 
 front door, where he stealthily kissed her. 
 
 She broke from him trembling, blushed, and turned aside, 
 hardly knowing how things had advanced to this. Fitz- 
 piers drove off, kissing his hand to her, and waving it to 
 Melbury, who was visible through the window. Her father 
 returned the surgeon's action with a great flourish of his 
 own hand, and a satisfied smile. 
 
 The intoxication that Fitzpiers had, as usual, produced 
 in Grace's brain during the visit passed oS somewhat with 
 his withdrawal. She felt like a woman who did not know 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 161 
 
 what she had been doing for the previous hour; but sup- 
 posed with trepidation that the afternoon's proceedings, 
 though vague, had amounted to an engagement between 
 herself and the handsome, coercive, irresistible Fitzpiers. 
 
 ********* 
 
 This visit was a type of many which followed it during 
 the long summer days of that year. Grace was borne along 
 upon a stream of reasonings, arguments, and persuasions, 
 supplemented, it must be added, by inclinations of her own 
 at times. No woman is without aspirations, which may be 
 innocent enough within certain limits ; and Grace had been 
 so trained socially and educated intellectually as to see clear- 
 ly enough a pleasure in the position of wife to such a man 
 as Fitzpiers. His material standing of itself, either present 
 or future, had little in it to give her ambition, but the pos- 
 sibilities of a refined and cultivated inner life, of subtle 
 psychological intercourse, .had their charm. It was this 
 rather than any vulgar idea of marrying well which caused 
 her to float with the current, and to yield to the immense in- 
 fluence which Fitzpiers exercised over her whenever she 
 shared his society. 
 
 Any observer would shrewdly have prophesied that 
 whether or not she loved him as yet in the ordinary sense, 
 she was pretty sure to do so in time. 
 
 . One evening just before dusk they had taken a rather 
 long walk together, and for a short cut homeward passed 
 through the shrubberies of Hintock House — still deserted, 
 and still blankly confronting with its sightless shuttered 
 windows the surrounding foliage and slopes. Grace was 
 tired, and they approached the wall, and sat together on 
 one of the stone sills — still warm with the sun that had been 
 pouring its rays upon them all the afternoon. 
 
 "This place would just do for us, would it not, dearest?" 
 said her betrothed, as they sat, turning and looking idly at 
 the old facade. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Grace, plainly showing that no such fancy 
 had ever crossed her mind. "She is away from home still," 
 Grace added in a minute, rather sadly, for she could not 
 forget that she had somehow lost the valuable friendship of 
 the lady of this bower. 
 
 "Who is oh, you mean Mrs. Charmond. Do you 
 
 know, dear, that at one time I thought you lived here?" 
 11 
 
162 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "Indeed!'; said Grace. "How was that?" 
 
 He explained, as far as he could do so without mention- 
 ing his disappointment at finding it was otherwise; and 
 then went on: "Well, never mind that. Now I want to 
 ask you something. There is one detail of our wedding 
 which I am sure you will leave to me. My inclination is 
 not to be married at the horrid little church here, with all 
 the yokels staring round at us, and a droning parson read- 
 ing." 
 
 "Where, then, can it be? At a church in town?" 
 
 "No; not in a church at all. At a registry-office. It is 
 a quieter, snugger, and more convenient place in every 
 way." 
 
 "Oh!" said she, with real distress. "How can I be mar- 
 ried except at church, and with all my dear friends round 
 me?" 
 
 "Yeoman Winterborne among them?" 
 
 "Yes; why not? You know there was nothing serious 
 between him and me." 
 
 "You see, dear, a noisy bell-ringing marriage at church 
 has this objection in our case; it would be a thing of re- 
 port a long way round. Now I would gently, as gently as 
 possible, indicate to you how inadvisable such publicity 
 would be if we leave Hintock, and I purchase the practice 
 that I contemplate purchasing at Budmouth — hardly more 
 than twenty miles ofif. Forgive my saying that it will be 
 far better if nobody there knows where you came from, nor 
 anything about your parents. Your beauty and knowledge 
 and manners will carry you anywhere if you are not ham- 
 pered by such retrospective criticism." 
 
 "But could it not be a quiet ceremony even at church?" 
 she pleaded. 
 
 "I don't see the necessity of going there," he said, a 
 trifle impatiently. "Marriage is a civil contract, and the 
 shorter and simpler it is made the better. People don't go 
 to church when they take a house, or even when they make 
 a will." 
 
 "Oh, Edgar, I don't hke to hear you speak like that." 
 
 "Well, well, I didn't mean to. But I have mentioned as 
 much to your father, who has made no objection, and why 
 should you?" 
 
THE WOODbANDERS. 163 
 
 She gave way, deeming the point one on which she ouglit 
 to allow sentiment to give way to policy — if there were, in- 
 deed, poUcy in his plan. But she was indefinably depressed 
 as they walked homeward. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 He left her at the door of her father's house. As he re- 
 ceded and was clasped out of sight by the filmy shades, he 
 impressed Grace as a man who hardly appertained to her 
 existence at all. Cleverer, greater than herself, one outside 
 her mental orbit, as she considered him, he seemed to be 
 her ruler rather than her equal, protector, and dear familiar 
 friend. 
 
 The disappointment she had experienced at his wish, the 
 shock given to her girlish sensibilities by his irreverent 
 views of marriage, together with the sure and near ap- 
 proach of the day fixed for committing her future to his 
 keeping, made her so restless that she could scarcely sleep 
 at all that night. She rose when the sparrows began to 
 walk out of the roof-holes, sat on the floor of her room in 
 the dim light, and by-and-by peeped out behind the win- 
 dow-curtains. It was even now day out-of-doors, though 
 the tones of morning were feeble and wan, and it was long 
 before the sun would be perceptible in this overshadowed 
 vale. 
 
 Not a sound came from any of the out houses as yet. 
 The tree trunks, the road, the out-buildings, the garden, 
 every object, wore that aspect of mesmeric fixity which 
 the suspensive quietude of daybreak lends to such scenes. 
 Outside her window helpless immobility seemed to be com- 
 bined with intense consciousness; a meditative inertness 
 possessed all things, oppressively contrasting with her own 
 active emotions. Beyond the road were some cottage roofs 
 and orchards; over these roofs and over the apple-trees 
 behind, high up the slope, and backed by the plantation on 
 the crest, was the house yet occupied by her future husband, 
 the rough-cast front showing whitely through its creepers. 
 The window-shutters were closed, the bedroom curtains 
 
164 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 closely drawn, and not the thinnest coil of smoke rose from 
 the rugged chimneys. 
 
 Something broke the stillness. The front door of the 
 house she was gazing at opened softly, and there came out 
 into the porch a female figure, wrapped in a large shawl, 
 beneath which was visible the white skirt of a long loose 
 garment. A gray arm, stretching from within the porch, 
 adjusted the shawl over the woman's shoulders ; it was with- 
 drawn and disappeared, the door closing behind her. 
 
 The woman went quickly down the box-edged path be- 
 tween the raspberries and currants, and as she walked her 
 well-developed form and gait betrayed her individuality. 
 It was Suke Damson, the affianced one of simple young Tim 
 Tangs. At the bottom of the garden she entered the shelter 
 of the tall hedge, and only the top of her head could be seen 
 hastening in the direction of her own dwelling. 
 
 Grace had recognized, or thought she recognized, in the 
 gray arm stretching from the porch the sleeve of a dressing- 
 gown which Mr. Fitzpiers had been wearing on her own 
 memorable visit to him. Her face fired red. She had just 
 before thought of dressing herself and taking a lonely walk 
 under the trees, so coolly green this early morning; but 
 she now sat down on her bed and fell into reverie. It 
 seemed as if hardly any time had passed when she heard 
 the household moving briskly about, and breakfast prepar- 
 ing down-stairs, though, on rousing herself to robe and 
 descend, she found that the sun was throwing his rays com- 
 pletely over the tree-tops, a progress of natural phenomena 
 denoting that at least three hours had elapsed since she last 
 looked out of the window. 
 
 When attired she searched about the house for her father. 
 She found him at last in the garden, stooping to examine 
 the potatoes for signs of disease. Hearing her rustle, he 
 stood up and stretched his back and arms, saying: "Morn- 
 ing t'ye. Grade. I congratulate ye. It is only a month to- 
 day to the time." 
 
 She did not answer, but, without lifting her dress, waded 
 between the dewy rows of tall potato-green into the middle 
 of the plot where he was. 
 
 "I have been thinking very much about my position this 
 morning — ever since it was light," she began, excitedly, and 
 trembling so that she could hardly stand. "And I feel it 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 165 
 
 is a false one. I wish not to marry Mr. Fitzpiers. I wish 
 not to marry anybody; but I'll marry Giles Winterborne, if 
 you say I must, as an alternative." 
 
 Her father's face settled into rigidity; he turned pale, and 
 came deliberately out of the plot before he answered her. 
 She, had never seen him look so incensed before. 
 
 "Now harken to me," he said. "There's a time for a 
 woman to alter her mind, and there's a time when she can 
 no longer alter it, if she has any right eye to her parents' 
 honor and the seemliness of things. That time has come. 
 I won't say to ye, you shall marry him. But I will say, that 
 if you refuse, I shall forever be ashamed and weary of ye as 
 a daughter, and shall look upon you as the hope of my life 
 no more. What do you know about life and what it can 
 bring forth, and how you ought to act to lead up to best 
 ends? Oh, you are an ungrateful maid, Grace; you've seen 
 that fellow Giles, and he has got over ye; that's where the 
 secret lies, I'll warrant me!" 
 
 "No, father, no ! It is not Giles ; it is something I cannot 
 tell you of " 
 
 "Well, make fools of us all; make us laughing-stocks; 
 break it off; have your own way." 
 
 "But who knows of the engagement as yet — how can 
 breaking it off disgrace you?" 
 
 Melbury then by degrees admitted that he had mentioned 
 the engagement to this acquaintance and to that, till she 
 perceived that in his restlessness and pride he had published 
 it everywhere. She went dismally away to a bower of laurel 
 at the top of the garden. Her father followed her. 
 
 "It is that Giles Winterborne!" he said, with an upbraid- 
 ing gaze at her. 
 
 "No, it is not; though for that matter you encouraged 
 him once," she said, troubled to the verge of despair. "It 
 is not Giles; it is Mr. Fitzpiers." 
 
 "You've had a tiff — a lovers' tiff — that's all, I suppose?" 
 
 "It is some woman " 
 
 "Ay, ay; you are jealous. The old story. Don't tell me. 
 Now do you bide here. I'll send Fitzpiers to you. I saw 
 him smoking in front of his house but a minute bygone." 
 
 He went off hastily out of the garden gate and down the 
 lane. But she would not stay where she was, and edging 
 through a slit in the garden fence, walked away into the 
 
166 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 wood. Just about here the trees were large and wide apart, 
 and there was no undergrowth, so that she could be seen 
 to some distance — a sylph-like greenish-white creature, as 
 toned by the sunlight and leafage. She heard a foot-fall 
 crushing dead leaves behind her, and found herself re'con- 
 noitred by Fitzpiers himself, approaching gay and fresh as 
 the morning around them. 
 
 His remote gaze at her had been one of mild interest 
 rather than of rapture. But she looked so lovely in the 
 green world about her, her pink cheeks, her simple light 
 dress, and the delicate flexibility of her movement acquired 
 such rarity from their wild-wood setting, that his eyes 
 kindled as he drew near. 
 
 "My darling, what is it? Your father says you are in the 
 pouts, and jealous, and I don't know what. Ha! ha! ha! 
 as if there were any rival to you, except vegetable nature, 
 in this home of recluses. We know better." 
 
 "Jealous! Oh, no; it is not so," said she, gravely; "that's 
 a mistake of his and yours, sir. I spoke to him so closely 
 about the question of marriage with you that he did not ap- 
 prehend my state of mind." 
 
 "But there's something wrong, eh?" he asked, eying her 
 narrowly, and bending to kiss her. She shrank away, and 
 his purposed kiss miscarried. 
 
 "What is it?" he said, more seriously, for this little de- 
 feat. 
 
 She made no answer beyond, "Mr. Fitzpiers, I have had 
 no breakfast; I must go in." 
 
 "Come," he insisted, fixing his eyes upon her, "tell me 
 at once, I say." 
 
 It was the greater strength against the less ; but she was 
 mastered less by his manner than her own sense of the un- 
 fairness of silence. "I looked out of the window," she said, 
 with hesitation. "I'll tell you by and by. I must go in- 
 doors. I have had no breakfast." 
 
 By a sort of divination his conjecture went straight to 
 the fact. "Nor I," he said, lightly. "Indeed, I rose late to- 
 day. I have had a broken night, or rather morning. A 
 g^rl of the village — I don't know her name — came and rang 
 at my bell as soon as it was light — between four and five, I 
 should think it was — ^perfectly maddened with an aching 
 tooth. As nobody heard the ring, she threw some gravel 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 167 
 
 at my window, till at last I heard her, and slipped on my 
 dressing-gown and went down. The poor thing begged me 
 with tears in her eyes to take out her tormentor, if I dragged 
 her head off. Down she sat, and out it came — a lovely 
 molar, not a speck upon it — and off she went with it in her 
 handkerchief, much contented, though it would have done 
 good work for her for fifty years to come." 
 
 It was all so plausible — so completely explained. Know- 
 ing nothing of the incident in the wood on old Midsummer 
 Eve, Grace felt that her suspicions were unworthy and 
 absurd, and with the readiness of an honest heart she jumped 
 at the opportunity of honoring his word. At the moment 
 of .her mental liberation, the bushes about the garden had 
 moved, and her father emerged into the shady glade. "Well, 
 I hope it is made up?" he said, cheerily, as he came up. 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Fitzpiers, with his eyes fixed on Grace, 
 whose eyes were shyly bent downward. 
 
 "Now," said her father, "tell me, the pair of ye, that you 
 still mean to take one another for good and all; and on the 
 strength o't you shall have another couple of hundred paid 
 down. I swear it by the name." 
 
 Fitzpiers took her hand. "We declare it, do we not, 
 my dear Grace?" 
 
 Relieved of her doubt, somewhat overawed, and ever 
 anxious to please, she was disposed to settle the matter; 
 yet, woman-like, she would not relinquish her opportunity 
 of asking a concession of some sort. "If our wedding can 
 , be at church, I say yes," she answered, in a measured voice. 
 "If not, I say no." 
 
 Fitzpiers was generous in his turn. "It shall be so," he 
 rejoined, gracefully. "To holy church we'll go, and much 
 good may it do us." 
 
 They returned through the bushes in-doors, Grace walk- 
 ing, full of thought, between the other two, somewhat com- 
 forted, both by Fitzpiers' ingenious explanation and by the 
 sense that she was not to be deprived of a religious cere- 
 mony. "So let it be," she said to herself. "Pray God it is 
 for the best." 
 
 From this hour there was no serious attempt at recalci- 
 tration on her part. Fitzpiers kept himself continually near 
 her, dominating any rebellious impulse, and shaping her 
 will into passive concurrence with all his desires. Apart 
 
168 THE! WOODLANDERS. 
 
 from his lover-like anxiety to possess her, the few golden 
 hundreds of the timber-dealer, ready to hand, formed a warm 
 background to Grace's lovely face, and went some way to re- 
 move his patrician uneasiness at the prospect of endangering 
 his social chances by an alliance with the family of a simple 
 countryman. 
 
 The interim closed up its perspective surely and silently. 
 Whenever Grace had any doubts of her position, the sense 
 of contracting time was like a shortening chamber, at other 
 moments she was comparatively blithe. Day after day 
 waxed and waned; the one or two woodmen who sawed, 
 shaped, spokeshaved, on her father's premises at this in- 
 active season of the year regularly came and unlocked the 
 doors in the morning, locked them in the evening, supped, 
 leant over their garden gates for a whifT of evening air, and 
 to catch any last and furthest throb of news from the outer 
 world, which entered and expired at Little Hintock like the 
 exhausted swell of a wave in some innermost cavern of some 
 innermost creek of an embayed sea; yet no news inter- 
 fered with the nuptial purpose at their neighbor's house. 
 The sappy green twig tips of the season's growth would 
 not, she thought, be appreciably woodier on the day she 
 became a wife, so near was the time ; the tints of the foliage 
 would hardly have changed. Everything was so much as 
 usual that no itinerant stranger would have supposed a 
 woman's .fate to be hanging in the balance at that summer's 
 decline. 
 
 But there were preparations, imaginable readily enough 
 by those who had special knowledge. In the remote and 
 fashionable town of Sandbourne something was growing 
 up under the hands of several persons who had never seen 
 Grace Melbury, never would see her, or care anything about 
 her at all, tho'ugh their creation had such interesting relation 
 to her life that it would inclose her very heart at a moment 
 when that heart would beat, if not with more emotional 
 ardor, at least with more emotional turbulence than at any 
 previous time. 
 
 Why did Mrs. Dollery's van, instead of passing along at 
 the end of the smaller village to Great Hintock direct, turn 
 one Saturday night into Little Hintock Lane, and never pull 
 up till it reached Mr. Melbury's gates? The gilding shine 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 169 
 
 of evening fell upon a large, fat box, not less than a yard 
 square and safely tied with cord, as it was handed out from 
 under the tilt with a great deal of care. But it was not 
 heavy for its size; Mrs. Dollery herself carried it into the 
 house. Tim Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, Suke Dam- 
 son, and others looked knowing and made remarks to each 
 other as they watched its entrance. Melbury stood at the 
 door of the timber-shed in the attitude of a man to whom 
 such an arrival was a trifling domestic detail with which he 
 did not condescend to be concerned. Yet he well divined 
 the contents of that box, and was, in truth, all the while in a 
 pleasant exaltation at the proof that thus far, at any rate, 
 no disappointment had supervened. While Mrs. Dollery 
 remained — which was rather long, from her sense of the 
 importance of her errand — he went into the out-house; 
 but as soon as she had had her say, been paid, and had 
 rumbled away, he entered the dwelling, to find there what 
 he knew he should find — his wife and daughter in a flutter 
 of excitement over the wedding-gown, just arrived from 
 the leading dressmaker of Sandbourne watering-place afore- 
 said. 
 
 During these weeks Giles Winterborne was nowhere to 
 be seen or heard of. At the close of his tenure in Hintock 
 he had sold some of his furniture, packed up the rest — a 
 few pieces endeared by associations, or necessary to his oc- 
 cupation — in the house of a friendly neighbor, and gone 
 away. People said that a certain laxity had crept into his 
 life ; that he had never gone near a church latterly, and had 
 been sometimes seen on Sundays, with unblacked boots, 
 lying on his elbow under a tree, with a cynical gaze at sur- 
 rounding objects. He was likely to return to Hintock when 
 the cider-making season came round, his apparatus being 
 stored there, and travel with his mill and press from village 
 to village. 
 
 The narrow interval that stood before the day diminished 
 yet. There was in Grace's mind sometimes a certain an- 
 ticipative satisfaction, the satisfaction of feeling that she 
 would be the heroine of an hour ; moreover, she was proud, 
 as a cultivated woman, to be the wife of a cultivated man. 
 It was an opportunity denied too frequently to young women 
 in her position, not a few nowadays ; those in whom parental 
 discovery of the value of education has implanted tastes 
 
170 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 which parental circles fail to gratify. But what an attenua- 
 tion was this cold pride of the dream of her youth, in which 
 she had pictured herself walking in state toward the altar, 
 flushed by the purple light and bloom of her own passion, 
 without a single misgiving as to the sealing of the bond, 
 and fervently receiving as her due 
 
 "The homage of a thousand hearts. 
 The fond, deep love of one." 
 
 Everything had been clear then, in imagination ; now some- 
 thing was undefined. She had little carking anxieties; a 
 curious fatefulness seemed to rule her; and she experienced 
 a mournful want of some one to confide in. 
 
 The day loomed so big and nigh that her prophetic ear 
 could in fancy catch the noise of it, hear the murmur of 
 the villagers as she came out of church, imagine the thin 
 jangle of the three thin-toned Hintock bells. The dia- 
 logues seemed to grow louder, and the ding-ding-dong of 
 those three crazed bells more persistent. She awoke; the 
 morning had come. 
 
 Five hours later she was the wife of Fitzpiers. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 The chief hotel at Sherton-Abbas was an old stone- 
 fronted inn with a yawning arch, under which vehicles were 
 driven by stooping coachmen to back premises of wonder- 
 ful commodiousness. The windows to the street were mul- 
 lioned into narrow lights, and only commanded a view of the 
 opposite houses; hence, perhaps, it arose that the best and 
 most luxurious private sitting-room that the inn could af- 
 ford overlooked the nether parts of the establishment, where 
 beyond the yard were to be seen gardens and orchards, now 
 bossed, nay, incrusted, with scarlet and gold fruit, stretch- 
 ing to infinite distance under a luminous lavender-mist. 
 The time was early autumn: 
 
 "When the fair apples, red as evening sky. 
 Do bend the tree unto the fruitful ground, 
 
 When juicy pears and berries of black dye 
 Po d^Qce in air, and csvl} tbe eyes arouiid," 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 171 
 
 The landscape confronting the window might, indeed, 
 have been part of the identical stretch of country which the 
 youthful Chatterton had in his mind. 
 
 In this room sat she who had been the maiden Grace Mel- 
 bury till the finger of fate touched her and turned her to a 
 wife. It was two months after the wedding, and she was 
 alone. Fitzpiers had walked out to see the abbey by the 
 light of sunset, but she had been too fatigued to accompany 
 him. They had reached the last stage of a long eight weeks' 
 tour, and were going on to Hintock that night. 
 
 In the yard between Grace and the orchards there pro- 
 gressed a scene natural to the locality at this time of the 
 year. An apple-mill and press had been erected on the spot, 
 to which some men were bringing fruit from divers points 
 in mawn-baskets, while others were grinding them, and 
 others wringing down the pomace, whose sweet juice gushed 
 forth into tubs and pails. The superintendent of these pro- 
 ceedings, to whom the others spoke as master, was a young 
 yeoman of prepossessing manner and aspect, whose form 
 she recognized in a moment. He had hung his coat to a 
 nail of the out-house wall, and wore his shirt sleeves rolled 
 up beyond his elbows, to keep them unstained while he 
 rammed the pomace into the bags of horse-hair. Frag- 
 ments of apple rind had alighted upon the brim of his hat — 
 probably from the bursting of a bag — ^while brown pips of 
 the same were sticking among the down upon his fine round 
 arms. 
 
 ' She realized in a moment how he had come there. Down 
 in the heart of the apple country nearly every farmer kept 
 up a cider-making apparatus and wring-house for his own 
 use, building up the pomace in great straw "cheeses," as 
 they were called; but here, on the margin of Pomona's 
 plain, was a debatable land neither orchard nor sylvan ex- 
 clusively, where the apple produce was hardly sufficient to 
 warrant each proprietor in keeping a mill of his own. This 
 was the field of the traveling cider-maker. His press and 
 mill were fixed to wheels instead of being set up in a cider- 
 house ; and with a couple of horses, buckets, tubs, strainers, 
 and an assistant or two, he wandered from place to place, 
 deriving very satisfactory returns for his trouble in such a 
 prolific season as the present. 
 
 The back parts of the town were just now abounding with 
 
172 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 apple-gatherings. They stood in the yards in carts, baskets, 
 and loose heaps, and the blue stagnant air of autumn which 
 hung over everything was heavy with a sweet cidery smell; 
 Cakes of pomace lay against the walls in the yellow sun, 
 where they were drying to be used as fuel. Yet it was not 
 the great make of the year as yet. Before the standard 
 crop came in there accumulated, in abundant times like this, 
 a large superfluity of early apples, and windfalls from the 
 trees of later harvests, which would not keep long. Thus 
 in the baskets, and quivering in the hopper of the millj she 
 saw specimens of mixed dates, including the mellow coun- 
 tenances of streaked-jacks, codlins, costtards, stubbards, 
 ratteripes, and other well-known friends of her ravenous 
 youth. 
 
 Grace watched the headman with interest. The slight- 
 est sigh escaped her. Perhaps she thought of the day — not 
 so far distant — when that friend of her childhood had met 
 her by her father's arrangement in this same town, warm 
 with hope, though difSdent, and trusting in a promise rather 
 implied than given. Or she might have thought of "days 
 earlier yet — days of childhood — when her mouth was some- 
 what more ready to receive a kiss from his than was his to 
 bestow one. However, all that was over. She had fe:lt 
 superior to him then, and she felt superior to him now. 
 
 She wondered why he never looked toward her open win- 
 dow. She did not know that in the slight commotion caused 
 by their arrival at the inn that afternoon Winterborne had 
 caught sight of her through the archway, had turned red, and 
 was continuing his work with more concentrated attention 
 on the very account of his discovery. Robert Creedle, too, 
 who traveled with Giles, had been incidentally informed by 
 the ostler that Dr. Fitzpiers and his young wife were in the 
 hotel ; after which news Creedle kept shaking his head and 
 saying to himself, "Ah!" very audibly, between his thrusts 
 at the screw of the cider-press. 
 
 "Why the deuce do you sigh like that, Robert?" asked 
 Winterborne at last. 
 
 "Ah, maister — 'tis my thoughts — 'tis my thoughts ! Yes, 
 ye've lost a hundred load o' timber, well seasoned ; ye've lost 
 five hundred pound in good money; ye've lost the stone- 
 windered house that's big enough to hold a dozen families ; 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 173 
 
 ye've lost your share of half a dozen wagons and their 
 horses — all lost! — through your letting slip she that was 
 once your own !" 
 
 "Good God, Creedle, you'll drive me mad!" said Giles, 
 sternly. "Don't speak of that any more!" 
 
 Thus the subject had ended in the yard. Meanwhile the 
 passive cause of all this loss still regarded the scene. She 
 was beautifully dressed; she was seated in the most com- 
 fortable room that the inn afforded; her long journey had 
 been full of variety, and almost luxuriously performed — 
 for Fitzpiers did not study economy where pleasure was in 
 question. Hence it perhaps arose that Giles and all his 
 belongings seemed sorry and common to her for the mo- 
 ment — moving in a plane so far removed from her own of 
 late that she could scarcely believe she had ever found con- 
 gruity therein. "No — I could never have married him!" 
 she said, gently shaking her head. "Dear father was right. 
 It would have been too coarse a life for me." And she 
 looked at the rings of sapphire and opal upon her white and 
 slender fingers that had been gifts from Fitzpiers. 
 
 Seeing that Giles still kept his back turned, and with a 
 little of the above-described pride of life — easily to be under- 
 stood, and possibly excused, in a young, inexperienced 
 woman who thought she had married well — she said at last, 
 with a smile on her lips, "Mr. Winterborne !" 
 
 He appeared to take no heed, and she said a second time, 
 "Mr. Winterborne!" 
 
 Even now he seemed not to hear, though a person close 
 enough to him to see the expression of his face might have 
 doubted it; and she said a third time, with a timid loud- 
 ness, "Mr. Winterborne! What! have you forgotten my 
 voice?" She remained with her lips parted in a welcoming 
 smile. 
 
 He turned without surprise, and came deliberately to- 
 ward the window. "Why do you call me?" he said, with 
 a sternness that took her completely unawares, his face be- 
 ing now pale. "Is it not enough that you see me here 
 moiling and muddling for my daily bread, while you are 
 sitting there in your success, that you can't refrain from 
 opening old wounds by calling out my name?" 
 
 She flushed, and was struck dumb for some moments; 
 but she forgave his unreasoning anger, knowing so well in 
 
174 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 what it had its root "I am sorry I offended you by speak- 
 ing," she replied, meekly. "Believe me, I did not intend to 
 do that. I could hardly sit here so near you without a word 
 of recognition." 
 
 Winter home's heart had swollen big and his eyes grown 
 moist by this time, so much had the gentle answer of that 
 familiar voice moved him. He assured her hurriedly, and 
 without looking at her, that he was not angry. He then 
 managed to ask her, in a clumsy, constrained way, if she 
 had had a pleasant journey, and seen many interesting sights. 
 She spoke of a few places that she had visited, and so the 
 time passed till he withdrew to take his place at one of the 
 levers which pulled round the screw. 
 
 Forgotten her voice! Indeed he had not forgotten her 
 voice, as his bitterness showed. But though in the heat ',)f 
 the moment he had reproached her keenly, his second mood 
 was a far more tender one — that which could regard her re- 
 nunciation of such as he as her glory and her privilege, his 
 own fidelity notwithstanding. He could have declared with 
 a contemporary poet: 
 
 "If I forget, 
 The salt creek may forget the ocean; 
 
 If I forget 
 The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion. 
 May I sink meanlier than the worst, 
 Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst — 
 
 If I forget. 
 
 "Though you forget. 
 No word of mine shall mar your pleasure; 
 
 Though you forget. 
 You filled my barren life with treasure. 
 You may withdraw the gift you gave. 
 You still are queen, I still am slave — 
 
 Though you forget." 
 
 She had tears in her eyes at the thought that she could 
 not remind him of what he ought to have remembered; 
 that not herself but the pressure of events had dissipated 
 the dreams of their early youth. Grace was thus unex- 
 pectedly worsted in her encounter with her old friend. She 
 had opened the window with a faint sense of triumph, but he 
 had turned it into sadness; she did not quite comprehend 
 the reason why. In truth, it was because she was not cruel 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 175 
 
 enough in her cruelty. If you have to use the knife, use it, 
 say the great surgeons; and for her own peace Grace should 
 have contemned Winterborne thoroughly or not at all. As 
 it was, on closing the window an indescribable — some might 
 have said dangerous — ^pity quavered in her bosom for him. 
 
 Presently her husband entered the room, and told her 
 what a wonderful sunset there was to be seen. 
 
 "I have not noticed it. But I have seen somebody out 
 there that we know," she replied, looking into the court. 
 
 Fitzpiers followed the direction of her eyes, and said he 
 did not recognize anybody. 
 
 "Why, Mr. Winterborne — ^there he is, cider-making. He 
 combines that with his other business, you know." 
 
 "Oh — that fellow!" said Fitzpiers, his curiosity becoming 
 extinct. 
 
 She, reproachfully: "What! call Mr. Winterborne a fel- 
 low, Edgar? It is true I was just saying to myself that I 
 never could have married him ; but I have much regard for 
 him, and always shall." 
 
 "Well, do by all means, my dear one. I dare say I am 
 inhuman, and supercilious, and contemptibly proud of my 
 poor old ramshackle family; but I do honestly confess to 
 you that I feel as if I belonged to a different species from 
 the people who are working in that yard." 
 
 "And from me too, then. For my blood is no better than 
 theirs." 
 
 He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, 
 indeed, a startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe 
 without should be standing there beside him as his wife, if 
 his sentiments were as he had said. In their travels to- 
 gether she had ranged so unerringly at his level in ideas, 
 tastes, and habits that he had almost forgotten how his heart 
 had played havoc with his principles in taking her to him. 
 
 "Ah, you — you are refined and educated into something 
 quite different," he said, self-assuringly. 
 
 "I don't quite like to think that," she murmured, with 
 soft regret. "And I think you underestimate Giles Win- 
 terborne. Remember, I was brought up with him till I 
 was sent away to school, so I cannot be radically different. 
 At any rate, I don't feel so. That is no doubt my fault, 
 and a great blemish in me. But I hope you will put up with 
 it, Edgar." 
 
176 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so, and, as it 
 was now getting on for dusk, they prepared to perform the 
 last stage of their journey, so as to arrive at Hintock be- 
 fore it grew very late. 
 
 In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers 
 in the yard having ceased their labors and gone away, so 
 that the only sounds audible«there now were the trickling 
 of the juice from the tightly-screwed press, and the buzz of 
 a single wasp, which had drunk itself so tipsy that it was un- 
 conscious of nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at the 
 thought of being soon in her sylvan home; but Fitzpiers 
 sat beside her almost silent. An indescribable oppressive- 
 ness had overtaken him with the near approach of the jour- 
 ney's end and the realities of life that lay there. 
 
 "You don't say a word, Edgar," she observed. "Aren't 
 you glad to get back? I am." 
 
 "You have friends here. I have none." 
 
 "But my friends are yours." 
 
 "Oh, yes — in that sense." 
 
 The conversation languished, and they drew near the end 
 of Hintock Lane. It had.been decided that they should, at^ 
 least for a time, take up their abode in her father's roomy) 
 house, one wing' of which was quite at their service, bein^!^ 
 almost disused by the Melburys. Workmen had been- 
 painting, papering, and whitewashing this set of rooms in 
 the wedded pair's absence; and so scrupulous had been the 
 timber-dealer that there should occur no hitch or disap- 
 pointment on their arrival that not the smallest detail re- 
 mained undone. To make it all complete, a ground-floor 
 room had been fitted up as a surgery, with an independent 
 outer door, to which Fitzpiers' brass plate was screwed — 
 for mere ornament, such a sign being quite superfluous 
 where everybody knew the latitude and longitude of his 
 neighbors for miles round. 
 
 Melbury and his wife welcomed the twain with affection, 
 and all the house with deference. They went up to explore 
 their rooms, that opened from a passage on the left hand 
 of the staircase, the entrance to which could be shut off on 
 the landing by a door that Melbury had hung for the pur- 
 pose. A friendly fire was burning in the grate, although 
 it was not cold. Fitzpiers said it was too soon for any sort 
 of meal, they only having dined shortly before leaving .Sher- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 177 
 
 ton-Abbas; he would walk across to his old lodging to 
 learn how his locum tenens had got on in his absence. 
 
 In leaving Melbury's door he looked back at the house. 
 There was economy in living under that roof — and economy 
 was desirable; but in some way he was dissatisfied with 
 the arrangement; it immersed him so deeply in son-in-law- 
 ship to Melbury. He went on to his former residence; his 
 deputy was out, and Fitzpiers fell into conversation with 
 his former landlady. 
 
 "Well, Mrs. Cox, what's the best news?" he asked of her 
 with cheery weariness. 
 
 She was a little soured at losing, by his marriage, so 
 profitable a tenant as the surgeon had proved to be dur- 
 ing his residence under her roof; and the more so in there 
 being hardly the remotest chance of her getting such an- 
 other settler in the Hintock solitudes. "'Tis what I don't 
 wish to repeat, sir ; least of all to you," she mumbled. 
 
 "Never mind me, Mrs. Cox; go ahead." 
 
 "It is what people say about your hasty marrying. Dr. 
 Fitzpiers. Whereas they won't believe you know such clever 
 doctrines in physics as they once supposed of ye, seeing 
 as you could marry into Mr. Melbury's family, which is 
 only Hintock-born, such as me." 
 
 "They are kindly welcome to their opinion," said Fitz- 
 piers, not allowing himself to recognize that he winced. 
 "Anything else?" 
 
 "Yes; she's come home at last." 
 
 "Who's she?" 
 
 "Mrs. Charmond." 
 
 "Oh, indeed," said Fitzpiers, with but slight interest. "I've 
 never seen her." 
 
 "She has seen you, sir, whether or no." 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "Yes. She saw you in some hotel or street for a minute 
 or two whilst you were away traveling, and accidently heard 
 your name; and when she made some remark about you, 
 Miss Ellis — ^that's her maid — ^told her you was on your wed- 
 ding tower with Mr. Melbury's daughter, and she said, 'He 
 ought to have done better than that. I fear he has spoilt 
 his chances,' she says." 
 
 Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering house- 
 wife, and walked home with no very brisk step. He en- 
 
 12 
 
m THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 tered the door quietly, and went straight up-stairs to the 
 drawing-room extemporized for their use by Melbury in his 
 and his bride's absence, expecting to find her there, as he had 
 left her. The fire was burning still, but there were no lights ; 
 he looked into the next apartment, fitted up as a little dining- 
 room, but no supper was laid. He went to the top of the 
 stairs, and heard a chorus of voices in the timber-merchant's 
 parlor below, Grace's being occasionally intermingled. 
 
 Descending, and looking into the room from the door- 
 way, he found quite a large gathering of neighbors and 
 other acquaintances, praising and congratulating Mrs. Fitz- 
 piers on her return, among them being the dairyman. Farm- 
 er Bawtree, and the master blacksmith from Great Hintock ; 
 also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some 
 others, with their wives, who lived hard by. Grace — girl 
 that she was — had quite forgotten her new dignity and her 
 husband's; she was in the midst of them, blushing and re- 
 ceiving their compliments with all the pleasure of old com- 
 radeship. 
 
 Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situa- 
 tion. Melbury was nowhere in the room, but Melbury 's 
 wife, perceiving the doctor, came to him. "We thought, 
 Grace and I," she said, "that as they have called, hearing 
 you were come, we could do no less than ask them to sup- 
 per; and then Grace proposed that we should all sup to- 
 gether, as it is the first night of your return." 
 
 By this time Grace had come round to him. "Is it not 
 good of them to welcome me so warmly?" she exclaimed, 
 with tears of friendship in her eyes. "After so much good 
 feeling, I could not think of our shutting ourselves up away 
 from them in our own dining-room." 
 
 "Certainly not — certainly not," said Fitzpiers. And he 
 entered the room with the heroic smile of a martyr. 
 
 As soon as they sat down to table, Melbury came in, and 
 seemed to see at once that Fitzpiers would much rather have 
 received no such demonstrative reception. He thereupon 
 privately chid his wife for her forwardness in the matter. 
 Mrs. Melbury declared that it was as much Grace's doing 
 as hers, after which there was no more to be said by that 
 young woman's tender father. By this time Fitzpiers was 
 making the best of his position among the wide-elbowed 
 and genial company who sat eating and drinking and laugh- 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 179 
 
 ing and joking around him, and getting warmed himself 
 by the good cheer, was obliged to admit that, after all, the 
 supper was not the least enjoyable he had ever known. 
 
 At times, however, the words about his having spoiled 
 his opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Char- 
 mond, haunted him like a handwriting on the wall. Then 
 his manner would become suddenly abstracted. At one 
 moment he would mentally put an indignant query why 
 Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make it her 
 business to have opinions about his opportunities; at an- 
 other he thought that he could hardly be angry with her for 
 taking an interest in the doctor of her own parish. Then 
 he would drink a glass of grog, and so get rid of the mis- 
 giving. These hitches and quafifings were soon perceived 
 by Grace as well as by her father; and hence both of them 
 were much relieved when the first of the guests to discover 
 that the hour was growing late rose and declared that he 
 must think of moving homeward. At the words Melbury 
 rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes 
 they were gone. 
 
 "Now, Grace," said her husband, as soon as he found 
 himself alone with her in their private apartments, "we've 
 had a very pleasant evening, and everybody has been very 
 kind. But we must come to an understanding about our 
 way of living here. If we continue in these rooms, there 
 must be no mixing in with your people below, I can't stand 
 it, and that's the truth." 
 
 She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his 
 distaste for those old-fashioned woodland forms of life 
 which in his courtship he had professed to regard with so 
 much interest. But she assented in a moment. 
 
 "We must be simply your father's tenants," he contin- 
 ued, "and our goings and comings must be as independent 
 as if we lived elsewhere." 
 
 "Certainly, Edgar; I quite see that it must be so." 
 
 "But you joined in with all those people in my absence, 
 without knowing whether I should approve or disapprove. 
 When I came, I couldn't help myself at all." 
 
 She, sighing, "Yes, I see I ought to have waited; though 
 they came unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the 
 best." 
 
 Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers 
 
180 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 went on his old rounds as usual. But it was easy for so 
 supersubtle an eye as his to discern, or to think he dis- 
 cerned, that he was no longer regarded as an extrinsic, un- 
 fathomed gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific and 
 social, but as Mr. Melbury's compeer, and therefore in a 
 degree only one of themselves. The Hintock woodlanders 
 held with all the strength of inherited conviction to the 
 aristocratic principle, and as soon as they had discovered 
 that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury Fitzpierses they 
 had accorded to him for nothing a touching of hat-brims, 
 promptness of service, and defei^nce of approach which 
 Melbury had to do without though he paid for it over and 
 over. But now, having proved a traitor to his own cause 
 by this marriage, Fitzpiers was believed in no more as a 
 superior hedged by his own divinity; while as doctor he 
 began to be rated no higher than old Jones, whom they had 
 so long despised. 
 
 His few patients seemed in his two months' absence to 
 have dwindled considerably in number, and no sooner had 
 he returned than there came to him from the Board of 
 Guardians a complaint that a pauper had been neglected 
 by his substitute. In a fit of pride Fitzpiers resigned his 
 appointment as one of the surgeons to the union, which had 
 been the nucleus of his practice here. 
 
 At the end of a fortnight he came in-doors one evening 
 to Grace more briskly than usual. "They have written to 
 me again about that practice in Budmouth that I once 
 negotiated for," he said to her. "The premium asked is 
 eight hundred pounds, and I think that between your father 
 and myself it ought to be raised. Then we can get away 
 from this place forever." 
 
 The question had been mooted between them before, and 
 she was not unprepared to consider it. They had not pro- 
 ceeded far with the discussion when a knock came to the 
 door, and in a minute Grammer ran up to say that a mes- 
 sage had arrived from Hintock House requesting Dr. Fitz- 
 piers to attend there at once. Mrs. Charmond had met 
 with a slight accident through the overturning of her car- 
 riage. 
 
 "This is something, anyhow," said Fitzpiers, rising with 
 an interest which he could not have defined. "I have had 
 a presentiment that this mysterious woman and I were to 
 be better acquainted." 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. Igl 
 
 The latter words were murmured to himself alone. 
 
 "Good-night," said Grace, as soon as he was ready. "I 
 shall be asleep probably when you return." 
 
 "Good-night," he replied, inattentively, and went down- 
 stairs. It was the first time since their marriage that he 
 had left her without a kisS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Winterborne's house had been pulled down. On this ac- 
 count his face had been seen but fitfully in Hintock; and he 
 would probably have disappeared from the place altogether 
 but for his slight business connection with Melbury, on 
 whose premises Giles kept his cider-making apparatus now 
 that he had no place of his own to stow it in. Coming here 
 one evening on his way to a hut, beyond the wood, where 
 he now slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-thatched 
 pinion of his paternal roof had vanished from its site, and 
 that the walls were leveled. In present circumstances he 
 had a feeling for the spot that might have been called mor- 
 bid, and when he had supped in the hut aforesaid he made 
 use of the spare hour before bedtime to return to Little Hin- 
 tock in the twilight, and ramble over the patch of ground on 
 which he had first seen the day. 
 
 He repeated this evening visit on several like occasions. 
 Even in the gloom he could trace where the different rooms 
 had stood; could mark the shape of the kitchen chimney- 
 corner in which he had roasted apples and potatoes in his 
 boyhood, cast his bullets, and burnt his initials on articles 
 that did and did not belong to him. The apple-trees still 
 remained to show where the garden had been, the oldest of 
 them even now retaining the crippled slant to northeast 
 given them by the great November gale of 1824 which car- 
 ried a brig bodily over the Chesil Bank. They were at pres- 
 ent bent to still greater obliquity by the heaviness of their 
 produce. Apples bobbed against his head, and in the grass 
 beneath he crunched scores of them as he walked. There 
 was nobody to gather them now. 
 
 It was on the evening under notice that, half sitting, half 
 leaning against one of these inclined trunks, Winterborne 
 
182 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 had become lost in his thoughts as usual, till one little star 
 after another had taken up a position in the piece of sky 
 which now confronted him where his walls and chimneys 
 had formerly raised their outlines. The house had jutted 
 awkwardly into the road, and the opening caused by its ab- 
 sence was very distinct. 
 
 In the silence the trot of horses and the spin of carriage 
 wheels became audible; and the vehicle soon shaped itself 
 against the blank sky, bearing down upon him with the 
 bend in the lane which here occurred, and of which the 
 house had been the cause. He could discern the figure of 
 a woman high up on the driving-seat of a phaeton, a groom 
 being just visible behind. Presently there was a slight 
 scrape, then a scream. Winterborne went across to the 
 spot, and found the phaeton half overturned, its driver sit- 
 ting on the heap of rubbish which had once been his dwell- 
 ing, and the man seizing the horses' heads. The equipage 
 was Mrs. Charmond's, and the unseated charioteer that 
 lady herself. 
 
 To his inquiry if she were hurt she made some incoherent 
 reply to the effect that she did not know. The damage in 
 other respects was little or none; the phaeton was righted, 
 Mrs. Charmond placed in it, and the reins given to the 
 servant. It appeared that she had been deceived by the 
 removal of the house, imagining the gap caused by the 
 demolition to be the opening of the road, so that she turned 
 in upon the ruins instead of at the bend a few yards fur- 
 ther on. 
 
 "Drive home! drive home!" cried the lady, impatiently; 
 and they started on their way. They had not, however, 
 gone many paces when, the air being still, Winterborne 
 heard her say, "Stop; tell that man to call the doctor, Mr. 
 Fitzpiers, and send him on to the house. I find I am hurt 
 more seriously than I thought." 
 
 Winterborne took the message from the groom and pro- 
 ceeded to the doctor's at once. Having delivered it, he 
 stepped back into the darkness and waited till he had seen 
 Fitzpiers leave the door. He stood for a few minutes look- 
 ing at the window which, by its light, revealed the room 
 where Grace was sitting, and went away under the gloomy 
 trees. 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 183 
 
 Fitzpiers duly arrived at Hintock House, whose doors he 
 now saw open for the first time. Contrary to his expecta- 
 tion, there was visible no sign of that confusion or alarm 
 which a serious accident to the mistress of the abode would 
 have occasioned. He was shown into a room at the top of 
 the staircase, cozily and femininely draped, where, by the 
 light of the shaded lamp, he saw a woman of full, round 
 figure reclining upon a couch in such a position as not to 
 disturb a pile of magnificent hair on the crown of her head. 
 A deep purple dressing-gown formed an admirable foil to 
 the peculiarly rich brown of her hair plaits; her left arm, 
 which was naked nearly up to the shoulder, was thrown 
 upward, and between the fingers of her right hand she 
 held a cigarette, while she idly breathed from her plump 
 lips a thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling. 
 
 The doctor's first feeling was a sense of his exaggerated 
 prevision in having brought appliances for a serious case; 
 the next, something more curious. While the scene and 
 the moment were new to him and unanticipated, the sen- 
 timent and essence of the moment were indescribably fa- 
 miliar. What could be the cause of it? Probably a dream. 
 
 Mrs. Charmond did not move more than to raise her 
 eyes to him, and he came and stood by her. She glanced 
 up at his face across her brows and forehead, and then he 
 observed a blush creep slowly over her decidedly hand- 
 some cheeks. Her eyes, which had lingered upon him 
 with an inquiring, conscious expression, were hastily with- 
 drawn, and she mechanically applied the cigarette again 
 to her lips. 
 
 For a moment he forgot his errand, till suddenly arous- 
 ing himself he addressed her, formally condoled with her, 
 and made the usual professional inquiries about what had 
 happened to her, and where she was hurt. 
 
 "That's what I want you to tell me," she murmured, in 
 tones of indefinable reserve. "I quite believe in you, for 
 I know you are very accomplished, because you study so 
 hard." 
 
 "I'll do my best to justify your good opinion," said the 
 young man, bowing. "And none the less that I am happy 
 to find the accident has not been serious." 
 
 "I am very much shaken," she said. 
 
 "Oh, yes," he replied, and completed his examination, 
 
184 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 which convinced him that there was really nothing the 
 matter with her, and more than ever puzzled him as to 
 why he had been fetched, since she did not appear to be a 
 timid woman. "You must rest awhile, and I'll send some- 
 thing," he said. 
 
 "Oh, I forgot," she returned. "Look here." And she 
 showed him a little scrape on her arm — the full, round 
 arm that was exposed. "Put some court-plaster on that, 
 please." 
 
 He obeyed. "And now," she said, "before you go I 
 want to put a question to you. Sit right there in front of me, 
 on that low chair, and bring the candles, or one, to the 
 little table. Do you smoke? Yes? That's right; I am learn- 
 ing. Take one of these; and here's a light." She threw a 
 match-box across. 
 
 Fitzpiers caught it, and having lit up, regarded her from 
 his new position, which, with the shifting of the candles, for 
 the first time afforded him a full view of her face. "How 
 many years have passed since first we met?" she resumed, 
 in a voice which she vainly endeavored to maintain at its 
 former pitch of composure, and eying him with daring bash- 
 fulness. 
 
 "We met, do you say?" 
 
 She nodded. "I saw you recently at a hotel in London, 
 when you were passing through, I suppose, with your bride, 
 and I recognized you as one I had met in my girlhood. 
 Do you remember, when you were studying at Heidelberg, 
 an English family that was staying there, who used to 
 walk " 
 
 "And the young lady who wore a long tail of rare-col- 
 ored hair — ah, I see it before my eyes ! — who lost her gloves 
 on the Great Terrace — ^\vho was going back in the dusk to 
 find them — to whom I said, 'I'll go for them,' and you said, 
 'Oh, they are not worth coming all the way up again for.' 
 I do remember, and how very long we stayed talking there ! 
 I went next morning whilst the dew was on the grass. There 
 they lay — the little fingers sticking out damp and thin, I see 
 them now! I picked them up, and then " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I kissed them," he rejoined, rather shamefacedly. 
 
 "But you had hardly ever seen me except in the dusk." 
 
 "Never mind. I was young then, and I kissed them. I 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 185 
 
 wondered how I could make the most of my trouvaille, and 
 decided that I would call at your hotel with them that 
 afternoon. It rained, and I waited till the next day. I 
 called, and you were gone." 
 
 "Yes," answered she, with dry melancholy. "My mother, 
 knowing my disposition, said she had no wish for such a 
 chit as me to go falling in love with an impecunious student, 
 and spirited me away to Baden. As it is all over and past, 
 I'll tell you one thing: I should have sent you a line passing 
 warm had I known your name. That name I never knew 
 till my maid said as you passed up the hotel stairs about a 
 month ago, 'There's Dr. Fitzpiers.' " 
 
 "Good heavens," said Fitzpiers, musingly, "how the time 
 comes back to me! The evening, the morning, the dew, 
 the spot. When I found that you really were gone it was as 
 if a cold iron had been passed down my back. I went up 
 to where you had stood when I last saw you — I flung my- 
 self on the grass, and — being not much more than a boy — 
 my eyes were literally blinded with tears. Nameless, un- 
 known to me as you were, I couldn't forget your voice." 
 
 "For how long?" 
 
 "Oh — ever so long. Days and days." 
 
 "Days and days! Only days and days? Oh, the heart 
 of a man ! Days and days !" 
 
 "But, my dear madam, I had not known you more than 
 a day or two. It was not a full-blown love — it was the 
 merest bud — red, fresh, vivid, but small. It was a colos- 
 sal passion in posse, a giant in embryo. It never matured." 
 
 "So much the better, perhaps." 
 
 "Perhaps. But see how powerless is the human will 
 against predestination. We were prevented meeting; we 
 have met. One feature of the case remains the same amid 
 many changes. You are still rich, and I am still poor. 
 Better than that, you have (judging by your last remark) 
 outgrown the foolish, impulsive passions of your early girl- 
 hood. I have not outgrown mine." 
 
 "I beg your pardon," said she, with vibrations of strong' 
 feeling in her words. "I have been placed in a position 
 which hinders such outgrowings. Besides, I don't believe 
 that the genuine subjects of emotion do outgrow them; I 
 believe that the older such people get, the worse they are. 
 Possibly at ninety or a hundred they may^ feel they are 
 
186 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 cured; but a mere threescore and ten won't do it — at least 
 for me." 
 
 He gazed at her in undisguised admiration. Here was a 
 soul of souls ! 
 
 "Mrs. Charmond, you speak truly," he exclaimed. "But 
 you speak sadly as well. Why is that?" 
 
 "I always am sad when I come here/' she said, drop- 
 ping to a low tone with a sense of having been too demon- 
 strative. 
 
 "Then may I inquire why you came?" 
 
 "A man brought me. Women are always carried about 
 like corks upon the waves of masculine desires. I hope I 
 have not alarmed you; but Hintock has the curious effect 
 of bottling up the emotions till one can no longer hold 
 them; I am often obliged to fly away and discharge my 
 sentiments somewhere, or I should die outright." 
 
 "There is very good society in the county for those who 
 have the privilege of entering it." 
 
 "Perhaps so. But the misery of remote country life is 
 that your neighbors have no toleration for difference of 
 opinion and habit. My neighbors think I am an atheist, 
 except those who think I am a Roman Catholic; and when 
 I speak disrespectfully of the weather or the crops, they 
 think I am a blasphemer." 
 
 She broke into a musical laugh at the idea. 
 
 "You don't wish me to stay any longer?" he inquired, 
 when he found that she remained musing. 
 
 "No— I think not." 
 
 "Then tell me that I am to be gone." 
 
 "Why? Cannot you go without?" 
 
 "I may consult my own feelings only, if left to myself." 
 
 "Well, if you do, what then? Do you suppose you'll be 
 in my way?" 
 
 "I feared it might be so." 
 
 "Then fear no more. But good-night. Come to-morrow 
 and see if I am going on right. This renewal of acquaint- 
 ance touches me. I have already a friendship for you." 
 
 "If it depends upon myself, it shall last forever." 
 
 "My best hopes that it may. Good-bye." 
 
 Fitzpiers went down the stairs absolutely unable to de- 
 cide whether she had sent for him in the natural alarm 
 which might have followed her mishap, or with the single 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 187 
 
 view of making herself known to him as she had done, for 
 which the capsize had afforded excellent opportunity. Out- 
 side the house he mused over the spot under the light of 
 the stars. It seemed very strange that he should have come 
 there more than once when its inhabitant was absent, and 
 observed the house with a nameless interest; that he should 
 have assumed off-hand before he knew Grace that it was 
 here she lived; that, in short, at sundry times and seasons 
 the individuality of Hintock House should have forced itself 
 upon him as appertaining to some existence with which 
 he was concerned. 
 
 The intersection of his temporal orbit with Mrs. Char- 
 mond's for a day or two in the past had created a senti- 
 mental interest in her at the time, but it had been so evan- 
 escent that in the ordinary onward roll of affairs he would 
 scarce ever have recalled it again. To find her here, how- 
 ever, in these somewhat romantic circumstances, magni- 
 fied that by-gone and transitory tenderness to indescribable 
 proportions. 
 
 On entering Little Hintock he found himself regarding 
 it in a new way — from the Hintock House point of view- 
 rather than from his own and the Melbury's. The house- 
 hold had all gone to bed, and as he went upstairs he heard 
 the snore of the timber merchant from his quarter of the 
 building, and turned into the passage communicating with 
 his own rooms in a strange access of sadness. A light was 
 burning for him in the chamber; but Grace, though in 
 bed, was not asleep. In a moment her sympathetic voice 
 came from behind the curtains. 
 
 "Edgar, is she very seriously hurt?" 
 
 Fitzpiers had so entirely lost sight of Mrs. Charmond 
 as a patient that he was not on the instant ready with a 
 reply. 
 
 "Oh, no," he said. "There are no bones broken, but she 
 is shaken. I am going again to-morrow." 
 
 Another inquiry or two, and Grace said, "Did she ask 
 for me?" 
 
 "Well — I think she did — I don't quite remember; but I 
 am under the impression that she spoke of you." 
 
 "Cannot you recollect at all what she said?" 
 j "I cannot just this minute." 
 
 "At any rate, she did not talk much about me?" said 
 Grace, with disappointment. 
 
188 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "Oh, no." 
 
 "But you did, perhaps," she added, innocently, fishing for 
 a compHment. 
 
 "Oh, yes; you may depend upon that," repHed he, warm- 
 ly, though scarcely thinking of what he was saying, so vivid- 
 ly was there present to his mind the personality of Mrs. 
 Charmond. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 The doctor's professional visit to Hintock House was 
 promptly repeated the next day and the next. He always 
 found Mrs. Charmond reclining on a sofa, and behaving 
 generally as became a patient who was in no great hurry 
 to lose that title. On each occasion he looked gravely at 
 the little scratch on her arm, as if it had been a serious 
 wound. 
 
 He had also, to his further satisfaction, found a slight 
 scar on her temple, and it was very convenient to put a 
 piece of black plaster on this conspicuous part of her per- 
 son in preference to gold-beater's skin, so that it might 
 catch the eyes of the servants, and make his presence ap- 
 pear decidedly necessary, in case there should be any doubt 
 of the fact. 
 
 "Oh, you hurt me!" she exclaimed, one day. 
 
 He was peeling off the bit of plaster on her arm, under 
 which the scrape had turned the color of an unripe black- 
 berry, previous to vanishing altogether. "Wait a moment, 
 then; I'll damp it," said Fitzpiers. He put his lips to the 
 place, and kept them there till the plaster came off easily. 
 "It was at your request I put it on," said he. 
 
 "I know it," she replied. "Is that blue vein still in my 
 temple that used to show there? The scar must be just 
 upon it. If the cirt had been a little deeper, it would have 
 spilt my hot blood indeed!" Fitzpiers examined so closely 
 that his breath touched her tenderly, at which their eyes rose 
 to an encounter, hers showing themselves as deep and mys- 
 terious as interstellar space. She turned her face away sud- 
 denly. "Ah! none of that — none of that; I cannot coquet 
 with you!" she cried. "Don't suppose I consent to for one 
 moment. Our poor, brief, youthful hour of love-making 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 139 
 
 was too long ago to bear continuing now. It is as well that 
 we should understand each other on that point before we 
 go further." 
 
 "Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the 
 historic gloves, so it is now. I might have been and may 
 be foolish; but I am no trifler. I naturally cannot forget 
 that little space in which I flitted across the field of your 
 vision in those days of the past, and the recollection opens 
 up all sorts of imaginings." 
 
 "Suppose my mother had not taken me away?" she mur- 
 mured, her dreamy eyes resting on the swaying tip of a 
 distant tree. 
 
 "I should have seen you again." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "Then the fire would have burnt higher and higher. What 
 would have immediately followed I know not, but sorrow 
 and sickness of heart at last." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "Well, that's the end of all love, according to Nature's 
 law. I can give no other reason." 
 
 "Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed. "Since we 
 are only picturing the' possibilities of that time, don't, for 
 pity's sake, spoil the picture." Her voice sank almost to 
 a whisper as she added, with an incipient pout upon her 
 full lips, "Let me think at least that if you had really loved 
 me at all seriously, you would have loved me forever and 
 ever!" 
 
 "You are right — ^think it with all your heart," said he. 
 "It is a pleasant thought, and costs nothing." 
 
 She weighed that remark in silence awhile. "Did you 
 ever hear anything of me from then till now?" she inquired. 
 
 "Not a word." 
 
 "So much the better. I had to fight the battle of life as 
 well as you. I may tell you about it some day. But don't 
 ever ask me to do it, and particularly do not press me to 
 tell you now." 
 
 Thus the two or three days that th'ey had spent in tender 
 acquaintance on the romantic slopes above the Neckar were 
 stretched out in retrospect to the length and importance of 
 years; made to form a canvas for infinite fancies, idle dreams, 
 luxurious melancholies, and sweet alluring assertions which 
 could neither be proved nor disproved. Grace was never 
 
190 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 mentioned between them, but a rumor of his proposed do- 
 mestic changes somehow reached her ears. 
 
 "Doctor, you are going away!" she exclaimed, confront- 
 ing him with accusatory reproach in her large, dark eyes 
 no less than in her rich, cooing voice. "Oh, yes, you are," 
 she went on, springing to her feet with an air which might 
 almost have been called passionate. "It is no use denying 
 it. You have bought a practice at Budmouth. I don't blame 
 you. Nobody can live at Hintock — least of all a profession- 
 al man who wants to keep abreast of recent discovery. And 
 there is nobody here to induce such a one to stay for other 
 reasons. That's right — ^that's right; go away." 
 
 "But, no, I have not actually bought the practice as yet, 
 though I am indeed in treaty for it. And, my dear friend, 
 if I continue to feel about the business as I feel at this 
 moment, perhaps I may conclude never to go at all." 
 
 "But you hate Hintock and everybody and everything 
 in it that you don't mean to take away with you?" 
 
 Fitzpiers contradicted this idea in his most vibratory 
 tones, and she lapsed into the frivolous archness under 
 which she hid passions of no mean strength — strange, smold- 
 ering, erratic passions, kept down like a stifled conflagra- 
 tion, but bursting out now here, now there — ^the only cer- 
 tain element in their directness being its unexpectedness. 
 If one word could have expressed her, it would have been 
 Inconsequence. She was a woman of perversities, delight- 
 ing in frequent contrasts. She liked mystery, in her life, 
 in her love, in her history. To be fair to her, there was 
 nothing in the latter which she had any great reason to be 
 ashamed of, and many things of which she might have been 
 proud ; but it had never been fathomed by the honest minds 
 of Hintock, and she rarely volunteered her experiences. As 
 for her capricious nature, the people on her estates grew ac- 
 customed to it, and with that marvelous subtlety of con- 
 trivance in steering round odd tempers, that is found in 
 sons of the soil and dependents generally, they managed 
 to get along under her government rather better than they 
 would have done beneath a more equable rule. 
 
 Now, with regard to the doctor's notion of leaving Hin- 
 tock, he had advanced further toward completing the pur- 
 chase of the Budmouth surgeon's good-will than he had 
 admitted to Mrs. Charmond. The whole matter hung upon 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 191 
 
 what he might do in the ensuing twenty-four hours. The 
 evening after leaving her he went out into the lane, and 
 walked and pondered between the high hedges, now green- 
 ish-white with wild clematis, here called "old-man's-beard," 
 from its aspect later in the year. 
 
 The letter of acceptance was to be written that night, 
 after which his departure from Hintock would be irrevo- 
 cable. But could he go away, remembering what had just 
 passed? The trees, the hills, the leaves, the grass — each 
 had been endowed and quickened with a subtle charm since 
 he had discovered the person, and history, and above all, 
 mood of their owner. There was every temporal reason for 
 leaving it; it would be entering again into a world which 
 he had only, quitted in a passion for isolation, induced by a 
 fit of Achillean moodiness after an imagined slight. His 
 wife herself saw the awkwardness of their position here, and 
 cheerfully welcomed the purposed change, toward which 
 every step had been taken but the last. But could he find it 
 in his heart — as he found it clearly enough in his conscience 
 — to go away. 
 
 He drew a troubled breath, and went indoors. Here he 
 rapidly penned a letter, wherein he withdrew, once for all, 
 from the treaty for the Budmouth practice. As the post- 
 man had already left Little Hintock for that night, he sent 
 one of Melbur)^s men to intercept a mail-cart on another 
 turnpike road, and so got the letter off. 
 
 The man returned, met Fitzpiers in the lane, and told 
 him the thing was done. Fitzpiers went back to his house 
 musing. Why had he carried out this impulse, taken such 
 wild trouble to effect a probable injury to his own and his 
 young wife's prospects? His motive was fantastic, glow- 
 ing, shapeless, as the fiery scenery about the western sky. 
 Mrs. Charmond could overtly be nothing more to him than 
 a patient now, and to his wife, at the outside, a patron. In 
 the unattached bachelor days of his first sojourning here, 
 how highly proper an emotional reason for lingering on 
 would have appeared to troublesome dubiousness! Matri- 
 monial ambition is such an honorable thing! 
 
 "My father has told me that you have sent off one of the 
 men with a late letter to Budmouth," cried Grace, coming 
 out vivaciously to meet him under the declining light of the 
 sky, wherein hung, solitary, the folding star. "I said at 
 
192 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 once that you had finally agreed to pay the premium they 
 ask, and that the tedious question had been settled. When 
 do we go, Edgar?" 
 
 "I have altered my mind," said he. "They want too much 
 — seven hundred and fifty is too large a sum — and in short 
 I have declined to go further. We must wait for another op- 
 portunity. I fear I am not a good business man." He spoke 
 the last words with a momentary faltering' at the great fool- 
 ishness of his act; for as he looked in her fair and honorable 
 face his heart reproached him for what he had done. 
 
 Her manner that evening showed her disappointment. 
 Personally, she liked the home of her childhood much, and 
 she was not ambitious. But her husband had seemed so 
 dissatisfied with the circumstances hereabout since their 
 marriage that she had sincerely hoped to go for his sake. 
 
 It was two or three days before he visited Mrs. Charmond 
 again. The morning had been windy, and little showers 
 had sowed themselves like grain against the walls and win- 
 dow-panes of the Hintock cottages. He went on foot across 
 the wilder recesses of the park, where slimy streams of green 
 moisture, exuding from decayed holes caused by old ampu- 
 tations, ran down the bark of the oaks and elms, the rind 
 below being coated with a lichenous wash as green as emer- 
 ald. They were stout-trunked trees, that never rocked their 
 stems in the fiercest gale, responding to it entirely by crook- 
 ing their limbs. Wrinkled like an old crone's face, and 
 antlered with dead branches that rose above the foliage of 
 their summits, they were nevertheless still green, though 
 yellow had invaded the leaves of other trees. 
 
 She was in a little boudoir or writing-room on the first 
 floor, and Fitzpiers was much surprised to find that the 
 window curtains were closed, and a red-shaded lamp and 
 candles burning, though out of doors it was broad daylight. 
 Moreover, a large fire was burning in the grate, though it 
 was not cold. 
 
 "What does it all mean?" he asked. 
 
 She sat in an easy chair, her face being turned away. 
 "Oh," she murmured, "it is because the world is so dreary 
 outside. Sorrow and bitterness in the sky, and floods of 
 agonized tears beating against the panes. I lay awake last 
 night, and I could hear the scrape of snails creeping up the 
 window glass; it was so sad! My eyes were so heavy this 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 1§3 
 
 morning that I could have wept my hfe away. I cannot 
 bear you to see my face ; I keep it away from you purposely. 
 Oh! why were we given hungry hearts and wild desires if 
 we have to live in a world like this? Why should death only 
 lend what life is compelled to borrow — rest? Answer that. 
 Dr. Fitzpiers." 
 
 "You must eat of a second tree- of knowledge before you 
 can do it, Felice Charmond." 
 
 "Then, when my emotions have exhausted themselves, I 
 become full of fears, till I think I shall die for very fear. The 
 terrible insistencies of society — how severe they are, and 
 cold, and inexorable! — ghastly toward those who are made 
 of wax and not of stone. Oh, I am afraid of them ; a stab 
 for this error, and a stab for that — correctives and regula- 
 tions framed that society may tend to perfection — an end 
 which I don't care for in the least. Yet for this all I do 
 care for has to be stunted and starved." 
 
 Fitzpiers had seated himself near her. "What sets you 
 in this mournful mood?" he asked gently. (In reality he 
 knew that it was the result of a loss of tone from staying 
 in-doors so much, but he did not say so.) 
 
 "My reflections. Doctor, you must not come here any 
 more. They begin to think it a farce already. I say you 
 must come no more. There! — don't be angry with me;" 
 and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked anxiously 
 at him. "It is necessary. It is best for both you and me." 
 
 "But," said Fitzpiers, gloomily, "what have we done?" 
 
 "Done — we have done nothing. Perhaps we have 
 thought the more. However, it is all vexation. I am going 
 away to Middleton Abbey, near Shottsford, where a rela- 
 tive of my late husband lives, who is confined to her bed. 
 The engagement was made in London, and I can't get out 
 of it. Perhaps it is for the best that I go there till all this is 
 past. When are you going to enter on your new practice, 
 and leave Hintock behind forever, with your pretty wife 
 on your arm?" 
 
 "I have refused the opportunity. I love this place too 
 well to depart." 
 
 "You have?" she said, regarding him with wild uncer- 
 tainty. "Why do you ruin yourself in that way? Great 
 Heaven! what have I done?" 
 
 "Nothing. Besides, you are going away." 
 
 13 
 
194 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "Oh, yes; but only to Middleton Abbey for a month or 
 two. Yet perhaps I shall gain strength there — particularly 
 strength of mind: I require it. And when I come back I 
 shall be a new woman; and you can come and see me 
 safely then, and bring your wife with you, and we'll be 
 friends, she and I. Oh, how this shutting up of one's self 
 does lead to indulgence in idle sentiments! I shall not wish 
 you to give your attendance to me after to-day. But I am 
 glad that you are not going away — if your remaining does 
 not injure your prospects at all." 
 
 As soon as he had left the room, the mild friendliness 
 she had preserved in her tone at parting, the playful sad- 
 ness with which she had conversed with him, equally de- 
 parted from her. She became as heavy as lead — ^just as 
 she had been before he arrived. Her whole being seemed 
 to dissolve in a sad powerlessness to do anything, and the 
 sense of it made her lips tremulous and her closed eyes 
 wet. His footsteps again startled her, and she turned round. 
 
 "I return for a moment to tell you that the evening is 
 going to be fine. The sun is shining: so do open your cur- 
 tains and put out those lights. Shall I do it for you?'* 
 
 "Please — if you don't mind." 
 
 He drew back the window curtains, whereupon the red 
 glow of the lamp and the two candle flames became almost 
 invisible with the flood of late autumn sunlight that poured 
 in. "Shall I come round to you?" he asked, her back being 
 turned toward him. 
 
 "No," she replied. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because I am crying, and I don't want to see you." 
 
 He stood a moment irresolute, and regretted that he had 
 killed the rosy, passionate lamplight by opening the cur- 
 tains and letting in garish day. 
 
 "Then I am going," he said. 
 
 "Very well," she answered, stretching one hand round 
 to him, and patting her eyes with a handkerchief held in 
 the other. 
 
 "Shall I write a line to you at " 
 
 "No, no." A gentle reasonableness came into her tone 
 as she added : "It must not be, you know. It won't do." 
 
 "Very well. Good-bye." The next moment he was gone. 
 
 In the evening, with listless adroitness, she encouraged 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 195 
 
 the maid who dressed her for dinner to speak of Dr. Fitz- 
 piers' marriage. 
 
 "Mrs. Fitzpiers was once supposed to favor Mr. Winter- 
 borne," said the young woman. 
 
 "And why didn't she marry him?" said Mrs. Charmond. 
 
 "Because, you see, ma'am, he lost his houses." 
 
 "Lost his houses? How came he to do tliat?" 
 
 "The houses were held on lives, and the lives dropped, 
 and your agent wouldn't renew them, though it is said that 
 Mr. Winterborne had a very good claim. That's as I've 
 heard it, ma'am, and it was through it that the match was 
 broke off.;' 
 
 Being just then distracted by a dozen emotions, Mrs. 
 Charmond sank into a mood of dismal self-reproach. "In 
 refusing that poor man his reasonable request," she said to 
 herself, "I foredoomed my rejuvenated girlhood's romance. 
 Who would have thought such a business matter could 
 have nettled my own heart like this! Now for a winter of 
 regrets and agonies and useless wishes, till I forget him in 
 the spring. Oh! I am glad I am going away." 
 
 She left her chamber and went down to dine, with a sigh. 
 On the stairs she stood opposite the larte window for a 
 moment, and looked out upon the lawn.l It was not yet 
 quite dark. Half-way up the steep, green |lope confronting 
 her stood old Timothy Tangs, who was shortening his way 
 homeward by clambering here, where there was no road, 
 and in opposition to express orders that no path was to be 
 made there. Tangs had momentarily stopped to take a 
 pinch of snuff; but observing Mrs. Charmond gazing at 
 him, he hastened to get over the top out of hail. His pre- 
 cipitancy made him miss his footing, and he rolled like a 
 barrel to the bottom, his snuff box rolling in front of him. 
 
 Her indefinite, idle, impossible passion for Fitzpiers, her 
 constitutional cloud of misery, the sorrowful drops that 
 still hung upon her eyelashes, all made way for the incur- 
 sive mood started by the spectacle. She burst into an im- 
 moderate fit of laughter, her very gloom of the previous 
 hour seeming to render it the more uncontrollable. It had 
 not died out of her when she reached the dining-room ; and 
 even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly shook 
 as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilar- 
 ity mingled with the remnants of those engendered by her 
 grief. 
 
196 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 She resolved to be sad no more. She drank two glasses 
 of champagne, and a little more still after those, and amused 
 herself in the evening with singing little amatory songs. 
 
 "I must do something for that poor man, Winterborne, 
 however," she said. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 A week had passed, and Mrs. Charmond had left Hin- 
 tock House. Middleton Abbey, the place of her sojourn, 
 was about twenty miles distant by road, eighteen by bridle- 
 paths and footways. 
 
 Grace observed for the first time that her husband was 
 restless, that at moments he even was disposed to avoid her. 
 The scrupulous civility of mere acquaintanceship crept into 
 his manner, yet when sitting at meals he seemed hardly to 
 hear her remarks. Her little doings interested him no long- 
 er, whilst toward her father his bearing was not far from 
 supercilious. It was plain that his mind was entirely outside 
 her life — ^whereabouts outside it she could not tell ; in some 
 region of science possibly, or of psychological literature. 
 But her hope that he was again immersing himself in those 
 lucubrations which before her marriage had made his light 
 a landmark in Hintock was founded simply on the slender 
 fact that he often sat up late. 
 
 One evening she discovered him leaning over a gate on 
 Rub-Down Hill — ^the gate at which Winterborne had once 
 been standing, and which opened on the brink of a steep, 
 slanting down directly into Blackmoor Vale, or the Vale of 
 the White Hart, extending beneath the eye at this point to 
 a distance of many miles. His attention was fixed on the 
 landscape far away, and Grace's approach was so noiseless 
 that he did not hear her. When sjje came close she could 
 see his lips moving unconsciously, as to some impassioned 
 visionary theme. 
 
 She spolfe, and Fitzpiers started. "What are you look- 
 ing at?" she apked. 
 
 "Oh, I ^vas contenipJ.atjng our old place of Buckbury in 
 my idle way," he said. 
 
 It had seemed to her that he was looking much to the 
 right of that cradle and tomb of his ancestral dignity; but 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 107 
 
 she made no further observation, and taking his arm, walked 
 home beside him almost in silence. She did not know that 
 Middleton Abbey lay in the direction of his gaze. "Are you 
 going to have out Darling this afternoon?" she asked, pres- 
 ently — Darling being the light gray mare which Winter- 
 borne had bought for Grace, and which Fitzpiers now con- 
 stantly used, the animal having turned out a wonderful 
 bargain in combining a perfect docility with an almost 
 human intelligence; moreover, she was not too young. 
 Fitzpiers was unfamiliar with horses, and he valued these 
 qualities. 
 
 "Yes," he replied, "but not to drive. I am riding her. I 
 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 d 
 week, only since Mrs. Charmond's absence, his universal 
 practice hitherto having been to drive. 
 
 Some few days later Fitzpiers started on the back of this 
 horse to see a patient in the aforesaid vale. It was about 
 five o'clock in the evening when he went away, and at bed- 
 time 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 the horses, Darling included, 
 insisted that the latter was "hag-rid," for when he had ar- 
 rived at the stable that morning she was in such a state as 
 no horse could be in by honest riding. It was true that the 
 doctor had stabled her himself when he got home, so that 
 she was not looked after as she would have been if he had 
 groomed and fed her, but that did not account for the ap- 
 pearance she presented if Mr. Fitzpiers' 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 narra- 
 tion of which occupied a considerable time. 
 
 Grace returned indoors. In passing through the outer 
 
If8 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 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 Mid- 
 dleton 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 learnt for 
 the first time that Mrs. Charmond was staying at Middle- 
 ton Abbey. She could not resist an inference, strange as 
 that inference was. 
 
 A few days later he prepared to start again at the same 
 time and in the same direction. She knew that the state 
 of the cottager who lived that way was a mere pretext; she 
 was quite sure he was going to Mrs. Charmond's. Grace 
 was amazed at the mildness of the passion which the sus- 
 picion engendered in her. She was but little excited, and 
 her jealousy was languid even to death. It told tales of the 
 nature of her affection for him. In truth her ante-nuptial 
 regard for Fitzpiers had been rather of the quality of awe 
 toward a superior being than of tender solicitude for a 
 lover. It had been based upon mystery and strangeness — 
 the mystery of his past, of his knowledge, of his professional 
 skill, of his beliefs. When this structure of ideals was de- 
 molished by the intimacy of common life, and she found him 
 as merely human as the Hintock people themselves, a new 
 foundation was in demand for an enduring and staunch 
 affection — a sympathetic interdependence, wherein mutual 
 weaknesses were made the grounds of a defensive alliance. 
 Fitzpiers had furnished none of that single-minded confi- 
 dence and truth out of which alone such a second union 
 could spring; hence it was with a controllable emotion that 
 she now watched the mare brought round. 
 
 "I'll walk with you to the hill if you are not in a great 
 hurry," she said, rather loath, after all, to let him go. 
 
 "Do; there's plenty of time," replied her husband. Ac- 
 cordingly he led along the horse, and walked beside her, 
 impatient enough nevertheless. Thus they proceeded to 
 the turnpike road, and ascended Rub-Down Hill to the gate 
 he had been leaning over when she surprised him ten days 
 before. This was the end of her excursion. Fitzpiers bade 
 her adieu with affection, even with tenderness, and she ob- 
 served that he looked weary-eyed. 
 
the! WOODLANDERS. 199 
 
 "Why do you go to-night?" she said. "You have been 
 called up two nights in succession already." 
 
 "I must go," he answered, almost gloomily. "Don't wait 
 up for me." With these words he mounted his horse, 
 passed through the gate which Grace held open for him, 
 and ambled down the steep bridle-track to the valley. 
 
 She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then 
 his journey onward. His way was east, the evening sun 
 which stood behind her back beaming full upon him as 
 soon as he got out from the shade of the hill. Notwithstand- 
 ing this untoward proceeding she was determined to be loyal 
 if he proved true; and the determination to love one's best 
 will carry a heart a long way toward making that best an 
 ever-growing thing. The conspicuous coat of the active 
 though blanching mare made horse and rider easy objects 
 for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with such 
 pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the 
 sleek creature; but her husband had found the animal ex- 
 ceedingly convenient, particularly now that he had taken 
 to the saddle, plenty of staying power being left in Darling 
 yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his character, while'despising 
 Melbury and his station, did not at all disdain to spend Mel- 
 bury's money, or appropriate to his own use the horse which 
 belonged to Melbury's daughter. 
 
 And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through 
 the gorgeous autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, sur- 
 rounded by orchards lustrous with the reds of apple crops, 
 berries, and foliage, the whole intensified by the gilding of 
 the declining sun. The earth this year had been prodigally 
 bountiful, and now was the supreme moment of her bounty. 
 In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and 
 blackberries ; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks 
 of chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if ar- 
 ranged by anxious sellers in a fruit market. In all this 
 proud show some kernels were unsound as her own situa- 
 tion, and she wondered if there were one world in the uni- 
 verse where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow. 
 
 Her Tannhauser still moved on, his plodding steed ren- 
 dering him distinctly visible yet. Could she have heard 
 Fitzpiers' voice at that moment she would have found him 
 murmuring : 
 
 "Toward the lodestar of my one desire 
 X flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light," 
 
200 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose 
 out of the valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk for- 
 mation on his right, which rested abruptly upon the fruity 
 district of loamy clay, the character and herbage of the 
 two formations being so distinct that the calcareous upland 
 appeared but as a deposit of a few years' antiquity upon 
 the level vale. He kept the edge of this high, uninclosed 
 country, and the sky behind him being deep violet, she 
 could still see white Darling in relief upon it — a mere speck 
 now — a Wouvermans eccentricity reduced to microscopic 
 dimensions. Upon this high ground he gradually disap- 
 peared. 
 
 Thus she had beheld the pet animal purchased for her 
 own use, in pure love of her, by one who had always been 
 true, impressed to convey her husband away from her ro 
 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 toward her, quite near at hand, though 
 till now hidden by the hedges. Surely they were Giles Win- 
 terborne, with his two horses and cider apparatus, conduct- 
 ed by Robert Creedle. Up, upward they crept, a stray beam 
 of the sun alighting every now and then like a star on the 
 blade of the pomace-shovels, which had been converted 
 to steel mirrors by the action of the malic acid. She opened 
 the gate when he came close, and the panting horses rested 
 as they achieved the ascent. 
 
 "How do you do, Giles?" said she, under a sudden im- 
 pulse to be familiar with him. 
 
 He replied with much more reserve. "You are going 
 for a walk, Mrs. Fitzpiers?" he added. "It is pleasant just 
 now." 
 
 "No; I am returning," said she. 
 
 The vehicles passed through, the gate slammed, and Win- 
 terborne walked by her side in the rear of the apple-mill. 
 
 He looked and smelt like autumn's very brother, his face 
 being sunburnt to wheat-color, his eyes blue as corn-flow- 
 ers, his boots and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands 
 clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled 
 with pips, and everywhere about him that atmosphere of 
 cider whioh at its first return each season has such an in- 
 describable 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 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 201 
 
 sudden lapse back to nature unadorned. The conscious- 
 ness of having to be genteel because of her husband's pro- 
 fession, the veneer of artificiality which she had acquired 
 at the fashionable schools, were thrown oS, and she became 
 the crude country girl of her latent, earliest instincts. 
 
 Nature was bountiful, she thought. No sooner had she 
 been starved off by Edgar Fitzpiers than another being, 
 impersonating bare and undiluted manliness, had arisen 
 out of the earth, ready to hand. This was an excursion of 
 the imagination which she did not encourage, and she said 
 suddenly, to disguise the confused regard which had fol- 
 lowed her thoughts, "Did you meet my husband?" 
 
 Winterborne, with some hesitation: "Yes." 
 
 "Where did you meet him?" 
 
 "At Calfhay Cross. I come from Middleton Abbey; I 
 have been making 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. Charmond had gone there 
 to stay?" 
 
 "Yes ; I have seen her at the windows once or twice." 
 
 Grace waited an interval before she went on, "Did Mr. 
 Fitzpiers take the way to Middleton?" 
 
 "Yes. I met him on Darling." As she did not reply, 
 he added, with a gentler inflection, "You know why the 
 mare was called that?" 
 
 "Oh, yes — of course," she answered, quickly. 
 
 They had risen so far over the crest of the hill that the 
 whole west sky was revealed. Between the broken clouds 
 they could see far into the recesses of heaven, the eye jour- 
 neying on under a species of golden arcades, and past fiery 
 obstructions, fancied cairns, logan-stones, stalactites and 
 stalagmites of topaz. Deeper than this their gaze passed 
 thin flakes of incandescence, till it plunged into a bottom- 
 less medium of soft green fire. 
 
 Her abandonment to the luscious time after her sense of 
 ill-usage, her revolt for the nonce, against social law, her 
 passionate desire for primitive life, may have showed in 
 her face. Winterborne was looking at her, his eyes linger- 
 ing 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. 
 
202 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 She drew back "What are you doing, Giles Winter- 
 borne?" she exclaimed, with a look of severe surprise. The 
 evident absence of all premeditation from the act, how- 
 ever, speedily led her to think that it was not necessary to 
 stand upon her dignity here and now. "You must bear in 
 mind, Giles," she said, kindly, "that we are not as we were ; 
 and some people might have said that what you did was 
 taking a liberty." 
 
 It was more than she need have told him; his action of 
 forgetfulness had made him so angry with himself that he 
 flushed through his tan. "I don't know what I am com- 
 ing to !" he exclaimed, savagely. "Ah — I was not once like 
 this!" Tears of vexation were in his eyes. 
 
 "No, now — it was nothing. I was too reproachful." 
 
 "It would not have occurred to me if I had not seen 
 something like it done elsewhere — at Middleton lately," he 
 s)[id, thoughtfully, after awhile. 
 
 "By whom?" 
 
 "Don't ask it." 
 
 She scanned him narrowly. "I know quite well enough," 
 she returned, indifferently. "It was by my husband, and 
 the woman was Mrs. Charmond. Association of ideas re- 
 minded you when you saw me. Giles, tell me all you know 
 about that — please do, Giles! But, no — I won't hear it. 
 Let the subject cease. And as you are my, friend, say noth- 
 ing to my father." 
 
 They reached a place where their ways divided. Win- 
 terborne continued along the highway which kept outside 
 the copse, and Grace opened a gate that entered it. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 She walked up the soft grassy ride, screened on either 
 hand by nut bushes, just now heavy with clusters of twos 
 and threes and fours. A little way on, the track she pur- 
 sued was crossed by a similar one at right angles. Here 
 Grace stopped ; some few yar<is up the transverse ride the 
 buxom Suke Damson was visible — her gown tucked up 
 high through her pocket-hole and no bonnet on her head — 
 in the act of pulling down boughs, from which she was gath- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 203 
 
 ering and eating nuts with great rapidity, her lover, Tim 
 Tart^s, standing near her engaged in the same pleasant 
 meal. 
 
 Crack, crack, went Suke's jaws every second or two. 
 By an automatic chain of thought, Grace's mind reverted 
 to the tooth-drawing scene described by her husband; and 
 for the first time she wondered if that narrative were really 
 true, Susan's jaws being so obviously sound and strong. 
 Grace turned up toward the nut-gatherers, and conquered 
 her reluctance to speak to the girl, who was a little in ad- 
 vance of Tim. "Good-evening, Susan," she said. 
 
 "Good evening. Miss Melbury." (Crack). 
 
 "Mrs. Fitzpiers." 
 
 "Oh, yes ma'am — Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Sake, with a pe- 
 culiar smile. 
 
 Grace, not to be daunted continued: "Take care of your 
 teeth, Suke. That accounts for the toothache." 
 
 "I don't know what an ache is, either in tooth, ear, or 
 head, thank the Lord." (Crack). 
 
 "Nor the loss of one, either?" 
 
 "See for yourself, ma'am." She parted her red lips, and 
 exhibited the whole double row, full up and unimpaired. 
 
 "You have never had one drawn?" 
 
 "Never." 
 
 "So much the better for your stomach," said Mrs. Fitz- 
 piers, 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 sufifered from that jealous excitement which is conven- 
 tionally attributed to all wives in such circumstances. But 
 though possessed by none of that feline wildness which it 
 was her moral duty to experience, she did not fail to know 
 that she had made a frightful mistake in her marriage. 
 Acquiescence in her father's wishes had been degradation 
 to herself. People are not given premonitions for nothing; 
 she should have obeyed her impulse on that early morning 
 and steadfastly refused her hand. 
 
 Oh, that plausible tale which her then betrothed had 
 told her about Suke — ^the dramatic account of her entreaties 
 to him to draw the aching enemy, and the fine artistic touch 
 he had given to the story by explaining' that it was a lovely 
 molar without a flaw! 
 
204 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 She traced the remainder of the woodland track dazed 
 by the compHcations of her position. If his protestations 
 to her before their marriage could be believed, her hus- 
 band had felt affection of some sort for herself and this 
 woman simultaneously, and was now again spreading the 
 same emotion over Mrs. Charmond and herself conjointly, 
 his manner being still kind and fond at times. But surely, 
 rather than that, he must have played the hypocrite to- 
 ward her in each case with elaborate completeness; and 
 the thought of this sickened her, for it involved the con- 
 jecture that if he had not loved her his only motive for mak- 
 ing her his wife must have been her little fortune. Yet 
 here Grace made a mistake, for the love of men like Fitz- 
 piers is unquestionably of such quality as to bear division 
 and transference. He had indeed once declared, though not 
 to her, that on one occasion he had noticed himself to be pos- 
 sessed by five distinct infatuations at the same time. Therein 
 it differed from the highest affection as the lower orders of 
 the animal world differ from advanced organism, 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 Suke Damson, Grace thought no more. She hatl 
 had her day. 
 
 "If he does not love me, I will not love him !" said Grace, 
 proudly. And though these were mere words it was a 
 somewhat formidable thing for Fitzpiers that her heart was 
 approximating to a state in which it might be possible to 
 carry them out. That very absence of hot jealousy which 
 made his courses so easy, and on which, indeed, he con- 
 gratulated himself, meant, unknown to either wife or hus- 
 band, more mischief than the inconvenient watchfulness of a 
 jaundiced eye. 
 
 Her sleep that night was nervous. The wing allotted to 
 her and her husband had never seemed so lonely. At 
 last she got up, put on her dressing gown, and went down- 
 stairs. Her father, who slept lightly, heard her descend 
 and came to the stair-head. 
 
 "Is that you, Grace? What's the matter!" he said. 
 
 "Nothing more than that I am restless. Edgar is de- 
 tained by a cas? at Owlscombe, in White Hart Vale," 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 205 
 
 "But how's 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 ; he will soon be home. I expect him about one." 
 
 She went back to her room, and dozed and woke several 
 times. One o'clock had been the hour of his return on 
 the last occasion; but it passed now by a long way, and 
 Fitzpiers did not come. Just before dawn she heard the 
 men stirring in the yard; and the flashes of their lanterns 
 spread every now and then through her window blind. She 
 remembered that her father had told her not to be disturbed 
 if she noticed them, as they would be rising early to send 
 ofiE four loads of hurdles to a distant sheep fair. Peeping out, 
 she saw them bustling about, the hollow-turner among the 
 rest; he was loading his wares — wooden bowls, dishes, 
 spigots, spoons, cheese-vats, funnels, and so on — ^upon one 
 of her father's wagons, who carried them to the fair for him 
 every year out of neighborly kindness. 
 
 The scene and the occasion would have enlivened her 
 but that her husband was still absent, though it was now 
 five o'clock. She could hardly suppose him, whatever his 
 infatuation, to have prolonged to a later hour than ten an 
 ostensibly professional call on Mrs. Charmond at Middle- 
 ton; and he could have ridden home in two hours and a 
 half. What, then, had become of. him? That he had been 
 out the greater part of the two preceding nights added to 
 her uneasiness. 
 
 She dressed herself, descended, and went out, the weird 
 twilight of advancing day chilling the rays from the lan- 
 terns, and making the men's faces wan. As soon as Mel- 
 bury saw her he came round, showing his alarm. 
 
 "Edgar is not come," she said. "And I have reason to 
 know that he's not attending anybody. He has had no rest 
 for two nights before this. I was going to the top of the hill 
 to look for him." 
 
 "I'll come with you," said Melbury. 
 
 She begged him not to hinder himself; but he insisted, 
 for he saw a peculiar and rigid gloom in her face over and 
 above her uneasiness, and did not like the look of it. Tell- 
 ing the men he would be with them again soon, he walked 
 beside her into the turnpike road, and partly up the hill 
 
20G THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 whence she had watched Fitzpiers the night before across 
 the Great White Hart or Blackmoor Valley. They halted 
 beneath a half-dead oak, hollow, and disfigured with white 
 tumors, its roots spreading out like accipitrine claws grasp- 
 ing the ground. A chilly wind circled round them, upon 
 whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree, sup- 
 ported 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 vivid curtain edged with pink. There was 
 no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers. 
 
 "It is no use standing here," said her father. "Fie may 
 come home fifty ways Why, look here — here be Dar- 
 ling's tracks — ^turned homeward and nearly blown dry and 
 hard! He must have come in hours ago without your see- 
 ing 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 ap- 
 propriated to the doctor's use. "Is there anything the mat- 
 ter?" cried Grace. 
 
 "Oh, no, ma'am. All's well that ends well," said old 
 Timothy Tangs. "I've heard of such things before-^ 
 amongst work-folk, though not amongst you gentle-people 
 —that's true." 
 
 They entered the stable, and saw the pale shape of Darling 
 standing in the middle of her stall, with Fitzpiers on her 
 back, sound asleep. Darling was munching hay as well as 
 she could with the bit in her mouth, and the reins, which 
 had fallen from Fitzpiers' hand, hung upon her neck. 
 
 Grace went and touched his hand; shook it, before she 
 could arouse him. He moved, started, opened his eyes, and 
 exclaimed, "Ah, Felice! Oh, it's Grace. I could not see 
 in the gloom. What — am I in the saddle?" 
 
 "Yes," she said. "How do you come here?" 
 
 He collected his thoughts, and in a few minutes stam- 
 mered, "I was riding along homeward through the Vale, 
 very, very sleepy, having been up so much of late. When 
 I came opposite Holywell spring the mare turned her head 
 that way, as if she wanted to drink. I let her go in, and 
 she drank — I thought she would never finish. While she 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 207 
 
 was drinking, the clock of Owlscombe church struck twelve. 
 I distinctly remember counting the strokes. From that 
 moment I positively recollect nothing till I saw you here by 
 my side." 
 
 "The name! If it had been any other horse he'd have 
 had a broken neck!" murmured Melbury. 
 
 " 'Tis wonderful, sure, how a quiet boss will bring a man 
 home at such times," said John Upjohn. "And what's 
 more wonderful than keeping your seat in a deep, slum- 
 bering sleep? I've knowed men drowse off walking home 
 from randies where the mead and other liquors have gone 
 round well, and keep walking for more than a mile on end 
 without waking. Well, doctor, I don't care who the man 
 is, 'tis a mercy you wasn't a-drownded, or a-splintered, or 
 a-hanged up to a tree like Absalom — also a handsome gen- 
 tleman like yourself, as the prophets say." 
 
 "True," murmured old Timothy. "From the sole ot his 
 foot to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him." 
 
 "Or leastwise you might ha' been a-wownded into tatters 
 a'most, and no doctor to jine your few limbs together with- 
 in seven mile!" 
 
 Whilst this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had 
 dismounted, and, taking Grace's arm, walked stififly indoors 
 with her. Melbury stood staring at the horse, which, in ad- 
 dition to being very weary, was spattered with mud. There 
 was no mud to speak of about the Hintocks just now — only 
 in the clammy hollows of the Vale beyond Owlscombe, the 
 stiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the 
 uplands were dry. Whilst they were rubbing down the 
 mare, Melbury's mind coupled with the foreign quality of 
 the mud the name he had- heard unconsciously muttered 
 by the surgeon when Grace took his hand — "Felice." Who 
 was Felice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she, as he knew, 
 was staying at Middleton. 
 
 Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled 
 Fitzpiers' 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 
 
208 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 wringing questions 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 ham- 
 pered as he had become, to recognize his real conquest 
 of this beauty, delayed so many years. His was the selfish 
 passion of Congreve's Millamont, to whom love's supreme 
 delight lay in "that heart which others bleed for, bleed for 
 me. 
 
 When the horse had been attended to, Melbury stood un- 
 easily here and there about his premises. He was rudely 
 disturbed in the comfortable views which had lately pos- 
 sessed 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 stepmother to occupying herself with the 
 lighter details of her own apartments. She seemed no long- 
 er able to find in her own hearth an adequate focus for her 
 life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee after leading oflf to 
 an independent home, had hovered again into the parent 
 hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of 
 the kind till now. 
 
 Something was wrong in the dove-cot. A ghastly sense 
 that he alone would be responsible for whatever unhappi- 
 ness should be brought upon her for whom he almost solely 
 lived; whom to retain under his roof he had faced the num- 
 erous inconveniences involved in giving up the best part 
 of his house to Fitzpiers. There was no room for doubt that 
 had he allowed events to take their natural course, she would 
 have accepted Winterborrie, and realized his old dream of 
 restitution to that young man's family. 
 
 That Fitzpiers could allow himself to look on any other 
 creature for a moment than Grace filled Melbury with grief 
 and astonishment. In the pure and simple life he had led 
 it had scarcely occurred to him that after marriage a man 
 might be faithless. That he could sweep to the heights of 
 Mrs. Charmond's position, lift the veil of Isis, so to speak, 
 would have amazed Melbury bv 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 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 208 
 
 encounter the homely timber dealer felt as inferior as a bow- 
 and-arrow savage before the precise weapons of modern 
 warfare. 
 
 Grace came out of the house as the morning drew on. 
 The village was silent, most of the folk having gone to the 
 fair. Fitzpiers had retired to bed, and was sleeping off 
 his fatigue. She went to the stable and looked at poor 
 Darling : in all probability Giles Winterborne, by obtaining 
 for her a horse of such intelligence and docility, had been 
 the means of saving her husband's, life. She paused over 
 the strange thought; and then there appeared her father 
 behind her. She saw that he knew things were not as they 
 ought to be from the troubled dullness of his eye, and from 
 his face, different points of which had independent motions, 
 twitchings, and tremblings, unknown to himself, and in- 
 voluntary. 
 
 "He was detained, I suppose, last night?" said Melbury. 
 
 "Oh, yes ; a bad case in the Vale," she replied, calmly. 
 
 "Nevertheless he should have stayed home." 
 
 "But he couldn't, father." 
 
 Her father turned away. He could hardly bear to see 
 his whilom truthful girl brought to the humiliation of having 
 to talk like that. 
 
 That night carking care sat beside Melbury's pillow, and 
 his stiff limbs tossed at its presence. "I can't lie here any 
 longer," he muttered; striking a light he wandered about 
 the room. "What have I done — what have I done for her!" 
 he said to his wife, who had anxiously awakened. "I had 
 long planned that she should marry the son of the man I 
 wanted to make amends to; do ye mind how I told you all 
 about it, Lucy, the night before she came home? Ah! but 
 I was not content with doing right, I wanted to do more !" 
 
 "Don't raft yourself without good need, George," she re- 
 plied. "I won't quite believe that things are so much amiss. 
 I won't believe that Mrs. Charmond has encouraged him. 
 Even supposing she has encouraged a great many, she can 
 have no motive to do it now. What so likely as that she 
 is not yet quite well, and doesn't care to let another doctor 
 come near her?" 
 
 He did not heed. "Grace used to be so busy every day, 
 with fixing a curtain here and driving a tin tack there; but 
 she cares for no employment now." 
 I* 
 
210 THE WOGDLANDERa 
 
 "Do you know anything of Mrs. Charmond's past his- 
 tory? Perhaps that would throw some light upon things. 
 Before she came here as the wife of old Charmond, four or 
 five years ago, not a soul seems to have heard aught of her. 
 Why not make inquiries? And then do ye wait and see 
 more ; there'll be plenty of opportunity. Time enough to cry 
 when you know 'tis a crying matter; and 'tis bad to meet 
 troubles half way." 
 
 There was some good sense in the notion of seeing further. 
 Melbury resolved to inquire and wait, hoping still, but op- 
 pressed between whiles with much fear. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Examine Grace as her father might, she would admit noth- 
 ing. For the present, therefore, he simply watched. 
 
 The suspicion that his darling child was being slighted 
 wrought almost a miraculous change in Melbury's nature. 
 No man so furtive for the time as the ingenuous countryman 
 who finds that his ingenuousness has been abused. Melbury's 
 heretofore confidential candor toward 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 ; 
 bvit for the first time he asked himself why this so generally 
 should be so. Moreover, this case was not, he argued, like 
 ordinary cases. Leaving out the question of Grace being 
 anything but an ordinary woman, her peculiar situation, as 
 it were in mid-air between two planes of society, together 
 with the loneliness of Hintock, made a husband's neglect 
 a far more tragical matter to her than it would be to one 
 who had a large circle of friends to fall back upon. Wisely 
 or unwisely, and whatever other fathers did, he resolved to 
 fight his daughter's battle still. 
 
 Mrs. Charmond had returned. But Hintock House 
 scarcely gave forth signs of life, so quietly had she 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 Fitz- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 211 
 
 piers, who was no church-goer, tell his wife that he was 
 going to walk in the wood. Melbury entered the building 
 and sat down in his pew; the parson came in, then Mrs. 
 Charmond, then Mr. Fitzpiers. 
 
 The service proceeded, and the jealous father was quite 
 sure that a mutual consciousness was uninterruptedly main- 
 tained between these two; he fancied that more than once 
 their eyes met. At the end, Fitzpiers so timed his movement 
 into the aisle that it exactly coincided with Felice Char- 
 mond's from the opposite side, and they walked out with 
 their garments in contact, the surgeon being just that two 
 or three inches in her rear which made it convenient for his 
 eyes to rest upon her cheek. The cheek warmed up to a 
 richer tone. 
 
 This was a worse feature in the flirtation than he had ex- 
 pected. If she had been playing with him in an idle freak, the 
 game might soon have wearied her; but the smallest germ 
 of passion — and women of the world do not change color for 
 nothing — was a threatening condition. The mere presence 
 of Fitzpiers in the building, after his statement, was well- 
 nigh conclusive as far as he wa's 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 tne golden colors that had 
 hung overhead were now crowded together in a degraded 
 mass underfoot, where the fallen myriads got redder and 
 hornier, and curled themselves up to rot. The only suspi- 
 cious features in Mrs. Charmond's existence at this season 
 were two: the first, that she lived with no companion or 
 relative about her, which, considering her age and attrac- 
 tions, was somewhat unusual conduct for a young widow 
 in a lonely country house ; the other that she did not, as in 
 previous years, start from Hintock to winter abroad. In 
 Fitzpiers, the only change from his last autumn's habits 
 lay in his abandonment of night study; his lamp never shone 
 from his new dwelling as from his old. 
 
 If the suspected^ones met it was by such adroit contri- 
 vances that even Melbury's vigilance could not encounter 
 
212 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 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 in- 
 terviews was known only to the parties themselves; but 
 that Felice Charmond was under some one's influence Mel- 
 bury 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 re- 
 turning 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 no- 
 where in particular, and the beauty of whose serpentine 
 curves was the only justification of their existence. Felice 
 almost simultaneously trotted down the lane toward the 
 timber-dealer, in a little basket-carriage which she some- 
 times drove about the estate, unaccompanied by a servant. 
 She turned in at the same place without having seen either 
 Melbury or apparently Fitzpiers. Melbury was soon at the 
 spot, despite his aches and his sixty years. Mrs. Charmond 
 had come up with the doctor, who was standing immediately 
 behind the carriage. She had turned to him, her arm being 
 thrown carelessly over the back of the seat. They looked 
 in each other's faces without uttering a word, an arch yet 
 gloomy smile wreathing her lips. Fitzpiers clasped her 
 hanging hand, and, while she still remained in the same 
 listless attitude, looking volumes into his eyes, he stealthily 
 unbuttoned her glove, and, stripped her hand of it by rolling 
 back the gauntlet over the fingers, so that it came ofif inside 
 out. He then raised her hand to his mouth, she still reclin- 
 ing passively, watching him as she might have watched a 
 fly upon her dress. At last she said, "Well, sir, what excuse 
 for this disobedience?" 
 
 "I make none." 
 
 "Then go your way, and let me go mine." She snatched 
 away her hand, touched the pony with the whip, and left 
 him standing there, holding the reversed glove. 
 
 Melbury's first impulse was to reveal his presence to Fitz- 
 piers, and upbraid him bitterly. But a moment's thought 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 213, 
 
 was sufficient to show him the futility of any such simple 
 proceeding. There was not, after all, so much in what he 
 had witnessed as in what that scene might be the surface 
 and froth of — probably a state of mind on which censure 
 operates as an aggravation rather than as a cure. Moreover, 
 he said to himself that the point of attack should be the 
 woman, if either. He therefore kept out of sight, and mus- 
 ing sadly, even tearfully — for he was meek as a child in mat- 
 ters concerning his daughter — continued his way toward 
 Hintock. 
 
 The insight which is bred of deep sympathy was never 
 more finely exemplified than in this instance. Through her 
 guarded manner, her dignified speech, her placid coun-- 
 tenance, he discerned the interior of Grace's life only too 
 truly, hidden as were its incidents from every outer eye. 
 
 These incidents had become painful enough. Fitzpiers 
 had latterly developed an irritable discontent which vented 
 itself in monologues when Grace was present to hear them. 
 The early morning of this day had been dull, after a night 
 of wind, and on looking out of the window Fitzpiers had 
 observed some of Melbury's men dragging away a large 
 limb which had been snapped off a beech-tree. Everything 
 was cold and colorless. 
 
 "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 as- 
 certain. "Ah, fool!" he went on to himself, "to clip your 
 own wings when you were free to soar! But I could not 
 rest till I had done it. Why do I never recognize an op- 
 portunity till I have missed it, nor the good or ill of a step 
 till it is irrevocable? I fell in love. Love, indeed : 
 
 " 'Love's but the frailty of the mind 
 
 When 'tis not with ambition joined; 
 
 A sickly flame which, if not fed, expires. 
 And feeding, wastes in self-consuming fires!' " 
 
 Grace moved. He thought she had heard some part of 
 his soliloquy. He was sorry, though he had not taken any 
 precaution to prevent her. 
 
 He expected a scene at breakfast, but she only exhibited 
 an extreme reserve. It was enough, however, to make him 
 repent that he should have done anything to produce discom- 
 
214 THE WUODLANDERS. 
 
 fort; 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 hus- 
 band's blighted prospects — if blighted they were — ^was the 
 origin of her mood, a mood that was the mere continuation 
 of what her father had noticed when he would have pre- 
 ferred a passionate jealousy in her as the more natural. 
 
 She had made a discovery — one which to a girl of honest 
 nature was almost appalling. She had looked into her heart, 
 and found that her early interest in Giles Winterborne had 
 become revitalized into luxuriant growth by her widening 
 perceptions of what was great and little in life. His home- 
 liness no longer offended her acquired tastes ; his compara- 
 tive want of so-called culture did not now jar on her in- 
 tellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior 
 roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage 
 how much that was humanly not great could co-exist with 
 attainments of an exceptional order, there was a revulsion 
 in her sentiments from all that she had formerly clung to 
 in this kind; honesty, goodness, manliness, tenderness, de- 
 votion, for her only existed in their purity now in the breasts 
 of unvarnished men; and here was one who had manifested 
 them toward 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 borne himself throughout his 
 scathing 
 
 "As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing." 
 
 It was these perceptions, and no subtle catching of her 
 husband's murmurs, that had bred the abstraction visible 
 in her. 
 
 When her father approached the house, after witnessing 
 the interview between Fitzpiers and Mrs. Charmond, Grace 
 was looking out of her sitting-room window, as if she had 
 nothing to do, or think of, or care for. He stood still. 
 
 "Ah, Grace," he said, regarding her fixedly. 
 
 "Yes, father," she murmured. 
 
 "Waiting for your dear husband?" he inquired, speak- 
 ing with the sarcasm of pitiful affection. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 21S 
 
 "Oh, no — not- especially. Pie 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 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 Hin- 
 tock House, regardless of conventionality, confronted and 
 attacked Felice Charmond unguibus et rostro, and accused 
 her even in exaggerated shape of stealing away her hus- 
 band. 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 hot. Do you suppose I don't see 
 the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that 
 this quietude is wrong conduct in you. You should look 
 more into matters." 
 
 "I am quiet because my sadness is not of a nature to stir 
 me to action." 
 
 Melbury wanted to ask her a dozen questions — did she 
 not feel jealous? was she not indignant? — but a natural del- 
 icacy restrained him. "You are very tame and let-alone, 
 I am bound to say," he remarked, pointedly. 
 
 "I am what I feel, father," she repeated. 
 
 He glanced at her, and there returned upon his mind the 
 scene of her offering to wed Winterborne instead of Fitz- 
 piers in the last days before her marriage; and he asked 
 himself if it could be the fact that she loved Winterborne, 
 now that she had lost him, more than she had ever done 
 when she was comparatively free to choose him. 
 
 "What would you have me do?" she asked in a low 
 voice. 
 
 He recalled his mind from the retrospective pain to the 
 practical matter before them. "I would have you go to Mrs. 
 Charmond," he said. 
 
 "Go to Mrs. Charmond — ^what for?" said she. 
 
 "Well, if I must speak plain, dear Grace — to ask her, ap- 
 peal to her in the name of your common womanhood, and 
 your many like sentiments on things, not to make unhappi- 
 
216 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 ness between you and your husband. It lies with her en- 
 tirely 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 hau- 
 teur. "I shall not think of going to her, father — of course 
 I could not," she answered. 
 
 "Why, don't 'ee want to be happier than you be at pres- 
 ent?" said Melbury, more moved on her account than she 
 was herself. 
 
 "I don't wish to be more humiliated. If I have anything 
 to bear I can bear it in silence." 
 
 "But, my dear maid, you are too young; you don't know 
 what the present state of things may lead to. Just see 
 the harm done a'ready! Your husband would have gone 
 away to Budmouth to a bigger practice if it had not been 
 for this. Although it has gone such a little way, it is poison- 
 ing your future even now. Mrs. Charmond is thoughtlessly 
 bad, not bad by calculation; and just a word to her now 
 might save 'ee a peck of woes." 
 
 "Ah! I loved her once," said Grace, with a broken ar- 
 ticulation, "and she would not care for me then: Now I 
 no longer love her. Let her do her worst; I don't care." 
 
 "You ought to care. You have got into a very good 
 position to start with. You have been well educated, well 
 tended, and you have become the wife of a professional 
 man of unusually good family. Surely you ought to make 
 the best of your position." 
 
 "I don't see that I ought. I wish I had never got into 
 it. I wish you had never, never thought of educating me. 
 I wish I worked in the woods like Marty South. I hate 
 genteel life, and I want to be no better than she." 
 
 "Why?" said her amazed father. 
 
 "Because cultivation has only brought me inconveniences 
 and troubles. I say again I wish you had never sent me 
 to those fashionable schools you set your mind on. It all 
 arose out of that, father. If I had stayed at home I should 
 have married — " She closed up her mouth suddenly and 
 was silent; and he saw that she was not far from crying. 
 
 Melbury was much grieved. "What, and would you like 
 to have grown up as we be here in Hintock — knowing no 
 more, and with no more chance of seeing good life than we 
 have here?" 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 217 
 
 "Yes. I have never got any happiness outside Hintock 
 that I know of, and I have suffered many a heartache at 
 being sent away. Oh, the misery of those January days 
 when I had got back to school, and left you all here in the 
 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 thought her 
 ingratitude and intractability. He had admitted to himself, 
 bitterly enough, that he should have let young hearts have 
 their way, or rather should have helped on her affection for 
 Winterborne, and given her to him according to his original 
 plan; but he was not prepared for her deprecation of those 
 attainments whose completion had been a labor of years, 
 and a, severe tax upon his purse. 
 
 "Very well," he said, with much heaviness of spirit. "If 
 you don't like to go to her, I don't wish to force you." 
 
 And so the question remained for him still, how should 
 he remedy this perilous state of things? 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 As February merged in March, and lighter evenings 
 broke the gloom of the woodmen's homeward journey, the 
 Hintocks Great and Little began to have ears for a rumor 
 of the events out of which had grown the timber-dealer's 
 troubles. It took the form of a wide sprinkling of conjec- 
 ture, wherein no man knew the exact truth. Tantalizing 
 phenomena, at once showing and concealing the real re- 
 lationship of the persons concerned, caused a diffusion of ex- 
 cited 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 circum- 
 stances, or sit with their backs turned like the good burghers 
 of Coventry at the passage of the beautiful lady. 
 
 Rumor, for a wonder, exaggerated little. There were, 
 in fact, in this case as in thousands, the well-worn incidents, 
 old as the hills, which, with individual variations, made a 
 mourner of Ariadne, a by-word of V^shti, and a corpse of 
 
218 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 the Countess Amy. There were rencounters accidental and 
 contrived, steahhy correspondence, sudden misgivings on 
 one side, sudden self-reproaches on the other. The inner 
 state of the twain was one as of confused noise that would 
 not allow the accents of calmer reason to be heard. De- 
 termination to go in this direction, and headlong plunges 
 in that; dignified safeguards, undignified collapses; not a 
 single rash step by deliberate intention, and all against 
 judgment. 
 
 It was all that Melbury had expected and feared. It was 
 more, for he had overlooked the publicity that would be 
 likely to result, as it now had done. What should he do? 
 Appeal to Mrs. Charmond himself, since Grace would not? 
 He bethought himself of Winterborne, and resolved to con- 
 sult 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 dis- 
 closed unexpected depths of hypocrisy and speciousness 
 where all had seemed solidity. He felt almost afraid to 
 form a conjecture on the weather, or the time, or the fruit 
 promise, so great was his self-abasement. 
 
 It was a rimy evening when he set out to look for Giles. 
 The woods seemed to be in a cold sweat; beads of perspi- 
 ration hung from every bare twig; the sky had no color, 
 and the trees rose before him as haggard gray phantoms, 
 whose days of substantiality were passed. Melbury seldom 
 saw Winterborne now, but he believed him to be occupy- 
 ing a lonely hut just beyond the boundary of Mrs. Char- 
 mond's estate, though still within the circuit of the wood- 
 land. The timber-merchant's thin legs stalked on through 
 the pale, damp scenery, his eyes on the dead leaves of last 
 year, while every now and then a hasty "Ay?" escaped 
 his lips, in reply to some bitter proposition. 
 
 His notice was attracted by a thin blue haze of smoke, 
 behind which arose sounds of voices and chopping; bend- 
 ing his steps that way, he saw Winterborne just in front 
 of him. It just now happened that Giles, after being for a 
 long time apathetic and unemployed, had become one of 
 the busiest men in the neighborhood; it is often thus; 
 fallen friends, lost sight of, we expect to find starving; wf 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 219 
 
 discover them going on fairly well. Without any solicita- 
 tion, or desire for profit on his part, he had been asked to 
 execute during that winter a very large order for hurdles 
 and other copse-ware, for which purpose he had been 
 obliged to buy several acres of brushwood standing. He 
 was now engaged in the cutting and manufacture of the 
 same, proceeding with the work daily like an automaton. 
 
 The hazel-tree did not belie its name to-day. The whole 
 of the copse-wood where the mist had cleared returned 
 purest tints of that hue, amid which Winterborne himself 
 was in the act of making a hurdle, the stakes being driven 
 firmly into the ground in a row, over which he bent and 
 wove the twigs. Beside him was a square, compact pile, 
 like the altar of Cain, formed of hurdles already finished, 
 which bristled on all sides with the sharp points of their 
 stakes. At a little distance the men in his employ were 
 assisting him to carry out his contract. Rows of copse- 
 wood lay on the ground as it had fallen under the ax; and 
 a shelter had been constructed near at hand, in front of 
 which burned the fire whose smoke had attracted him. 
 The air was so dank that the smoke hung heavy, and crept 
 away amid the bushes without rising from the ground. 
 
 After wistfully regarding Winterborne awhile, Melbury 
 drew nearer, and briefly inquired of Giles how he came to 
 be so busily engaged, with an undertone of slight surprise 
 that Winterborne could go on thriving, even to this degree, 
 after being deprived of Grace. Melbury was not without 
 emotion at the meeting, for Grace's afifairs had divided them, 
 and ended their intimacy of old times. 
 
 Winterborne explained just as briefly, without raising 
 his eyes from his occupation of chopping a bough that he 
 held in front of him. 
 
 " 'Twill be up in April before you get it all cleared," said 
 Melbury. 
 
 "Yes, there or thereabouts," said Winterborne, a chop 
 of the billhook jerking the last word into two pieces. 
 
 There was another interval; Melbury still looked on, a 
 chip from Winterborne's hook occasionally flying against 
 the waistcoat and legs of his visitor, who took no heed. 
 
 "Ah, Giles, you should have been my partner. You 
 should have been ray son-in-law," the old man said at last, 
 "It wovild have been f^r better for h?r and for m§," 
 
220 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 Winterborne saw that something had gone wrong with 
 his former friend, and throwing down the switch he was 
 about to interweave, he responded only too readily to the 
 mood of the timber-dealer. "Is she ill?" he said, hur- 
 riedly. 
 
 "No, no." Melbury stood without speaking for some 
 minutes, and then, as though he could not bring himself to 
 proceed, turned to go away. 
 
 Winterborne told one of his men to pack up the tools for 
 the night, and walked after Melbury. 
 
 "Heaven forbid that I should seem too inquisitive, sir," he 
 said, "especially since we don't stand as we used to stand 
 to one another! but I hope it is well with them all over 
 your way." 
 
 "No," said Melbury; "no." He stopped and struck the 
 smooth trunk of a young ash-tree with the flat of his hand. 
 "I would that his ear had been where that rind is!" he 
 exclaimed; "I should have treated him to little compared 
 wi' what he deserves." 
 
 "Now," said Winterborne, "don't be in a hurry to go 
 home. I've put some cider down to warm in my shelter 
 here, and we'll sit and drink it and talk this over." 
 
 Melbury turned unresistingly as Giles took his arm, and 
 they went back to where the fire was, and sat down under 
 the screen, the other woodmen having gone. He drew out 
 the cider-mug from the ashes, and they drank together. 
 
 "Giles, you ought to have had her, as I said just now," 
 repeated Melbury. "I'll tell you why, for the first time." 
 
 He thereupon told Winterborne, as with great relief, the 
 story of how he won away Giles' father's chosen one — by 
 nothing worse than a lover's cajoleries, it is true, but by 
 means which, except in love, would certainly have been 
 pronounced cruel and unfair. He explained how he had 
 always intended to make reparation to Winterborne the 
 father by giving Grace to Winterborne the son, till the 
 devil tempted him in the person of Fitzpiers, and he broke 
 his virtuous vow. 
 
 "How highly I thought of that man, to be sure! Who'd 
 have supposed he'd have been so weak and wrong-headed 
 as this! You ought to have had her, Giles, and there's an 
 end on't." 
 
 Winterborne krjew how to presery? hi? c^Im under this 
 
tHE WOODLANDERS. 221 
 
 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 had his 
 feelings. "I was not well enough educated; too rough, in 
 short. I couldn't have surrounded her with the refine- 
 ments she looked for, anyhow at all." 
 
 "Nonsense; you are quite wrong there," said the unwise 
 old man doggedly. "She told me only this day that she 
 hates refinements and such like. All that my trouble and 
 money bought for her in that way is thrown away upon 
 her, quite. She'd fain be like Marty South — think o' that! 
 That's the top of her ambition! Perhaps she's right. 
 Giles, she loved you — under the rind; and, what's more, 
 she loves ye still — worse luck for the poor maid!" 
 
 If Melbury had only known what fires he was recklessly 
 stirring up, he might have held his peace. Winterborne 
 was silent a long time. The darkness had closed in round 
 them, and the monotonous drip of the fog from the branches 
 quickened as it turned to fine rain. 
 
 "Oh, she never cared much for me," Giles managed to 
 say, as he stirred the embers with a brand. 
 
 "She did, and does, I tell ye," said the other, obstinately. 
 "However, all that's vain talking now. What I come to 
 ask you about is a more practical matter — how to make 
 the best of things as they are. I am thinking of a desperate 
 , step — of calling on the woman Charmond. I am going to 
 appeal to her, since Grace will not. 'Tis she who holds the 
 balance in her hands, not he. While she's got the will to 
 lead him astray he will follow — poor, unpractical, lofty- 
 notioned dreamer — and how long she'll do it depends upon 
 her whim. Did ye ever hear anything about her character 
 before she came to Hintock?" 
 
 "She's been a bit of a charmer in her time, I believe," 
 replied Giles, with the same level quietude, as he regarded 
 the red coals. "One who has often smiled where she has 
 not loved, and loved where she has not married. Before 
 Mr. Charmond made her his wife she was a play-actress." 
 
 "Hey? But how close you have kept all this, Giles! 
 What besides?" 
 
^2 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "Mr. Charmond was a rich man engaged in the iron 
 trade in the north — twenty or thirty years older than she. 
 He married her, and retired, and came down here and 
 bought this property." 
 
 "Yes, yes — I know all about that. But the other I' did 
 not know. I fear it bodes no good. For how can I go and 
 appeal to the forbearance of a woman in this matter who 
 has made cross-loves and crooked entanglements her trade 
 for years? I thank ye, Giles, for finding it out; but it makes 
 my plan the harder that she should have belonged to that 
 unstable tribe." 
 
 Another pause ensued, and they looked gloomily at the 
 smoke that beat about the hurdles which sheltered them, 
 through whose weavings a large drop of rain fell at inter- 
 vals and spat smartly into the fire. Mrs. Charmond had 
 been no friend to Winterborne, but he was manly, and it was 
 not in his. heart to let her be condemned without a trial. 
 
 "She is said to be generous," he answered. "You might 
 not appeal to her in vain." 
 
 "It shall be done," said Melbury, rising. "For good or 
 for evil, to Mrs. Charmond I'll go." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 At nine o'clock the next morning Melbury dressed him- 
 self up in shining broadcloth, creased with folding and 
 smelling of camphor, and started for Hintock House. He 
 was the more impelled to go at once by the absence of his 
 son-in-law in London for a few days to attend, really or 
 ostensibly, some professional meetings. He said nothing 
 of his destination either to his wife or to Grace, fearing 
 that they might entreat him to abandon so risky a project, 
 and went out unobserved. He had chosen his time with a 
 view, as he supposed, of conveniently catching Mrs. Char- 
 mond when she had just finished her breakfast, before any 
 other business people should be about, if any came. Plod- 
 ding thoughtfully onward he crossed a glade lying between 
 Little Hintock woods and the plantation which abutted on 
 the park, and, the spot being open, he was discerned there 
 by Winterborne from the copse on the next hill, where he 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 223 
 
 and his men were working. Knowing his mission, the 
 younger man hastened down from the copse and managed 
 to intercept the timber-merchant. 
 
 "I have been thinking of this, sir," he said, "and I am 
 of opinion that it would be best to put off your visit for the 
 present." 
 
 But Melbury would not even stop to hear him. His mind 
 was made up, the appeal was to be made; and Winter- 
 borne stood and watched him sadly till he entered the second 
 plantation and disappeared. 
 
 Melbury rang at the tradesmen's door of the manor house, 
 and was at once informed that the lady was not yet visible, 
 as indeed he might have guessed had he been anybody but 
 the man he was. Melbury said he would wait, whereupon 
 the young man informed him in a neighborly way that be- 
 tween themselves she was in bed and asleep. 
 
 "Never mind," said Melbury, retreating into the court; 
 "I'll stand about here." Charged so fully with his mission, 
 he shrank from contact with anybody. 
 
 But he walked about the paved court till he was tired, 
 and still nobody came to him. At last he entered the house, 
 and sat down in a small waiting-room, from which he got 
 glimpses of the kitchen corridor, and of the white-capped 
 maids flitting jauntily hither and thither. They had heard 
 of his arrival, but had not seen him enter, and imagining 
 him still in the court, discussed freely the possible reason 
 of his calling. They 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 knob- 
 bed thorn walking-stick whose growing he had seen before 
 he enjoyed its use. The scene to him was not the material 
 environment of his person, but a tragic vision that traveled 
 with him like an envelope. Through this vision the inci- 
 dents of the moment but gleamed confusedly here and there 
 as an outer landscape through the high-colored scenes of a 
 stained window. He waited thus an hour, an hour and a 
 half, two hours. He began to look pale and ill, whereupon 
 the butler who came in asked him, to have a glass of wine. 
 Melbury roused himself, and said : "No, no. Is she almost 
 ready?" 
 
224 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 "She is just finishing breakfast," said the butler. "She 
 will soon see you now. I am just going up to tell her you 
 are here." 
 
 "What! haven't you told her before?" said Melbury. 
 
 "Oh, no," said the other. "You see, you came so very 
 early." 
 
 At last the bell rang: Mrs. Charmond could see him. 
 She was not in her private sitting-room when he reached it, 
 but in a minute he heard her coming from the front stair- 
 case, and she entered where he stood. 
 
 At this time of the morning Mrs. Charmond looked her 
 full age and more. She might almost have been taken for 
 the typical femme de trente ans, though she was really not 
 more than seven or eight and twenty. There being no fire 
 in the room, she came in with a shawl thrown loosely round 
 her shoulders, and obviously without the least suspicion 
 that Melbury had called upon any other errand than tim- 
 ber. Felice was, indeed, the only woman in the parish who 
 had not heard the rumor of her own weaknesses; she was 
 at this moment living in a fool's paradise in respect of that 
 rumor, though not in respect of the weaknesses themselves, 
 which, if the truth be told, caused her grave misgivings. 
 
 "Do sit down, Mr. Melbury. You have felled all the trees 
 that were to be purchased by you this season, except the 
 oaks, I believe." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Melbury, in a reverie. He did not take a 
 chair, and she also remained standing. Resting upon his 
 stick, he began: "Mrs. Charmond, I have called upon a 
 more serious matter — at least to me — ^than tree-throwing. 
 And whatever mistakes I make in my manner of speak- 
 ing upon it to you, madam, do me the justice to set 'em down 
 to my want of practice, and not to my want of care." 
 
 Mrs. Charmond looked ill at ease. She might have begun 
 to guess his meaning; but apart from that she had such 
 dread of contact with anything painful, harsh, or even 
 earnest, that his preliminaries alone were enough to dis- 
 tress her. "Yes, what is it"?" she said. 
 
 "I am an old man," said Melbury, "whom, somewhat 
 late in life, God thought fit to bless with one child, and she 
 a daughter. Her mother was a very dear wife to me ; but 
 she was taken away from us when the child was young; 
 and the child became precious as the apple of my eye to 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 225 
 
 me, for she was all I had left to love. For her sake en- 
 tirely I married as second wife a homespun woman who 
 had been kind as a mother to her. In due time the ques- 
 tion of her education came on; and I said, 'I will educate 
 the maid well, if I live upon bread to do it.' Of her possi- 
 ble 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 that it was the law of nature that this should 
 be; and that it was for the maid's happiness that she should 
 have a home when I was gone; and I made up my mind 
 without a murmur to help it on for her sake. In my 
 youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to make amends 
 I determined to give her, my most precious possession, to 
 my friend's son, seeing that they liked each other well. 
 Things came about which made me doubt if it would be 
 for my daughter's happiness to do this, inasmuch as the 
 young man was poor, and she was delicately reared. An- 
 other man came and paid court to her — one her equal in 
 breeding and accomplishments; in every way it seemed to 
 me that he only could give her the home which her train- 
 ing 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 gentle- 
 man I had calculated on so surely was not stanch of heart, 
 and that therein lay a danger of great sorrow for my 
 daughter. Madam, he saw you, and you know the rest. 
 I ■ have come to make no demands, to utter no threats ; 
 I have come simply as a father in great grief about 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 so 
 doing; your course is far higher than the courses of a simple 
 professional man ; and the gratitude you would win from me 
 and mine by your kindness is more than I can say." 
 
 Mrs. Charmond had first rushed into a mood of indig- 
 nation 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 
 
 15 
 
226 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 influence her, and when he ceased speaking she said, with 
 hurried, hot breath: "What has led you to think this of me? 
 Who says I have won your daughter's husband away from 
 her? Some monstrous calumnies are afloat — of which I 
 have known nothing until now !" 
 
 Melbury started, and looked at her simply. "But surely, 
 ma'am, you know the truth better than I?" 
 
 Her features became a little pinched, and the touches oi 
 powder on her handsome face for the first time showed them- 
 selves as an extrinsic film. "Will you leave me to myself?" 
 she said, with a faintness which suggested a guilty consci- 
 ence. "This is so utterly unexpected — you obtain admis- 
 sion to my presence by misrepresentation " 
 
 "As God's 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." 
 
 "Tell you, ma'am — ^not 1. What the gossip is, no matter. 
 What really is, you know. Set facts right, and the scandal 
 will right of itself. But pardon me — I speak roughly ; and 
 I came to speak gently, to coax you, beg you to be my 
 daughter's friend. She loved you once, ma'am; you began 
 by liking her. Then you dropped her without a reason, 
 and it hurt her warm heart more than I can tell ye. But you 
 were within your right as the superior, no doubt. But if you 
 would consider her position now — surely, surely you would 
 do her no harm!" 
 
 "Certainly I would do her no harm — I " Melbury's 
 
 eye met hers. It was curious, but the allusion to Grace's 
 former love for her seemed to touch her more than all Mel- 
 bury'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 voice. 
 
 As soon as he was out of the room she went to a corner 
 and there rocked herself, under an emotion in which hurt 
 pride and vexation mingled with better sentiments. 
 
 Mrs. Charmond's mobile spirit was subject to these fierce 
 assaults of introspection. She had never so clearly per- 
 ceived till now that her soul was being slowly invaded by 
 a delirium which had brought about all this; that she was 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 227 
 
 losing judgment and dignity under it, becoming an ani- 
 mated 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 — over- 
 shadowed with sudden night, as if a tornado had passed by. 
 
 While she sat, or rather crouched, unhinged by the in- 
 terview, lunch-time came, and then the early afternoon, al- 
 most without her consciousness. Then "a strange gentle- 
 man who says it is not necessary to give his name," was 
 suddenly announced. 
 
 "I cannot see him, whoever he may be. I am not at home 
 to anybody." 
 
 She heard no more of her visitor; and shortly after, in 
 an attempt to recover some mental serenity by violent 
 physical exercise, she put on her hat and cloak and went 
 out of doors, taking a path which led her up the slopes to 
 the nearest spur of the wood. She disliked the woods, but 
 they had the advantage of being a place in which she could 
 walk comparatively unobserved. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 There was agitation to-day in the lives of all whom these 
 matters concerned. It was not till Hintock dinner-time 
 — one o'clock — that Grace discovered her father's absence 
 from the house after a departure in the morning under 
 somewhat tmusual conditions. By a little reasoning and 
 inquiry she was able to come to a conclusion on his desti- 
 nation, 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 
 
228 THE WOODLANDEnS. 
 
 roofed in from the outer world of wind and cloud by a net- 
 work of boughs, led her slowly on till in time she had left the 
 larger trees behind her and swept round into the coppice 
 where Winterborne and his men were clearing the under- 
 growth. 
 
 Had Giles' attention been concentrated on his hurdles 
 he would not have seen her; but ever since Melbury's pas- 
 sage 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 hini more than Melbury's return with his tidings. 
 Fearing that something might be the matter, he hastened 
 up to her. 
 
 She had not seen her old lover for a long time, and too 
 conscious of the late pranks of her heart, she could not 
 behold him calmly. "I am only looking for my father," she 
 said, in an unnecessarily apologetic intonation. 
 
 "I was looking for him too," said Giles. "I think he may 
 perhaps have gone on further." 
 
 "Then you knew he was going to the House, Giles?" she 
 said, turning her large tender eyes anxiously upon him. 
 "Did he tell you what for?" 
 
 Winterborne glanced doubtingly at her, and then softly 
 hinted that her father had visited him the evening before, 
 and that their old friendship was quite restored, on which 
 she guessed the rest. 
 
 "Oh, I am glad indeed that you two are friends again!" 
 she cried. And then they stood facing each other, fearing 
 each other, troubling each other's souls. Gra'ce experienced 
 acute misery at the sight of these wood-cutting scenes, 
 because she had estranged herself from them, craving, even 
 to its defects and inconveniences, that homely sylvan life of 
 her father which in the best probable succession of events 
 would shortly be denied her. 
 
 At a little distance, on the edge of the clearing, Marty 
 South was shaping spar-gads to take home for manufacture 
 during the evenings. While Winterborne and Mrs. Fitz- 
 piers stood looking at her in their mutual embarrassment 
 at each other's presence they beheld approaching the girl 
 a lady in a dark fur mantle and a black hat, having a white 
 veil tied picturesquely round it. She spoke to Marty, who 
 turned and courtesied, and the lady fell into conversation 
 with her. It was Mrs. Charmond.. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 229 
 
 On leaving her house, Mrs. Charmond had walked on and 
 onward under the fret and fever of her mind with more vigor 
 than she was accustomed to show in her normal moods — 
 a fever which the solace of a cigarette did not entirely allay. 
 Reaching the coppice, she listlessly observed Marty at work, 
 threw away her cigarette, and came near. Chop, chop, 
 chop, went Marty's little billhook, with never more assiduity, 
 till Mrs. Charmond spoke. 
 
 "Who is that young lady I see talking to the woodman 
 yonder?" she asked. 
 
 "Mrs. Fitzpiers, ma'am," said Marty. 
 
 "Oh," said Mrs. Charmond, with something like a start, 
 for she had not recognized Grace at that distance. "And 
 the man she is talking to?" 
 
 "That's Mr. Winterborne." 
 
 A redness stole into Marty's face as she mentioned Giles' 
 name, which Mrs. Charmond did not fail to notice, and which 
 informed her of the state of the girl's heart. "Are you en- 
 gaged to him?" she asked, softly. 
 
 "No, ma'am," said Marty. "She was once; and I 
 think " 
 
 But Marty could not possibly explain the complications 
 of her thoughts on this matter — ^which were nothing less 
 than one of extraordinary acuteness for a girl so young 
 and inexperienced — namely, that she saw danger to two 
 hearts naturally honest in Grace being thrown back into 
 Winterborne's society by the neglect of her husband. Mrs. 
 Charmond, however, with the almost supersensory means 
 to knowledge which women have on such occasions, quite 
 understood what Marty had intended to convey; and the 
 picture thus exhibited to her of lives drifting away, involving 
 the wreck of poor Marty's hopes, prompted her to more 
 generous resolves than all Melbury's remonstrances had 
 been able to stimulate. 
 
 Full of the new feeling, she bade the girl good-afternoon, 
 and went on over the stumps of hazel to where Grace and 
 Winterborne were standing. They saw her approach, and 
 Winterborne said: "She is coming to you; it is a good 
 omen. She dislikes me, so I'll go away." He accordingly 
 retreated to where he had been working before Grace came, 
 and Grace's formidable rival approached her. 
 
 "Dear — Mrs. Fitzpiers," said Felice Charmond, with some 
 
230 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 inward turmoil which stopped her speech, "I have not seen 
 you for a long time." 
 
 She held out her hand tentatively, while Grace stood like 
 a wild animal on first confronting a mirror or other strange 
 product of civilization. Was it really Mrs. Charmond speak- 
 ing to her thus? If it was, she could no longer form any 
 guess as to what life signified. 
 
 "I want to talk to you," said Mrs. Charmond, implor- 
 ingly, for the gaze of the young woman had chilled her 
 through. "Can you walk on with me till we are quite 
 alone?" 
 
 Sick with distaste, Grace nevertheless complied, as by 
 clockwork, and they moved evenly side by side into the 
 deeper recesses of the woods. They went further, much 
 further, than Mrs. Charmond had meant to go; but she 
 could not begin her conversation, and in default of it kept 
 walking. 
 
 "I have seen your father," she at length resumed. "And 
 — I am much troubled by what he told me." 
 
 "What did he tell you? I have not been admitted to his 
 confidence on anything he may have said to you." 
 
 "Nevertheless, why should I repeat to you what you can 
 easily divine?" 
 
 "True — true," returned Grace, mournfully. "Why should 
 you repeat what we both know to be in our minds al- 
 ready?" 
 
 "Mrs. Fitzpiers, your husband " The moment that 
 
 the speaker's tongue touched the dangerous subject a vivid 
 look of self-consciousness flashed over her, in which her 
 heart revealed, as by a lightning gleam, what filled it to over- 
 flowing. So transitory was the expression that none but 
 a sensitive woman, and she in Grace's position, would have 
 had the power to catch its meaning. Upon her the phase 
 was not lost. 
 
 "Then you do love him?" she exclaimed, in a tone of 
 much surprise. 
 
 "What do you mean, my young friend?" 
 
 "Why," cried Grace, "I thought till now that you had 
 only been cruelly flirting with my husband, to amuse your 
 idle moments — a rich lady with a poor professional gentle- 
 man, whom, in her heart, she despised not much less than 
 her who belongs to him. But I guess from your manner 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 231 
 
 that you love him desperately; and I don't hate you as I 
 did before." 
 
 "Yes, indeed," continued Mrs. Fitzpiers, with a trembling 
 tongue, "since it is not playing in your case at all, but 
 
 real Oh, I do pity you, more than I despise you. For 
 
 you will s-s-suffer most!" 
 
 Mrs. Charmond was now as much agitated as Grace. "I 
 ought not to allow myself to argue with you," she ex- 
 claimed. "I demean myself by doing it. But I liked you 
 once, and for the sake of that time I try to tell you how 
 mistaken you are!" Much of her confusion resulted from 
 her wonder and alarm at finding herself in a sense dominated 
 mentally and emotionally by this simple school-girl. "'I 
 do not love him," she went on, with desperate untruth. "It 
 was a kindness — my making somewhat more of him than 
 one usually does of one's doctor. I was lonely; I talked — 
 well, I trifled with him. 1 am very sorry if such child's play- 
 ing, out of pure friendship, has been a serious matter to 
 you. Who could have expected it? But the world is so 
 simple here." 
 
 "Oh, that's affectation," said Grace, shaking her head. 
 "It is no use — you love" him. I can see in your face that 
 in this matter of my husband you have not let your acts 
 belie your feeUngs. During these last four or six months 
 you have been terribly indiscreet; but you have not been 
 insincere; and that almost disarms me." 
 
 "I have been insincere — if you will have the word — I 
 mean I have coquetted, and do not love him!" 
 
 But Grace clung to her position like a limpet. "You 
 may have trifled with others; but him you love as you never 
 loved another man." 
 
 "Oh, well — I won't argue," said Mrs. Charmond, laugh- 
 ing faintly. "And you come to reproach me for it, child." 
 
 "No," said Grace, magnanimously. "You may go on 
 loving him if you like — I don't mind at all. You'll find it, 
 let me tell you, a bitterer business for yourself than for me 
 in the end. He'll get tired of you soon, as tired as can be 
 — ^you don't know him so well as I — ^and then you may 
 wish you had never seen him!" 
 
 Mrs. Charmond had grown quite pale and weak under this 
 prophecy. It was extraordinary that Grace, whom almost 
 every one would have characterized as a gentle girl, should 
 
232 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 be of stronger fiber than her interlocutor. "You exagger- 
 ate — cruel, silly young woman," she reiterated, writhing with 
 little agonies. "It is nothing but playful friendship — 
 nothing. It will be proved by my future conduct. I shall 
 at once refuse to see him more — since it will make no difier- 
 ence to my heart, and much to my name." 
 
 "I question if you will refuse to see him again," said Grace, 
 dryly, as 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 unsea- 
 sonable, when I have found him riding miles and miles across 
 the country at midnight, and risking his life, and getting 
 covered with mud, to get a glimpse of you, I have called him 
 a foolish man — the plaything of a finished coquette. I 
 thought that what was getting to be a tragedy to me was a 
 comedy to you. But now I see that tragedy lies on your 
 side of the situation no less than on mine, and more ; that if 
 I have felt trouble at my position you have felt anguish 
 at yours ; that if I have had disappointments you have had 
 despairs. Heaven may fortify me — God help you!" 
 
 "I cannot attempt to reply to your raving eloquence," 
 returned the other, aiming to restore a dignity which had 
 completely collapsed. "My acts will be my proofs. In 
 the world, which you have seen nothing of, friendships be- 
 tween men and women are not unknown, and it would have 
 been better both for you and your father if you had each 
 .judged me more respectfully, and left me alone. As it is, 
 I wish never to see or speak to you, madam, any more." 
 
 Grace bowed, and Mrs. Charmond turned away. The 
 two went apart in directly opposite courses, and were soon 
 hidden from each other by their umbrageous surroundings 
 and by the shadows of eve. 
 
 In the excitement of their long argument they had 
 walked onward and zigzagged about without regarding di- 
 rection or distance. All sound of the wood-cutters had 
 long since faded into remoteness, and even had not the in- 
 terval been too great for hearing them they would have 
 been silent and homeward bound at this twilight hour. But 
 Grace went on her course without any misgiving, though 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 233 
 
 there was much underwood here, with only the narrowest 
 passages for walking, across which brambles hung. She 
 had not, however, traversed this the wildest part of the 
 wood since her childhood, and the transformation of outlines 
 had been great; old trees which once were landmarks had 
 been felled or blown down, and the bushes which then had 
 been small and scrubby were now large and overhanging. 
 She soon found that her ideas as to direction were vague — 
 that she had indeed no ideas as to direction at all. If the 
 evening had not been growing so dark, and the wind had not 
 put on its night moan so distinctly, Grace would not have 
 minded; but she was rather frightened now, and began to 
 strike across hither and thither in random courses. 
 
 Denser grew the darkness, more developed the wind- 
 voices, and still no recognizable spot or outlet of any kind 
 appeared, nor any sound of the Hintocks, 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, nmst inevi- 
 tably have taken her out of the v/ood 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 soughing of the wind she heard 
 shufifling footsteps on the leaves heavier than those of rab- 
 bits or hares. Though fearing at first to meet anybody on 
 the chance of his being a friend, she decided that the fellow 
 night-rambler, even if a poacher, would not injure her, and 
 that he might possibly be some one sent to search for her. 
 She accordingly shouted a rather timid "Hoi!" 
 
 The cry was immediately returned by the other person; 
 and Grace, running at once in the direction whence it came, 
 beheld an indistinct figure hastening up to her as rapidly. 
 They were almost in each other's arms when she recognized 
 in her vis-a-vis the outline and white veil of her whom she 
 had parted from an hour and a half before — Mrs. Char- 
 mond. 
 
 "I have lost my way — I have lost my way," cried that 
 lady. "Oh! is it indeed you? I am so glad to meet you 
 or anybody. I have been wandering up and down ever 
 since we parted, and am nearly dead with terror and misery 
 and fatigue !" 
 
234 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "So am I," said Grace. "What shall we, shall we do?" 
 
 "You won't go away from me?" asked her companion, 
 anxiously. 
 
 "No, indeed. Are you very tired?" 
 
 "I can scarcely move, and I am scratched dreadfully 
 about the ankles." 
 
 Grace reflected. "Perhaps, as it is dry under foot, the 
 best thing for us to do would be to sit down for half an 
 liour, and then start again when we have thoroughly rested. 
 By walking straight we must come to a track leading some- 
 where before the morning." 
 
 They found a clump of bushy hollies which afforded 
 a shelter from the wind, and sat down under it, some tufts 
 of dead fern, crisp and dry, that remained from the previous 
 season forming a sort of nest for them. But it was cold, 
 nevertheless, on this March night, particularly for Grace, 
 who, with the sanguine prematureness of youth in matters 
 of dress, had considered it spring-time, and hence was not 
 so warmly clad as Mrs. Charmond, who still wore her winter 
 fur. But after sitting 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 wer£ 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. Char- 
 mond's furs consoling Grace's cold face, and each one's body 
 as she breathed alternately heaving against that of her com- 
 panion. 
 
 When a few minutes had been spent thus, Mrs. Charmond 
 said, "I am so wretched!" in a heavy emotional whisper. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 235 
 
 "You are frightened," said Grace, kindly. "But there 
 is nothing to fear; I know these woods well." 
 
 "I am not at all frightened at the wood, but I am at other 
 things." 
 
 Mrs. Charmond embraced Grace more and more tightly, 
 and the younger woman could feel her neighbor's breathing 
 grow deeper and more spasmodic, as though uncontrollable 
 feelings were germinating. 
 
 "After I had left you," she went on, "I regretted some- 
 thing 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 pas- 
 sions to respond to Fitzpiers in the first place leading her 
 now to find luxurious comfort in opening her heart to his 
 wife. "I said to you I could give him up without pain or 
 deprivation — that he had only been my pastime. That 
 was untrue; it was said to deceive you. I could not do it 
 without much pain; and what is more dreadful, I cannot 
 give him up — even if I would — of myself alone." 
 
 "Why? Because you love him, you mean." 
 
 Felice Charmond denoted assent by a movement. 
 
 "I knew I was right," said Grace. "But that should 
 not deter you," she presently added, in a moral tone. "Oh, 
 do struggle against it, and you will conquer!" 
 
 "You are so simple — so simple!" cried Felice. "You 
 think because you guessed my assumed indifference to him 
 to be a sham, that you know the extreme that people are 
 capable of! But a good deal more may have been going on 
 than you have fathomed with all your insight. I cannot 
 give him up until he chooses to give up me." 
 
 "But surely you are the superior in station and in every 
 way, and the cut must come from you." 
 
 "Tchut! Must I tell verbatim, you simple child? Oh, I 
 suppose I must! I shall eat out my heart if I do not reveal 
 all, after meeting you like this and finding how guileless 
 you are." She thereupon whispered a few words in the 
 girl's ear, and burst into a violent fit of sobbing. 
 
 Grace started roughly away from the shelter of the fur, 
 and sprung to her feet. 
 
 "Oh, my God !" she exclaimed, thunderstruck at the rev- 
 elation, transcending her utmost suspicion, "Can it be — • 
 can it be !" 
 
236 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 She turned as if to hasten away. But Felice Charmond's 
 sobs came to her ear; deep darkness circled her about, 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 her own 
 voice grown ten years older. 
 
 Without an answer Mrs. Charmond slowly rose. 
 
 "You mean to betray me!" she said from the bitterest 
 depths of her soul. "Oh, fool, fool I!" 
 
 "No," said Grace, shortly. "I mean no such thing. But 
 let us be quick now. We have a serious undertaking before 
 us. Think of nothing' but going straight on." 
 
 They walked on in profound silence, pulling back boughs 
 now growing wet, and treading down woodbine, but still 
 keeping a pretty straight course. Grace began to be thor- 
 oughly worn out, and her companion too, when on a sud- 
 den they broke into the deserted highway at the hilltop, on 
 which the man had waited for Mrs. Dollery's van. Grace 
 recognized the spot as soon as she looked around her. 
 
 "How we have got here I cannot tell," she said, with cold 
 civility. "We have made a complete circuit of Little Hin- 
 tock. The hazel copse is quite on the other side. Now we 
 have only to follow the road." 
 
 They dragged themselves onward, turned into the lane, 
 passed the track to Little Hintock, and so reached the park. 
 
 "Here I turn back," said Grace, in the same passionless 
 voice. "You are quite near home." 
 
 Mrs. Charmond stood inert, seeming appalled by her ad- 
 mission. 
 
 "I have told you something in a moment of irresistible 
 desire to unburden my soul, which all but a fool would have 
 kept silent as the grave," she said. "I cannot help it now. 
 Is it to be a secret, or do you mean war?" 
 
 "A secret, certainly," said Grace, mournfully. "How can 
 you expect war from such a helpless, wretched being as I !" 
 
 "And I'll do my best not to see him. I am his slavej 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 ma^ keep him— for me " Had she been 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 237 
 
 wounded instead of mortified she could not have used the 
 words ; but Fitzpiers' 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 afterward she met people in search of her, and 
 reached the house to find all in serious alarm. She soon ex- 
 plained that she had lost her way, and her general depression 
 was attributed to exhaustion on that account 
 
 Could she have known what Marty was writing she would 
 have been surprised. 
 
 The rumor had reached the young girl, and she was pen- 
 ning a letter to Fitzpiers, to tell him that Mrs. Charmond 
 wore her hair. It was poor Marty's only card, and sh"e 
 played it, knowing nothing of fashion, and thinking her reve- 
 lation a fatal one for a lover. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 It was at the beginning of April, a few days after the 
 meeting between Grace and Mrs. Charmond in the wood, 
 that Fitzpiers, just retvirned from London, was traveling 
 from Sherton-Abbas to Hintock in a hired carriage. In his 
 eye there was a doubtful light, and the lines of his refined 
 face showed a vague disquietude. He appeared now like 
 one of those who impress the beholder as having suffered 
 wrong in being born. 
 
 His position was in truth gloomy, and to his apprecia- 
 tive mind it seemed even gloomier than it was. His prac- 
 tice had been slowly dwindling of late, and now threatened 
 to die out altogether, the irrepressible old Dr. Jones captur- 
 ing patients up to Fitzpiers' very door. Fitzpiers knew only 
 too well the latest and greatest cause of his unpopularity; 
 and yet, so illogical is man, the second branch of his sadness 
 grew out of a remedial measure proposed for the first — 
 a letter from Felice Charmond imploring him not to see her 
 again. To bring about their severance still more effectually, 
 she added that she had decided during his absence upon 
 almost immediate departure for the Continent. 
 
23§ THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 The time was that dull interval in a woodlander's life 
 which coincides with great activity in the hfe of the wood- 
 land 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 life 
 inside all the trunks of the forest. 
 
 Winterborne's contract was completed, and the planta- 
 tions were deserted. It was dusk; there were no leaves as 
 yet; the nightingales would not begin to sing for a fort- 
 night; and "the Mother of the Months" was in her most 
 attenuated phase — starved and bent to a mere bowed skel- 
 eton, which glided along behind the bare twigs in Fitz- 
 piers' 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 learnt with much surprise that Grace 
 had gone on a visit to an acquaintance at Shottsford- Forum, 
 three days earlier; that tidings had on this morning reached 
 her father of her being very unwell there, in consequence of 
 which he had ridden over to see her. 
 
 Fitzpiers went upstairs again, and the little drawing- 
 room, now lighted by a solitary candle, was not rendered 
 more cheerful by the entrance of Grammer Oliver with an 
 apronful of wood, which she threw on the hearth while she 
 raked out the grate and rattled about the fire-irons, with 
 a view to making things comfortable. Fitzpiers considered 
 that Grace ought to have let him know her plans more ac- 
 curately before leaving home in a freak like this. He went 
 desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been 
 pulled down, and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, 
 and at the tall stalk of smoke rising from the top of Suke 
 Damson's chimney, signifying that the young woman had 
 just lit her fire to prepare supper. He became conscious of 
 a discussion in progress on the opposite side of the court. 
 Somebody had looked over the wall to talk to the sawyers, 
 and was telling them in a loud voice news in which the 
 name of Mrs. Charmond soon arrested his ears. 
 
 "Grammer, don't make so much noise with that grate," 
 said the surgeon, at which Grammer reared herself upon 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 239 
 
 her knees, and held the fuel suspended in her hand, while 
 Fitzpiers half opened the casement. 
 
 "She is off to foreign lands again at last — hev made up 
 her mind quite sudden like — and it is thoughted she'll leave 
 in a day or two. She's been all as if her mind were low for 
 some days past — with a sort of sorrow in her face, as if she 
 reproached her own soul. She's the wrong sort of woman 
 for Hintock — hardly knowing a beech from a woak — ^that 
 I own. But I don't care who the man is, she's been a very 
 kind friend to me. Well, the day after to-morrow is the 
 Sabbath day, and without charity we are but tinkling sim- 
 ples: but this I do say, that her going will be a blessed thing 
 for a certain married couple who remain." 
 
 The fire was lighted, and Fitzpiers sat down in front of 
 it, restless as the last leaf upon a tree. "A sort of sorrow 
 in her face, as if she reproached her own soul." Poor 
 Felice ! How Felice's frame must be pulsing under the con- 
 ditions of which he had just heard the caricature! how her 
 fair temples must ache! what a mood of wretchedness she 
 must be in ! But for this mixing up of his name with hers, 
 and her determination to sunder their too close acquaint- 
 ance on that account, she would probably have sent for him 
 professionally. She was now sitting alone, suffering, per- 
 haps wishing she had not forbidden him to come again. 
 
 Unable to remain in this lonely room any longer, or to 
 wait for the meal which was in course of preparation, he 
 made himself ready for riding, descended to the yard, stood 
 by the stable door while Darling was being saddled, and 
 rode off down the lane. He would have preferred walking, 
 but was weary with his day's travel. 
 
 As he approached the door of Marty South's cottage, 
 which it was necessary to pass on his way, she came from 
 the porch, as if she had been awaiting him, and met him in 
 the middle of the road, holding up a letter. Fitzpiers took 
 it without stopping, and asked over his shoulder from whom 
 it came. 
 
 Marty hesitated. "From me," she said, shyly, though 
 with noticeable firmness. 
 
 This letter contained, in fact, Marty's declaration that she 
 was the original owner of Mrs. Charmond's supplementary 
 locks, and inclosed a sample from tlie native stock, which 
 had grown considerably by this time. It was her long con- 
 
240 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 templated 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 Fitz- 
 piers 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 rein under a group of dark oaks com- 
 manding a view of the front, and reflected awhile. His 
 entry would not be altogether unnatural in the circum- 
 stances of her possible indisposition ; but upon the whole he 
 thought it best to avoid riding up to the door. By silently 
 approaching he could retreat unobserved in the event of her 
 not being alone. Thereupon he dismounted, hitched Darling 
 to a stray bough hanging a little below the general brows- 
 ing-line of the trees, and proceeded to the door on foot. 
 
 In the meantime Melbury had returned from Shottsford- 
 Forum. The great court or quadrangle of the timber mer- 
 chant's house, divided from the shady lane by an ivy-cov- 
 ered wall, was entered by two white gates, one standing 
 near each extremity of the wall. It had so happened that 
 at the moment when Fitzpiers was riding out at the lower 
 gate on his way to the manor house, Melbury was approach- 
 ing the upper gate to enter it. Fitzpiers, being in front of 
 Melbury, was seen by the latter; but the surgeon, never 
 turning his head, did not observe his father-in-law, ambling 
 slowly and silently along under the trees, though his horse, 
 too, was a gray one. 
 
 "How is Grace?" said his wife, as soon as he entered. 
 
 Melbury looked gloomy. "She is not at all well," he 
 said. "I don't like the looks of her at all. I couldn't bear 
 the notion of her biding away in a strange place any longer, 
 and I begged her to let me get her home. At last she 
 agreed to it, but not till after much persuading. I was then 
 sorry that I rode over instead of driving; but I have hired 
 a nice, comfortable carriage — ^the easiest-going I could get 
 — and she'll be here in a couple of hours or less. I rode on 
 ahead to tell you to get her room ready ; but I see her hus- 
 band has come back." 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 241 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Melbury. She expressed her concern 
 that her husband had hired a carriage all the way from 
 Shottsford. "What it will cost!" she said. 
 
 "I don't care what it costs!" he exclaimed, testily. "I 
 was determined to get her home. Why she went away I 
 can't think! She acts in a way that is not at all likely to 
 mend matters, as far as I can see." (Grace had not told 
 her father of her interview with Mrs. Charmond, and the 
 disclosure that had been whispered in her startled ear.) 
 "Since Edgar is come," he continued, "he might have wait- 
 ed in till I got back 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 Fitz- 
 piers take the direction of the manor house. 
 
 Melbury said no more. It was exasperating to him that 
 just at this moment, when there was every reason for Fitz- 
 piers to stay indoors, or at any rate to ride along the Shotts- 
 ford road to meet his ailing wife, he should be doing despite 
 to her by going elsewhere. The old man went out of doors 
 again, and his horse being hardly unsaddled as yet, he told 
 Upjohn to retighten the girths, when he again mounted, and 
 rode off at the heels of the surgeon. 
 
 By the time that Melbury reached the park he was pre- 
 pared to go any lengths in combating this rank and restless 
 errantry of his daughter's husband. He would fetch home 
 Edgar Fitzpiers to-night by some means, rough or fair: in 
 his view there could come of his interference nothing worse 
 than what existed at present. And yet to every bad there is 
 a worse. 
 
 He had entered by the bridle-gate which admitted to the 
 park on this side, and cantered over the soft turf almost in 
 the tracks of Fitzpiers' horse, till he reached the clump of 
 trees under which his precursor had halted. The whitish 
 object that was indistinctly visible here in the gloom of the 
 boughs he found to be Darling, as left by Fitzpiers. 
 
 "D — n him! why did he not ride up to the house in an 
 honest way?" said Melbury. 
 
 He profited by Fitzpiers' 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 
 
242 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 to stick at trifles in his investigation, and did not hesitate 
 to gently open the front door without ringing. 
 
 The large square hall, with its oak floor, staircase, and 
 wainscot, was lighted by a dim lamp hanging from a beam. 
 Not a soul was visible. He went into the corridor and 
 listened at a door which he knew to be that of the drawing- 
 room; there was no sound, and on turning the handle he 
 found the room empty. A fire burning low in the grate 
 was the sole light of the apartment; its beams flashed mock- 
 ingly on the somewhat showy Versaillese furniture and gild- 
 ing here, in style as unlike that of the structural parts of 
 the building as it was possible to be, and probably intro- 
 duced by Felice to counteract the fine old English gloom of 
 the place. Disappointed in his hope of confronting his son- 
 in-law here, he went on to the dining-room ; this was with- 
 out light or fire, and pervaded by a cold atmosphere, which 
 signified that she had not dined there that day. 
 
 By this time Melbury's mood had a little mollified. Every- 
 thing here was so pacific, so unaggressive in its repose, that 
 he was no longer incited to provoke a collision with Fitz- 
 piers or with anybody. The comparative stat^liness of the 
 apartments influenced him to an emotion, rather than to a 
 belief, that where all was outwardly so good and proper there 
 could not be quite that delinquency within which he had 
 suspected. It occurred to him, too, that even if his suspicion 
 were justified, his abrupt, if not unwarrantable, entry into 
 the house might end in confounding its inhabitant at the 
 expense of his daughter's dignity and his own. Any ill 
 result would be pretty sure to hit Grace hardest in the long 
 run. He would, after all, adopt the more rational course, and 
 plead with Fitzpiers privately, as he had pleaded with Mrs. 
 Charmond. 
 
 He accordingly retreated as silently as he had come. Pass- 
 ing the door of the drawing-room anew, he fancied that he 
 heard a noise within which was not the crackling of the fire. 
 Melbury gently reopened the door to a distance of a few 
 inches, and saw at the opposite window two figures in the 
 act of stepping out — a man and a woman — in whom he rec- 
 ognized 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 car- 
 riage-entrance door, coming round to the lawn front in time 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 243 
 
 to see the two figures parting at the railing which divided 
 the precincts of the house from the open park. Mrs. Char- 
 mond turned to hasten back immediately that Fitzpiers 
 had left her side, and he was speedily absorbed into the 
 duskiness of the trees. 
 
 Melbury waited till Mrs. Charmond had re-entered the 
 drawing-room, and then followed after Fitzpiers, thinking 
 that he would allow the latter to mount and ride ahead a 
 little way before overtaking him, and giving him a piece 
 of his mind. His son-in-law might possibly see the second 
 horse near his own; but that would do him no harm, and 
 might prepare him for what he was to expect. 
 
 The event, however, was different from the plan. On 
 plunging into the thick shade of the clump of oaks, he 
 could not perceive his horse Blossom anywhere; but feel- 
 ing his way carefully along, he by and by discerned Fitz- 
 piers' mare Darling still standing as before under the ad- 
 joining 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 am- 
 bling comfortably along a little way ahead, and a creaking 
 of the saddle, which showed that she had a rider. Walk- 
 ing on as far as the small gate in the corner of the park, 
 he met a laborer, who, in reply to Melbury's inquiry if he 
 had seen any person on a gray horse, said that he had only 
 met Dr. Fitzpiers. 
 
 It was just what Melbury had begun to suspect; Fitz- 
 piers had mounted the mare which did not belong to him 
 in mistake for his own — an oversight easily explicable, in 
 a man ever unwitting in horseflesh, by the darkness of the 
 spot and the near similarity of the animals in appearance, 
 though Melbury's was readily enough seen to be the grayer 
 horse by day. He hastened back, and did what seemed 
 best in the circumstances — got upon old Darling and rode 
 rapidly after Fitzpiers. 
 
 Melbury had just entered the wood, and was winding 
 along the cartway which led through it, channeled deep in 
 the leaf mould with large ruts that were formed by the tim- 
 ber wagons in fetching the spoil of the plantations, when 
 all at once he descried in front, at a point where the road 
 took a turning round a large chestnut-tree, the form of his 
 
244 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 own horse Blossom, at which Melbury quickened Darling's 
 pace, thinking to come up with Fitzpiers. 
 
 Nearer view revealed that the horse had no rider. At 
 Melbury's approach, it galloped friskily away under the 
 trees in a homeward direction. Thinking something was 
 wrong, the timber merchant dismounted as soon as he 
 reached the chestnut, and, after feeling about for a minute 
 or two, discovered Fitzpiers lying on the ground. 
 
 "Here — help!" cried the latter, as soon as he felt Mel- 
 bury'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 traveler of the old-fashioned sort; having 
 just come from Shottsford-Forum, he still had in his pocket 
 the pilgrim's flask of rum which he always carried on jour- 
 neys exceeding a dozen miles, though he seldom drank 
 much of it. He poured it down the surgeon's throat with 
 such effect that he quickly revived. Melbury got him on 
 his legs; but the question was what to do with him. He 
 could not walk more than a few steps, and the other horse 
 had gone away. 
 
 With great exertion Melbury contrived to get him astride 
 Darling, mounting himself behind, and holding Fitzpiers 
 round his waist with one arm. Darling being broad, 
 straight-backed, and high in the withers, was well able to 
 carry double, at any rate as far as Hintock, and at a gentle 
 pace. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 The mare paced along with firm and cautious tread 
 through the copse where Winterborne had worked, and 
 into the heavier soil where the oaks grew; past Great 
 
TEE WOODLANDERS. 245 
 
 Willy, the largest oak in the wood, and thence toward Nell- 
 combe Bottom, intensely dark now with overgrowth, and 
 popularly supposed to be haunted by the spirits of the fratri- 
 cides exorcised from Hintock House. 
 
 By this time Fitzpiers was quite recovered as to physical 
 strength. But he had eaten nothing since making a hasty 
 breakfast in London that morning, his anxiety about Felice 
 having hurried him away from home before dinner; as a 
 consequence the old rum administered by his father-in-law 
 flew to the young man's head and loosened his tongue, with- 
 out his ever having recognized who it was that had lent 
 him a kindly hand. He began to speak in desultory sen- 
 tences, Melbury still supporting him. 
 
 "I've come all the way m London to-day," said Fitz- 
 piers. "Ah, that's the place to meet your equals. I live at 
 Hintock — worse, at Little Hintock — and I am quite lost 
 there. There's not a man within ten miles of Hintock who 
 can comprehend me. I tell you. Farmer What's-your-name, 
 I'm a man of education. I know several languages; the 
 poets and I are familiar friends ; I used to read more in meta- 
 physics than anybody within fifty miles; and since I gave that 
 up there's nobody can match me in the whole county of Wes- 
 sex as a scientist. Yet I am doomed to live with trades- 
 people in a miserable little hole like Hintock." 
 
 "Indeed!" muttered Melbury. 
 
 Fitzpiers, increasingly energized by the alcohol, here 
 reared himself up suddenly from the bowed posture he had 
 hitherto held, thrusting his shoulders so violently against 
 Melbury's breast as to make it difficult for the old man to 
 keep a hold on the reins. "People don't appreciate me here !" 
 the surgeon exclaimed; lowering his voice, he added softly 
 and slowly, "except one — except one! A passionate soul, 
 as warm as she is clever, as beautiful as she is warm, and as 
 rich as she is beautiful. I say, old fellow, those claws of 
 yours clutch me rather tight — rather like the eagle's, you 
 know, that ate out the liver of Pro — Pre — ^the man on Mount 
 Caucasus. People don't appreciate me, I say, except her. 
 Ah, gods, I am an unlucky man ! She would have been mine, 
 she would have taken my name ; but unfortunately it cannot 
 be so. I stooped to mate beneath me; and now I rue it." 
 
 The position was becoming a very trying one for Mel- 
 bury, corporeally and mentally. He was obliged to steady 
 
246 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 Fitzpiers with his left arm, and he began to hate the con- 
 tact. He hardly knew what to do. It was useless to remon- 
 strate with Fitzpiers, in his intellectual confusion from the 
 rum and from the fall. He remained silent, his hold upon his 
 companion, however, being stern rather than compassion- 
 ate. "You hurt me a little, farmer, though I am much 
 obliged to you for your kindness. People don't appreciate 
 me, I say. Between ourselves, I am losing my practice here; 
 and why? Because I see matchless attraction where match- 
 less attraction is, both in person and position. I mention 
 no names, so nobody will be the wiser. But I have lost her — 
 in a legitimate sense, that is. If I were a free man now, 
 things have come to such a pass that she could not refuse 
 me; while with her fortune (which I don't covet for itself) 
 I should have a chance of satisfying an honorable ambition 
 — a. chance I have never had yet, and now never, never shall 
 have, probably!" 
 
 Melbury, his heart throbbing against the other's back- 
 bone, and his brain on fire with indignation, ventured to 
 mutter, huskily, "Why?" 
 
 The horse ambled on some steps before Fitzpiers replied. 
 "Because I am tied and bound to another by law, as tight- 
 ly as I am to you by your arm — not that I complain of your 
 arm — I thank you for helping me. Well, where are we? 
 Not nearly home yet? Home, say I? It is a home! When 
 I might have been at the other house over there." In a 
 stupefied way he flung his hand in the direction of the park. 
 "I was just two months too early in committing myself. 
 
 Had I only seen the other first " 
 
 Here the old man's arm gave Fitzpiers a convulsive shake. 
 "What are you doing?" continued the latter. "Keep still, 
 please, or put me down. I was saying that I lost her by a 
 mere little two months ! There is no chance for me now in 
 this world, and it makes me reckless! Unless, indeed, any- 
 thing should happen to the other one. She is amiable 
 enough; but if anything should happen to her — and I hear 
 she is ill — ^well, if it should, I should be free — and my fame, 
 my happiness, would be insured." 
 
 These were the last words that Fitzpiers uttered in h^s 
 seat in front of the timber merchant. Unable longer to 
 master himself, Melbury, the skin of his face compressed. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 247 
 
 whipped away his spare arm from Fitzpiers' waist, and seized 
 him by the collar. 
 
 "You heartless villain — after all that we have done for 
 ye!" he cried, with a quivering lip. "And the money of 
 hers that you've had, and the roof we've provided to shel- 
 ter ye ! — it is to me, George Melbury, that you dare to talk 
 like that!" The exclamation was accompanied by a power- 
 ful swing from the shoulder, which flung the young man 
 headlong into the road. 
 
 Fitzpiers fell with a heavy thud upon the stumps of some 
 undergrowth which had been cut during the winter pre- 
 ceding. Darling continued her walk for a few paces further, 
 and stopped. 
 
 "God forgive me!" Melbury murmured, repenting of what 
 he had done. "He tried me too sorely; and now perhaps 
 I've murdered him I" 
 
 He turned round in the saddle and looked toward the 
 spot on which Fitzpiers had fallen. To his great surprise 
 he beheld the surgeon rise to his feet with a bound, as if un- 
 hurt, and walk away rapidly under the trees. 
 
 Melbury listened till the rustle of Fitzpiers' footsteps died 
 away. "It might have been a crime, but for the mercy of 
 Providence in providing leaves for his fall," he said to him- 
 self. And then his mind reverted to the words of Fitzpiers, 
 and his indignation so mounted within him that he almost 
 wished the fall had put an end to the young man there and 
 then. 
 
 €Ie had not ridden far when he discerned his own gray 
 mare standing under some bushes. Leaving Darling for a 
 moment, Melbury went forward and easily caught the 
 younger animal, now disheartened at its freak. He then 
 made the pair of them fast to a tree, and turning back en- 
 deavored to find some trace of Fitzpiers, feeling pitifully 
 that, after all, he had gone further than he intended with 
 the offender. 
 
 But though he threaded the wood hither and thither, 
 his toes plowing layer after layer of the little horny scrolls 
 that had once been leaves, he could not find him. He stood 
 still listening and looking round. The breeze was oozing 
 through the network of boughs as through a strainer; the 
 trunks and larger branches stood against the light of the 
 sky in the forms of writhing men, gigantic candelabra, pikes, 
 
248 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 halberds, lances, and whatever besides the fancy chose to 
 make of them. Giving up the search, Melbury came back 
 to the horses, and walked slowly homeward, leading one in 
 each hand. 
 
 ******** 
 
 It happened that on this self-same evening a boy had 
 been returning from Great to Little Hintock about the 
 time of Fitzpiers' and Melbury's passage home along that 
 route. A horse-collar, that had been left at the harness- 
 mender's to be repaired, was required for use at five o'clock 
 next morning, and in consequence the boy had to fetch it 
 overnight. He put his head through the collar, and accom- 
 panied his walk by whistling the one tune he knew, as an 
 antidote to fear. 
 
 The boy suddenly became aware of a horse trotting 
 rather briskly along the track behind him, and not know- 
 ing whether to expect friend or foe, prudence suggested that 
 he should cease his whistling and retreat among the trees 
 till the horse and his rider had gone by, a course to which 
 he was still more incUned when he found how noiselessly 
 they approached, and saw that the.horse looked pale, and re- 
 membered what he had read about Death in the Revelation. 
 He therefore deposited the collar by a tree, and hid himself 
 behind it. The horseman came on, and the youth, whose 
 eyes were as keen as telescopes, to his great relief recognized 
 the doctor. 
 
 As Melbury surmised, Fitzpiers had in the darkness taken 
 Blossom for Darling, and he had not discovered his mistake 
 when he came up opposite the boy, though he was some- 
 what surprised 'at the liveliness of his usually placid mare. 
 The only other pair of eyes on the spot whose vision was 
 keen as the young carter's were those of the horse; and, 
 with that strongly conservative objection to the unusual 
 which animals show. Blossom, on eying the collar under the 
 tree — quite invisible to Fitzpiers — exercised none of the 
 patience of the older horse, but shied sufficiently to unseat 
 so second-rate an equestrian as the surgeon. 
 
 He fell, and did not move, lying as Melbury afterward 
 found him. The boy ran away, salving his conscience for 
 the desertion by thinking how vigorously he would spread 
 the alarm of the accident when he got to Hintock — which 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 219 
 
 he uncompromisingly did, incrusting the skeleton event 
 with a load of dramatic horrors. 
 
 Grace had returned, and the fly hired on her account, 
 though not by her husband, at the Crown Hotel, Shotts- 
 ford-Forum, had been paid for and dismissed. The long 
 drive had somewhat revived her, her illness being a fever- 
 ish intermittent nervousness which had more to do with 
 mind than body, and she walked about her sitting-room in 
 something of a hopeful mood. Mrs. Melbury had told her, 
 as soon as she arrived, that her husband had returned from 
 London. He had gone out, she said, to see a patient as she 
 supposed, and he must soon be back, since he had had no 
 dinner or tea. Grace would not allow her mind to harbor 
 any suspicion of his whereabouts, and her step-mother said 
 nothing of Mrs. Charmond's rumored sorrows and plans of 
 departure. 
 
 So the young wife sat by the fire, waiting silently. She 
 had left Hintock in a turmoil of feeling, after the revelation 
 of Mrs. Charmond, intending not to be at home when her 
 husband returned. But she had thought the matter over, 
 and had allowed her father's influence to prevail and bring 
 her back, and now somewhat regretted that Edgar's arrival 
 had preceded hers. By and by Mrs. Melbury came upstairs 
 with a slight air of flurry and abruptness. "I have some- 
 thing to tell — some bad news," she said. "But you must 
 not be alarmed, as it is not so bad as it might have been. 
 Edgar has been thrown oS his horse. We don't think he is 
 hurt much. It happened in the wood the other side of Nell- 
 combe Bottom, where 'tis said the ghosts walk." She went 
 on to give a few of the particulars, but none of the invented 
 horrors that had been communicated by the boy. "I 
 thought it better to tell you at once," she added, "in case 
 he should not — be very well able to walk home, and some- 
 body should bring him." 
 
 Mrs. Melbury really thought matters much worse than 
 she represented, and Grace knew that she thought so. She 
 sat down dazed for a few minutes, returning a negative to 
 her step-mother's inquiry if she could do anything for her. 
 "But please go into the bedroom," she said, on second 
 thoughts, "and see if all is ready there — in case it is seri- 
 ous," Mrs. Melbury thereupon called Grammer, and they 
 
250 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 did as directed, supplying the room with everything they 
 could think of for the accommodation of an injured man. 
 
 Nobody was left in the lower part of the house. Not 
 many minutes had passed when Grace heard a knock at 
 the door — a single knock, not loud enough to reach the ears 
 of those in the bedroom. She went to the top of the stairs 
 and said, faintly: "Come up," knowing that the door stood, 
 as usual in such houses, wide open. Retreating into the 
 gloom of the broad landing, she saw rise up the stairs a 
 woman whom at first she did not recognize, till her voice 
 revealed her to be Suke Damson, in great fright and sor- 
 row. A streak of light from the partially closed door of 
 Grace's room fell upon her face as she came forward, and 
 it was drawn and pale. 
 
 "Oh, Miss Melbury — I would say Mrs. Fitzpiers," she 
 said, wringing her hands. "This terrible news! Is he dead? 
 Is he hurted very bad? Tell me. I couldn't help coming; 
 please forgive me, Miss Melbury — Mrs. Fitzpiers, I would 
 say." 
 
 Grace sank down on the oak chest which stood on the 
 landing, and put her hands to her now flushed face and 
 head. Could she order Suke Damson downstairs and out 
 of the house? Her husband might be brought in at any 
 moment, and what would happen? But could she order 
 this genuinely grieved woman away? There was a dead 
 silence of half a minute or so, till Suke said: "Why don't 
 ye speak? Is he here? Is he dead? If so, why can't I see 
 him? would it be so very wrong?" 
 
 Before Grace had answered, somebody else came to the 
 door below — a footfall light as a roe's. There was a hur- 
 ried tapping upon the panel, as if with the impatient tips 
 of fingers whose owner thought not whether a knocker 
 were there or no. Without a pause, and possibly guided 
 by the stray beam of light on the landing, the new-comer 
 ascended the staircase as the first had done. Grace was 
 sufficiently visible, and the lady, for a lady it was, came to 
 her side. 
 
 "I could make nobody hear downstairs," said Felice Char- 
 mond, with lips whose dryness could almost be heard, and 
 panting, as she stood like one ready to sink on the floor 
 with distress. "What is — the matter? Tell me the worst. 
 Csm he live?" She looked at Grace imploringly, without 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 251 
 
 perceiving poor Suke, who, dismayed at such a presence, 
 had shrunk away into the shade. Mrs. Charmond's Httle feet 
 were covered with mud; she was quite unconscious of her 
 appearance now. "I have heard such a dreadful report," she 
 went on; "I came to ascertain the truth of it. Is he — killed?" 
 
 "She won't tell us. He's dying; he's in that room," burst 
 out Suke, regardless of consequences, as she heard the dis- 
 tant movements of Mrs. Melbury and Grammer in the bed- 
 room at the end of the passage. 
 
 "Where?" said Mrs. Ch; end; and on Suke pointing 
 out the direction, she made as if to go thither. 
 
 Grace barred the way. "He is not there," she said. "I 
 have not seen him any more than you. I- have heard a re- 
 port only — not so bad as you think. It must have been 
 exaggerated to you." 
 
 "Please do not conceal anything; let me know all," said 
 Felice, doubtingly. 
 
 "You shall know all I know. You have a perfect right 
 to know; who can have a better!" said Grace, with a deli- 
 cate sting which was lost upon Felice Charmond now. "I 
 repeat, I have only heard a less charming account than you 
 have heard; how much it means, and how little, I cannot 
 say. I pray God that it means not much, in common human- 
 ity. You probably pray the same, for other reasons." 
 
 She regarded them both there in the dim light. 
 
 They stood dumb in their trouble, not stinging back at 
 her, not heeding her mood. A tenderness spread over Grace 
 like a dew. It was well, very well, conventionally, to ad- 
 dress either one of them in the wife's regulation terms of 
 'virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for losing 
 their hearts to her husband. But life, what was it, and who 
 was she? She had been plagued and chastened all the day 
 long, but could she by retributive words, in order to please 
 herself, the individual, "offend against the generation," as 
 deprecated by the singer of the Psalm of Asaph? 
 
 "He is dying, perhaps," blubbered Suke Damson, put- 
 ting her apron to her eyes. 
 
 In their gestures and faces there were anxieties, affec- 
 tion, agony of heart, all for a man who had wronged them 
 — had never really behaved toward either of them anyhow 
 but selfishly. Neither one but would have well-nigh sacri- 
 ficed half her lif? to him even now. The tears which his pos- 
 
252 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 sibly critical situation could not bring to her eyes surged 
 over at the contemplation of these fellow-women. She 
 turned to the balustrade, bent herself upon it, and wept. 
 
 Thereupon Felice began to cry also, without using her 
 handkerchief, and letting the tears run down silently. 
 While these three poor women stood together thus, pity- 
 ing another while most to be pitied themselves, the pacing 
 of a horse or horses became audible in the court, and in a 
 moment Melbury's voice was heard calling to his stable- 
 man. Grace at once started up, ran down the stairs, and 
 out into the quadrangle, as her father crossed it toward the 
 door. "Father, what is the matter with him?" she cried. 
 
 "Who— -Edgar ?" said Melbury, abruptly. "Matter? Noth- 
 ing. What, my dear, and have you got home safe? Why, 
 you are better already. But you ought not to be out in 
 the air like this." 
 
 "But he has been thrown off his horse." 
 
 "I know — I know. I saw it. He got up again, and 
 walked off as well as ever. A fall on the leaves didn't hurt 
 a spry fellow like him. He did not come this way," he add- 
 ed, significantly. "I suppose he went to look for his horse. 
 I tried to find him, but could not. But after seeing him go 
 away under the trees, I found the horse, and have led it 
 home for safety. So he must walk. Now don't you stay 
 out here in this night air." 
 
 She returned to the house with her father. When she 
 had again ascended to the landing and to her own rooms 
 beyond, it was a great relief to her to find that both Petti- 
 coat the First and Petticoat the Second of her Bien-aime 
 had silently disappeared. They had, in all probability, heard 
 the words of her father, and departed, with their anxieties re- 
 lieved. 
 
 Presently her parents came up to Grace, and busied them- 
 selves to see that she was comfortable. Perceiving soon 
 that she would prefer to be left alone, they went away. 
 
 Grace waited on. The clock raised its voice now and 
 then, but her husband did not return. At her father's usual 
 hour for retiring he again came in to see her. "Do not stay 
 up," she said, as soon as he entered. "I am not at all tired. 
 I will sit up for him." 
 
 "I think it will be useless, Grace," said Melbury, slowly. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 253 
 
 "I have had a bitter quarrel with him. And on that ac- 
 count I hardly think he will return to-night." 
 
 "A quarrel? Was that after the fall seen by the boy?" 
 
 Melbury nodded an afifirmative, without taking his eyes 
 off the candle. 
 
 "Yes; it was as we were coming home together," he said. 
 
 Something had been swelling up in Grace while her father 
 was speaking. "How could you want to quarrel with him?" 
 she cried, suddenly. "Why could you not let him come home 
 quietly, if he were inclined to? He is my husband; and now 
 you have married me to him surely you need not provoke 
 him unnecessarily. First you induce me to accept him, and 
 then you do things that divide us more than we should natu- 
 rally be divided!" 
 
 "How can you speak so unjustly to me, Grace?" said Mel- 
 bury, with indignant sorrow. "I divide you from your hus- 
 band, indeed! You little think " 
 
 He was inclined to say more — ^to tell her the whole story 
 of the encounter, and that the provocation he had received 
 had lain entirely in hearing her despised. But it would 
 have greatly distressed her, and he forbore. "You had bet- 
 ter lie down. You are tired," he said, soothingly. "Good- 
 night." 
 
 The household went to bed, and a silence fell upon the 
 dwelling, broken only by the occasional skirr of a halter in 
 Melbury's stables. Despite her father's advice Grace still 
 waited up. But nobody came. 
 
 It was a critical time in Grace's emotional life, that night. 
 She thought of her husband a good deal, and for the nonce 
 forgot Winterborne. 
 
 "How these unhappy women must have admired Edgar!" 
 she said to herself. "How attractive he must be to every- 
 body ; and, indeed, he is attractive." The possibility is that, 
 piqued by rivalry, these ideas might have been transformed 
 into their corresponding emotions by a show of the least 
 reciprocity in Fitzpiers. There was, in truth, a love-bird 
 yearning to fly from her heart, and it wanted a lodging 
 badly. 
 
 But no husband came. The fact was that Melbury had 
 been much mistaken about the condition of Fitzpiers. Peo- 
 ple do not fall headlong on stumps of underwood with im- 
 punity. Had the old man been able to watch Fitzpiers nar- 
 
254 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 rowly enough he would- have observed that on rising and 
 walking into the thicket he dropped blood as he went; that 
 he had not proceeded fifty yards before he showed signs of 
 being dizzy, and, raising his hands to his head, reeled and 
 fell down. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 Grace was not the only one who watched and meditated 
 in Hintock that night. Felice Charmond was in no mood 
 to retire to rest at a customary hour; and over her draw- 
 ing-room fire at the manor house she sat as motionless and 
 in as deep a reverie as Grace in her little room at the home- 
 stead. 
 
 Having caught ear of Melbury's intelligence while she 
 stood on the landing at his house, and been eased of much 
 of her mental distress, her sense of personal decorum re- 
 turned upon her with a rush. She descended the stairs 
 and left the door like a ghost, keeping close to the walls of 
 the building till she got round to the gate of the quadrangle, 
 through which she noiselessly passed almost before Grace 
 and her father had finished their discourse. Suke Damson 
 had thought it well to imitate her superior in this respect, 
 and descending the back stairs as Felice descended the front, 
 went out at the side door and home to her cottage. 
 
 Once outside Melbury's gates, Mrs. Charmond ran with 
 all her speed to the manor house, without stopping or turn- 
 ing her head, and splitting her thin boots in her haste. She 
 entered her own dwelling as she had emerged from it — by 
 the drawing-room window. In other circumstances she 
 would have felt some timidity at undertaking such an un- 
 premeditated excursion alone ; but her anxiety for another 
 had cast out her fear for herself. 
 
 Everything in her drawing-room was just as she had left 
 it — the candles still burning, the casement closed, and the 
 shutters gently pulled to, so as to hide the state of the win- 
 dow from the cursory glance of a servant entering the apart- 
 ment. She had been gone about three-quarters of an hour 
 by the clock, and nobody seemed to have discovered her 
 absence. Tired in body but tense in mind, she sat down, 
 palpitating, round-eyed, bewildered at what she had done. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 255 
 
 She had been betrayed by her emotion into a visit which, 
 now that the emotion instigating it had calmed down under 
 her belief that Fitzpiers was in no danger, was the saddest 
 surprise to her. This was how she had set about doing her 
 best to escape her passionate bondage to him ! Somehow, 
 in declaring to Grace and to herself the unseemliness of her 
 infatuation, she had grown a convert to its irresistibility. If 
 Heaven would only give her strength; but Heaven never 
 did. One thing was indispensable ; she must go away from 
 Hintock if she meant to withstand further temptation. The 
 struggle was too wearying, too hopeless, while she remained. 
 It was but a continual capitulation of conscience to what she 
 dared not name. 
 
 By degrees, as she sat, Felice's mind — helped perhaps by 
 the anti-climax of learning that her lover was unharmed 
 after all her fright about him — grew wondrously strong in 
 wise resolve. For the moment she was in a mood, in the 
 words of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, "to run mad with discre- 
 tion"; and was so persuaded that discretion lay in departure 
 that she wished to set about going that very minute. Jump- 
 ing up from her seat, she began to gather together some 
 small personal knick-knacks scattered about the room, to 
 feel that preparations were really in train. 
 
 While moving here and there she fancied that she heard 
 a slight noise out of doors, and stood still. Surely it was a 
 tapping at the window. A thought entered her mind, and 
 burned her cheek. He had come to that window before ; yet 
 was it possible that he should dare to do so now? All the 
 servants were in bed, and in the ordinary course of afifairs 
 she would have retired also. Then she remembered that 
 on stepping in by the casement and closing it, she had 
 not fastened the window-shutter, so that a streak of light 
 from the interior of the room might have revealed her vigil 
 to an observer on the lawn. How all things conspired against 
 her keeping faith with Grace! The tapping recommenced, 
 light as from the bill of a little bird ; her illegitimate hope 
 cast out her fear; she went and pulled back tlie shutter, de- 
 termining, however, to shake her head at him and keep the 
 casement securely closed. 
 
 What she saw outside might have struck terror into a 
 heart stouter than a helpless woman's at midnight. In the 
 center of the lowest pane of the window, close to the glass. 
 
256 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 was a human face, which she barely recognized as the face 
 of Fitzpiers. It was surrounded with the darkness of the 
 night without, corpse-like in its pallor, and covered with 
 blood. As disclosed in the square area of the pane it met 
 her frightened eyes lilce a replica of the Sudarium of St. 
 Veronica. 
 
 He moved his lips, and looked at her imploringly. Her 
 rapid mind pieced together in an instant a possible concat- 
 enation of events which might have led to this tragical issue. 
 She unlatched the casement with an impulsive hand, and 
 bending down to where he was crouching, pressed his hand 
 with compassionate solicitude, and assisted him into the 
 room without a word, to do which it was almost necessary 
 to lift him bodily. Quickly closing the window and fasten- 
 ing the shutters, she bent over him breathlessly. 
 
 "Are you hurt much, much?" she whispered, faintly. "Oh, 
 oh, how is this!" 
 
 "Rather much; but don't be frightened," he answered, 
 in a difficult whisper, and turning himself to obtain an easier 
 position if possible. "A little water, please." 
 
 She ran across into the dining-room, and brought a bottle 
 and glass, from which he eagerly drank. He could then 
 speak much better, and with her help got upon the nearest 
 couch. 
 
 "Are you dying, Edgar?" she said. "Do speak to me!" 
 
 "I am half dead," said Fitzpiers. "But perhaps I shall 
 get over it. It is chiefly loss of blood." 
 
 "But I thought your fall did not hurt you?" said she. 
 "Who did this?" 
 
 "Felice — my father-in-law! I have crawled to you more 
 than a mile on my hands and knees — God, I thought I should 
 never have got here ! I have come to you — because you are 
 the only friend — I have in the world now. I can never go 
 back to Hintock — never — ^to the roof of the Melburys I Not 
 poppy nor mandragora will ever medicine this bitter feud! 
 If I were only well again!" 
 
 "Let me bind your head, now that you have rested." 
 
 "Yes — but wait a moment — it has stopped bleeding, for- 
 tunately, or I should be a dead man before now. While in 
 the wood I managed to make a tourniquet of some half 
 pence and my handkerchief, as well as I could in the dark. 
 But listen, dear Felice; can you hide me till I am well? 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 257 
 
 \Vhatever comes, I can be seen in Hintock no more. My 
 practice is nearly gone, you know — and after this I would 
 not care to recover it if I could." 
 
 By this time Felice's tears began to blind her. Where 
 were now her discreet plans for sundering their lives for- 
 ever? To minister to him in his pain and trouble and pov- 
 erty was her single thought. The first step was to hide him, 
 and she asked herself where. A place occurred to her mind. 
 
 She got him some wine from the dining-room, which 
 strengthened him much." Then she managed to remove 
 his boots, and as he could now keep himself upright by lean- 
 ing upon her on one side and a walking-stick on the other, 
 they went thus in slow march out of the room and up the 
 stairs. At the top she took him along a gallery, pausing 
 whenever he required rest, and thence up a smaller staircase 
 to the least used part of the house, where she unlocked a 
 door. Within was a lumber-room, containing abandoned 
 furniture of all descriptions, built up in piles which obscured 
 the light of the windows, and formed between them nooks 
 and lairs in which a person would not be discerned, even 
 should an eye gaze in at the door. The articles were main- 
 ly those that had belonged to the previous owner of the 
 house, and had been bought in by the late Mr. Charmond at 
 the auction ; but changing fashion, and the tastes of a young 
 wife, had caused them to be relegated to this dungeon. 
 
 Here Fitzpiers sat on the floor against the wall till she 
 had hauled out materials for a bed, which she spread on 
 the floor in one of the aforesaid nooks. She obtained water 
 and a basin, and washed the dried blood from his face and 
 hands; and when he was comfortably reclining, fetched 
 food from the larder. While he ate, her eyes lingered anx- 
 iously on his face, following its every movement with such 
 loving kindness as only a woman can show. 
 
 He was now in better condition, and discussed his posi- 
 tion with her. 
 
 "What I fancy I said to Melbury must have been enough 
 to enrage any man, if uttered in cold blood, and with knowl- 
 edge of his presence. But I did not know him, and I was 
 stupefied by what he had given me, so that I hardly was 
 aware of what I said. Well — ^the veil of that temple is rent 
 in twain! As I am not going to be seen again in Hintock 
 my first efiforts must be directed to allay any alarm that may 
 
 17 
 
258 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 be felt at my absence, before I am able to get clear away. 
 Nobody must suspect that I have been hurt, or there will be 
 a country talk about me. Felice, I must at once concoct a 
 letter to check all search for me. I think, if you bring me a 
 pen and paper, I may be able to do it now. I could rest 
 better if it were done. Poor thing! how I tire her with run- 
 ning up and down!" 
 
 She fetched writing materials, and held up the blotting- 
 book as a support to his hand, while he penned a brief note 
 to his nominal wife. 
 
 "The animosity shown toward me by your father," he 
 wrote in this coldest of marital epistles, "is such that I can- 
 not return again to a roof which is his, even though it shel- 
 ters you. A parting is unavoidable, as you are sure to be on 
 his side in this division. I am starting on a journey which 
 will take me a long way from Hintock, and you must not 
 expect to see me there again for some time." 
 
 He then gave her a few directions bearing upon his pro- 
 fessional engagements and other practical matters, conclud- 
 ing without a hint of his destination, or a notion of when 
 she would see him again. He offered to read the note to 
 Felice before he closed it up, but she would not hear or see 
 it; that side of their situation distressed her beyond endur- 
 ance. She turned away from Fitzpiers and sobbed bitterly. 
 
 "If you can get this posted at a place some miles awa)'," 
 he whispered, exhausted by the efifort of writing, "at Shotts- 
 ford, or Port-Bredy, or, still better, Budmouth, it will divert 
 all suspicion from this house as the place of my refuge." 
 
 "I will drive to one or other of the places myself — anything 
 to keep it unknown," she murmured, her voice weighted 
 with vague foreboding, now that the excitement of helping 
 him had passed away. 
 
 Fitzpiers told her that there was yet one thing more to 
 be done. "In creeping over the fence on to the lawn," he 
 said, "I made the rail bloody, and it shows rather much on 
 the white paint — I could see it in the dark. At all hazards 
 it should be washed off. Could you do that also, Felice?" 
 
 What will not women do on such devoted occasions? 
 Weary as she was, she went — all the way down the rambling 
 staircases to the ground floor, then to search for a lantern, 
 which she lighted and hid under her cloak; then for a wet 
 sponge, and next forth into the night. The white railing 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 259 
 
 stafed out in the darkness at her approach, and a ray from 
 the enshrouded lantern fell upon the blood — ^just where he 
 told her it would be found. She shuddered. It was almost 
 too much to bear in one day — but with a shaking hand she 
 sponged the rail clean, and returned to the house. 
 
 The time occupied by these several proceedings was not 
 much less than two hours. When all was done, and she had 
 smoothed his extemporized bed, and placed everything 
 within his reach that she could think of, she took her leave 
 of him and locked him in. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 When her husband's letter reached Grace's hands, bear- 
 ing upon it the postmark of a distant town, it never once 
 crossed her mind that Fitzpiers was within a mile of her 
 still. She felt relieved that he did not write more bitterly of 
 the quarrel with her father, whatever its nature might 
 have been; but the general frigidity of his communication 
 quenched in her the incipient spark that events had kindled 
 so shortly before. 
 
 From this center of information it was made known in 
 Hintock that the doctor had gone away, and as none but 
 the Melbury household were aware that he did not return 
 on the night of his accident, no excitement manifested itself 
 in the village. 
 
 Thus the early days of May passed by. None but the 
 nocturnal birds and animals were aware that late one even- 
 ing toward the middle of the month, a closely wrapped figure, 
 with a crutch under one arm and a stick in his hand, crept 
 out from Hintock House across the lawn to the shelter of 
 the trees, taking thence a slow and laborious walk to the 
 nearest point of the turnpike-road. The mysterious person- 
 age was so disguised that his own wife would hardly have 
 known him. Felice Charmond was a practiced hand at 
 make-ups, as well she might be ; and she had done her utmost 
 in padding and painting Fitzpiers with the old materials 
 of her trade in the recesses of the lumber-room. 
 
 In the highway he was met by a covered carriage, which 
 conveyed him to Sherton Abbas, whence he proceeded to 
 
260 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 the nearest port on the south coast, and immediately crossed 
 the Channel. 
 
 But it was known to everybody that three days after this 
 time Mrs. Charmond executed her long-deferred plan of 
 setting out for a long term of travel and residence on the 
 Continent. She went off one morning as unostentatiously 
 as could be, and took no maid with her, having, she said, 
 engaged one to meet her at a point further on in her route. 
 After that, Hintock House, so frequently deserted, was again 
 to be let. Spring had not merged in summer when a clinch- 
 ing rumor, founded on the best of evidence, reached the 
 parish and neighborhood. Mrs. Charmond and Fitzpiers 
 had been seen together in Baden, in relations which set at 
 rest the question that had agitated the little community ever 
 since the winter. 
 
 Melbury had entered the Valley of Humiliation even furth- 
 er than Grace. Her spirit seemed broken. 
 
 But once a week he mechanically went to market as usual, 
 and here, as he was passing by the conduit one day, his 
 mental condition expressed largely by his gait, he heard his 
 name spoken by a voice formerly familiar. He turned and 
 saw a certain Fred Beaucock — once a promising lawyer's 
 clerk and local dandy, who had been called the cleverest 
 fellow in Sherton, without whose brains the firm of solicitors 
 employing him would be nowhere. But later on Beaucock 
 had fallen into the mire. He was invited out a good deal, 
 sang songs at agricultural meetings and burgesses' dinners ; 
 in sum, victualed himself with spirits more frequently than 
 was good for the clever brains or body either. He lost his 
 situation, and after an absence spent in trying his powers 
 elsewhere, came back to his native town, where, at the time 
 of the foregoing events in Hintock, he gave legal advice for 
 astonishingly small fees — mostly carrying on his profession 
 on public-house settles, in whose recesses he might often 
 have been overheard making country people's wills for half 
 a crown; calling with a learned voice for pen and ink and a 
 halfpenny sheet of paper, on which he drew up the docu- 
 ment while resting it in a little space wiped with his hand 
 on a table amid the liquid circles formed by the cups and 
 glasses. An idea implanted early in life is difficult to up- 
 root, and many elderly trades-people still clung to the notion 
 that Fred Beaucock knew a great deal of law. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 261 
 
 It was he who had called Melbury by name. "You look 
 very down, Mr. Melbury — very, if I may say as much," he 
 observed, when the timber-merchant turned. "But I know 
 — I know. A very sad case — very. I was bred to the law, 
 as you know, and am, professionally, no stranger to such 
 matters. Well, Mrs. Fitzpiers has her remedy." 
 
 "How — what — a remedy?" said Melbury. 
 
 "Under the new law, sir. A new court was established 
 last year, and under the new statute, twenty and twenty- 
 one Vic, cap. eighty-five, unmarrying is as easy as marry- 
 ing. No more Acts of Parliament necessary; no longer one 
 law for the rich and another for the poor. But come in- 
 side — I was just going to have a nibleykin of rum hot — I'll 
 explain it all to you." 
 
 The intelligence amazed Melbury, who saw little of news- 
 papers. And though he was a severely correct man in his 
 habits, and had no taste for entering a tavern with Fred 
 Beaucock — nay, would have been quite uninfluenced by 
 such a character on any other matter in the world — such 
 fascination lay in the idea of delivering his poor girl from 
 bondage that it deprived him of the critical faculty. He 
 could not resist the ex-lawyer's clerk, and entered the inn. 
 
 Here they sat down to the rum, which Melbury paid for 
 as a matter of course, Beaucock leaning back in the settle 
 with a legal gravity which would hardly allow him to be 
 conscious of the spirits before him, though they, neverthe- 
 less, disappeared with mysterious quickness. 
 
 How much of the exaggerated information on the then 
 new divorce laws which Beaucock imparted to his listener 
 was the result of ignorance, and how much of dupery, was 
 never ascertained. But he related such a plausible story 
 of the ease with which Grace could become a free woman 
 that her father was irradiated with the project, and though 
 he scarcely wetted his lips, Melbury never knew how he 
 came out of the inn, or when or where he mounted his gig 
 to pursue his way homeward. But home he found himself, 
 his brain having all the way seemed to ring sonorously as a 
 gong in the intensity of its stir. Before he had seen Grace, 
 he was accidentally met by Winterborne, who found his 
 face shining as if he had, like the lawgiver, conversed with 
 an angel. 
 
 He relinquished his horse, and took Winterborne by the 
 
262 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 arm to a heap of rendle-wood — as barked oak was here 
 called — which lay under a privet hedge. 
 
 "Giles," he said, when they had sat down upon the logs, 
 "there's a new law in the land! Grace can be free quite 
 easily. I only knew it by the merest accident. I might 
 not have found it out for the next ten years. She can get 
 rid of him — d'ye hear — get rid of him. Think of that, my 
 friend Giles!" 
 
 He related what he had learnt of the new legal remedy. 
 A subdued tremulousness about the mouth was all the re- 
 sponse that Winterborne made; and Melbury added, "My 
 boy, you shall have her yet — if you want her." His feelings 
 had gathered volume as he said this, and the articulate sound 
 of the old idea drowned his sight in mist. 
 
 "Are you sure — about this new law?" asked Winterborne, 
 so disquieted by a gigantic exultation that loomed alter- 
 nately with fearful doubt that he evaded the full acceptance 
 of Melbury's last statement. 
 
 Melbury said that he had no manner of doubt, for since 
 his talk with Beaucock it had come into his mind that he 
 had seen some time ago in the weekly paper, an allusion to 
 such a legal change; but having no interest in those des- 
 perate remedies at the moment, he had passed it over. 
 "But I'm not going to let the matter rest doubtful for a 
 single day," he continued. "I am going to London. Beau- 
 cock will go with me, and we shall get the best advice as 
 soon as we possibly can. Beaucock is a thorough lawyer 
 — nothing the matter with him but a fiery palate. I knew 
 him as the stay and refuge of Sherton in knots of law at one 
 time." 
 
 Winterborne's replies were of the vaguest. The new 
 possibility was almost unthinkable by him at the moment. 
 He was what was called at Hintock "a solid-going fellow ;" 
 he maintained his abeyant mood not from want of reci- 
 procity, but from a taciturn hesitancy, taught by life as he 
 knew it. 
 
 "But," continued the timber merchant, a temporary 
 crease or two of anxiety supplementing those already es- 
 tablished in his forehead by time and care, "Grace is not at 
 all well. Nothing constitutional, you know; but she has 
 been in a low, nervous state, ever since that night of fright. 
 I don't doubt but that she will be all right soon. I wonder 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 2G3 
 
 how she is this evening?" He rose with the words, as if he 
 had too long forgotten her personaHty in the excitement 
 of her previsioned career. 
 
 They had sat till the evening was beginning to dye the 
 garden 'brown, and now went toward Melbury's house, Giles 
 a few steps in the rear of his old friend, who was stimulated 
 by the enthusiasm of the moment to outstep the ordinary 
 walking of Winterborne. He felt shy of entering Grace's 
 presence as her reconstituted lover — which was how her 
 father's manner would be sure to present him — before defin- 
 ite information as to her future state was forthcoming; it 
 seemed too nearly like the act of those who rush in where 
 angels fear to tread. 
 
 A chill to counterbalance all the glowing promise of the 
 day was prompt enough in coming. No sooner had he fol- 
 lowed the timber-merchant in at the door than he heard 
 Grammer inform him that Mrs. Fitzpiers was still more 
 unwell than she had been in the morning. Old Dr. Jones 
 being in the neighborhood, they had called him in, and he 
 had instantly directed them to get her to bed. They were 
 not, however, to consider her illness serious — a feverish 
 nervous attack, the result of recent events, was what she 
 was suffering from — and she would doubtless be well in a 
 few days. 
 
 Winterborne, therefore, did not remain, and his hope of 
 seeing her that evening was disappointed. Even this ag- 
 gravation of her morning condition did not greatly depress 
 Melbury. He knew, he said, that his daughter's constitu- 
 tion was sound enough. It was only these domestic trou- 
 bles that were pulling her down. Once free, she would 
 be blooming again. Melbury diagnosed rightly, as parents 
 usually do. 
 
 He set out for London the next morning, Jones having 
 paid another visit and assured him that he might leave 
 home without uneasiness, especially on an errand of that 
 sort, which would the sooner put an end to her suspense. 
 
 The timber-merchant had been away only a day or two 
 when it was told in Hintock that Dr. Fitzpiers' hat had 
 been found in the wood. Later on in the afternoon the hat 
 was brought to Melbury's, and by a piece of ill-fortune, into 
 Grace's presence. It had doubtless lain in the wood ever 
 since his fall from the horse, but it looked so clean and unin- 
 
264 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 jured — the summer weather and leafy shelter having much 
 favored its preservation — ^that Grace could not believe it 
 had remained so long concealed. A very little of fact was 
 enough to set her fevered fancy at work at this juncture; 
 she thought him still in the neighborhood; she feared his 
 sudden appearance; and her nervous malady developed con- 
 sequences so grave that Dr. Jones began to look serious, 
 and the household was alarmed. 
 
 It was the beginning of June, and the cuckoo at this time 
 of the summer scarcely ceased his cry for more than two or 
 three hours during the night. The bird's note, so familiar 
 to her ears from infancy, was now absolute torture to the 
 poor girl. On the Friday following the Wednesday of Mel- 
 bury's departure, and the' day after the discovery of Fitz- 
 piers' hat, the cuckoo began at two o'clock in the morning 
 with a sudden cry from one of Melbury's apple-trees, not 
 three yards from the window of Grace's room. 
 
 "Oh — he is coming!" she cried, and in her terror sprung 
 clean from the bed out upon the floor. 
 
 These starts and frights continued till noon; and when 
 the doctor had arrived and had seen her, and had talked 
 with Mrs. Melbury, he sat down and meditated. That ever- 
 present terror it was indispensable to remove from her mind 
 at all hazards ; and he thought how this might be done. 
 
 Without saying a word to anybody in the house, or to 
 the disquieted Winterborne waiting in the lane below, Dr. 
 Jones went home and wrote to Mr. Melbury at the London 
 address he had obtained from his wife. The gist of his com- 
 munication was that Mrs. Fitzpiers should be assured as 
 soon as possible that steps were being taken to sever the 
 bond which was becoming a torture to her; that she would 
 soon be free; and was even then virtually so. "If you can 
 say it at once, it may be the means of averting much harm," 
 he said. "Write to herself; not to me." 
 
 On Saturday he drove over to Hintock, and assured her 
 with mysterious pacifications that in a day or two she might 
 expect to receive some assuring news. So it turned out. 
 When Sunday morning came there was a letter for Grace 
 from her father. It arrived at seven o'clock, the usual time 
 at which the toddling postman passed by Hintock; at eight 
 Grace awoke, having slept an hour or two, for a wonder, 
 and Mrs. Melbury brought up the letter. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 265 
 
 "Can you open it yourself?" said she. 
 
 "Oh, yes, yes !" said Grace, with feeble impatience. She 
 tore the envelope, unfolded the sheet, and read; when a 
 creeping blush tinctured her white neck and cheek. 
 
 Her father had exercised a bold discretion. He informed 
 her that she need have no further concern about Fitzpiers' 
 return; that she would shortly be a free woman; and there- 
 fore if she should desire to wed her old lover — which he 
 trusted was the case, since it was his own deep wish — she 
 would be in a position to do so. In this Melbury had not 
 written beyond his belief. But he very much stretched the 
 facts in adding that the legal formalities were practically 
 settled. The truth was that on the arrival of the doctor's 
 letter poor Melbury had been much agitated, and could with 
 difficulty be prevented by Beaucock from returning to her 
 bedside. What was the use of his rushing back to Hin- 
 tock? Beaucock had asked him. The only thing that could 
 do her any good was a breaking of the bond. Though he 
 had not as yet had an interview with the eminent solicitor 
 they were about to consult, he was on the point of seeing 
 him; and the case was clear enough. Thus the simple Mel- 
 bury, urged by his parental alarm at her danger, by the rep- 
 resentations of his companion, and by the doctor's letter, 
 had yielded, and sat down to tell her roundly that she was 
 virtually free. 
 
 "And you'd better write also to the gentleman," sug- 
 gested Beaucock, who, scenting game and the germ of a 
 large practice in the case, wished to commit Melbury to it 
 irretrievably; to effect which he knew that nothing would 
 be so potent as awakening the passion of Grace for Winter- 
 borne, so that her father might not have the lieart to with- 
 draw from his attempt to make her love legitimate when he 
 discovered that_ there were difficulties in the way. 
 
 The nervous, impatient Melbury was much pleased with 
 the idea of "starting them at once," as he called it. To put 
 his long-delayed reparative scheme in train had become a 
 passion with him now. He added to the letter addressed to 
 his daughter a passage hinting that she ought to begin to 
 encourage Winterborne, lest she should lose him altogether; 
 and he wrote to Giles that the path was virtually open for 
 him at last. Life was short, he declared; there were slips 
 betwixt the cup and the lip; h?r interest in him should be 
 
266 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 reawakened at once, that all might be ready when the good 
 time came for uniting them. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 At these warm words Winterborne was not less dazed 
 than he was moved in heart. The novelty of the avowal 
 rendered what it carried with it inapprehensible by him in 
 its entirety. 
 
 Only a few short months ago completely estranged from 
 this family — beholding Grace going to and fro in the dis- 
 tance, clothed with the alienating radiance of obvious su- 
 periority, the wife of the then popular and fashionable Fitz- 
 piers, hopelessly outside his social boundary down to so re- 
 cent a time that flowers then folded were hardly faded yet — 
 he was now asked by that jealously guarding father of hers 
 to take courage; to get himself ready for the day when he 
 should be able to claim her. 
 
 The old times came back to him in dim procession. How 
 he had been snubbed ; how Melbury had despised his Christ- 
 mas party; how that sweet, coy Grace herself had looked 
 down upon him and his household arrangeriients, and poor 
 Creedle's contrivances! 
 
 Well, he could not believe it. Surely the adamantine 
 barrier of marriage with another could not be pierced like 
 this! It did violence to custom. Yet a new law might do 
 anything. But was it all within the bounds of probability 
 that a woman who, over and above her own attainments, 
 liad been accustomed to those of a cultivated professional 
 man, could ever be the wife of such as he? 
 
 Since the date of his rejection he had almost grown to 
 see the reasonableness of that treatment. He had said to 
 himself again and again that her father was right; that the 
 poor churl Giles Winterborne would never have been able 
 to make such a dainty girl happy. Yet now that she had 
 stood in a position further removed from his own than at 
 first, he was asked to prepare to woo her. He was full of 
 doubt. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was not in him to show backwardness. 
 To act so promptly as Melbury desired him to act seemed, ■ 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 267 
 
 indeed, scarcely wise, because of the uncertainty ol events. 
 Giles knew nothing of legal procedure, but he did know 
 that for him to step up to Grace as a lover before the bond 
 which bound her was actually dissolved was simply an ex- 
 travagant dream of her father's overstrained mind. He 
 pitied Melbury for his almost childish enthusiasm, and saw 
 that the aging man must have suffered acutely to be weak- 
 ened to this unreasoning desire. 
 
 Winterborne was far too magnanimous to harbor any 
 cynical conjecture that the timber-merchant, in his intense 
 affection for Grace, was courting him now because that 
 young lady, when disunited, would be left in an anomalous 
 position, to escape which a bad husband was better than 
 none. He felt quite sure that his old friend was simply on 
 tenterhooks of anxiety to repair the almost irreparable error 
 of dividing two whom nature had striven to join together 
 in earlier days, and that in his ardor to do this he was ob- 
 livious of formalities. The cautious supervision of his past 
 years had overleaped itself at last. Hence, Winterborne 
 perceived that in this new beginning the necessary care not 
 to compromise Grace by too early advances must be exer- 
 cised by himself. 
 
 Perhaps Winterborne was not quite so ardent as hereto- 
 fore. There is lio such thing as a stationary love ; men are 
 either loving more or loving less. But Giles himself recog- 
 nized no decline in his sense of her dearness. If the flame 
 did indeed burn lower now than when he had fetched her 
 from Sherton at her last return from school, the marvel was 
 small. He had been laboring ever since his rejection and 
 her marriage to reduce his former passion to a docile friend- 
 ship, out of pure regard to its expediency ; and their separa- 
 tion may have helped him to a partial success. 
 
 A week and more passed, and there was no further news 
 of Melbury. But the effect of the intelligence he had al- 
 ready transmitted upon the elastic-nerved daughter of the 
 woods had been much what the old surgeon Jones had sur- 
 mised. It had soothed her perturbed spirit better than all 
 the opiates in the pharmacopoeia. She had slept unbro- 
 kenly a whole night and a day. The "new law" was to be a 
 mysterious, beneficent, godlike entity, lately descended upon 
 earth, that would make her as she once had been, without 
 trouble or annoyance. Her position fretted her, its abstract 
 
268 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 features rousing an aversion which was even greater than 
 her aversion to the personaHty of him who had caused it. 
 It was mortifying, productive of sHghts, undignified. Him 
 she could forget; her circumstances she had always with her. 
 
 She saw nothing of Winterborne during the days of her 
 recovery; and perhaps on that account her fancy wove about 
 him a more romantic tissue than it could have done if he had 
 stood before her with all the specks and flaws inseparable 
 from corporeity. He rose upon her memory as the fruit- 
 god and the wood-god in alternation ; sometimes leafy, and 
 smeared with green lichen, as she had seen him amongst 
 the sappy boughs of the plantations; sometimes cider- 
 stained, and with apple-pips in the hair of his arms, as she 
 had met him on his return from cider-making in White Hart 
 Vale, with his vats and presses beside him. In her secret 
 heart she almost approximated to her father's enthusiasm 
 in wishing to show Giles once for all how she still regarded 
 him. 
 
 The question whether the future would indeed bring them 
 together for life was a standing wonder with her. She 
 knew that it could not with any propriety do so just yet. 
 But reverently believing in her father's sound judgment and 
 knowledge, as good girls are wont to do, she remembered 
 what he had written about her giving a hint to Winterborne 
 lest there should be risk in delay, and her feelings were not 
 averse to such a step, so far as it could be done without 
 danger at this early stage of the proceedings. 
 
 From being a frail phantom of her former equable self 
 she returned in bounds to a Condition of passable philoso- 
 phy. She bloomed again in the face in the course of a few 
 days, and was well enough to go about as usual. One day 
 Mrs. Melbury proposed that for a change she should be 
 driven in the gig to Sherton Market, whither Melbury's 
 man was going on other errands. Grace had no business 
 whatever in Sherton; but it crossed her mind that Winter- 
 borne would probably be there, and this made the thought 
 of such a drive interesting. 
 
 On the way she saw nothing of him ; but when the horse 
 was walking slowly through the obstructions of Sheep 
 Street, she discerned the young man on the pavement. 
 She thought of that time when he had been standing under 
 his apple-tree on her return from school, and of the tender 
 
THE WOOpLANDERS. 269 
 
 Opportunity then missed through her fastidiousness. Her 
 heart rose in her throat. She abjured all such fastidious- 
 ness now. Nor did she forget the last occasion on which she 
 had beheld him in that town, making cider in the courtyard 
 of the Earl of Wessex Hotel, while she was figuring as a 
 fine lady in the balcony above. . 
 
 Grace directed the man to set her down there in the 
 midst, and immediately went up to her lover. Giles had 
 not before observed her, and his eyes now suppressedly 
 looked his pleasure, without the embarrassment that had 
 formerly marked him at such meetings. 
 
 When a few words had been spoken, she said, archly: 
 "I have nothing to do. Perhaps you are deeply engaged?" 
 
 "I? Not a bit. My business now at the best of times 
 is small, I am sorry to say." 
 
 "Well, then, I am going into the Abbey. Come along 
 with me." 
 
 The proposition had suggested itself as a quick escape 
 from publicity, for many eyes were regarding her. She had 
 hoped that sufficient time had elapsed for the extinction of 
 curiosity; but it was quite otherwise. The people looked at 
 her with tender interest as the deserted girl-wife — without 
 obtrusiveness, and without vulgarity; but she was ill pre- 
 pared for scrutiny in any shape. 
 
 They walked about the Abbey aisles, and presently sat 
 down. Not a soul was in the building save themselves. 
 She regarded a stained window, with her head sideways, 
 and tentatively asked him if he remembered the last time 
 they were in that town alone. 
 
 He remembered it perfectly, and remarked: "You were 
 a proud miss then, "and as dainty as you were high. Per- 
 haps you are now?" 
 
 Grace slowly shook her head. "Aiifliction has taken all 
 that out of me," she answered, impressively. "Perhaps I 
 am too far the other way now." As there was something 
 lurking in this that she could not explain, she added, so 
 quickly as not to allow him time to think of it, "Has my 
 father written to you at all?" 
 
 "Yes," said Winterborne. 
 
 She glanced, ponderingly, up at him. "Not about me?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 His mouth was lined with character}', which told her that 
 
270 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 he had been bidden to take the hint as to the future which 
 she had been bidden to give. The unexpected discovery 
 sent a scarlet pulsation through Grace for the moment. 
 However, it was only Giles who stood there, of whom she 
 had no fear; and her self-possession returned. 
 
 "He said I was to sound .you with a view to — what you 
 will understand if you care to," continued Winterborne, in 
 a low voice. Having been put on this track by herself, he 
 was not disposed to abandon it in a hurry. 
 
 They had been children together, and there was between 
 them that familiarity as to personal afifairs which only such 
 acquaintanceship can give. "You know, Giles," she an- 
 swered, speaking in a very practical tone, "that that is all 
 very well ; but I am in a very anomalous position at present, 
 and I cannot say anything to the point about such things as 
 those." 
 
 "No?" he said, with a stray air as regarded the subject. 
 He was looking at her with a curious consciousness of dis- 
 covery. He had not been imagining that their renewed in- 
 tercourse would show her to him thus. For the first time 
 he realized an unexpectedness in her which, after all, should 
 not have been unexpected. She before him was not the 
 girl Grace Melbury whom he had used to know. Of course 
 he might easily have prefigured as much; but it had never 
 occurred to him. She was a woman who had been mar- 
 ried ; she had moved on, and without having lost her girlish 
 modesty, she had lost her girlish shyness. The inevitable 
 change, though known to him, had not been heeded, and it 
 struck him into a momentary fixity. The truth was that he 
 had never come into close comradeship with her since 
 her engagement to Fitzpiers, with the brief exception of the 
 evening encounter on Rubdown Hill, when she met him 
 with his cider apparatus ; and that interview had been of too 
 cursory a kind for insight. 
 
 Winterborne had advanced too. He could criticise her. 
 Time had been when to criticise a single trait in Grace Mel- 
 bury would have lain as far beyond his power as to criticise 
 a deity. This thing was sure ; it was a new woman in many 
 ways whom he had come out to see; a creature of more ideas, 
 more dignity, and, above all, more assurance, than the orig- 
 inal Grace had been capable of. He could not at first de- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 271 
 
 cide whether he were pleased or displeased at this. But 
 upon the whole the novelty attracted him. 
 
 She was so sweet and sensitive that she feared his silence 
 betokened something in his brain of the nature of an enemy 
 to her. "What are you thinking of that makes those lines 
 come in your forehead?" she asked. "I did not mean to 
 offend you by speaking of the time being premature as yet." 
 
 Touched by the genuine loving-kindness which had lain 
 at the foundation of these words, and much moved, Win- 
 terborne turned his face aside, as he took her by the hand. 
 He was grieved that he had criticised her. 
 
 "You are very good, dear Grace," he said, in a low voice. 
 "You are better, much better, than you used to be!" 
 
 "How?" 
 
 He could not very well tell her how, and said, with an 
 evasive smile, "You are prettier;" which was not what he 
 really had meant. He then remained still holding her right 
 hand in his own right, so that they faced in opposite ways; 
 and, as he did not let go, she ventured upon a tender remon- 
 strance. 
 
 "I think we have gone as far as we ought to go at present 
 — and far enough to satisfy my poor father that we are the 
 same as ever. You see, Giles, my case is not settled yet, 
 and if — oh, suppose I never get free — ^there should be any 
 hitch or informality !" 
 
 She drew a catching breath, and turned pale. The dia- 
 logue had been affectionate comedy up to this point. The 
 gloomy atmosphere of the past, and the still gloomy horizon 
 of the present, had been for the interval forgotten. Now, 
 the whole environment came back, the due balance of shade 
 among the light was restored. 
 
 "It is sure to be all right, I trust," she resumed, in un- 
 easy accents. "What did my father say the solicitor had told 
 him?" 
 
 "Oh — that all is sure enough. The case is so clear — noth- 
 ing could be clearer. But the legal part is not yet quite 
 done and finished, as is natural." 
 
 "Oh, no — of course not," she said, sunk in meek thought. 
 "But father said it was almost — did he not? Do you know 
 anything about the new law that makes these things so 
 easy?" 
 
 "Nothing — except the general fact that it enables ill-as- 
 
272 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 sorted husbands and wives to part in a way they could not 
 formerly do without an Act of Parliament." 
 
 "Have you to sign a paper, or swear anjrthing? Is it 
 something like that?" 
 
 "Yes, I believe so." 
 
 "How long has it been introduced?" 
 
 "About six months or a year, the lawyer said, I think." 
 
 To hear these two poor Arcadian innocents talk of im- 
 perial law would have made a humane person weep who 
 should have known what a dangerous structure they were 
 building up on their supposed knowledge. They remained 
 in thought like children in the presence of the incompre- 
 hensible. 
 
 "Giles," she said at last, "it makes me quite weary when I 
 think how serious my situation is, or has been. Shall we 
 not go out from here now, as it may seem rather fast of me 
 — our being so long together, I mean — if anybody were to 
 see us! I am almost sure," she added, uncertainly, "that I 
 ought not to let you hold my hand yet, knowing that the 
 documents — or whatever it may be — ^liave not been signed; 
 so that I — am still as married as ever — or almost. My dear 
 father has forgotten himself. Not that I feel morally bound 
 to any one else, after what has taken place — no woman of 
 spirit could — now, too, that several months have passed. 
 But I wish to keep the proprieties as well as I can." 
 
 "Yes, yes. Still, your father reminds us that life is short. 
 I myself feel that it is ; that is why I wished to understand 
 you in this that we have begun. At times, dear Grace, since 
 receiving your father's letter, I am as uneasy and fearful 
 as a child at what he said. If one of us were to die before 
 the formal signing and sealing that is to release you have 
 been done — if we should drop out of the world and never 
 have made the most of this little short, but real opportunity, 
 I should think to myself, as I sunk down dying, 'Would to 
 my God that I had spoken out my whole heart — given her 
 one poor little kiss when I had the chance to give it! But 
 I never did, although she had promised to be mine some 
 day; and now I never can.' That's what I should think." 
 
 She had begun by watching the words from his lips with 
 a mournful regard, as though their passage were visible; 
 but as he went on she dropped her glance. "Yes," she said, 
 "I have thought that too. And, because I have thought it, 
 I bx no means meant, in speaking of the proprieties, to be 
 
THE WOODLANDERS; 273 
 
 reserved and cold to you who loved me so long ago, or to 
 ■ hurt your heart as I used to do at that thoughtless time. 
 
 Oh, not at all, indeed! But — ought I to allow you 
 
 Oh, it is too quick — surely!" Her eyes filled with tears of 
 bewildered, alarmed emotion. 
 
 Winterborne was too straightforward to influence her 
 further against her better judgment. "Yes — I suppose it 
 is," he said, repentantly. "I'll wait till all is settled. What 
 did your father say in that last letter?" 
 
 He meant about his progress with the petition; but she, 
 mistaking him, frankly spoke of the personal part. "He 
 said — what I have implied. Should I tell more plainly?" 
 
 "Oh, no — don't, if it is a secret." 
 
 "Not at all. I will tell every word, straight out, Giles, if 
 you wish. He said I was to encourage you. There. But 
 I cannot obey him further to-day. Come, let us go now." 
 She gently slid her hand from his, and went in front of him 
 out of the Abbey. 
 
 "I was thinking of getting some dinner," said Winter- 
 borne, changing to the prosaic as they walked. "And you 
 too must require something. Do let me take you to a place 
 I know." 
 
 Grace was almost without a friend in the world outside 
 her father's house; her life with Fitzpiers had brought her 
 no society; had sometimes, indeed, brought her deeper soli- 
 tude and inconsideration than any she had ever known be- 
 fore. Hence it was a treat to her to find herself again the 
 object of thoughtful care. But she questioned if to go pub- 
 licly to dine with Giles Winterborne were not a proposal 
 due rather to his unsophistication than to his indiscretion. 
 She said, gently, that she would much prefer his ordering 
 her lunch at some place, and then coming to tell her it was 
 ready, while she remained in the Abbey porch. Giles saw 
 her secret reasoning, thought how hopelessly blind to pro- 
 priety he was beside her, and went to do as she wished. 
 
 He was not absent more than ten minutes, and found 
 Grace where he had left her. "It will be quite ready by 
 the time you get there," he said, and told her the name of 
 the inn at which the meal had been ordered, which was one 
 that she had never heard of. 
 
 "I'll find it by inquiry," said Grace, setting out. 
 
 "And shall I see you again?" 
 
 18 ■ ---^ 
 
274 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "Oh, yes — come to me there. It will not be like going 
 together. I shall want you to find my father's man and the 
 gig for me." 
 
 He waited on some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, 
 till he thought her lunch ended, and that he might fairly take 
 advantage of her invitation to start her on her way home. 
 He went straight to the Three Tuns — a little tavern in a 
 side street; scrupulously clean, but humble and inexpensive. 
 On his way he had an occasional misgiving as to whether 
 the place had been elegant enough for her; and as soon as 
 he entered it and saw her ensconced there, he perceived that 
 he had blundered. 
 
 Grace was seated in the only dining-room that the sim- 
 ple old hostelry could boast of, which was also a general 
 parlor on market days ; a long, low apartment, with a sand- 
 ed floor herring-boned with a broom ; a wide, red-curtained 
 window to the street, and another to the garden. Grace had 
 retreated to the end of the room looking out upon the lat- 
 ter, the front part being full of a mixed company which had 
 dropped in since he was there. 
 
 She was in a mood of the greatest depression. On ar- 
 riving, and seeing what the tavern was like, she had been 
 taken by surprise; but having gone too far to retreat, she 
 had heroically entered and sat down on the well-scrubbed 
 settle, opposite the narrow table, with its knives and steel 
 forks, tin pepper-boxes, blue salt-cellars, and posters ad- 
 vertising the sale of bullocks against the wall. The last 
 time that she had taken any meal in a public place it had 
 been with Fitzpiers at the grand new Earl of Wessex Hotel 
 in that town, after a two months' roaming and sojourning 
 at the gigantic hotels of the Continent. How could she 
 have expected any other kind of accommodation in present 
 circumstances than such as Giles had provided? And yet 
 how unprepared she was for this change! The tastes that 
 she had acquired from Fitzpiers had been imbibed so sub- 
 tly that she hardly knew she possessed them till confronted 
 by this contrast. The elegant Fitzpiers, in fact, at that very 
 moment, owed a long bill at the above-mentioned hotel for 
 the luxurious style in which he used to put her up there 
 whenever they drove to Sherton. But such is social senti- 
 ment that she had been quite comfortable under those debt- 
 impending conditions, while she felt humiliated by her pres- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 275 
 
 ent situation, which Winterbortve had paid for honestly on 
 the nail. 
 
 He had noticed in a moment that she shrunk from her 
 position, and all his pleasure was gone. It was the same 
 susceptibility over again which had spoiled his Christmas 
 party long ago. 
 
 But he did not know that this recrudescence was only the 
 casual result of Grace's apprenticeship to what she was de- 
 termined to learn in spite of it — a consequence of one of 
 those sudden surprises which confront everybody bent upon 
 turning over a new leaf. She had finished her lunch, which 
 he saw had been a very mincing performance, and he 
 brought her out of the house as soon as he could. 
 
 "Now," he said, with great sad eyes, "you have not fin- 
 ished at all well, I know. Come round to the Earl of Wes- 
 sex. I'll order a tea there. I did not remember that what 
 was good enough for me was not good enough for you." 
 
 Her face faded into an aspect of deep distress when she 
 saw what had happened. "Oh, no, Giles," she said, with 
 extreme pathos; "certainly not. Why do you — say that, 
 when you know better? You ever will misunderstand me." 
 
 "Indeed, that's not so, Mrs. Fitzpiers. Can you deny that 
 you felt out of place at the Three Tuns?" 
 
 "I don't know. Well, since you make me speak, I do 
 not deny it." 
 
 "And yet I have felt at home there these twenty years. 
 Your husband used always to take you to the Earl of Wes- 
 sex, did he not?" 
 
 "Yes," she reluctantly admitted. How could she explain 
 in the street of a market town that it was her superficial 
 and transitory taste which had been ofifended, and not her 
 nature or her affection? Fortunately, or unfortunately, at 
 that moment they saw Melbury's man driving vacantly along 
 the street in search of her, the hour having passed at which 
 he had been told to take her up. Winterborne hailed him, 
 and she was powerless then to prolong the discourse. She 
 entered the vehicle sadly, and the horse trotted away. 
 
278 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 All night did Winterborne think over that unsatisfactory 
 ending of a pleasant time, forgetting the pleasant time itself.- 
 He feared anew that they could never be happy together, 
 even should she be free to choose him. She was accom- 
 plished; he was unrefined. It was the original difficulty, 
 which he was too sensitive to recklessly ignore, as some 
 men would have done in his place. 
 
 He was one of those silent, unobtrusive beings who want 
 little from others in the way of favor or condescension, and 
 perhaps on that very account scrutinize those others' be- 
 havior too closely. He was not versatile, but one in whom 
 a hope or belief which had once had its rise, meridian, and 
 decline seldom again exactly recurred, as in the breasts of 
 more sanguine mortals. He had once worshiped her, laid 
 out his life to suit her, wooed her, and lost her. Though 
 it was with almost the same zest, it was with not quite the 
 same hope, that he had begun to tread the old tracks again, 
 and allowed himself to be so charmed with her that day. 
 
 Move another step toward her he would not. He would 
 even repulse her — as a tribute to conscience. It would be 
 sheer sin to let her prepare a pitfall for her happiness not 
 much smaller than the first by inveigling her into a union 
 with such as he. Her poor father was now blind to these 
 subtleties, which he had formerly beheld as in noontide 
 light. It was his own duty to declare them — for her dear 
 sake. 
 
 Grace, too, had a very uncomfortable night, and her so- 
 licitous embarrassment was not lessened the next morning 
 when another letter from her fattier was put into her hands. 
 Its tenor was an intenser strain of the one that had preceded 
 it. After stating how extremely glad he was to hear that 
 she was better, and able to get out of doors, he went on : 
 
 "This is a wearisome business, the solicitor we have 
 come to see being out of town. I do not know when I shall 
 get home. My great anxiety in this delay is still lest you 
 should lose Giles Winterborne. I cannot rest at night for 
 thinking that while our business is hanging fire he may be- 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 277 
 
 come estranged, or go away from the neighborhood. I have 
 set my heart upon seeing him your husband, if you ever have 
 another. Do, then, Grace, give him some temporary en- 
 couragement, even though it is over-early. For when I 
 consider the past I do think God will forgive me and you 
 for being a Httle forward. I have another reason for this, 
 my dear. I feel myself going rapidly down-hill, and late 
 affairs have still further helped me that way. And until 
 this thing is done I cannot rest in peace." 
 
 He added a postscript: 
 
 "I have just heard that the solicitor is to be seen to-mor- 
 row. Possibly, therefore, I shall return in the evening after 
 you get this." 
 
 The paternal longing ran on all-fours with her own de- 
 sire; and yet in forwarding it yesterday she had been on 
 the brink of giving ofifense. While craving to be a coun- 
 try girl again, just as her father requested, to put off the 
 old Eve, the fastidious miss — or rather madam — completely, 
 her first attempt had been beaten by the unexpected vitality 
 of that fastidiousness. Her father on returning and seeing 
 the trifling coolness of Giles would be sure to say that the 
 same perversity which had led her to make difficulties about 
 marrying Fitzpiers was now prompting her to blow hot and 
 cold with poor Winterborne. 
 
 If the latter had been the most subtle hand at touching 
 the stops of her delicate soul instead of one who had just 
 bound himself to let her drift away from him again (if she 
 would) on the wind of her estranging education, he could 
 not have acted more seductively than he did that day. He 
 chanced to be superintending some temporary work in a 
 field opposite her windows.. She could not discover what 
 he was doing, but she read his mood keenly and truly; she 
 could see in his coming and going an air of determined 
 abandonment of the whole landscape that lay in her direc- 
 tion. 
 
 Oh, how she longed to make it up with him! Her father 
 coming in the evening — ^which meant, she supposed, that 
 all formalities would be in train, her marriage virtually 
 annulled, and she be free to be won again — ^Iiow could she 
 look him in the face if he should see them estranged thus? 
 
 It was a fair green evening in June. She was seated in 
 the garden, in the rustic chair which stood under the laurel 
 
278 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 bushes, made of peeled oak branches that came to Mel- 
 bury's premises as refuse after barking-time. The mass 
 of full-juiced leafage cm the heights around her was just 
 swayed into faint gestures by a nearly spent wind which, 
 even in its enfeebled state, did not reach her shelter. All 
 day she had expected Giles to call — ^to inquire how she had 
 got home, or something or other; but he had not come. 
 And he still tantalized her by going across that orchard 
 opposite. She could see him as she sat. 
 
 A slight diversion was presently created by Creedle bring- 
 ing him a letter. She knew from this that Creedle had just 
 come from Sherton, and had called as usual at the postoffice 
 for anything that had arrived by the afternoon post, of 
 which there was no delivery at Hintock. She pondered on 
 what the letter might contain — particularly whether it were 
 a second refresher for Winterborne from her father, like 
 her own of the morning. 
 
 But it appeared to have no bearing upon herself whatever. 
 Giles read its contents, and almost immediately turned away 
 to a gap in the hedge of the orchard — if that could be called 
 a hedge which, owing to the drippings of the trees, was lit- 
 tle more than a bank with a bush upon it here and there. 
 He entered the plantation, and was no doubt going that 
 way homeward to the mysterious hut that he occupied on 
 the other side of the woodland. 
 
 The sad sands were running swiftly through Time's glass; 
 she had often felt it in these latter days; and, like Giles, 
 she felt it doubly now after the solemn and pathetic remind- 
 er in her father's communication. Her freshness would 
 pass, the long-suffering devotion of Giles might suddenly 
 end — ^might end that very hour. Men were so strange. The 
 thought took away from her all her former reticence, and 
 made her action bold. She started from her seat. If the 
 little breach, quarrel, or whatever it might be called, of yes- 
 terday was to be healed up, it must be done by her on the 
 instant. She crossed into the orchard and clambered 
 through the gap after Giles, just as he was diminishing to 
 a faun-like figure under the green canopy and over the 
 brown floor. 
 
 Grace had been wrong — ^very far wrong — in assuming 
 that the letter had no reference to herself because Giles 
 had turned away into the wood after its perusal. It was, sad 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 279 
 
 to say, because the missive had so much reference to her- 
 self that he had thus turned away. He feared that his 
 grieved discomfiture might be observed. The letter was 
 from Beaucock, written a few hours later than Melbury's 
 to his daughter. It announced failure. 
 
 Giles had once done that thriftless man a good turn, and 
 now was the moment when Beaucock had chosen to re- 
 member it, in his own way. During his absence in town 
 with Melbury, the lawyer's clerk had naturally heard a great 
 deal of the timber merchant's family scheme of justice to 
 Giles, and his communication was to inform Winterborne at 
 the earliest possible moment that their attempt had failed, in 
 order that the young man should not place himself in a 
 false position toward Grace in the belief of its coming suc- 
 cess. The news was, in sum, that Fitzpiers' conduct had not 
 been sufficiently cruel to Grace to enable her to snap the 
 bond. She was apparently doomed to be his wife till the 
 end of the chapter. 
 
 Winterborne quite forgot his superficial dififerences with 
 the poor girl under the warm rush of deep and distracting 
 love for her which the almost tragical information engen- 
 dered. 
 
 To renounce her forever — that was then the end of it for 
 him, after all. There was no longer any question about 
 suitability, or room for tiffs on petty tastes. The curtain 
 had fallen again between them. She could not be his. The 
 cruelty of their late revived hope was now terrible. How 
 could they all have been so simple as to suppose this thing 
 could be done? 
 
 It was at this moment that, hearing some one coming be- 
 hind him, he turned and saw her hastening on between the 
 thickets. He perceived in an instant that she did not know 
 the blighting news. 
 
 "Giles, why didn't you come across to me?" she asked, 
 with arch reproach. "Didn't you see me sitting there ever 
 so long?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," he said, in unprepared extemporized tones, for 
 her unexpected presence caught him without the slightest 
 plan of behavior in the conjuncture. His manner made her 
 think that she had been too chiding in her speech; and 
 a mild scarlet wave passed over her as she resolved to soften 
 it 
 
280 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "I have had another letter from my father," she hastened 
 to continue. "He thinks he may come home this evening. 
 And — in view of his hopes — it will grieve him if there is 
 any little difference between us, Giles." 
 
 "There is none," he said, sadly regarding her from the 
 face downward as he pondered how to lay the cruel truth 
 bare. 
 
 "Still — I fear you have not quite forgiven me about my 
 being uncomfortable at the inn." 
 
 "I have, Grace, I'm sure." 
 
 "But you speak in quite an unhappy way," she retvirned, 
 coming up close to him with the most winning of the many 
 pretty airs that appertained to her. "Don't you think you 
 will ever be happy, Giles?" 
 
 He did not reply for some instants. "When the sun 
 shines on the north front of Sherton Abbey — that's when 
 my happiness will come to me!" said he, staring as it were 
 into the earth. 
 
 "But — ^then that means that there is something more than 
 my offending you in not liking the Three Tuns. If it is 
 because I — did not like to let you kiss me in the Abbey — 
 well, you know, Giles, that it was not on account of my 
 cold feelings, but because I did certainly, just then, think 
 it was rather premature, in spite of my poor father. That 
 was the true reason — ^the sole one. But I do not want to 
 be hard — God knows I do not," she said, her voice fluctu- 
 ating. "And perhaps — as I am on the verge of freedom — 
 I am not right, after all, in thinking there is any harm in 
 your kissing me." 
 
 "Oh, God!" said Winterborne, within himself. His head 
 was turned askance as he still resolutely regarded the 
 ground. For the last several minutes he had seen this great 
 temptation approaching him in regular siege; and now it 
 had come. The wrong, the social sin, of now taking advan- 
 tage of the offer of her lips, had a magnitude, in the eyes 
 of one whose life had been so primitive, so ruled by purest 
 household laws as Giles', which can hardly be explained. 
 
 "Did you say anything?" she asked, timidly. 
 
 "Oh, no— only that " 
 
 "You mean that it must be settled, since my father is 
 coming home?" she said, gladly. 
 
 Winterborne, though fighting valiantly against himself 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 281 
 
 all this while — ^though he would have protected Grace's 
 good repute as the apple of his eye, was a man; and as 
 Desdemona said men are not gods. In face of the agoniz- 
 ing seductiveness shown by her, in her unenlightened 
 school-girl simplicity about the laws and ordinances, he 
 betrayed a man's weakness. Since it was so — since it had 
 come to this, that Grace, deeming herself free to do it, was 
 virtually asking him to demonstrate that he loved her — 
 since he could demonstrate it only too truly — since life was 
 short and love was strong — he gave way to the temptation, 
 notwithstanding that he perfectly well knew her to be wed- 
 ded irrevocably to Fitzpiers. Indeed, he cared for nothing 
 past or future, simply accepting the present and what it 
 brought, desiring once in his life to clasp in his arms her 
 he had watched over and loved so long. 
 
 She started back suddenly from nis embrace, influenced 
 by a sort of inspiration. "Oh, I suppose," she said, "that 
 I am really free? — ^that this is right? Is there really a new 
 law? Father cannot have been too sanguine in saying " 
 
 He did not answer, and a moment afterward Grace burst 
 into tears in spite of herself. "Oh, why does not my father 
 come home and explain," she sobbed, "and let me know 
 clearly what I am? It is too trying, this, to ask me to — 
 and then to leave me so long in so vague a state that I do 
 not know what to do, and perhaps do wrong!" 
 
 Winterborne felt like a very Cain, over and above his 
 previous sorrow. How he had sinned against her in not 
 telling her what he knew ! He turned aside ; the feeling of 
 his cruelty mounted higher and higher. How could he 
 have dreamt of kissing her? He could hardly refrain from 
 tears. Surely nothing more pitiable had ever been known 
 than the condition of this poor young thing, now as hereto- 
 fore the victim of her father's well-meant but blundering 
 policy. 
 
 Even in the hour of Melbury's greatest assurance Winter- 
 borne had harbored a suspicion that no law, new or old, 
 could undo Grace's marriage without her appearance in 
 public; though he was not sufficiently sure of whit might 
 have been enacted to destroy by his own words her pleas- 
 ing idea that a mere dash of the pen, on her father's testi- 
 mony, was going to be sufficient. But he had never sus- 
 pected the sad fact that the position was irremediable. 
 
282 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 Poor Grace, perhaps feeling that she had indulged in too 
 much fluster for a mere kiss, calmed herself at finding how 
 grave he was. "I am glad we are friends again anyhow," 
 she said, smiling through her tears. "Giles, if you had only 
 shown half the boldness before I married that you show 
 now, you would have carried me off for your own first in- 
 stead of second. If we do marry, I hope you will never 
 think badly of me for encouraging you a little, but my 
 father is so impatient, you know, as his years and infirmities 
 increase, that he will wish to see us a little advanced when 
 he comes. That is my only excuse." 
 
 To Winterborne all this was sadder than it was sweet. 
 How could she so trust her father's conjectures? He did 
 not know how to tell her the truth and shame himself. And 
 yet he felt that it must be done. "We may have been 
 wrong," he began, almost fearfully, "in supposing that it 
 can all be carried out whilst we stay here at Hintock. I 
 am not sure but that people may have to appear in a public 
 court even under the new act; and if there should be any 
 difficulty, and we cannot marry after all " 
 
 Her cheeks became slowly bloodless. "Oh, Giles," she 
 said, grasping his arm, "you have heard something! What 
 — cannot my father conclude it there and now? Surely he 
 has done it? Oh, Giles, Giles, don't deceive me. What 
 terrible position am I in?" 
 
 He could not tell her, try as he would. The sense of her 
 implicit trust in his honor absolutely disabled him. "I can- 
 not inform you," he murmured, his voice as husky as that 
 of the leaves under foot. "Your father will soon be here. 
 Then we shall know. I will take you home." 
 
 Inexpressibly dear as she was to him, he offered her his 
 arm with the most reserved air, as he added, correctingly : 
 "I will take you, at any rate, into the drive." 
 
 Thus they walked on together, Grace vibrating between 
 happiness and misgiving. It was only a few minutes' walk 
 to where the drive ran, and they had hardly descended into 
 it when they heard a voice behind them cry: "Take out 
 that arm!" 
 
 For a moment they did not heed, and the voice repeated, 
 more loudly and hoarsely : 
 
 "Take out that arm!" 
 
 It was Melbur^y's. He h^d returned $poner than they 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 283 
 
 expected, and now came up to them. Grace's hand had 
 been withdrawn Hke lightning on her hearing the second 
 command. "I don't blame you, I don't blame you," he 
 said, in the weary cadence of one broken down with scourg- 
 ings. "But you two must walk together no more — I have 
 been surprised — I have been cruelly deceived — Giles, don't 
 say anything to me, but go away!" 
 
 He was evidently not aware that Winterborne had 
 known the truth before he brought it; and Giles would not 
 stay to discuss it with him then. When the young man 
 had gone, Melbury took his daughter indoors to the room 
 he used as his office. There he sat down, and bent over 
 the slope of the bureau, her bewildered gaze fixed upon 
 him. 
 
 When Melbury had recovered a little he said: "You are 
 now, as ever, Fitzpiers' wife. I was deluded. He has not 
 done you enough harm. You are still subject to his beck 
 and call." 
 
 "Then let it be, and never mind, father," she said with 
 dignified sorrow. "I can bear it. It is your trouble that 
 grieves me most." She stooped over him, and put her arm 
 round his neck, which distressed Melbury still more. "I 
 don't mind at all what comes to me," Grace continued — 
 "whose wife I am, or whose I am not. I do love Giles; I 
 cannot help that; and I have gone further with him than 
 I should have done if I had known exactly how things 
 were. But I do not reproach you." 
 
 "Then Giles did not tell you?" said Melbury. 
 
 "No," said she. "He could not have known it. His be- 
 havior to me proved that he did not know." 
 
 Her father said nothing more, and Grace went away to 
 the solitude of her chamber. 
 
 Her heavy disquietude had many shapes, and for a time 
 she put aside the dominant fact to think of her too free 
 conduct toward Giles. His love-making had been brief as 
 it was sweet ; but would he on reflection contemn her for . 
 forwardness? How could she have been so simple as to sup- 
 pose she was in a position to behave as she had done ! Thus 
 she mentally blamed her ignorance; and yet in the center 
 of her heart she blessed it a little for what i\ had momentar- 
 ily brought her, 
 
284 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 Life among the people involved in these events seemed 
 to be suppressed and hide-bound for awhile. Grace seldom 
 showed herself outside the house, never outside the garden ; 
 for she feared she might encounter Giles Winterborne; and 
 that she could not bear. 
 
 This pensive intramural existence of the self-constituted 
 nun appeared likely to continue for an indefinite time. She 
 had learned that there was one possibility in which her 
 formerly imagined position might become real, and only 
 one; that her husband's absence should continue long 
 enough to amount to positive desertion. But she never al- 
 lowed her mind to dwell much upon the thought; still less 
 did she deliberately hope for such a result. Her regard 
 for Winterborne had been rarefied by the shock which fol- 
 lowed its avowal into an ethereal emotion that had little to 
 do with living and doing. 
 
 As for Giles, he was lying — or rather sitting — ill at his 
 hut. A feverish indisposition which had been hanging about 
 him for some time, the result of a chill caught the previous 
 winter, seemed to acquire virulence with the prostration 
 of his hopes. But not a soul knew of his languor, and he 
 did not tiiink the case serious enough to send for a medical 
 man. After a few days he was better again, and crept about 
 his home in a great coat, attending to his simple wants 
 as usual with his own hands. So matters stood when the 
 limpid inertion of Grace's pool-like existence was disturbed 
 as by a geyser. She received a letter from Fitzpiers. 
 
 Such a terrible letter it was in its import, though couched 
 in the gentlest language. In his absence Grace had grown 
 to regard him with toleration, and her relation to him with 
 equanimity, till she had almost forgotten how trying his 
 presence would be. He wrote briefly and unaffectedly; he 
 made no excuses, but informed her that he was living quite 
 alone, and had been led to think that they ought to be to- 
 gether, if she would make up her mind to forgive him. He 
 therefore proposed to cross the Channel to Budmouth by 
 the steamer on a day he named, which she found to be three 
 days after the time of her present reading. 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 285 
 
 He said that he could not come to Hintock for obvious 
 reasons, which her father would understand even better 
 than herself. As the only alternative, she was to be on the 
 quay to meet the steamer when it arrived from the opposite 
 coast, probably about half an hour before midnight, bring- 
 ing with her any luggage she might require; join him there, 
 and pass with him into the twin vessel, which left imme- 
 diately the other entered the harbor; returning thus with 
 him to his Continental dwelling-place, which he did not 
 name. He had no intention of showing himself on land at 
 all. 
 
 The troubled Grace took the letter to her father, who now 
 continued for long hours by the fireless summer chimney- 
 corner, as if he thought it were winter, the pitcher of cider 
 standing beside him, mostly untasted, and coated with a 
 film of dust. After reading it he looked up. 
 
 "You sha'n't go," said he. 
 
 "I had felt I would not," she answered. "But I did not 
 know what you would say." 
 
 "If he comes and lives in England, not too near here, and 
 in a respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am 
 not sure that I'll oppose him in wishing it," muttered Mel- 
 bury. "I'd stint myself to keep you both in a genteel and 
 seemly style. But go abroad you never shall with my con- 
 sent." 
 
 There the question rested that day. Grace was unable 
 to reply to her husband in the absence of an address, and 
 the morrow came, and the next day, and the evening on 
 which he had requested her to meet him. Throughout the 
 whole of it she remained within the four walls of her room. 
 
 The sense of her harassment, carking doubt of what 
 might be impending, hung like a cowl of blackness over 
 the Melbury household. They spoke almost in whispers, 
 and wondered what Fitzpiers would do next. It was the 
 hope of every one that, finding she did not arrive, he would 
 return again to France; and as for Grace, she was willing 
 to write to him on the most friendly terms if he would only 
 keep away. 
 
 The night passed, Grace lying tense and wide-awake, 
 and her relatives, in great part, hkewise. When they met 
 the next morning they were pale and anxious, though 
 neither speaking of the subject which occupied all their 
 
286 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 thoughts. The day passed as quietly as the previous ones, 
 and she began to think that in the rank caprice of hi? moods 
 he had abandoned the idea of getting her to join him as 
 quickly as it was formed. All on a sudden, some person 
 who had just come from Sherton entered the house with the 
 news that Mr. Fitzpiers was on his way home to Hintock. 
 He had been seen hiring a carriage at the Earl of Wessex 
 Hotel. 
 
 Her father and Grace were both present when the intelli- 
 gence was announced. 
 
 "Now," said Melbury, "we must make the best of what 
 has been a very bad matter. The man is repenting; the 
 partner of his shame, I hear, is gone away from him to 
 Switzerland, so that chapter of his life is probably over. 
 If he chooses to make a home for ye, I think you should 
 not say him nay, Grace. Certainly he cannot very well live 
 at Hintock without a blow to his pride; but if he can bear 
 that, and likes Hintock best, why there's the empty wing 
 of the house as it was before." 
 
 "Oh, father!" said Grace, turning white with dismay. 
 
 "Why not?" said he, a little of his former doggedness 
 returning. He was, in truth, disposed to somewhat more 
 leniency toward her husband just now than he had shown 
 formerly, from a conviction that he had treated him over- 
 roughly in his anger. "Surely it is the most respectable 
 thing to do?" he continued. "I don't like this state that 
 you are in — neither married nor single. It hurts me, and 
 it hurts you, and it will always be remembered against us 
 in Hintock. There has never been any scandal like it in the 
 family before." 
 
 "He will be here in less than an hour," murmured Grace. 
 The twilight of the room prevented her father seeing the 
 despondent misery of her face. The one intolerable condi- 
 tion, the condition she had deprecated above all others, 
 was that of Fitzpiers' reinstatement there. "Oh, I won't — 
 I won't see him," she said, sinking down. She was almost 
 hysterical. 
 
 "Try if you cannot," he returned moodily. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I will, I will," she went on, inconsequently. "I'll 
 try"; and jumping up suddenly, she left the room. 
 
 In the darkness of the apartment to which she flew noth- 
 ing could have been seen during the next half hour; but 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 287 
 
 from a corner a quick breathing was audible from this im- 
 pressible creature, who combined modern nerves with prim- 
 itive emotions, and was doomed by such coexistence to be 
 numbered among the distressed, and to take her scourgings 
 to their exquisite extremity. 
 
 The window was open. On this quiet, late summer even- 
 ing, whatever sound arose in so secluded a district — ^the 
 chirp of a bird, a call from a voice, the turning of a wheel 
 — extended over bush and tree to unwonted distances. Very 
 few sounds did arise. But as Grace invisibly breathed in 
 the brown glooms of the chamber, the small remote noise 
 of light wheels came in to her, accompanied by the trot of 
 a horse on the turnpike-road. There seemed to be a sud- 
 den hitch or pause in the progress of the vehicle, which was 
 what first drew her attention to it. She knew the point 
 whence the sound proceeded — ^the hilltop over which trav- 
 elers passed on their way hitherward from Sherton-Abbas 
 — ^the place at which she had emerged from the wood with 
 Mrs. Charmond. Grace slid along the floor, and bent her 
 head over the window-sill, listening with open lips. The 
 carriage had stopped, and she heard a man use exclamatory 
 words. Then another said, "What the devil is the matter 
 with the horses?" She recognized the, voice as her hus- 
 band's. 
 
 The accident, such as it had been, was soon remedied, 
 and the carriage could be heard descending the hill on the 
 Hintock side, soon to turn into the lane leading out of the 
 highway, and then into the "drong" which led out of the 
 lane to the house where she was. 
 
 A spasm passed through Grace. The Daphnean instinct, 
 exceptionally strong in her as a girl, had been revived by 
 her widowed seclusion; and it was not lessened by her af- 
 fronted sentiments toward the comer, and her regard for 
 another man. She opened some little ivory tablets that 
 lay on the dressing-table, scribbled in pencil on one of them, 
 "I am gone to visit one of my school friends," gathered a 
 few toilet necessaries into a hand-bag, and not three min- 
 utes after that voice had been heard, her slim form, hastily 
 wrapped up from observation, might have been seen pass- 
 ing out of the back door of Melbury's house. Thence she 
 skimmed up the garden path, through the gap in the hedge, 
 
288 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 and into the mossy cart track under the trees which led into 
 the depths of the woods. 
 
 The leaves overhead were now in their latter green — so 
 opaque that it was darker at some of the densest spots than 
 in winter time, scarce a crevice existing by which a ray 
 could get down to the ground. But in open places she 
 could see well enough. Summer was ending; in the day- 
 time singing insects hung in every sunbeam ; vegetation was 
 heavy nightly with globes of dew ; and after showers creep- 
 ing damps and twilight chills came up from the hollows. 
 The plantations were always weird at this hour of eve — more 
 spectral far than in the leafless season, when there were 
 fewer masses and more minute lineality. The smooth sur- 
 faces of grassy plants came out like weak, lidless eyes ; there 
 were strange faces and figures from expiring lights that had 
 somehow wandered into the canopied obscurity; while now 
 and then low peeps of the sky between the trunks were like 
 sheeted shapes, and on the tips of boughs sat faint cloven 
 tongues. 
 
 But Grace's fear just now was not imaginative or spirit- 
 ual; and she heeded these impressions but little. She went 
 on as silently as she could, avoiding the hollows wherein 
 leaves had accumulated, and stepping upon soundless moss 
 and grass tufts. She paused breathlessly once or twice, 
 and fancied that she could hear, above the beat of her 
 strumming pulse, the vehicle containing Fitzpiers turning 
 in at the gate of her father's premises. She hastened on 
 again. 
 
 The Hintock woods owned by Mrs. Charmond were pres- 
 ently left behind, and those into which she next plunged 
 were divided from the latter by a bank, from whose top 
 the hedge had long ago perished — starved for want of sun. 
 It was with some caution that Grace now walked, though 
 she was quite free from any of the commonplace timidities 
 of her ordinary pilgrimages to such spots. She feared no 
 lurking harms, but that her effort would be all in vain, 
 and her return to the house rendered imperative. 
 
 She had walked between three and four miles, when that 
 prescriptive comfort and relief to wanderers in woods, a 
 distant light, broke at last upon her searching eyes. It 
 was so very small as to be almost sinister to a stranger but 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 289 
 
 to her it was what she sought. She pushed forward, and 
 the dim outHne of a dwelhng was disclosed. 
 
 The house was a square cot of one story only, sloping up 
 on all sides to a chimney in the midst. It had formerly 
 been the home of a charcoal-burner, in times when that 
 fuel was still used in the country houses. Its only appur- 
 tenance was a paled inclosure, there being no garden, the 
 shade of the trees preventing the growth of vegetables. 
 She advanced to the window whence the rays of light pro- 
 ceeded, and the shutters being as yet unclosed, she could 
 survey the whole interior through the panes. 
 
 The room within was kitchen, parlor and scullery, all 
 in one,^the natural sandstone floor was worn into hills and 
 dales by long treading, so that none of the furniture stood 
 level, and the table slanted like a desk. A fire burned on 
 the hearth, in front of which revolved the skinned carcass 
 of a rabbit, suspended by a string from a nail. Leaning 
 with one arm on the mantel-shelf stood Winterborne, his 
 eyes on the roasting animal, his face so rapt that specula- 
 tion could build nothing on it concerning his thoughts, 
 more than that they were not with the scene before him. 
 She thought that his features had changed a little since 
 she saw them last. The firelight did not enable her to per- 
 ceive that they were positively haggard. 
 
 Grace's throat emitted a gasp of relief at finding the re- 
 sult so nearly as she had hoped. She went to the door and 
 tapped lightly. 
 
 He seemed to be accustomed to the noises of woodpeck- 
 ers, squirrels, and such small creatures, for he took no 
 notice of her tiny signal, and she knocked again. This 
 time he came and opened the door. When the light of the 
 room fell upon her face he started; and, hardly knowing 
 what he did, crossed the threshold to her, placing his hands 
 upon her two arms; while surprise, joy, alarm, sadness, 
 chased through him by turns. With Grace it was the same; 
 even in this stress there was the fond fact that they had met 
 again. Thus they stood, 
 
 "Long tears upon their faces, waxen white 
 With extreme sad delight." 
 
 He broke the silence by saying, in a whisper, "Come in." 
 "No, no, Giles!" she answered, hurriedly, stepping yet 
 
 IS 
 
290 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 further back from the door. "I am passing by — and I 
 have called on you— I won't enter. Will you help me? I 
 am afraid. I want to get by a roundabout way to Sherton, 
 and so to Exbury. I have a school-fellow there — ^but I can 
 not get to Sherton alone. Oh, if you will only accompany 
 me a little way! Don't condemn me, Giles, and be offend- 
 ed ! I was obliged to come to you because — I have no other 
 help here. Three months ago you were my lover: now 
 you are only my friend. The law has stepped in and for- 
 bidden what we thought of. It must not be. But we can 
 act honestl}', and yet you can be my friend for one little hour. 
 I have no other " 
 
 She could get no further. Covering her eyes with one 
 hand, by an effort of repression she wept a silent trickle, 
 without a sigh or sob. Winterborne took her other hand. 
 "What has happened?" he said. 
 
 "He has come." 
 
 There was a stillness as of death, till Winterborne asked, 
 "You mean this, Grace — that I am to help you to get away?" 
 
 "Yes," said she. "Appearance is no matter, when the 
 reality is right. I have said to myself I can trust you." 
 
 Giles knew from this that she did not suspect his treach- 
 ery — if it could be called such — earlier in the summer, when 
 they met for the last time as lovers; and in the intensity 
 of his contrition for that tender wrong, he determined to de- 
 serve her faith now at least, and so wipe out that reproach 
 from his conscience. "I'll come at once," he said. "I'll light 
 a lantern." , 
 
 He unhooked a dark lantern from a nail under the eaves, 
 and she did not notice how his hand shook with the slight 
 strain, or dream that in making this offer he was taxing a 
 convalescence which could ill-afford such self-sacrifice. The 
 lantern was lit and they started. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 The first hundred yards of their course lay under motion- 
 less trees, whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling 
 drops of rain. By the time that they emerged upon a glade 
 it rained heavily. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 291 
 
 "This is awkward," said Grace, with an effort to hide her 
 concern. 
 
 Winterborne stopped. "Grace," he said, preserving a 
 strictly business manner which belied him, "you cannot go 
 to Sherton to-night." 
 
 "But I must!" 
 
 "Why, it is nine miles from here. It is almost an impos- 
 sibility in this rain." 
 
 "True — ^why," she replied, mournfully, at the end of si- 
 lence. "What is reputation to me?" 
 
 "Now, hearken," said Giles. "You won't — go back to 
 your " 
 
 "No, no, no! Don't make me!" she cried, piteously. 
 
 "Then let us turn." They slowly retraced their steps, and 
 again stood before his door. "Now this house from this 
 moment is yours, and not mine," he said, deliberately. "I 
 have a place near by where I can stay very well." 
 
 Her face had drooped. "Oh!" she murmured, as she 
 saw the dilemma. "What have I done?" 
 
 There was a smell of something burning within, and he 
 looked through the window. The rabbit that he had been 
 cooking to coax a weak appetite was beginning to char. 
 "Please go in and attend to it," he said. "Do what you 
 like. Now I leave. You will find everything about the 
 hut that is necessary." 
 
 "But, Giles — your supper," she exclaimed. "An out- 
 house would do for me — anything — ^till to-morrow at day- 
 break." 
 
 He signified a negative. "I tell you to go in — you may 
 catch agues out here in your delicate state. You can give 
 me my supper through the windpw, if you feel well enough. 
 I'll wait awhile." 
 
 He gently urged her to pass the doorway, and was re- 
 lieved when he saw her within the room, sitting down. 
 Without so much as crossing the threshold himself, he 
 closed the door upon her, and turned the key in the lock. 
 Tapping at the window, he signified that she should open 
 the casement, and when she had done this he handed in the 
 key to her. 
 
 "You are locked in," he said; "and your own mistress." 
 
 Even in her trouble she could not refrain from a faint 
 smile at his scrupulousness as she took the door-key. 
 
292 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "Do you feel better?" he went on. "If so, and you wish 
 to give me some of your supper, please do. If not, it is of 
 no importance. I can get some elsewhere.'' 
 
 The grateful sense of his kindness stirred her to action, 
 though she only knew half what that kindness really was. 
 At the end of some ten minutes she again came to the win- 
 dow, pushed it open, and said, in a whisper, "Giles!" He 
 at once emerged from the shade, and saw that she was pre- 
 paring to hand him his share of the meal upon a plate. 
 
 "I don't like to treat you so hardly," she murmured, 
 with deep regret in her words, as she heard the rain patter- 
 ing on the leaves. "But — I suppose it is best to arrange 
 like this?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," he said quickly. 
 
 "I feel that I could never have reached Sherton." 
 
 "It was impossible." 
 
 "Are you sure you have a snug place out there?" (With 
 renewed misgiving). 
 
 "Quite. Have you found everything you want? I am 
 afraid it is rather rough accommodation." 
 
 "Can I notice defects? I have long passed that stage, and 
 you. know it, Giles, or you ought to." 
 
 His eyes sadly contemplated her face as its pale respon- 
 siveness modulated through a crowd of expressions that 
 showed only too clearly to what a pitch she was strung. 
 If ever Winterborne's heart fretted his bosom, it was at 
 this sight of a perfectly defenseless creature conditioned by 
 such circumstances. He forgot his own agony in the satis- 
 faction of having at least found her a shelter. He took his 
 plate and cup from her hands, saying, "Now I'll push the 
 shutter to, and you will find an iron pin on the inside, 
 which you must fix into the bolt. Do not stir in the morn- 
 ing till I come and call you." 
 
 She expressed an alarmed hope that he would not go 
 very far away. 
 
 "Oh, no — I shall be quite within hail," said Winterborne. 
 
 She bolted the window as directed, and he retreated. 
 His snug place proved to be a wretched little shelter of the 
 roughest kind, formed of four hurdles thatched with brake- 
 fern. Underneath were dry sticks, hay and other litter of 
 the sort, upon which he sat down, and there in the dark tried 
 to eat his meal. But his appetite was quite gone. He 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 293 
 
 pushed the plate aside, and shook up the hay and sacks, so 
 IS to form a rude couch, on which he flung himself down 
 to sleep, for it was getting late. 
 
 But sleep he could not, for many reasons, of which not 
 the least was thought of his charge. He sat up, and looked 
 toward the cot through the damp obscurity. With all its 
 external features the same as usual, he could scarcely be- 
 lieve that it contained the dear friend — he would not use a 
 warmer name — who had come to him so unexpectedly, and, 
 he could not help admitting, so rashly. 
 
 He had not ventured to ask her any particulars; but the 
 position was pretty clear without them. Though social law 
 had negatived forever their opening paradise of the^ previ- 
 ous June, it was not without stoical pride that he accepted 
 the present trying conjuncture. There was one man on 
 earth in whom she believed absolutely, and he was that 
 man. That this crisis could end in nothing but sorrow was 
 a view for a moment effaced by this triumphant thought 
 of her trust in him; and the purity of the affection with 
 which she responded to that trust rendered him more than 
 proof against any frailty that besieged him in relation to her. 
 
 The rain, which had never ceased, now drew his atten- 
 tion by beginning to drop through the meager screen that 
 covered him. He rose to attempt some remedy for this 
 discomfort, but the trembling of his knees and the throb- 
 bing of his pulse told him that in his weakness he was un- 
 able to fence against the storm, and he lay down to bear it 
 as best he might. He was angry with himself for his 
 feebleness — he who had been so strong. It was imperative 
 that she should know nothing of his present state, and to do 
 that she must not see his face by dayUght, for its color 
 would inevitably betray him. 
 
 The next morning, accordingly, when it was hardly light, 
 he rose and dragged his stiff limbs about the precincts, pre- 
 paring for her everything she could require for getting 
 breakfast within. On the bench outside the window-siU 
 he placed water, wood, and other necessaries, writing with 
 a piece of chalk beside them, "It is best that I should not 
 see you. Put my breakfast on the bench." 
 
 At seven o'clock he tapped at her window as he had prom- 
 ised, retreating at once that she might not catch sight of 
 
294 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 him. But from his shelter under the boughs he could see 
 her very well, when, in response to his signal, she opened 
 the window and the light ffeU upon her face. The languid 
 largeness of her eyes showed that her sleep had been little 
 more than his own, and the pinkness of their lids, that her 
 waking hours had not been free from tears. 
 
 She read the writing, seemed, he thought, disappointed, 
 but took up the materials he had provided, evidently think- 
 ing him some way off. Giles waited on, assured that a girl, 
 who, in spite of her culture, knew what country life was, 
 would find no difficulty in the simple preparation of their 
 food. 
 
 Within the cot it was all very much as he conjectured, 
 though Grace had slept much longer than he. After the 
 loneliness of the night she would have been glad to see him; 
 but appreciating his feeling when she read the writing, 
 she made no attempt to recall him. She found abundance 
 of provisions laid in, his plan being to replenish his but- 
 tery weekly, and this being the day after the victualing 
 van had called from Sherton. When the meal was ready 
 she put what he required outside, as she had done with 
 the supper, and notwithstanding her longing to see him, 
 withdrew from the window promptly and left him to him- 
 self. 
 
 It had been a leaden dawn, and the rain now steadily 
 renewed its fall. As she heard no more of Winterborne, 
 she concluded that he had gone away to his daily work, 
 and forgotten that he had promised to accompany her to 
 Sherton — an erroneous conclusion, for he remained all day, 
 by force of his condition, within fifty yards of where she 
 was. The morning wore on, and in her doubt when to start 
 and how to travel she lingered yet, keeping the door care- 
 fully bolted lest an intruder should discover her. Locked 
 in this place she was comparatively safe, at any rate, and 
 doubted if she would be safe elsewhere. 
 
 The humid gloom of an ordinary wet day was doubled 
 by the shade and drip of the leafage. Autumn, this year, 
 was coming in with rains. Gazing, in her enforced idleness, 
 from the one window of the living-room, she could see 
 various small members of the animal community that lived 
 unmolested there — creatures of hair, fluff, and scale; the 
 toothed kind and the billed kind; underground creatures, 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 295 
 
 jointed and ringed — circumambulating the hut, under the 
 impression that, Giles having gone away, nobody was there, 
 and eying it inquisitively with a view to winter-quarters. 
 Watching these neighbors, who knew neither law nor sin, 
 distracted her a little from her trouble, and she managed 
 to while away some portion of the afternoon by putting 
 Giles' home in order, and making little improvements which 
 she deemed that he would value when she was gone. 
 
 Once or twice she fancied that she heard a faint noise 
 amid the trees, resembling a cough, but as it never came 
 any nearer, she concluded that it was a squirrel or a bird. 
 
 At last the daylight lessened, and she made up a larger 
 lire, for the evenings were chilly. As soon as it was too 
 dark — which was comparatively early — ^to discern the hu- 
 man countenance in this place of shadows, there came to 
 the window, to her great deUght, a tapping, which she 
 knew from its method to be Giles'. 
 
 She opened the casement instantly, and put out her hand 
 to him, though she could only just perceive his outline. 
 He clasped her fingers, and she noticed the heat of his palm 
 and its shakiness. 
 
 "He has been walking fast in order to get here quickly," 
 she thought. How could she know that he had just crawled 
 out from the straw of the shelter hard by, and that the 
 heat of his hand was feverishness? 
 
 "My dear, good Giles!" she burst out impulsively. 
 
 "Anybody would have done it for you," replied Winter- 
 borne, with as much matter-of-fact as he could summon. 
 
 "About my getting to Exbury?" she said. 
 
 "I have been thinking," responded Giles, with tender 
 deference, "that you had better stay where you are for the 
 present, if you wish not to be caught. I need not tell you 
 that the place is yours as long as you like, and perhaps in 
 a day or two, finding you absent, he will go away. At any 
 rate, in two or three days I could do anything to assist — 
 such as make inquiries, or go a great way toward Sherton- 
 Abbas with you ; for the cider season will soon be coming 
 on, and I want to run down to the Vale to see how the 
 crops are, and I shall go by the Sherton road. But for a 
 day or two I am busy here." He was hoping that by the 
 time mentioned he would be strong enough to engage him- 
 
296 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 self actively on her behalf.. "I liope you do not feel over- 
 much melancholy in being a prisoner." 
 
 She declared that she did not mind it ; but she sighed. 
 
 From long acquaintance they could read each other's 
 heart symptoms like books of large type. "I fear you are 
 sorry you came," said Giles, "and that you think I should 
 have advised you more firmly than I did not to stay." 
 
 "Oh, no, dear, dear friend!" answered Grace, with a 
 heaving bosom. "Don't think that that is what I regret. 
 What I regret is my enforced treatment of you — dislodg- 
 ing you — excluding you from your own house. Why 
 should I not speak out? You know what I feel for you — 
 what I have felt for no other living man — what I shall never 
 feel for a man again. But as I have vowed myself to 
 somebody else than you, and cannot be released, I must 
 behave as I do behave, and keep that vow. I am not 
 bound to him by any divine law, after what he has done, 
 but I have promised, and I will pay." 
 
 The rest of the evening was passed in his handing her 
 such things as she would require the next day, and casual 
 remarks thereupon — an occupation which diverted her 
 mind to some degree from pathetic views of her attitude 
 toward him, and of her life in general. The only infringe- 
 ment — if infringement it could be called — of his predeter- 
 mined bearing toward her was an involuntary pressing of 
 her hand to his lips when she put it through the casement 
 to bid him good-night. He knew she was weeping, though 
 he could not see her tears. 
 
 She again entreated his forgiveness for so selfishly ap- 
 propriating the cottage. But it would only be for a day or 
 two more, she thought, since go she must. 
 
 He replied, yearningly, "I — I don't like you to go 
 away." 
 
 "Oh, Giles," said she, "I know — I know! But — I am a 
 woman, and you are a man. I cannot speak more plainly. 
 'Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of 
 good report' — ^you know what is in my mind, because you 
 know me so well." 
 
 "Yes, Grace, yes. I do not at all mean that the question 
 between us has not been settled by the fact of your mar- 
 riage turning out hopelessly unalterable. I merely meant 
 — ^well, a feeling, no more." 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 297 
 
 "In a week, at the outside, I should be discovered if I 
 stayed here; and I think that by law he could compel me 
 to return to him." 
 
 "Yes; perhaps you are right. Go when you wish, dear 
 Grace." 
 
 His last words that evening were a hopeful remark that 
 all might be well with her yet; that Mr. Fitzpiers would 
 not intrude upon her hfe if he found that his presence cost 
 her so much pain. Then the window was closed, the shut- 
 ters folded, and the rustle of his footsteps died away. 
 
 No sooner had she retired to rest that night than the 
 wind began to rise, and after a few prefatory blasts to be 
 accompanied by rain. The wind grew more violent, and as 
 the storm went on it was difficult to believe that no opaque 
 body, but only an invisible, colorless thing, was trampling 
 and climbing over the roof, making branches creak, spring- 
 ing out of the trees upon the chimney, popping its head 
 into the flue, and shrieking and blaspheming at every cor- 
 ner of the walls. As in the old story, the assailant was a 
 specter which could be felt, but not seen. She had never 
 before been so struck with the devilry of a gusty night in 
 a wood, because she had never been so entirely alone in 
 spirit as she was now. She seemed almost to be apart from 
 herself — a vacuous duplicate only. The recent self of phys- 
 ical animation and clear intentions was not there. 
 
 Sometimes a bough from an adjoining tree was swayed so 
 low as to smite the roof in the manner of a gigantic hand 
 smiting the mouth of an adversary, to be followed by a 
 trickle of rain as blood from the wound. To all this 
 weather Giles must be more or less exposed; how much 
 she did not know. 
 
 At last Grace could hardly endure the idea of such a 
 hardship in relation to him. Whatever he was suffering, 
 it was she who had caused it; he vacated his house on ac- 
 count of her. She was not worth such self-sacrifice; she 
 should not have accepted it of him. And then, as her anx- 
 iety increased with increasing thought, there returned upon 
 her mind some incidents of her late intercourse with him, 
 which she had heeded but little at the time. The look 
 of his face — ^what had there been about his face which 
 seemed different from its appearance as of yore? Was it 
 not thinner^ less rich in hue, less hke that of ripe autumn's 
 
298 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 brother, to whom she had formerly compared him? And 
 his voice; she had distinctly noticed a change in tone. 
 And his gait; surely it had been feebler, stififer, more like 
 the gait of a weary man. That slight occasional noise she 
 had heard in the day, and attributed to squirrels, it might 
 have been his cough, after all. 
 
 Thus conviction took root in her perturbed mind that 
 Winterborne was ill, or had been so, and that he had care- 
 fully concealed his condition from her that she might have 
 no scruples about accepting a hospitality which by the 
 nature of the case expelled her entertainer. 
 
 "My own, own, true 1 — my dear, kind friend!" she cried 
 to herself. "Oh, it shall not be— it shall not be!" 
 
 She hastily wrapped herself up, and obtained a light, 
 with which she entered the adjoining room, the cottage 
 possessing only one floor. Setting down the candle on the 
 table here, she went to the door with the key in her hand, 
 and placed it in the lock. Before turning it she paused, 
 her fingers still clutching it; and pressing her other hand 
 to her forehead, she fell into agitating thought. 
 
 A tattoo on the window, caused by the tree-droppings 
 blowing against it, brought her indecision to a close. She 
 turned the key, and opened the door. 
 
 The darkness was intense, seeming to touch her pupils 
 like a substance. She only now became aware how heavy 
 the rainfall had been and was; the dripping of the eaves 
 splashed like a fountain. She stood listening with parted 
 lips, and holding the door in one hand, till her eyes, grow- 
 ing accustomed to the obscurity, discerned the wild bran- 
 dishing of their boughs by the adjoining trees. At last 
 she cried loudly, with an effort, "Giles, you may come in." 
 
 There was no immediate answer to her cry, and over- 
 powered by her own temerity, Grace retreated quickly, shut 
 the door, and stood looking on the floor. But it was not 
 for long. She again lifted the latch, and with far more 
 determination than at first. 
 
 "Giles! Giles!" she cried, with the full strength of her 
 voice, and without any of the shamefacedness that had 
 characterized her first cry. "Oh, come in! come in! 
 Where are you? I have been wicked. I have thought too 
 much of myself. Do you hear? I don't want to keep you 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 299 
 
 out any longer. I cannot bear that you should suffer so. 
 Gi-i-iles!" 
 
 A reply! It was a reply! Through the darkhess and 
 wind a voice reached her, floating upon the weather as 
 though a part of it. 
 
 "Here I am — all right. Don't trouble about me." 
 
 "Don't you want to come in? Are you not ill? I dojij: 
 mind what they say or what they think any more." 
 
 "I am all right," he repeated. "It is not necessary for 
 me to come. Good-night! good-night!" 
 
 Grace sighed, turned, and shut the door slowly. Could 
 she have been mistaken about his health? Perhaps, after 
 all, she had perceived a change in him because she had not 
 seen him for so long. Time sometimes did his aging work 
 in jerks, as she knew. Well, she had done all she could. 
 He would not come in. She retired to rest again. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 The next morning Grace was at the window early. She 
 felt determined to see him somehow that day, and prepared 
 his breakfast eagerly. Eight o'clock struck, and she had 
 remembered that he had not come to arouse her by a 
 knocking as usual, her own anxiety having caused her to 
 stir. 
 
 The breakfast was set in its place without. But- he did 
 not arrive to take it, and she Waited on. Nine o'clock 
 arrived, and the breakfast was cold, and still there was no 
 Giles. A thrush that had been repeating itself a good deal 
 on an opposite bush for some time came and took a morsel 
 from the plate and bolted it, waited, looked around, and 
 took another. At ten o'clock she drew in the tray, and 
 sat down to her own solitary meal. He must have been 
 called away on business early, the rain having cleared off. 
 
 Yet she would have liked to assure herself by thoroughly 
 exploring the precincts of the hut that he was nowhere in 
 its vicinity; but as the day was comparatively fine, the 
 dread lest some stray passenger or woodman should en- 
 counter her in such a reconnoiter paralyzed her wish. The 
 solitude was further accentuated to-day by the stopping of 
 
300 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 the clock for want of winding, and the fall into the chim- 
 ney-corner of flakes of soot loosened by the rains. At noon 
 she heard a slight rustling outside the window, and found 
 that it was caused by an eft which had crept out of the 
 leaves to bask in the last sun-rays that would be worth 
 having till the following May. 
 
 She continually peeped out through the lattice, but could 
 see little. In front lay the brown leaves of last year, and 
 upon them some yellowish-green ones of this season that 
 had been prematurely blown down by the gale. Above 
 stretched an old beech, with vast armpits, and great pocket- 
 holes in its sides where branches had been amputated in 
 past times; a black slug was trying to climb it. Dead 
 boughs were scattered about like ichthyosauri in a museum, 
 and beyond them were perishing woodbine stems resem- 
 bling old ropes. 
 
 From the other window all she could see were more 
 trees, jacketed with lichen and stockinged with moss. At 
 their roots were stemless yellow fungi like lemons and 
 apricots, and tall fungi with more stem than stool. Next 
 were more trees close together wrestling for existence, 
 their branches disfigured with wounds resulting from their 
 mutual rubbings and blows. It was the struggle between 
 these neighbors that she had heard in the night. Beneath 
 them were the rotting stumps of those of the group that 
 had been vanquished long ago, rising from their mossy set- 
 ting like decayed teeth from green gums. Further on were 
 other tufts of moss in islands divided by the shed leaves 
 — variety upon variety, dark green and pale green; moss- 
 like little fir trees, like plush, like malachite stars, like 
 nothing on earth except moss. 
 
 The strain upon Grace's mind in various ways was so 
 great on this the most desolate day she had passed there 
 that she felt it would be well nigh impossible to spend 
 another in such circumstances. The evening came at last; 
 the sun, when its chin was on the earth, found an opening 
 through which to pierce the shade, and stretched irradi- 
 ated gauzes across the damp atmosphere, making the wet 
 trunks shine, and throwing splotches of such ruddiness 
 on the leaves beneath the beech that they were turned to 
 gory hues. When night at last arrived, and with it the 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 301 
 
 time for his return, she was nearly broken down with sus- 
 pense. 
 
 The simple evening meal, partly tea, partly supper, 
 which Grace had prepared, stood waiting upon the hearth, 
 and yet Giles did not come. It was now nearly twenty- 
 four hours since she had seen him. As the room grew 
 darker, and only the firelight broke against the gloom of 
 the walls, she was convinced that it would be beyond her 
 staying power to pass the night without hearing from him 
 or from somebody. Yet eight o'clock drew on, and his 
 form at the window did not appear. 
 
 The meal remained untasted. Suddenly rising from be- 
 fore the hearth of smoldering embers, where she had been 
 crouching with her hands clasped over her knees, she 
 crossed the room, unlocked the door, and listened. Every 
 breath of wind had ceased with the decline of day, but the 
 rain had resumed the steady dripping of the night before. 
 Grace might have stood there five minutes, when she fan- 
 cied she heard that old sound, a cough, at no great distance, 
 and it was presently repeated. If it were Winterborne's, 
 he must be near her; why then had he not visited her? 
 
 A horrid misgiving that he could not visit her took pos- 
 session of Grace, and she looked up anxiously for the lan- 
 tern, which was hanging above her head. To light it and 
 go in the direction of the sound would be the obvious way 
 to solve the dread problem; but the conditions made her 
 hesitate, and in a moment a cold sweat pervaded her at 
 further sounds from the same quarter. 
 
 They were low mutterings, at first like persons in con- 
 versation, but gradually resolving themselves into varie- 
 ties of one voice. It was an endless monologue, like that 
 we sometimes hear from inanimate nature in deep secret 
 places where water flows, or where ivy leaves flap against 
 stones; but by degrees she was convinced that the voice 
 was Winterborne's. Yet who could be his listener, so mute 
 and patient? for though he argued so rapidly and persist- 
 ently, nobody replied. 
 
 A dreadful enlightenment spread through the mind of 
 Grace. "Oh!" she cried in her anguish, as she hastily 
 prepared herself to go out, "how selfishly correct I am 
 always! — too, too correct! Cruel propriety is killing the 
 dearest heart that ever woman clasped to her own!" 
 
302 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 While speaking thus to herself she had lit the lantern, 
 and hastening out, without further thought, took the direc- 
 tion whence the mutterings had proceeded. The course 
 was marked by a little path, which ended at a distance of 
 about forty yards in a small erection of hurdles, not much 
 larger than a shock of corn, such as were frequent in the 
 woods and copses when the cutting season was going on. 
 It was too slight even to be called a hovel, and was not 
 high enough to stand upright in; appearing, in short, to be 
 erected for the temporary shelter of fuel. The side toward 
 Grace was open, and turning the light toward the interior, 
 she beheld what her prescient fear had pictured in snatches 
 all the way thither. 
 
 Upon the straw within Winterborne lay in his clothes, 
 just as she had seen him during the whole of her stay here, 
 except that his hat was off, and his hair matted and wild. 
 
 Both his clothes and the straw were saturated with rain. 
 His arms were flung over his head; his face was flushed to 
 an unnatural crimson. His eyes had a burning brightness, 
 and though they met her own, she perceived that he did 
 not recognize her. 
 
 "Oh, my Giles!" she cried, "what have I done to you?" 
 
 But she stopped no longer, even to reproach herself. She 
 saw that the first thing to be thought of was to get him 
 indoors. 
 
 How Grace performed that labor she never could have 
 exactly explained. But by dint of clasping her arms round 
 him, rearing him into a sitting posture, and straining her 
 strength to the uttermost, she put him on one of the hur- 
 dles that was loose alongside, and, taking the end of it in 
 both her hands, dragged him along the path to the entrance 
 of the hut, and, after a pause for breath, in at the doorway. 
 
 It was somewhat singular that Giles, in his semi-con- 
 scious state, acquiesced unresistingly in all that she did. 
 But he never for a moment recognized her, continuing his 
 rapid conversation to himself, and seeming to look upon 
 her as some angel or other supernatural creature of the 
 visionary world in which he was mentally living. The un- 
 dertaking occupied her more than ten minutes; but by 
 that time, to her great thankfulness, he was in the inner 
 room, lying on the bed, his damp outer clothing removed. 
 
 Then the unhappy Grace regarded him by the light of 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 303 
 
 the candle. There was something in his look which agon- 
 ized her, in the rush of his thoughts, accelerating their 
 speed from minute to minute. He seemed to be passing 
 through the universe of ideas like a comet; erratic, inap- 
 prehensible, untraceable. 
 
 Grace's distraction was almost as great as his. In a few 
 moments she firmly believed he was dying. Unable to 
 withstand her impulse, she knelt down beside him, kissed 
 his hands, and his face, and his hair, exclaiming, in a low 
 voice: "How could I? How could I?" 
 
 Her timid morality had indeed underrated his chivalry 
 till now, though she knew him so well. The purity of his 
 nature, his freedom from the grosser passions, his scrupu- 
 lous delicacy, had never been fully understood by Grace 
 till this strange self-sacrifice in lonely juxtaposition to her 
 own person was revealed. The perception of it added 
 something that was little short of reverence to the deep 
 affection for him of a woman who, herself, had more of 
 Artemis than of Aphrodite in her constitution. 
 
 All that a tender nurse could do Grace did; and the 
 power to express her solicitude in action, unconscious 
 though the sufferer was, brought her mournful satisfaction. 
 She bathed his hot head, wiped his perspiring hands, moist- 
 ened his lips, cooled his fiery eyelids, sponged his heated 
 skin, and administered whatever she could find in the 
 house that the imagination could conceive as likely to be 
 in any way alleviating. That she might have been the 
 cause, or partially the cause, of all this, interfused misery 
 with her sorrow. 
 
 Six months before this date a scene, almost similar in 
 its mechanical parts, had been enacted at Hintock House. 
 It was between a pair of persons most intimately connected 
 in their Hves with these. Outwardly like as it had been, 
 it was yet infinite in spiritual difference, though a woman's 
 devotion had been common to both. 
 
 Grace rose from her attitude of affection, and bracing 
 her energies, saw that something practical must imme- 
 diately be done. Much as she would have liked, in the 
 emotion of the moment, to keep him entirely to herself, 
 medical assistance was necessary whilst there remained a 
 possibility of preserving him alive. Such assistance was 
 fatal to her own concealmentj but even had the chance of 
 
304 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 benefiting him been less than it was, she would have run 
 the hazard for his sake. The question was, where should 
 she get a medical man competent and near? 
 
 There was one such man, and only one, within accessible 
 distance; a man who, if it were possible to save Winter- 
 borne's life, had the brain most likely to do it. If human 
 pressure could bring him, that man ought to be brought 
 to the sick Giles' side. The attempt should be made. 
 
 Yet she dreaded to leave her patient, and the minutes 
 raced past, and yet she postponed her departure. At last, 
 when it was after eleven o'clock, Winterborne fell into a 
 fitful sleep, and it seemed to afiford her an opportunity. 
 
 She hastily made him as comfortable as she could, put 
 on her things, cut a new candle from the bunch hanging in 
 the cupboard, and having set it up, and placed it so that 
 the light did not fall upon his eyes, she closed the door and 
 started. 
 
 The spirit of Winterborne seemed to keep her company 
 and banish all sense of darkness from her mind. The rains 
 had imparted a phosphorescence to the pieces of touch- 
 wood and rotting leaves that lay about her path, which, as 
 scattered by her feet, spread abroad like spilt milk. She 
 would not run the hazard of losing her way by plunging 
 into any short, unfrequented track through the denser parts 
 of the woodland, but followed a more open course, which 
 eventually brought her to the highway. Once here, she 
 ran along with great speed, animated by a devoted purpose 
 which had much about it that was stoical; and it was with 
 scarcely any faltering of spirit that, after an hour's progress, 
 she passed over Rubdown Hill, and onward toward that 
 same Hintock, and that same house, out of which she had 
 fled a few days before in irresistible alarm. But that had 
 happened which, above all other things of chance and 
 change, could make her deliberately frustrate her plan of 
 flight, and sink all regard of personal consequences. 
 
 One specialty of Fitzpiers' was respected by Grace as 
 much as ever — his professional skill. In this she was right. 
 Had his persistence equaled his insight, instead of being 
 the spasmodic and fitful thing it was, fame and fortune 
 need never have remained a wish with him. His freedom 
 from conventional errors and crusted prejudices had indeed 
 been such as to retard rather than accelerate his advance 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 305 
 
 in Hintock and its neighborhood, where people could not 
 believe that nature herself effected cures, and that the doc- 
 tor's business was only to smooth the way. 
 
 It was past midnight when Grace arrived opposite her 
 father's house, now again temporarily occupied by her 
 husband, unless he had already gone away. Ever since 
 her emergence from the denser plantations about Winter- 
 borne's residence, a pervasive lightness had hung in the 
 damp autumn sky, in spite of the vault of cloud, signify- 
 ing that a moon of some age was shining above its arch. 
 The two white gates were distinct, and the white balls on 
 the pillars and the puddles and damp ruts left by the recent 
 rain had a cold, corpse-eyed luminousness. She entered 
 by the lower gate, and crossed the quadrangle to the wing 
 wherein the apartments that had been hers since her mar- 
 riage were situate, till she stood under a window which, 
 if her husband were in the house, gave light to his bed- 
 chamber. 
 
 She faltered, and paused with her hand on her heart in 
 spite of herself. Could she call to her presence the very 
 cause of all her foregoing troubles? Alas! Old Jones was 
 seven miles ofif ; Giles was possibly dying — ^what else should 
 she do? 
 
 It was in a perspiration, wrought even more by con- 
 sciousness than by exercise, that she picked up some gravel, 
 threw it at the panes, and waited to see the result. The 
 night bell which had been fixed when Fitzpiers first took 
 up his residence there still remained; but as it had fallen 
 into disuse with the collapse of his practice, and his elope- 
 ment, she did not venture to pull it now. 
 
 Whoever slept in the room had heard her signal, slight 
 as it was. In half a minute the window was opened, and 
 a voice said "Yes?" inquiringly. Grace recognized her 
 husband in the speaker at once. Her effort was now to 
 disguise her own accents. 
 
 "Doctor," she said, in as unusual a tone as she could 
 command, "a man is dangerously ill in One-chimney Hut, 
 out toward Delborough, and you must go to him at once — 
 in all mercy." 
 
 "I will, readily." 
 
 The alacrity, surprise, and pleasure expressed in his 
 reply amazed her for a moment. But in truth they denoted 
 
 20 
 
306 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 the sudden relief of a man who, having got back in a mood 
 of contrition, from erratic abandonment to fearful joys, 
 found the soothing routine of professional practice unex- 
 pectedly opening anew to him. The highest desire of his 
 soul just now was for a respectable life of painstaking. If 
 this, his first summons since his return, had been to attend 
 upon a cat or a dog, he would scarcely have refused it in 
 the circumstances. 
 
 "Do you know the way?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes," said he. 
 
 "One-chimney hut," she repeated. "And — immediately !" 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Fitzpiers. 
 
 Grace remained no longer. She passed out of the white 
 gate without slamming it, and hastened on her way back. 
 Her husband, then, had re-entered her father's house. How 
 he had been able to eiTect a reconciliation with the old man, 
 what were the terms of the treaty between them, she could 
 not so much as conjecture. Some sort of truce must have 
 been entered into ; that was all she could say. But close as 
 the question lay to her own life, there was a more urgent 
 one which banished it; and she retraced her steps quickly 
 along the meandering trackways. 
 
 Meanwhile Fitzpiers was preparing to leave the house. 
 The state of his mind, over and above his professional zeal, 
 was peculiar. At Grace's first remark he had not recognized 
 or suspected her presence; but as she went on, he was awak- 
 ened to the great resemblance of the speaker's voice to his 
 wife's. He had taken in such good faith the statement of the 
 household on his arrival, that she had gone on a visit for a 
 time because she could not at once bring her mind to be 
 reconciled to him, that he could not quite actually believe 
 this comer to be she. It was one of the features of Fitz- 
 piers' repentant humor at this date that, on receiving the 
 explanation of her absence, he had made no attempt to out- 
 rage her feelings by following her ; though nobody had in- 
 formed him how very shortly her departure had preceded his 
 entry, and of all that might have been inferred from her pre- 
 cipitancy. 
 
 Melbury, after much alarm and consideration, had de- 
 cided not to follow her either. He sympathized with her 
 flight, much as he deplored it; moreover, the tragic color 
 of the antecedent events that he had been a great means of 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 307 
 
 creating checked his instinct to interfere. He prayed and 
 trusted that she had got into no danger on her way (as 
 he supposed) to Sherton, and thence to Exbury, if that were 
 the place she had gone to, forbearing all inquiry which the 
 strangeness of her departure would have made natural. A 
 few months before this time a performance by Grace of 
 one-tenth the magnitude of this would have aroused him to 
 imwonted investigation. 
 
 It was in the same spirit that he had tacitly assented to 
 Fitzpiers' domiciliation there. The two men had not met 
 face to face, but Mrs. Melbury had proposed herself as an 
 intermediary, who made the surgeon's re-entrance com- 
 paratively easy to him. Everything was provisional, and 
 nobody asked questions. Fitzpiers had come in the per- 
 formance of a plan of penitence which had originated in 
 circumstances hereafter to be explained; his self-humilia- 
 tion to the very bass-string was deliberate; and as soon as 
 a call reached him from the bedside of a dying man his de- 
 sire was to set to work and do as much good as he could 
 with the least possible fuss or show. He therefore refrained 
 from calling up a stableman to get ready any horse or gig, 
 and set out for One-chimney Hut on foot, as Grace had 
 done. 
 
 CHAPTER XLHI. 
 
 She re-entered the hut, flung off her bonnet and cloak, 
 and approached the sufferer. He had begun anew those 
 terrible mutterings, and his hands were cold. As soon as 
 she saw him, there returned to her that agony of mind which 
 the stimulus of her journey had thrown off for a time. 
 
 Could he really be dying? She bathed him, kissed him, 
 forgot all things but the fact that lying there before her 
 was he who had loved her more than the mere lover w.ould 
 have loved; had martyred himself for her comfort, cared 
 more for her self-respect than she had thought of caring. 
 This mood continued till she heard quick, smart footsteps 
 without. She knew whose footsteps they were. 
 
 Grace sat on the inside of the bed against the wall, hold- 
 ing Giles' hand, so that when her husband entered the pa- 
 tient lay between herself and him. He stood transfixed at 
 
308 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 first, noticing Grace only. Slowly he dropped his glance, and 
 discerned who the prostrate man was. Strangely enough, 
 though Grace's distaste for her husband's company had 
 amounted almost to dread, and culminated in actual flight, 
 at this moment her last and least feeling was personal. Sen- 
 sitive femininity was eclipsed by self-effacing purpose; and 
 that it was a husband who stood there was forgotten. The 
 first look that possessed her face was relief; satisfaction at 
 the presence of the physician obliterated thought of the 
 man, which only returned in the form of a subconscious- 
 ness that did not interfere with her words. 
 
 "Is he dying — is there any hope?" she cried. 
 
 "Grace!" said Fitzpiers, in an indescribable whisper — 
 more than invocating — if not quite deprecatory. 
 
 He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its in- 
 trinsic character — though that was striking enough to a 
 man who called himself the husband of the sufferer's friend 
 and nurse — but in its character as the counterpart of one 
 that had its hour many months before, in which he had 
 figured as the patient, and the woman had been Felice Char- 
 mond. 
 
 "Is he in great danger — can you save him?" she cried 
 again. 
 
 Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and exam- 
 ined Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was con- 
 cluded in a mere glance. Before he spoke he looked at her 
 contemplatively as to the effect of his coming words. 
 
 "He is dying," he said, with dry precision. 
 
 "What?" said she. 
 
 "Nothing can be done, by me or any other man. It will 
 soon be all over. The extremities are dead already." His 
 eyes still remained fixed on her, the conclusion to which he 
 had come seeming to end his interest, professional and 
 otherwise, in Winterborne forever. 
 
 "But it cannot be? He was well three days ago!" 
 
 "Not well, I suspect. This seems like a secondary at- 
 tack, which has followed some previous illness — possibly 
 typhoid — it may have been months ago, or recently." 
 
 "Ah — he was not well — you are right. He was ill — ^he 
 was ill when I came." 
 
 There was nothing more to do or say. She crouched 
 down at the side of the bed, and Fitzpiers took a seat. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 30? 
 
 Thus they remained in silence, and long as it lasted she 
 never turned her eyes, or apparently her thoughts, at all 
 to her husband. He occasionally murmured, with auto- 
 matic authority, some slight directions for alleviating the 
 pain of the dying man, which she mechanically obeyed, 
 bending over him during the intervals in silent tears. 
 
 Winterborne never recovered consciousness of what was 
 passing, and that he was going became soon perceptible 
 also to her. In less than an hour the delirium ceased, then 
 there was an interval of somnolent painlessness and soft 
 breathing, at the end of which Winterborne passed quietly 
 away. 
 
 Then Fitzpiers broke the silence. "Have you lived here 
 long?" said he. 
 
 . Grace was wild with sorrow — with all that had befallen 
 her — with the cruelties that had attacked her — with life — 
 with Heaven. She answered at random: "Yes. By what 
 right do you ask?" 
 
 "Don't think I claim any right," said Fitzpiers, sadly. 
 "It is for you to do and say what you choose. I admit, 
 quite as much as you feel, that I am a vagabond — a brute 
 — not worthy to possess the smallest fragment of you. But 
 here I am, and I have happened to take sufficient interest 
 in you to make that inquiry." 
 
 "He is everything to me," said Grace, hardly heeding her 
 husband, and laying her hand reverently on the dead man's 
 eyelids, where she kept it a long time, pressing down their 
 lashes with gentle touches; as if she were stroking a little 
 bird. 
 
 He watched her awhile, and then glanced round the cham- 
 ber, where his eyes fell upon a few dressing necessaries that 
 she had brought. 
 
 "Grace — if I may call you so," he said, "I have been al- 
 ready humiliated almost to the depths. I have come back 
 since you refused to join me elsewhere — I have entered 
 your father's house — and borne all that that cost me without 
 flinching, because I have felt I deserved humiliation. But 
 is there yet a greater humiliation in store for me? You 
 say you have been living here — ^that he is everjrthing to 
 you. Am I to draw from that the obvious, the extremest 
 inference?" 
 
3X0 THE WOODIANDERS. 
 
 Triumph at any price is sweet to men and women — espe- 
 cially the latter. It was her first and last opportunity of re- 
 paying him for the cruel contumely which she had borne at 
 his hands so docilely. 
 
 "Yes," she answered; and there was that in her subtly 
 compound nature which made her feel a thrill of pride as 
 she did so. 
 
 Yet the moment after she had so mightily belied her 
 character she half repented. Her husband had turned as 
 white as the wall behind him. It seemed as if all that re- 
 mained to him of life and spirit had been abstracted at a 
 stroke. Yet he did not move, and in his efforts at self-con- 
 trol closed his mouth together as a vise. His determination 
 was fairly successful, though she saw how very much great- 
 er than she had expected her triumph had been. Presently 
 he looked across at Winterborne. 
 
 "Would it startle you to hear," he said, as if he hardly 
 had breath to utter words, "that she who was to me what he 
 was to you is dead also?" 
 
 "Dead — she dead?" exclaimed Grace. 
 
 "Yes. Felice Charmond is where this young man is." 
 
 "Never!" said Grace, vehemently. 
 
 He went on without heeding the insinuation: "And I 
 came back to try to make it up with you — ^but " 
 
 Fitzpiers rose and moved across the room to go away, 
 looking downward with the droop of a man whose hope 
 was turned to apathy if not despair. In going round the 
 door his eye fell upon her once more. She was still bend- 
 ing over the body of Winterborne, her face close to the 
 young man's. 
 
 "Have you been kissing him during his illness?" asked her 
 husband. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Since his fevered state set in?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "On "his lips?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Then you will do well to take a few drops of this in 
 water as soon as possible." He drew a small vial from his 
 pocket, and returned to offer it to her. 
 
 Grace shook her head. 
 
 "If you don't do as I tell you, you may soon be like him." 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 311 
 
 "I don't care, I wish to die." 
 
 "I'll put it here," said Fitzpiers, placing the bottle on a 
 ledge beside him. "The sin of not having warned you will 
 not be upon my head at any rate, amongst my other sins. 
 I am now going, and I will send somebody to you. Your 
 father does not know that you are here, so I suppose I 
 shall be bound to tell him?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 Fitzpiers left the cot, and the stroke of his feet was soon 
 immersed in the silence that pervaded the spot. Grace re- 
 mained kneeling and weeping, she hardly knew how long, 
 and then she sat up, covered poor Giles' features, and went 
 toward the door where her husband had stood. No sign of 
 any other comer greeted her ear, the only perceptible sounds 
 being the tiny cracklings of the dead leaves, which, like a 
 feather-bed, had not yet done rising to their normal level 
 where indented by the pressure of her husband's receding 
 footsteps. It reminded her that she had been struck with 
 the change in his aspect; the extremely intellectual look 
 that had always been in his face was wrought to a finer 
 phase by thinness ; and a careworn dignity had been super- 
 added. She returned to Winterborne's side, and during 
 her meditations another tread drew near the door, entered 
 the outer room, and halted at the entrance of the chamber, 
 where Grace was. 
 
 "What— Marty!" said Grace. 
 
 "Yes. I have heard," said Marty, whose demeanor had 
 lost all its girlishness under the stroke that seemed almost 
 literally to have bruised her. 
 
 "He died for me!" murmured Grace, heavily. 
 
 Marty did not fully comprehend, and she answered. "He 
 belongs to neither of us now, and your beauty is no more 
 powerful with him than my plainness. I have come to help 
 you, ma'am. He never cared for me, and he cared much for 
 you; but he cares for us both alike now." 
 
 "Oh, don't, don't, Marty!" 
 
 Marty said no more, but knelt over Winterborne from 
 the other side. 
 
 "Did you meet my hus — Mr. Fitzpiers?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Then what brought you here?" 
 
 "I come this way sometimes. I have got to go to the 
 
312 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 further side of the wood this time of the year, and am obliged 
 to get there before four o'clock in the morning, to begui 
 heating the oven for the early baking. I have passed by 
 here often at this time." 
 
 Grace looked at her quickly. "Then did you know I was 
 here?" 
 
 "Yes, ma'am." 
 "Did you tell anybody?" 
 
 "No. I knew you lived in the hut, that he had gied it up 
 to ye, and lodged out himself." 
 
 "Did'you know where he lodged?" 
 
 "No. That I couldn't find out. Was it at Delborough?" 
 
 "No. It was not there, Marty. Would it had been! It 
 
 would have saved — saved " To check her tears she 
 
 turned, and seeing a book in the window-bench, took it up. 
 "Look, Marty, this is a psalter. He was not an outwardly 
 religious man, but he was pure and perfect in his heart. 
 Shall we read a psalm over him?" 
 
 "Oh, yes — we will — ^with all my heart!" 
 Grace opened the thin brown book, which poor Giles had 
 kept at hand mainly for the convenience of whetting his 
 penknife upon its leather covers. She began to read in that 
 rich, devotional voice peculiar to women only on such oc- 
 casions. When it was over, Marty said, "I should like to 
 pray for his soul." 
 
 "So should I," said her companion. "But we must not." 
 "Why? Nobody would know." 
 
 Grace could not resist the argument, influenced as she 
 was by the sense of making amends for having neglected 
 him in the body; and their tender voices united and filled 
 the narrow room with supplicatory murmurs that a Cal- 
 vinist might have envied. They had hardly ended when new 
 and more numerous footfalls were audible; also persons 
 in conversation, one of whom Grace recognized as her 
 father. 
 
 She rose, and went to the outer apartment, in which there 
 was only such light as beamed from the inner one. Melbury 
 and Mrs. Melbury were standing there. 
 
 "I don't reproach you, Grace," said her father with an 
 estranged manner, and in a voice not at all like his old 
 voice. "What has come upon you and us is beyond re- 
 proach, beyond weeping and beyond wailing. Perhaps I 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 313 
 
 drove you to it. But I am hurt; I am scourged; I am as- 
 tonished. In the face of this there is nothing to be said." 
 
 Without replying, Grace turned and ghded back to the 
 inner chamber. "Marty," she said, quickly, "I cannot look 
 my father in the face until he knows the true circumstances 
 of my life here. Go and tell him — what you have told me 
 — what you saw — ^that he gave up his house to me." 
 
 She sat down, her face buried in her hands, and Marty 
 went, and after a short absence returned. Then Grace 
 rose, and going out, asked her father if he had met her 
 husband. 
 
 "Yes," said Melbury. 
 
 "And you know all that has happened?" 
 
 "I do. Forgive me, Grace, for suspecting ye of worse 
 than rashness — I ought to know ye better. Are you coming 
 with me to what was once your home?" 
 
 "No. I stay here with him. Take no account of me any 
 more." 
 
 The unwonted, perplexing, agitating relations in which 
 she had stood to Winterborne quite lately — brought about 
 by Melbury's own contrivance — could not fail to soften the 
 natural anger of a parent at her more recent doings. "My 
 daughter, things are bad," he rejoined. "But why do you 
 persevere to make 'em worse? What good can you do to 
 Giles by staying here with him? Mind, I ask no questions. 
 I don't inquire why you decided to come here, or anything 
 as to what your course would have been if he had not died, 
 though I know there's no deliberate harm in ye. As for 
 me, I have lost all claim upon you, and I make no com- 
 plaint. But I do say that by coming back with me now 
 you will show no less kindness to him, and escape any sound 
 of shame." 
 
 "But I don't wish to escape it." 
 
 "If you don't on your own account, cannot you wish to 
 on mine and hers? Nobody except our household knows 
 that you have left home. Then why should you by a piece 
 of perverseness bring down my hairs with sorrow to the 
 grave?" 
 
 "If it were not for my husband " she began, moved 
 
 by his words. "But how can I meet him there? How can 
 any woman who is not a mere man's creature join him 
 after what has taken place?" 
 
S14 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "He would go away again rather than keep you out of 
 my house." 
 
 "How do you know that, father?" 
 
 "We met him' on our way here, and he told us so," said 
 Mrs. Melbury. "He had said something like it before. He 
 seems very much upset altogether." 
 
 "He declared to her when he came to our house that he 
 would wait for time and devotion to bring about forgive- 
 ness," said her husband. "That was it, wasn't it, Lucy?" 
 
 "Yes. That he would not intrude upon you, Grace, till 
 you gave him absolute permission," Mrs. Melbury added. 
 
 This antecedent considerateness in Fitzpiers was as wel- 
 come to Grace as it was unexpected; and though she did 
 not desire his presence, she was sorry that by her retalia- 
 tory fiction she had given him a different reason for avoid- 
 ing her. She made no further objections to accompanying 
 her parents, taking them into the inner room to give Win- 
 terborne a last look, and gathering up the two or three 
 things that belonged to her. While she was doing this the 
 two women came who had been called by Melbury, and at 
 their heels poor Creedle. 
 
 "Forgive me, but I can't rule my mourning nohow as a 
 man should, Mr. Melbury," he said. "I ha'n't seen him 
 since Thursday se'night, and have wondered for days and 
 days where he's been keeping. There was I expecting him 
 to come and tell me to wash out the cider barrels against 
 the making, and here was he. Well, I've knowed him from 
 table-high; I knowed his father — used to bide about upon 
 two sticks in the sun afore he died — ^and now I've seen the 
 end of the family, which we can ill-afford to lose, wi' such 
 a scanty lot of good folk in Hintock as we've got. And now 
 Robert Creedle will be nailed up in parish boards, 'a b'lieve, 
 and nobody will glutch down a sigh for he!" 
 
 They started for home, Marty and Creedle remaining be- 
 hind. For a time Grace and her father walked side by side 
 without speaking. It was just in the blue of the dawn, and 
 the chilling tone of the sky was reflected in her cold, wet 
 face. The whole wood seemed to be a house of death, per- 
 vaded by loss to its uttermost length and breadth. Win- 
 terborne was gone, and the copses seemed to show the want 
 of him ; those young trees, so many of which he had plant- 
 ed, and of which h? had spoken so truly when he said that 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 315 
 
 he should fall before they fell, were at that very moment 
 sending out their roots in the direction that he had given 
 them' with his subtle hand. 
 
 "One thing made it tolerable to us that your husband 
 should come back to the house," said Melbury at last. "The 
 death of Mrs. Charmond." 
 
 "Ah, yes," said Grace, arousing slightly to the recollec- 
 tion; "he told me so." 
 
 "Did he tell you how she died? It was no such death as 
 Giles'. She was shot — ^by a disappointed lover. It occurred 
 in Germany. The unfortunate man shot himself afterward. 
 He was that South Carolina gentleman of very passionate 
 nature, who used to haunt this place to force her to an in- 
 terview, and followed her about everywhere. So ends the 
 brilliant Felice Charmond — once a good friend to me — but 
 no friend to you." 
 
 "I can forgive her," said Grace, absently. "Did Edgar 
 tell you of this?" 
 
 "No; but he put a London newspaper, giving an account 
 of it, on the hall table, folded in such a way that we should 
 see it. It will be in the Sherton paper this week, no doubt. 
 To make the event more solemn still to him, he had just be- 
 fore had sharp words with her, and left her. He told Lucy 
 this, as nothing about him appears in the newspaper. And 
 the cause of the quarrel was, of all people, she we've left 
 behind us." 
 
 "Do you mean Marty?" Grace spoke the words but per- 
 functorily. For, pertinent and pointed as Melbury's story 
 was, she had no heart for it now. 
 
 "Yes. Marty South." Melbury persisted in his narra- 
 tive, to divert her from her present grief, if possible. "Be- 
 fore he went away she wrote him a letter, which he kept 
 in his pocket a long while before reading. He chanced to 
 pull it out in Mrs. Charmond's presence, and read it out 
 loud. It contained something which teased her very much, 
 and that led to the rupture. She was following him to make 
 it up when she met with her terrible death." 
 
 Melbury did not know enough to give the gist of the in- 
 cident, which was that Marty South's letter had been con- 
 cerning a certain personal adornment common to herself 
 and Mrs. Charmond. Her bullet reached its billet at last. 
 The scene between Fitzpiers and Felice had been sharp as 
 
316 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 only a scene can be which arises out of the mortification 
 one woman by another in the presence of a lover. Tn 
 Marty had not effected it by word of mouth; the char 
 about the locks of hair was made simply by Fitzpiers rea 
 ing her letter to him aloud to Felice in the playfully iro 
 ical tones of one who had become a little weary of his situ 
 tion, and was finding his friend, in the phrase of Geor 
 Herbert, a "flat delight." He had stroked those false tress 
 with his hand many a time without knowing them to 
 transplanted, and it was impossible when the discovery w 
 so abruptly made to avoid being finely satirical, despite h 
 generous disposition. 
 
 That was how it had begun, and tragedy had been 
 end. On his abrupt departure she had followed him to t 
 station, but the train was gone ; and in traveling to Baden 
 search of' him she had met his rival, whose reproaches led 
 an altercation, and the death of both. Of that precipita 
 scene of passion and crime Fitzpiers had known nothii 
 till he saw an account of it in the papers, where, fortunate 
 for himself, no mention was made of his prior acquaintan 
 with the unhappy lady; nor was there any allusion to hi 
 in the subsequent inquiry, the double death being attribut 
 to some gambling losses, though in point of fact neither oi 
 of them had visited the tables. 
 
 Melbury and his daughter drew near their house, havii 
 seen but one living thing on their way, a squirrel, whii 
 did not run up its tree, but dropping the sweet chestn 
 which it carried, cried chut-chut-chut, and stamped wi 
 its hindlegs on the ground. When the roofs and chimne 
 of the homestead began to emerge from the screen 
 boughs, Grace started, and checked herself in her abstract 
 advance. 
 
 "You clearly understand," she said to her step-moth( 
 some of her old misgiving returning, "that I am comii 
 back only on condition of his leaving as he promised? W 
 you let him know this, that there may be no mistake?" 
 
 Mrs. Melbury, who had had some long private talks wi 
 Fitzpiers, assured Grace that she need have no doubts < 
 that point, and that he would probably be gone by the eve 
 ing. Grace then entered with them into Melbury's wii 
 of the house, and sat down listlessly in the parlor while h 
 stepmother went to Fitzpiers. 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 317 
 
 The prompt obedience to her wishes which the surgeon 
 showed did honor to him, if anything could. Before Mrs. 
 Melbury had returned to the room, Grace, who was sitting 
 in the parlor window-bench, saw her husband go from the 
 door under the increasing light of morning, with a bag in 
 his hand. While passing through the gate he turned his 
 head. The fire-light of the room she sat in threw her figure 
 into dark relief against the window as she looked through 
 the panes, and he must have seen her distinctly. In a 
 moment he went on, the gate fell to, and he disappeared. 
 At the hut she had declared that another had displaced him; 
 and now she had banished him. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 Fitzpiers had hardly been gone an hour when Grace 
 began to sicken. The next day she kept her room. Old 
 Jones was called in; he murmured some statements in which 
 the words "feverish symptoms" occurred. Grace heard 
 them, and guessed the means by which she had brought this 
 visitation upon herself. 
 
 One day while she still lay there with her head throbbing, 
 wondering if she were really going to join him who had gone 
 before, Grammer Oliver came to her bedside. "I don't know 
 whe'r this is meant for you to take, ma'am," she said. "But 
 I have found it on the table. It was left by Marty, I think, 
 when she came this morning." 
 
 Grace turned her hot eyes upon what Grammer held up. 
 It was the vial left at the hut by her husband when he had 
 begged her to take some drops of its contents if she wished 
 to preserve herself from falling a victim to the malady which 
 had pulled down Winterborne. She examined it as well 
 as she could. The liquid was of an opaline hue, and bore 
 a label with an inscription in Italian. He had probably 
 got it in his wanderings abroad. She knew but little Italian, 
 but could understand that the cordial was a febrifuge of some 
 sort. Her father, her mother, and all the household were 
 anxious for her recovery, and she resolved to obey her hus- 
 band's directions. Whatever the risk, if any, she was pre- 
 
318 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 pared to run it. A glass of water was brought, and the 
 drops dropped in. 
 
 The effect, though not miraculous, was remarkable. In 
 less than an hour she felt calmer, cooler, better able to re- 
 flect, less inclined to fret and chafe and wear herself away. 
 She took a few drops more. From that time the fever re- 
 treated, and went out like a damp conflagration. 
 
 "How clever he is!" she said, regretfully. "Why could 
 he not have had more principle, so as to turn his great 
 talents to good account? Perhaps he has saved my useless 
 life. But he doesn't know it, and doesn't care whether he 
 has saved it or not, and on that account will never be told 
 by me. Probably he only gave it to me in the arrogance of 
 his skill, to show the greatness of his resources beside mine, 
 as Elijah drew down fire from heaven." 
 
 As soon as she had quite recovered from this foiled at- 
 tack upon her life, Grace went to Marty South's cottage. 
 The current of her being had again set toward the lost Giles 
 iWinterborne. 
 
 "Marty," she said, "we both loved him. We will go to 
 his grave together." 
 
 Great Hintock church stood at the upper part of the vil- 
 lage, and could be reached without passing through the 
 street. In the dusk of the late September day they went 
 thither by secret ways, walking mostly in silence side by 
 side, each busied with her own thoughts. Grace had a 
 trouble exceeding Marty's, that haunting sense of having 
 put out the light of his life by her own hasty doings. She 
 had tried to persuade herself that he might have died of his 
 illness even if she had not taken possession of his house. 
 Sometimes she had succeeded in her attempt; sometimes 
 she did not. 
 
 They stood by the grave together, and though the sun 
 had gone down, they could see over the woodland for miles, 
 and down to the vale in which he had been accustomed 
 to descend every year with his portable mill and press to 
 make cider about this time. 
 
 Perhaps Grace's first grief, the discovery that if he had 
 lived he could never have claimed her; had some power in 
 softening this, the second. On Marty's part there was the 
 same consideration; never would she have been his. As no 
 anticipation of gratified afifection had been in existence while 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. SlS 
 
 he was with them, there was none to be disappointed now 
 that he had gone. 
 
 Grace was abased when, by degrees, she found that she 
 had never understood Giles as Marty had done. Marty 
 South alone, of all the women in Hintock and the world, had 
 approximated to Winterborne's level of intelligent inter- 
 course with nature. In that respect she had formed the 
 complement to him in the other sex, had lived as his coun- 
 terpart, had subjoined her thought to his as a corollary. 
 
 The casual glimpses which the ordinary population be- 
 stowed upon that wondrous world of sap and leaves called 
 the Hintock woods had been with these two, Giles and 
 Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of its finer 
 mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had been able to 
 read its hieroglpyhs as ordinary writing; to them the sights 
 and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense 
 boughs, which had to Grace a touch of the uncanny, and 
 even the supernatural, were simple occurrences, whose ori- 
 gin, continuance, and laws they foreknew. They had plant- 
 ed together, and together they had felled; together they 
 had, with the run of the years, mentally collected those re- 
 moter signs and symbols which seen in few were of runic 
 obscurity, but altogether made an alphabet. From the light 
 lashings of the twigs upon their faces when brushing through 
 them in the dark they could pronounce upon the species of 
 the tree whence they stretched ; from the quality of the wind's 
 murmur through a bough, they could in like manner name 
 its sort afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its 
 heart were sound, or tainted with incipient decay, and by 
 the state of its upper twigs the stratum that had been reached 
 by its roots. The artifices of the seasons were seen by them 
 from the conjurer's own point of view, and not from that of 
 the spectator's. 
 
 "He ought to have married you, Marty, and nobody else 
 in the world!" said Grace, with conviction, after thinking 
 somewhat in the above strain. 
 
 Marty shook her head. "In all our out-door days and 
 years together, ma'am," she replied, "the one thing he never 
 spoke of to me was love; nor I to him." 
 
 "Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody 
 else knew — not even my father, though he came nearest 
 
320 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 knowing— the tongue of the trees and fruits and flowers 
 themselves." 
 
 She could indulge in mournful fancies like this to Marty, 
 but the hard core to her grief — which Marty's had not — 
 remained. Had she been sure that Giles' death resulted 
 entirely from his exposure, it would have driven her well- 
 nigh to insanity; but there was always that bare possibility 
 that his exposure had only precipitated what was inevita- 
 ble. She longed to believe that it had done even this. 
 
 There was only one man whose opinion on the circum- 
 stances she would be at all disposed to trust. Her husband 
 was that man. Yet to ask him it would be necessary to 
 detail the true conditions in which she and Winterborne 
 had lived during these three or four critical days that fol- 
 lowed her flight, and in withdrawing her original defiant an- 
 nouncement on that point there seemed a weakness she did 
 not care to show. She never doubted that Fitzpiers would 
 believe her if she made a clean confession of the actual situ- 
 ation ; but to volunteer the correction would seem like sig- 
 naling for a truce, and that in her present frame of mind was 
 what she did not feel the need of. 
 
 It will probably not appear a surprising statement, after 
 what has been already declared of Fitzpiers, that the man 
 whom Grace's fidelity could not keep faithful was stung 
 into passionate throbs of interest concerning her by her 
 avowal of the contrary. 
 
 He declared to himself that he had never known her dan- 
 gerously full compass if she were capable of such a reprisal, 
 and melancholy as it may be to admit the fact, his own 
 humiliation and regret engendered a smoldering admiration 
 of her. 
 
 He passed a month or two of great misery at Exbury, the 
 place to which he had retired — quite as much misery in- 
 deed as Grace, could she have known it, would have been 
 inclined to inflict upon any living creature, how much so- 
 ever he might have, wronged her. Then a sudden hope 
 dawned upon him ; he wondered if her affirmation was true. 
 He asked himself whether it was not the act of a woman 
 whose natural purity and innocence had blinded her to the 
 contingencies of such an announcement. His wide experi- 
 ence of the sex had taught him that, in many cases, women 
 who had ventured on hazardous matters did so because they 
 
THE WOODLANDERS, Mi 
 
 lacked an imagination sensuous enough to feel their full 
 force. In this light Grace's bold avowal might merely have 
 denoted the desperation of one who was a child to the reali- 
 ties of obliquity. 
 
 Fitzpiers' mental suiiferings and suspense led him at last 
 to take a melancholy journey to the neighborhood of Little 
 Hintock, and here he hovered for hours around the scene 
 of the purest emotional experiences that he had ever known 
 in his life. He walked about the woods that surrounded 
 Melbury's house, keeping out of sight like a criminal. It 
 was a fine evening, and on his way homeward he passed 
 near Marty South's cottage. As usual she had lighted her 
 candle without closing her shutters; he saw her within as 
 he had seen her many times before. 
 
 She was polishing tools, and though he had not wished 
 to show himself he could not resist speaking to her through 
 the half-open door. "What are you doing that for, Marty?" 
 
 "Because I want to clean them. They are not mine." 
 He could see, indeed, that they were not hers, for one was 
 a spade, large and heavy, and another was a billhook which 
 she could only have used with both hands. The spade, 
 though not a new one, had been so completely burnished 
 that it was bright as silver. 
 
 Fitzpiers somehow divined that they were Giles Winter- 
 borne's, and he put the question to her. 
 
 She replied in the affirmative. "I am going to keep 'em," 
 she said; "but I can't get his apple mill and press. I wish 
 I could; it is going to be sold, they say." 
 
 "Then I will buy it for you," said Fitzpiers. "That will 
 be making you a return for a kindness you did me." His 
 glance fell upon the girl's rare-colored hair, which had 
 grown again. "Oh, Marty, those locks of yours — and that 
 letter! But it was a kindness to send it, nevertheless," he 
 added, musingly. 
 
 After this there was confidence between them ; such con- 
 fidence as there had never been before. Marty was shy, 
 indeed, of speaking about the letter and her motives in writ- 
 ing it; but she thanked him warmly for his promise of the 
 cider press. She would travel with it in the autumn season 
 as he had done, she said. She would be quite strong 
 enough, with old Creedle as an assistant. 
 
 "Ah! there was one nearer to him than you," said Fitz- 
 ai 
 
322 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 piers, referring to Winterbome. "One who lived where he 
 lived, and was with him when he died." 
 
 Then Marty, suspecting that he did not know the true 
 circumstances, from the fact that Mrs. Fitzpiers and him- 
 self were living apart, told him of Giles' generosity to Grace 
 in giving up his house to her, at the risk, and possibly the 
 sacrifice, of his own life. When the surgeon heard it he 
 almost envied Giles his chivalrous character. He expressed 
 a wish to Marty that his visit to her should be kept secret, 
 and went home thoughtful, feeling that in more than one 
 sense his journey to Hintock had not been in vain. 
 
 He would have given much to win Grace's forgiveness 
 then. But whatever he dared hope for in that kind from 
 the future, there was nothing to be done yet, while Giles 
 Winterborne's memory was green. To wait was impera- 
 tive. A little time might melt her frozen thoughts, and 
 lead her to look on him with toleration, if not with love. 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 Weeks and months of mourning for Winterborne had 
 been passed by Grace in the soothing monotony of the 
 memorial act to which she and Marty had devoted them- 
 selves. Twice a week the pair went in the dusk to Great 
 Hintock, and Uke the mourners in "Cymbeline," sweetened 
 his sad grave with their flowers and their tears. Some- 
 times Grace thought that it was a pity neither one of them 
 had been his wife for a little while, and given the world a 
 copy of him who was so valuable in their eyes. Nothing 
 ever had brought home to her with such force as this death 
 how little acquirements and culture weigh beside sterling 
 personal character. While her simple sorrow for his loss 
 took a softer edge with the lapse of the autumn and winter 
 seasons, her self-reproach at having had a possible hand in 
 causing it knew little abatement. 
 
 Little occurred at Hintock during these months of the 
 fall and decay of the leaf. Discussion of the almost contem- 
 poraneous death of Mrs. Charmond abroad had waxed 
 and waned. Fitzpiers had had a marvelous escape from 
 being dragged into the inquiry which followed it, through 
 
THE WOODLANDERS, 323 
 
 the accident of their having parted just before under the 
 influence of Marty South's letter — the tiny instrument of a 
 cause deep in nature. 
 
 Her body was not brougfht home. It seemed to accord 
 well with the fitful fever of that impassioned woman's life 
 that she should not have found a native grave. She had 
 enjoyed but a life-interest in the estate, which, after her 
 death, passed to a relative of her husband's — one who knew 
 not Felice, one whose purpose seemed to be to blot out 
 every vestige of her. 
 
 On a certain day in February — the cheerful day of St. 
 Valentine, in fact — a letter reached Mrs. Fitzpiers, which 
 had been mentally promised her for that particular day a 
 long time before. 
 
 It announced that Fitzpiers was living at some midland 
 town, where he had obtained a temporary practice as assist- 
 ant to some local medical man, whose curative principles 
 were all wrong, though he dared not set them right. He 
 had thought fit to communicate with her on that day of ten- 
 der traditions to inquire if, in the event of his obtaining a 
 substantial practice that he had in view elsewhere, she could 
 forget the past and bring herself to join him. 
 
 There the practical part ended ; he then went on : 
 
 "My last year of experience has added ten years to my 
 age, dear Grace, and dearest wife that ever erring man un- 
 dervalued. You may be absolutely indifferent to what I say, 
 but let me say it — I have never loved any woman alive or 
 dead as I love, respect and honor you at this present mo- 
 ment. What you told me in the pride and naughtiness of 
 your heart I never believed (this, by the way, was not strict- 
 ly true); but even if I had believed it, it could never have 
 estranged me from you. Is there any use in telling you — 
 no, there is not — ^that I dream of your ripe lips more fre- 
 quently than I say my prayers; that the old familiar rustle 
 of your dress often returns upon my mind till it distracts 
 me? If you could condescend even only to see me again it 
 would be breathing life into a corpse. My pure, pure Grace, 
 modest as a turtle dove, how came I ever to possess you? 
 For the sake of being present in your mind on this lovers' 
 day, I think I would almost rather have you hate me a little 
 than not think of me at all. You may call my fancies whim- 
 
324 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 sical; but remember, sweet, lost one, that 'nature is fine in 
 love, and where 'tis fine it sends some instance of itself.' I 
 will not intrude upon you further now. Make me a little bit 
 happy by sending back one line to say that you will consent, 
 at any rate, to a short interview. I will meet you and leave 
 you as a mere acquaintance, if you will only afford me this 
 slight means of making a few explanations, and of putting 
 my position before you. Believe me, in spite of all you may 
 do or feel, 
 
 "Your lover always (once your husband), 
 
 "E." 
 
 It was, oddly enough, the first occasion, or nearly the first, 
 on which Grace had ever received a love-letter from him, 
 his courtship having taken place under conditions which 
 rendered letter-writing unnecessary. Its perusal, therefore, 
 had a certain novelty for her. She thought that, upon the 
 whole, he wrote love-letters very well. But the chief ration- 
 al interest of the letter to the reflective Grace lay in the 
 chance that such a meeting as he proposed would afford her 
 of setting her doubts at rest one way or the other on her actu- 
 al share in Winterborne's death. The relief of consulting a 
 skilled mind, the one professional man who had seen Giles 
 at that time, would be immense. As for that statement that 
 she had uttered in her disdainful grief, which at the time she 
 had regarded as her triumph, she was quite prepared to 
 admit to him that his belief was the true one; for in wrong- 
 ing herself as she did when she made it she had done what 
 to her was a more serious thing, wronged Winterborne's 
 memory. 
 
 Without consulting her father, or any one in the house or 
 out of it, Grace replied to the letter. She agreed to meet 
 Fitzpiers on two conditions, of which the first was that the 
 place of meeting should be the top of Rubdown Hill, the 
 second that he would not object to Marty South accom- 
 panying her. 
 
 Whatever art, much or little, there may have been in 
 Fitzpiers' so-called valentine to his wife, he felt a delight 
 as of the bursting of spring when her brief reply came. It 
 was one of the few pleasures that he had experienced of 
 late years at all resembling those of his early youth. He 
 promptly replied that he accepted the conditions, and 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 325 
 
 named the day and hour at which he would be on the spot 
 she mentioned. 
 
 A few minutes before three on the appointed day found 
 him climbing the well-known hill, which had been the axis 
 of so many critical movements in their lives during his resi- 
 dence at Hintock. 
 
 The sight of each homely and well-remembered object 
 swelled the regret that seldom left him now. Whatever 
 paths might lie open to his future, the soothing shades of 
 Hintock were forbidden him forever as a permanent dwell- 
 ing-place. 
 
 He longed for the society of Grace. But to lay offerings 
 on her slighted altar was his first aim, and until her pro- 
 pitiation was complete, he would constrain her in no way 
 to return to him. The least reparation that he could make, 
 in a case where he would gladly have made much, would 
 be to let her feel herself absolutely free to choose between 
 living with him and without him. 
 
 Moreover, a subtlist in emotions, he cultivated as under 
 glasses strange and mournful pleasures that he -Would not 
 willingly let die just at present. To show any forwardness 
 in suggesting a modus vivendi to Grace would be to put 
 an end to these novelties. Tc be the vassal of her sweet will 
 for a time — he demanded no more, and found solace in the 
 contemplation of the soft miseries she caused him. 
 
 Approaching the hill-top with a mind strung to these no- 
 tions, Fitzpiers discerned a gay procession of people com- 
 ing over the crest, and was not long in perceiving it to be 
 a wedding party. Though the wind was keen the women 
 were in light attire, and the flowered waistcoats of the men 
 had a pleasing vividness of pattern. Each of the gentler 
 ones clung to the arm of her partner so tightly as to have 
 with him one step, rise, swing, gait, almost one center of 
 gravity. In the buxom bride Fitzpiers recognized no other 
 than Suke Damson, who in her light gown looked a giantess ; 
 the small husband beside her he saw to be Tim Tangs. 
 
 Fitzpiers could not escape, for they had seen him ; though 
 of all the beauties in the world whom he did not wish to 
 meet, Suke was the chief. But he put the best face on the 
 matter that he could, and came on, the approaching com- 
 pany evidently discussing him and his separation from Mrs. 
 
326 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 Fitzpiers. As the couples closed upon him, he expressed 
 his congratulations. 
 
 "We be just walking round the parishes to show our- 
 selves a bit," said Tim. "First we het across to Delborough, 
 then athwart to here, and from here we go to Rubdown and 
 Millshot, and then round by the cross-roads home. Home, 
 says I ; but it won't be that long. We be off next month." 
 
 "Indeed! Where to?" 
 
 Tim informed him that they were going to New Zealand. 
 Not but that he would have been contented with Hintock, 
 but his wife was ambitious and wanted to leave; so he had 
 given way. 
 
 "Then good-bye," said Fitzpiers; "I may not see you 
 again." He shook hands with Tim and turned to the bride. 
 "Good-bye, Suke," he said, taking her hand also. "I wish 
 you and your husband prosperity in the country you have 
 chosen." With this he left them, and hastened on to his 
 appointment. 
 
 The wedding party reformed and resumed march like- 
 wise. But in restoring his arm to Suke, Tim noticed that 
 her full and blooming countenance had undergone a change. 
 "Hullo! my dear, what's the matter?" said Tim. 
 
 "Nothing to speak o'," said she. To give the lie to her 
 assertion she was seized with lachrymose twitches that soon 
 produced a dribbHng face. 
 
 "How — what the devil's this about?" exclaimed the bride- 
 groom. 
 
 "She's a little wee bit overcome," said the first bride- 
 maid, unfolding her handkerchief and wiping Suke's eyes. 
 
 "I never did like parting from people !" said Suke, as soon 
 as she could speak. 
 
 "Why him in particular?" 
 
 "Well, he's such a clever doctor, that 'tis a thousand pit- 
 ies we sha'n't see him any more. There'll be no such clever 
 doctor as he in New Zealand, if I should require one; and 
 the thought o't got the better of my feelings." 
 
 They walked on, and Tim's face grew rigid and pale, for 
 he recalled slight circumstances, disregarded at the time of 
 their occurrence. The former boisterous laughter of the 
 wedding party at the groomsman's jokes was heard ringing 
 through the woods no more. 
 
 By this time Fitzpiers had advanced on his way to the 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 32T 
 
 top of the hill, where he saw two figures emerging from 
 the bank on the right hand. These were the expected ones, 
 Grace and Marty South, who had evidently come there by 
 a short and secret path through the wood. Grace was muf- 
 fled up in her winter dress, and he thought that she had 
 never looked so seductive as at this moment in the noontide 
 bright, but heatless, sun, and the keen wind, and the pur- 
 plish-gray masses of brushwood around. Fitzpiers contin- 
 ued to regard the nearing picture, till at length their glances 
 met for a moment, when she demurely sent off hers at a 
 tangent, and gave him the benefit of her three-quarter face, 
 while with chivalrous completeness of conduct he lifted his 
 hat in a large arc. Marty dropped behind, and when Fitz- 
 piers held out his hand Grace touched it with her fingers. 
 
 "I have agreed to be here mostly because I wanted to ask 
 you something important," said Mrs. Fitzpiers, her intona- 
 tion modulating in a direction that she had not quite wished 
 it to take. 
 
 "I am most attentive," said her husband. "Shall we take 
 to the wood for privacy?" 
 
 Grace demurred, Fitzpiers gave in, and they, kept the pub 
 lie road. 
 
 At any rate she would take his arm? This also was 
 gravely negatived. The refusal being audible to Marty, 
 who looked amused. 
 
 "Why not?" he inquired. 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Fitzpiers — how can you ask!" 
 
 "Right, right," said he, his effusiveness shriveled up. 
 
 As they walked on she returned to her inquiry. "It is 
 about a matter that may, perhaps, be unpleasant to you. 
 But I think I need not consider that too carefully." 
 
 "Not at all," said Fitzpiers, heroically. 
 
 She then took him back to the time of poor Winterborne's 
 death, and related the precise circumstances amid which 
 his fatal illness had come upon him, particularizing the 
 dampness of the shelter to which he had betaken himself, 
 his concealment from her of the hardships that he was un- 
 dergoing, all that he had put up with, all that he had done 
 for her in his scrupulous considerateness. The retrospect 
 brought her to tears as she asked him if he thought that 
 the sin of having driven him to his death was upon her. 
 
 Fitzpiers could hardly help showing his satisfaction at 
 
328 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 what her narrative indirectly revealed, the actual harm- 
 lessness of an escapade with her lover, which had at first, 
 by her own showing, looked so grave, but he did not care 
 to inquire whether that harmlessness had been the result 
 of aim or of accident. With regard to her question, he de- 
 clared that in his judgment no human being could answer 
 it. He thought that upon the whole the balance of proba- 
 bilities turned in her favor. Winterborne' s apparent 
 strength during the last months of his life must have been 
 delusive. It had often occurred that after a first attack of 
 that insidious disease a person's apparent recovery was a 
 physiological mendacity. 
 
 The relief which came to Grace lay almost as much in 
 sharing her knowledge of the particulars with an intelligent 
 mind as in the assurances Fitzpiers gave her. "Well, then, 
 to put this case before you, and obtain your professional 
 opinion, was chiefly why I consented to come here to-day," 
 said she, when he had reached the aforesaid conclusion. 
 
 "For no other reason at all?" he asked, ruefully. 
 
 "It was nearly the whole." 
 
 They stood and looked over a gate at twenty or thirty 
 starlings feeding in the grass, and he started the talk again 
 by saying in a low voice : "And yet I love you more than 
 ever I loved you in my life." 
 
 Grace did not move her eyes from the birds, and folded 
 her delicate lips as if to keep them in subjection. 
 
 "It is a dififerent kind of love altogether," said he. "Less 
 passionate; more profound. It has nothing to do with the 
 material conditions of the object at all ; much to do with her 
 character and goodness, as revealed by closer observation. 
 'Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with 
 dearer love.' " 
 
 "That is out of 'Measure for Measure,' " said she, slyly. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I meant it as a citation," blandly replied Fitz- 
 piers. "Well, then, why not give me a very little bit of 
 your heart again?" 
 
 The crash of a felled tree in the remote depths of the 
 wood recalled the past at that moment, and all the homely 
 faithfulness of Winterborne. "Don't ask it. My heart is in 
 the grave with Giles," she replied stanchly. 
 
 "Mine is with you — in no less deep a grave, I fear, accord- 
 ing to that." 
 
THE WOODLANDBES. 329 
 
 "I am very sorry, but it cannot be helped." 
 
 "How can you be sorry for me when you willfully keep 
 open the grave?" 
 
 "Oh, no, that's not so," returned Grace, quickly, and 
 moved to go away from him. 
 
 "But, dearest Grace," said he, "you have condescended 
 to come, and I thought from it that perhaps when I had 
 passed through a long state of probation you would be gen- 
 erous. But if there can be no hope of our getting completely 
 reconciled, treat me gently, wretch though I am." 
 
 "I did not say you were a wretch, nor have I ever said so." 
 
 "But you have such a contemptuous way of looking at 
 me that I fear you think so." 
 
 Grace's heart struggled between the wish not to be harsh 
 and the fear that she might mislead him. "I cannot look 
 contemptuous unless I feel contempt," she said, evasively. 
 "And all I feel is lovelessness." 
 
 "I have been very bad, I know," he returned. "But un- 
 less you can really love me again, Grace, I would rather 
 go away from you forever. I don't want you to receive me 
 again for duty's sake, or anything of that sort. If I had 
 not cared more for your affection and forgiveness than my 
 own personaj comfort I should never have come back here. 
 I could have obtained a practice at a distance, and have 
 lived my own life without coldness or reproach. But I have 
 chosen to return to the one spot on earth where my name is 
 tarnished — to enter the house of a man from whom I have 
 had worse treatment than from any other man alive — all 
 for you." 
 
 This was undeniably true, and it had its weight with Grace, 
 who began to look as if she thought she had been shocking- 
 ly severe. 
 
 "Before you go," he continued, "I want to know your 
 pleasure about me; what you wish me to do, or not to do." 
 
 "You are independent of me, and it seems a mockery 
 to ask that. Far be it from me to advise. But I will think 
 it over. I rather need advice myself than stand in a posi- 
 tion to give it" 
 
 "You don't need advice, wisest, dearest woman that ever 
 lived. If you did " 
 
 "Would you give it to me?" 
 
 "Would you act upon what I gave?" 
 
330 THE WOODLANDBRS. 
 
 "That's not a fair inquiry," said she, smiling, despite her 
 gravity. "I don't mind hearing it; what you do really think 
 the most correct and proper course for me." 
 
 "It is so easy for me to say, and yet I dare not, for it 
 would be provoking you to remonstrances." 
 
 Knowing, of course, what the advice would be, she did 
 not press him further, and was about to beckon Marty for- 
 ward and leave him, when he interrupted her with, "Oh, 
 one moment, dear Grace, you will meet me again?" 
 
 She eventually agreed to see him that day fortnight. 
 Fitzpiers expostulated at the interval, but the half-alarmed 
 earnestness with which she entreated him not to come soon- 
 er made him say hastily that he submitted to her will — that 
 he would regard her as a friend only, anxious for his re- 
 form and well-being, till such time as she might allow him 
 to exceed that privilege. 
 
 All this was to assure her; it was only too clear that he 
 had not won her confidence yet. It amazed Fitzpiers, and 
 overthrew all his deductions from previous experience, to 
 find that this girl, though she had been married to him, 
 could yet be so coy. Notwithstanding a certain fascination 
 that it carried with it, his reflections were somber as he 
 went homeward; he saw how deep had been his ofifense to 
 produce so great a vf eariness in a gentle and once unsuspi- 
 cious soul. 
 
 He was himself too fastidious to care to coerce her. To 
 be an object of misgiving or dislike to a woman who shared 
 his home was what he could not endure the thought of. 
 Life as it stood was more tolerable. 
 
 When he was gone, Marty joined Mrs. Fitzpiers. She 
 would fain have consulted Marty on the question of platonic 
 relations with her former husband, as she preferred to re- 
 gard him. But Marty showed no great interest in their af- 
 fairs, so Grace said nothing. They came onward and saw 
 Melbury standing at the scene of the felling which had 
 been audible to them, when, telling Marty that she 
 wished her meeting with Mr. Fitzpiers to be kept private, 
 she left the girl to join her father. At any rate, she would 
 consult him on the expediency of occasionally seeing her 
 husband. 
 
 Her father was cheerful and walked by her side as he 
 had done in earlier days. "I was thinking of you when yoq 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 331 
 
 eame up," he said. "I have considered that what has hap- 
 pened is for the best. Since your husband is gone away, 
 and seems not to wish to trouble you, why, let him go, and 
 drop out of your life. Many women are worse off. You 
 can live here comfortably enough, and he can emigrate, or 
 do what he likes for his good. I wouldn't mind sending 
 him the further sum of money he might naturally expect 
 to come to him, so that you may not be bothered with him 
 any more. He could hardly have gone on living here without 
 speaking to me or meeting me; and that would have been 
 very unpleasant on both sides." 
 
 These remarks checked her intention. There was a sense 
 of weakness in following them by saying that she had just 
 met her husband by appointment. "Then you would ad- 
 vise me not to communicate with him?" she observed. 
 
 "I shall never advise ye again. You are your own mis- 
 tress — do as you like. But my opinion is that if you don't 
 live with him you had better live without him, and not 
 go shilly-shallying and playing bo-peep. You sent him 
 away; and now he's gone. Very well; trouble him no 
 more." 
 
 Grace felt a guiltiness — she hardly knew why — and made 
 no confession. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 The woods were uninteresting, and Grace stayed indoors 
 a great deal. She became quite a student, reading more 
 than she had done since her marriage. But her seclusion 
 was always broken for the periodical visit to Winterborne's 
 grave with Marty, which was kept up with pious strict- 
 ness for the purpose of putting snowdrops, primroses, and 
 other vernal flowers thereon as they came. 
 
 One afternoon at sunset she was standing just outside 
 her father's garden, which, like the rest of the Hintock in- 
 closures, abutted into the wood. A slight footpath led along 
 here, forming a secret way to either of the houses by getting 
 through its boundary hedge. Grace was just about to adopt 
 this mode of entry when a figure approached along the 
 path, and held up his hand to detain her, It wag her hug- 
 band- 
 
332 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "I am delighted," he said, coming up out of breath; and 
 there seemed no reason to doubt his words. "I saw you some 
 way off — I was afraid you would go in before I could reach 
 you." 
 
 "It is a week before the time," said she, reproachfully. "I 
 said a fortnight from the last meeting." 
 
 "My dear, you don't suppose I could wait a fortnight 
 without trying to get a glimpse of you, even though you 
 had declined to meet me! Would it make you angry to 
 know that I have been along this path at dusk three or four 
 times since our last meetng? Well, how are you?" 
 
 She did not refuse her hand, but when he showed a wish 
 to retain it a moment longer than mere formality required, 
 she made it smaller, so that it slipped away from him, with 
 again that same alarmed look which always followed his 
 attempts in this direction. He saw that she was not yet 
 out of the elusive mood; not yet to be treated presuming- 
 ly; and he was correspondingly careful to tranquilize her. 
 
 His assertion had seemed to impress her somewhat. "I 
 had no idea you came so often," she said. "How far do you 
 come from?" 
 
 "From Exbury. I always walk from Sherton-Abbas, for 
 if I hire, people will know that I come; and my success with 
 you so far has not been great enough to justify such overt- 
 ness. Now, my dear one — as I must call you — I put it to 
 you : will you see me a little oftener as the spring advances?" 
 
 Grace lapsed into unwonted sedateness, and avoiding the 
 question, said: "I wish you would concentrate on your 
 profession, and give up those strange studies that used to 
 distract you so much. I am sure you would get on." 
 
 "It is the very thing I am doing. I was going to ask 
 you to burn — or, at least, get rid of — all my philosophical 
 literature. It is in the book-cases in your rooms. The fact 
 is, I never cared much for abstruse studies." 
 
 "I am so glad to hear you say that. And those other 
 books — those piles of old plays — ^what good are they to a 
 medical man?" 
 
 "None whatever," he replied, cheerfully. "Sell them at 
 Sherton for what they will fetch." 
 
 "And those dreadful old French romances, with their 
 horrid spellings of 'filz,' and 'ung,' and 'ilz,' and 'mary,' and 
 •ma foy'?" 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. §83 
 
 "You haven't been reading them, Grace?" 
 
 "Oh, no — I just looked into them, that was all." 
 
 "Make a bonfire of 'em directly you get home. I meant 
 to do it myself. I can't think what possessed me ever to 
 collect them. I have only a few professional hand-books 
 now, and am quite a practical man. I am in hopes of hav- 
 ing some good news to tell you soon, and then do you think 
 you could — come to me again?" 
 
 "I would rather you did not press me on that just now,'' 
 she replied, with some agitation. "You have said you mean 
 to lead a new, useful, effectual life; but I should like to see 
 you put it in practice for a little while before you address 
 that query to me. Besides, I could not live with you." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 Grace was silent a few instants. "I go with Marty to 
 Giles' grave. We swore we would show him that devotion. 
 And I mean to keep it vip." 
 
 "Well, I wouldn't mind that at all. I have no right to 
 expect anything else, and I will not wish you to keep away. 
 I liked the man as well as any I ever knew. In short, I 
 would accompany you as far as — say, a hundred yards of 
 the place, and smoke a cigar on the stile while I waited till 
 you came back." 
 
 "Then you haven't given up smoking?" 
 
 "Well — ahem — no. I have thought of doing so, but " 
 
 His extreme complaisance had rather disconcerted Grace, 
 and the question about smoking had been to effect a diver- 
 sion. Presently she said sadly and with a moisture in her 
 eye that he could not see, as her mind returned to poor Giles' 
 "frustrate ghost," "I don't like you to speak lightly on that 
 subject, if you did speak lightly. To be frank with you — 
 quite frank — I think of him as my betrothed lover still. I 
 cannot Help it. So that it would be wrong for me to join 
 you." 
 
 Fitzpiers was now uneasy. "You say your betrothed lover 
 still," he rejoined. "When, then, were you betrothed to him, 
 or engaged, as we common people say?" 
 
 "When you were away." 
 
 "How could that be?" 
 
 Grace would have avoided this; but her natural candor; 
 led her on, "It was when I was under the impression that 
 
33i THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 my marriage with you was about to be annulled, and that 
 he could then marry me. So I encouraged him." 
 
 Fitzpiers winced visibly at this ; and yet, upon the whole, 
 she was right in telling it. Indeed, his perception that she 
 was right in her absolute sincerity kept his affectionate ad- 
 miration for her under the pain of the rebuff. Time had been 
 when the avowal that Grace had deliberately taken steps to 
 replace him would have brought him no sorrow. But she so 
 far dominated him now that he could not bear to hear her 
 words, although the object of her high regard was no more. 
 
 "It is rough upon me — that!" he said, bitterly. "Oh, Grace 
 — I did not know you — tried to get rid of me! I suppose 
 it is of no use, but I ask, cannot you hope to — find a little love 
 in your heart for me again?" 
 
 "If I could, I would oblige you ; but I fear I cannot," she 
 replied, with illogical ruefulness. "And I don't see why you 
 should mind my having had one lover besides yourself in 
 my life, when you have had so many." 
 
 "But I can tell you honestly that I love you better than 
 all of them put together, and that's what you will not tell 
 me." 
 
 "I am sorry, but I fear I cannot," she said, sighing again. 
 
 "I wonder if you ever will?" He looked musingly into 
 her indistinct face, as if he would read the future there. "Now 
 have pity and tell me: will you try?" 
 
 "To love you again?" 
 
 "Yes, if you can." 
 
 "I don't know how to reply," she answered, her embar- 
 rassment proving her truth. "Will you promise to leave me 
 quite free as to seeing you or not seeing you?" 
 
 "Certainly. Have I given any ground for you to doubt 
 my first promise in that respect?" 
 
 She was obliged to admit that he had not. 
 
 "Then I think you might get your heart out of that grave," 
 said he, with playful sadness. It has been there a long time." 
 
 She faintly shook her head, but said, "I'll try to think of 
 you more — if I can." 
 
 With this Fitzpiers was compelled to be satisfied, and he 
 asked her when she would meet him again. 
 
 "As we arranged — in a fortnight." 
 
 "Jf it must be a fortpight it must," 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 335 
 
 "This time, at least. I'll consider by the day I see you 
 again if I can shorten the interval." 
 
 "Well, be that as it may, I shall come at least twice a week 
 to look at your window." 
 
 "You must do as you like about that. Good-night." 
 
 "Say 'husband.' " 
 
 She seemed almost inclined to give him the word; but 
 exclaiming, "No, no, I cannot," slipped through the garden 
 hedge, and disappeared. 
 
 Fitzpiers did not exaggerate when he told her that he 
 should haunt the precincts of the dwelling. But his per- 
 sistence in this course did not result in his seeing her much 
 oftener than at the fortnightly interval which she had her- 
 self marked out as proper. At these times, however, she 
 punctually appeared, and as the spring wore on the meet- 
 ings were kept tip, though their character changed but lit- 
 tle with the increase of their number. 
 
 The small garden of the cottage occupied by the Tangs 
 family — father, son, and now son's wife — aligned with the 
 larger one of the timber dealer at its upper end ; and when 
 young Tim, after leaving work at Melbury's, stood at dusk 
 in the little bower at the corner of his inclosure to smoke a 
 pipe, he frequently observed the surgeon pass along the 
 outside track before mentioned. Fitzpiers always walked 
 loiteringly, pensively, looking with a sharp eye into the gar- 
 dens, one after another, as he proceeded, for Fitzpiers did 
 not wish to leave the now absorbing spot too quickly, after 
 traveling so far to reach it, hoping always for a glimpse of 
 her whom he passionately desired to take to his arms anew. 
 
 Now Tim began to be struck with these loitering prog- 
 resses along the garden boundaries in the gloaming, and 
 wondered what they boded. It was naturally quite out of 
 his power to divine the singular, sentimental revival in Fitz- 
 piers' heart — the fineness of tissue which could take a deep 
 emotional, almost also an artistic, pleasure in being the 
 yearning inamorata of a woman he once had deserted, would 
 have seemed an absurdity to the young sawyer. Mr. and 
 Mrs. Fitzpiers were separated, therefore the question of at- 
 tachment as between them was settled. But his Suke had, 
 since that meeting on their marriage-day, repentantly 
 admitted, to the urgencj of his questioning, a good deal con- 
 
S36 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 earning her past levities. Putting all things together, he 
 could hardly avoid connecting Fitzpiers' mysterious visits to 
 this spot with Suke's residence under his roof. But he made 
 himself fairly easy; the vessel in which they were about to 
 emigrate sailed that month, and then Suke would be out of 
 Fitzpiers' way forever. 
 
 The interval at last expired, and the eve of their departure 
 arrived. They were pausing in the room of the cottage al- 
 lotted to them by Tim's father, after a busy day of prepara- 
 tion, which left them weary. In a corner stood their boxes, 
 crammed and corded, their large case for the hold having 
 already been sent away. The firelight shone upon Suke's 
 fine face and form as she stood looking into it, and tipon the 
 face of Tim seated in a corner, and upon the walls of his 
 father's house, which he was beholding that night almost for 
 the last time. 
 
 Tim Tangs was not happy. This scheme of emigration 
 was dividing him from his father — for old Tangs would on 
 no account leave Hintock — and had it not been for Suke's 
 reputation and his own dignity Tim would at the last mo- 
 ment have abandoned the project. As he sat in the back 
 part of the room he regarded her moodily, and the fire, and 
 the boxes. One thing he had particularly noticed this even- 
 ing — she was very restless; fitful in her actions, unable to 
 remain seated, and in a marked degree depressed. 
 
 "Sorry that you be going, after all, Suke?" he said. 
 
 She sighed involuntarily. "I don't know but that I be," 
 she answered. " 'Tis natural, isn't it, when one is going 
 away?" 
 
 "But you wasn't born here, as I was." 
 
 "No." 
 
 "There's folk left behind that you'd fain have with 'ee, 
 I reckon?" 
 
 "Why do ye think that?" 
 
 "I've seen things, and I've heard things; and, Suke, I 
 say 'twill be a good moVe for me to get 'ee away. I don't 
 mind his leavings abroad, but I do mind 'em at home." 
 
 Suke's face was not changed from its aspect of listless 
 indifiference by the words. She answered nothing, and 
 shortly after he went out for his customary pipe of tobacco at 
 the top of the garden. 
 
 The restlessness of Suke had indeed owed its presence to 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 337 
 
 the gentleman of Tim's suspicions, but in a different and — 
 it must be added, in justice to her — more innocent sense than 
 he supposed, judging from former doings. She had acci- 
 dentally discovered that Fitzpiers was in the habit of com- 
 ing secretly once or twice a week to Hintock, and knew that 
 this evening was a favorite one of the seven for his journey. 
 As she was going next day to leave the country, Suke thought 
 there could be no great harm in giving way to a little senti- 
 mentality by obtaining a glimpse of him quite unknown to 
 himself or to anybody, and thus taking a silent last farewell. 
 Aware that Fitzpiers' time for passing was at hand, she thus 
 tetrayed her feeling. No sooner, therefore, had Tim left the 
 room than she let herself noiselessly out of the house, and 
 hastened to the corner of the garden whence she could wit- 
 ness the surgeon's transit across the scene, if he had not al- 
 ready gone by. 
 
 Her light cotton dress was visible to Tim ensconced in 
 the arbor of the opposite corner, though he was hidden 
 from her. He saw her stealthily climb into the hedge, and 
 so ensconce herself there that nobody could have the least 
 doubt her purpose was to watch unseen for a passer-by. 
 
 He went across to the spot, and stood behind her. Suke 
 started, having in her blundering way forgotten that he 
 might be near. She at once descended from the hedge. 
 
 "So he's coming to-night?" said Tim, laconically. "And 
 we be always anxious to see our dears." 
 
 "He is coming to-night," she replied, with defiance. "And 
 we be anxious for our dears." 
 
 "Then will ye step in-doors, where your dear will soon jine 
 'ee? We've to mouster by half past three to-morrow, and 
 if we don't get to bed by eight at latest our faces will ht as 
 long as clock cases all day." 
 
 She hesitated for a minute, but ultimately obeyed, going 
 slowly down the garden to the house, where he heard the 
 door-latch click behind her. 
 
 Tim was incensed beyond measure. His marriage had 
 so far been a total failure, a source of bitter regret ; and the 
 only course for improving his case, that of leaving the coun- 
 try, was a sorry, and possibly might not be a very effectual, 
 one. Do what he would, his domestic sky was likely to be 
 overcast to the end of the day. Thus he brooded, and his re- 
 sentment gathered force. He craved a means of striking one 
 
 22 
 
338 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 blow back at the cause of his cheerless plight while he was 
 still on the scene of his discomfiture. For some minutes no 
 method suggested itself, and then he had an idea. 
 
 Coming to a sudden resolution, he hastened along the gar- 
 den, and entered the one attached to the next cottage, which 
 had formerly been the dwelling of a game-keeper. Tim de- 
 scended the path to the back of the house, where only an 
 old woman lived at present, and reaching the wall, he 
 stopped. Owing to the slope of the ground, the roof eaves 
 of the linhay were here within touch, and he thrust his arm 
 up under them, feeling about in the space on the top of the 
 wall place. 
 
 "Ah, I thought my memory didn't deceive me !" he lipped, 
 silently. 
 
 With some exertion he drew down a cobwebbed object 
 curiously framed in iron, which clanked as he moved it. It 
 was about three feet in length and half as wide. Tim con- 
 templated it as well as he could in the dying light of day, 
 and raked off the cobwebs with his hand. 
 
 "That will spoil his pretty shins for'm, I reckon," he said. 
 Ai It was a man-trap. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 Were the inventors of automatic machines to be ranged 
 according to the excellence of their devices for producing 
 sound artistic torture, the creator of the man-trap would 
 occupy a very respectable if not a very high place. 
 
 It should rather, however, be said, the inventor of the 
 particular form of man-trap of which this found in the keep- 
 er's out-house was a specimen. For there were other shapes 
 and other sizes, instruments which, if placed in a row beside 
 one of the type disinterred by Tim, would have worn the 
 subordinate aspect of the bears, wild boars, or wolves in a 
 traveling menagerie as compared with the leading lion or 
 tiger. In short, though many varieties had been in use dur- 
 ing those centuries which we are accustomed to look back 
 upon as the true and only period of merry England — in the 
 rural districts more especially — and onward down to the 
 third decade of the nineteenth century, this model had borne 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 339 
 
 the palm, and had been most usually followed when the 
 orchards and estates required new ones. 
 
 There had been the toothless variety used by the softer- 
 hearted landlords — quite contemptible in their clemency. 
 The jaws of these resembled the jaws of an old woman to 
 whom time has left nothing but gums. There were also the 
 intermediate or half-toothed sorts, probably devised by the 
 middle-natured squires, or those under the influence of their 
 wives ; two inches of mercy, two inches of cruelty, two inches 
 of mere nip, two inches of probe, and so on through the 
 whole extent of the jaws. There were also, as a class apart, 
 the bruisers, which did not lacerate the flesh, but only 
 crushed the bone. 
 
 The sight of one of these gins when set produced a vivid 
 impression that it was endowed with life. It exhibited the 
 combined aspects of a shark, a crocodile, and a scorpion. 
 Each tooth was in the form of a tapering spine, two and a 
 quarter inches long, which, when the jaws were closed, stood 
 in alternation from this side and that. When they were open 
 the two halves formed a complete circle between two and 
 three feet in diameter, the plate or treading-place in the midst 
 being about a foot square, while from beneath extended in 
 opposite directions the soul of the apparatus, the pair of 
 springs, each one being of a stiffness to render necessary a 
 lever or the whole weight of the body when forcing- it down. 
 
 There were men at this time still living at Hintock who 
 remembered when the gin and others like it were in use. 
 Tim Tangs' great-uncle had endured a night of six hours 
 in this very trap, which lamed him for life. Once a keeper 
 of Hintock woods set it on the track of a poacher, and after- 
 ward coming back that way forgetful of what he had done, 
 walked into it himself. The wound brought on lockjaw, of 
 which he died. This event occurred during the thirties, and 
 by the year 1840 the use of such implements was "well-nigh 
 discontinued in the neighborhood. But being made entire- 
 ly of iron, they by no means disappeared, and in almost every 
 village one could be found in some nook or corner as read- 
 ily as this was found by Tim. It had indeed been a fearful 
 amusement of Tim and other Hintock lads — especially those 
 who had a dim sense of becoming renowned poachers when 
 they reached their prime— to drag out this trap from its hid- 
 
340 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 ing, set it, and throw it with billets of wood, which were 
 penetrated by the teeth to the depth of near an inch. 
 
 As soon as he had examined the trap, and found that the 
 hinges and springs were still perfect, he shouldered it with- 
 out more ado, and returned with his burden to his own gar- 
 den, passing on through the hedge to the path immediately 
 outside the boundary. Here, by the help of a stout stake, he 
 set the trap, and hid it carefully behind a bush while he went 
 forward to reconnoiter. As has been stated nobody passed 
 this way for days together sometimes ; but there was just a 
 possibility that some other pedestrian than the one in request 
 might arrive, and it behooved Tim to be careful as to the 
 identity of his victim. 
 
 Going about a hundred yards along the rising ground to 
 the right, he reached a ridge whereon a large and thick holly 
 grew. Beyond this for some distance the wood was more 
 open, and the course which Fitzpiers must pursue to reach 
 the point, if he came to-night, was visible a long way for- 
 ward. 
 
 For some time there was no sign of him or of anybody. 
 Then there shaped itself a spot out of the dim mid-distance 
 between the masses of brushwood on either hand. And it 
 enlarged, and Tim could hear the brushing of feet over the 
 tufts of sour grass. The airy gait revealed Fitzpiers even 
 before his exact outline could be seen. 
 
 Tim Tangs turned about, and ran down the opposite side 
 of the hill, till he -was again at the head of his own garden. 
 It was the work of a few moments to drag out the man-trap 
 very gently — ^that the plate might not be disturbed sufficient- 
 ly to throw it — ^to a space between a pair of young oaks 
 which, rooted in contiguity, grew apart upward, forming a 
 V-shaped opening between; and, being backed up by 
 bushes, left this as the only course for a foot-passenger. 
 Here he laid the trap with the same gentleness of handling, 
 locked the chain round one of the trees, and finally slid back 
 the guard, which was placed to keep the gin from accidentally 
 catching the arms of him who set it, or, to use the local and 
 better word, "toiled" it. Having completed this, Tim sprung 
 through the adjoining hedge of his father's garden, ran down 
 the path, and softly entered the house. 
 
 Obedient to his order, Suke had gone to bed; and as soon 
 as he had bolted the door, Tim unlaced and kicked off his 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 341 
 
 boots at the foot of the stairs, and retired likewise without 
 hghting a candle. His object seemed to be to undress as 
 soon as possible. Before, however, he had completed the 
 operation a long cry resounded without — penetrating, but 
 indescribable. 
 
 "What's that?" said Suke, starting up in bed. 
 
 "Sounds as if somebody had caught a rabbit in his gin." 
 
 "Oh, no," said she. "It was not a rabbit; 'twas louder. 
 Hark!" 
 
 "Do 'ee get to sleep," said Tim. "How be you going lo 
 wake at half-past three else?" 
 
 She lay down and was silent. Tim stealthily opened the 
 window and listened. Above the low harmonies produced 
 by the instrumentation of the various species of trees around 
 the premises he could hear the twitching of a chain from the 
 spot whereon he had set the man-trap. But further human 
 sound there was none. 
 
 Tim was puzzled. In the haste of his project he had not 
 calculated upon a cry; but if one, why not more. He soon 
 ceased to essay an answer, for Hintock was dead to him 
 already. In half a dozen hours he would be out of its pre- 
 cincts for life, on his way to the antipodes. He closed the 
 window and lay down. 
 
 The hour which had brought these movements of Tim 
 to birth had been operating actively elsewhere. Awaiting 
 in her father's house the minute of her appointment with her 
 husband, Grace Fitzpiers deliberated on many things. 
 Should she inform her father before going out that the es- 
 trangement of herself and Edgar was not so complete as he 
 had imagined, and deemed desirable for her happiness? If 
 she did so she must in some measure become the apolo- 
 gist of her husband, and she was not prepared to go so far. 
 
 As for him, he kept her in a mood of considerate grav- 
 ity. He certainly had changed. He had at his worst times 
 always been gentle in his manner toward her. Could it be 
 that she might make of him a true and worthy husband yet? 
 She had married him; there was no getting over that; and 
 ought she any longer to keep him at a distance? His suave 
 deference to her lightest whim on the question of his comings 
 and goings, when as her lawful husband he might show a 
 little independence, was a trait in his character as unexpected 
 
342 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 as it was engaging. If she had been his empress, and he her 
 thrall, he could not have exhibited a more sensitive care to 
 avoid intruding upon her against her will. 
 
 Impelled by a remembrance she took down a prayer-book, 
 and turned to the marriage service. Reading it slowly 
 through she became quite appalled at her recent off-handed- 
 ness, when she discovered what awfully solemn promises she 
 had made him at those chancel steps not so very long ago. 
 She became lost in long ponderings on how far a person's 
 conscience might be bound by vows made without at the 
 time a full recognition of their force. That particular sen- 
 tence beginning "Whom God hath joined together" was a 
 staggerer for a gentle woman of strong devotional sentiment. 
 She wondered whether God really did join them together. 
 Before she had done deliberating the time of her engage- 
 ment drew near, and she went out of the house almost at the 
 moment that Tim Tangs retired to his own. 
 
 The position of things at that critical juncture was brief!}' 
 as follows: Two hundred yards to the right of the upper 
 end of Tangs' garden Fitzpiers was still advancing, having 
 now nearly reached the summit of the wood-clothed ridge, 
 the path being the actual one which further on passed be- 
 tween the two young oaks. Thus far it was according to 
 Tim's conjecture. But about two hundred years to the left, 
 or rather less, was arising a condition which he had not 
 divined, the emergence of Grac as aforesaid from the upper 
 corner of her father's garden with the view of meeting Tim's 
 intended victim. Midway between husband and wife was the 
 diabolical trap, silent, open, ready. 
 
 Fitzpiers' walk that night had been cheerful, for he was 
 convinced that the slow and gentle method he had adopted 
 was promising success. The very restraint that he was 
 obliged to exercise upon himself, so as not to kill the delicate 
 bud of returning confidence, fed his flame. He walked so 
 much more rapidly than Grace that if they continued ad- 
 vancing as they had begun he would reach the trap a good 
 half-minute before she could reach the same spot. But here 
 a new circumstance came in: to escape the unpleasantness 
 of being watched or listened to by lurkers — naturally curious 
 by reason of their strained relations — they had arranged that 
 their meeting for to-night should be at the holm-tree on the 
 
THB WOODLANDERS. 343 
 
 ridge above named. So soon, accordingly, as Fitzpiers 
 reached the tree he stood still to await her. 
 
 He had not passed under the prickly foliage more than two 
 minutes when he thought he heard a scream from the other 
 side of the ridge. Fitzpiers wondered what it could mean ; 
 but such wind as there was just now blew in an adverse di- 
 rection, and his mood was light. He set down the origin of 
 the sound to one of the superstitious freaks of frolicsome 
 scrimmages between sweethearts that still survived in Hin- 
 tock from old English times, and waited on where he stood 
 till ten minutes had passed. Feeling then a little uneasy, his 
 mind reverted to the scream; and he went forward over the 
 summit and down the embowered incline, till he reached 
 the pair of sister oaks with the narrow opening between 
 them. 
 
 Fitzpiers stumbled and all but fell. Stretching down his 
 hand to ascertain the obstruction, it came in contact with 
 a confused mass of silken drapery and iron-work that con- 
 veyed absolutely no explanatory idea to his mind at all. It 
 was but the work of a moment to strike a match; and then 
 he saw a sight which congealed his blood. 
 
 The man-trap was thrown; and between its jaws was part 
 of a woman's clothing — a patterned silk skirt — gripped with 
 such violence that the iron teeth had passed through it, 
 skewering its tissue in a score of places. He immediately 
 recognized the skirt as that of one of his wife's gowns — ^the 
 gown that she had worn when she met him on the very last 
 occasion. 
 
 Although he had never seen a man-trap before Fitzpiers 
 could not help perceiving that this instrument was one, and 
 the conception instantly flashed through him that Grace 
 had been caught, taken out mangled by some chance passer, 
 and carried home, some of her clothing being left behind in 
 the difficulty of getting her free. The shock of this convic- 
 tion, striking into the very current of high hope, was so great 
 that he cried out like one in corporeal agony, and in his mis- 
 ery bowed himself down to the ground. 
 
 Of all the degrees and qualities of punishment that Fitz- 
 piers had undergone since his sins against Grace first began, 
 not any even approximated in intensity to this. "Oh, my 
 own — my darling! Oh, cruel Heaven — it is too much this!" 
 
344 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 he cried, writhing and rocking himself over the sorry acces- 
 sories of her he deplored. 
 
 The voice of his distress was sufficiently loud to be audi- 
 ble to any one who might have been there to hear it; and 
 one there was. Right and left of the narrow pass between 
 the oaks were dense bushes; and now from behind these 
 a female figure glided, whose appearance in the gloom was, 
 though graceful in outline, noticeably strange. 
 
 She was in white up to the waist, and figured above. She 
 was, in short, Grace, his wife, lacking the portion of her 
 dress which the gin retained. 
 
 "Don't be grieved about me — don't, dear Edgar!" she ex- 
 claimed, rushing up and bending over him. "I am not hurt 
 a bit! I was coming on to find you after I had released my- 
 self, but I heard footsteps, and I hid away, because i was 
 without some of my clothing, and I did not know who the 
 person might be." 
 
 Fitzpiers had sprung to his feet, and his next act was no 
 less unpremeditated by him than it was irresistible by her, 
 and would have been so by any woman not of Amazonian 
 strength. He clasped his arms completely round, pressed 
 her to his breast, and kissed her passionately. 
 
 "You are not dead — you are not hurt! Thank God — 
 thank God !" he said, almost sobbing in his delight and relief 
 from the horror of his apprehension. "Grace, my wife, my 
 love, how is this? — ^what has happened?" 
 
 "I was coming on to you," she said, as distinctly as she 
 could in the half-smothered state of her face against his. "I 
 was trying to be as punctual as possible, and as I had started 
 a minute late I ran along the path very swiftly — fortunately 
 for myself. Just when I had passed between these trees I 
 felt something clutch at my dress from behind with a noise, 
 and the next moment I was pulled backward by it, and fell 
 to the ground. I screamed with terror, thinking it was a 
 man lying down there to murder me, but the next moment I 
 discovered it was iron, and that my clothes were caught in 
 a trap. I pulled this way and that, but the thing would not 
 let go, drag it as I wouldj and I did not know what to do. I 
 did not want to alarm my father or anybody, as I wished no- 
 body to know of those meetings with you ; so I could think 
 of no other plan than slipping off my skirt, meaning to run 
 on and tell you what a strange accident had happened to me. 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 345 
 
 But when I had just freed myself by leaving the dress be- 
 hind, I heard steps, and not being sure it was you, I did not 
 like to be seen in such a pickle, so I hid away." 
 
 "It was only your speed that saved you! One or both of 
 your legs would have been broken if you had come at an 
 ordinary walking pace." 
 
 "Or yours, if you had got here first," said she, beginning 
 to realize the whole ghastliness of the possibility. "Oh, 
 Edgar, there has been an Eye watching over us to-night, and 
 we should be thankful indeed!" 
 
 He continued to press his face to hers. "You are mine — 
 mine again now." 
 
 She gently owned that she supposed she was. "I heard 
 what you said when you thought I was injured," she went 
 on, shyly, "and I know that a man who could suffer as you 
 were suffering must have a tender regard for me. But how 
 does this awful thing come here ?" 
 
 "I suppose it has something to do with poachers." ^z- 
 piers was still so shaken by the sense of her danger thajJ|e 
 was obliged to sit awhile, and it was not until Grace said^^f 
 I could only get my skirt out nobody would know anything 
 about it," that he bestirred himself. 
 
 By their united efforts, each standing on one of the springs 
 of the trap, they pressed them down sufficiently to insert 
 across the jaws a billet which they dragged from a fagot near 
 at hand; and it was then possible to extract the silk mouthful 
 from the monster's bite, creased and pierced with many holes, 
 but not torn. Fitzpiers assisted her to put it on again; and 
 when her customary contours were thus restored they walked 
 on together, Grace taking his arm, till he effected an im- 
 prove'ment by clasping it round her waist. 
 
 The ice having been broken in this unexpected manner 
 she made no further attempt at reserve. "I would ask you 
 to come into the house," she said, "but my meetings with 
 you have been kept secret from my father, and I should like 
 to prepare him." 
 
 "Never mind, dearest. I could not very well have ac- 
 cepted the invitation. I shall never live here again — as much 
 for your sake as for mine. I have news to tell you on this 
 very point, but my alarm had put it out of my head. I have 
 bought a practice, or rather a partnership, in the midlands, 
 and I must go there in a week to take up permanent resi- 
 
34S THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 dence. My poor old great-aunt died about eight months 
 ago, and left me enough to do this. I have taken a little fur- 
 nished house for a time, till we can get one of our own." 
 
 He described the place, and the surroundings, and the 
 view from the windows; and Grace became much interest- 
 ed. "But why are you not there now?" she said. 
 
 "Because I cannot tear myself away from here till I have 
 your promise. Now, darUng, you will accompany me there 
 — will you not? To-night has settled that?" 
 
 Grace's tremblings had gone off, and she did not say nay. 
 They went on together. 
 
 The adventure, and the emotions consequent upon the 
 reunion which that event had forced on, combined to render 
 Grace obhvious of the direction of their desultory ramble, 
 till she noticed they were in an encircled glade in the densest 
 part of the wood ; the moon that had imperceptibly added its 
 rays to the scene, shone almost vertically. It was an excep- 
 tionally soft, balmy evening for the time of year, which was 
 just that transient period in the May month when beech-trees 
 have suddenly unfolded large, limp, young leaves of the 
 softness of butterflies' wings. Boughs bearing such leaves 
 hung low around, and completely inclosed them, so that it 
 was as if they were seated in a great, green vase, which had 
 moss for its bottom and leaf sides. 
 
 The clouds having been packed in the west that evening 
 so as to retain the departing glare a long while, the hour 
 had seemed much earlier than it was. But suddenly the 
 question of time occurred to her. 
 
 "I must go back," she said; and without further delay 
 they set their faces toward Hintock. As they walked he 
 examined his watch by the aid of the now strong moonlight. 
 
 "By the gods, I think I have lost my train!" said Fitzpiers. 
 
 "Dear me ! — ^whereabouts are we?" said she. 
 
 "Two miles in the direction of Sherton." 
 
 "Then do you hasten on, Edgar. I am not in the least 
 afraid. I recognize now the part of the wood we are in, 
 and I can find my way back quite easily. I'll tell my father 
 that we have made it up. I wish I had not kept our meet- 
 ings so private, for it may vex him a little to know I have 
 been seeing you. He is getting old and irritable, that was 
 v.'hy I did not. Good-by." 
 
 "But, as I must stay at the Earl of Wessex to-night, for I 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 347 
 
 ttannot possibly catch the train, I think it would be safer for 
 you to let me take care of you." 
 
 "But what will my father think has become of me? He 
 does not know where I am — he thinks I only went into the 
 garden for a few minutes." 
 
 "He will surely guess — somebody has seen me for cer- 
 tain. I'll go all the way back with you to-morrow." 
 
 "But that newly done up place — ^the Earl of Wessex!" 
 
 "If you are so very particular about the publicity I will 
 stay at the Three Tuns." 
 
 "Oh, no — it is not that I am particular — but I haven't a 
 brush or comb or anything!" 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 All the evening Melbury had been continually coming 
 to his door saying: "I wonder where in the world that girl 
 is ! Never in all my born days did I know her bide out Uke 
 this. She surely said she was going into the garden to get 
 some parsley." 
 
 Melbury searched the garden, the parsley-bed, and the 
 orchard, but could find no trace of her, and then he made 
 inquiries at the cottages of such of his workmen as had not 
 gone to bed, avoiding Tangs' because he knew the young 
 people were to rise early to leave. In these inquiries one 
 of the men's wives somewhat incautiously let out the fact 
 that she had heard a scream in the wood, though from which 
 direction she could not say. 
 
 This set Melbury's fears on end. He told the men to light 
 lanterns, and headed by himself they started, Creedle fol- 
 lowing at the last moment with quite a burden of grapnels 
 and ropes which he could not be persuaded to leave behind, 
 and the company being joined by the hollow-turner and 
 the man who kept the cider-house as they went along. 
 
 They explored the precincts of the village, and in a short 
 time lighted upon the man-trap. Its discovery simply added 
 an item of fact without helping their conjectures; but Mel- 
 bury's indefinite alarm was greatly increased when, holding 
 a candle to the ground, he saw in the teeth of the instrument 
 some frayings from Grace's clothing. No intelligence of any 
 
348 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 kind was gained till they met a woodman of Delborough, 
 ^yho said that he had seen a lady answering to the descrip- 
 tion her father gave of Grace, walking through the wood 
 with a gentleman's arm round her waist in the direction of 
 Sherton. 
 
 "Was he holding her tight?" said Melbury. 
 
 "Well— rather," said the man. 
 
 "Did she walk lame?" 
 
 "Well, 'tis true her head hung over toward him a bit." 
 
 Creedle groaned tragically. 
 
 Melbury not suspecting the presence of Fitzpiers, coupled 
 this account with the man-trap and the scream; he could 
 not be persuaded but that some one was carrying off his 
 daughter by force and threats after having trapped her, 
 though that she could not be much lamed was obvious. Ac- 
 cordingly they bore away toward the town, shouting as they 
 went, and in due course emerged upon the highway. 
 
 Nearing Sherton Abbas, the previous information was 
 confirmed by other strollers, though the arm had disap- 
 peared from the waist of the lady in these later accounts. 
 At last they were so near Sherton that Melbury informed 
 his faithful followers that he did not wish to drag them 
 further at so late an hour, since he could go on alone and 
 inquire if the woman who had been seen were really Grace. 
 But they would not leave him alone in his anxiety, and 
 trudged onward till the lamp-light from the town began to 
 illuminate their fronts. At the entrance to the High Street 
 they got fresh scent of the pursued, but coupled with the 
 new condition that the lady in the costume described had 
 been seen going up the street alone. 
 
 "Faith, I believe she's mesmerized, or walking in her 
 sleep!" said Melbury. 
 
 However, the identity of this woman with his daughter 
 Grace was by no means certain; but they plodded on up the 
 street. The hair-dresser who had despoiled Marty of her 
 tresses was standing at his door, and they duly put inquiries 
 to him. 
 
 "And how's Little Hintock folks by now?" he said, be- 
 fore replying. "Never have I been over there since one 
 winter some three years ago — and then I lost myself finding 
 it. How can ye live in such a one-eyed place? Great Hin- 
 tock is bad enough, but Little Hintock — ^the bats and owls 
 
THE WOODLANDBRS. 349 
 
 would drive me melancholy mad ! It took two days to raise 
 my sperrits to their true pitch again after that night I went 
 there. Mr. Melbury, sir, as a man that's put by money, why 
 not retire and live here, and see something of the world?" 
 
 The responses at last given by him to their queries guided 
 them to the building that offered the best accommodations 
 in Sherton — having been enlarged contemporaneously with 
 the construction of the railway — namely, the Earl of Wessex 
 Hotel. 
 
 Leaving the others without, Melbury made prompt in- 
 quiry here. His alarm was lessened, though his perplexity 
 was increased, when he received a brief reply that such a 
 lady was in the house. 
 
 "Do you know if it is my daughter?" asked Melbury. 
 
 The waiter did not. 
 
 "Do you know the lady's name?" 
 
 Of this, too, the household was ignorant, the hotel hav- 
 ing been taken by brand-new people from a distance. They 
 knew the gentleman very well by sight, and had not thought 
 it necessary to ask hifn to enter his name. 
 
 "Oh, the gentleman appears again now," said Melbury 
 to himself. "Well, I want to see the lady," he declared. 
 
 A message was taken up, and after some delay the shape 
 of Grace appeared descending round the bend of the stair- 
 case, looking as if she lived there, but in other respects ratli^r 
 guilty and frightened. 
 
 "Why — what the name " began her father. "I thought 
 
 you went out to get parsley!" 
 
 "Oh, yes — I did — but it is all right," said Grace, in a flur- 
 ried whisper. "I ami not alone here. I am here with Edgar. 
 It is entirely owing to an accident, father." 
 
 "Edgar! An accident! How does he come here? I 
 thought he was nearly two hundred miles off." 
 
 "Yes, so he is. I mean he has got a beautiful practice 
 two hundred miles ofif ; he has bought it with his own money, 
 some that came to him. But he traveled here, and I was 
 nearly caught in a man-trap, and that's how it is I am here. 
 We were just thinking of sending a messenger to let you 
 know." 
 
 Melbury did not seem to be particularly enlightened by 
 this explanation. 
 
 "You were caught in a man-trap?" 
 
350 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 "Yes ; my dress was. That's how it arose. Oh, Edgar is 
 upstairs in his own sitting-room," she went on. "He would 
 not mind seeing you, I am sure." 
 
 "Oh, faith, I don't want to see him. I have seen him too 
 often a'ready. I'll see him another time, perhaps, if 'tis to 
 oblige 'ee." 
 
 "He came to see me; he wanted to consult me about this 
 large partnership I speak of, as it is very promising." 
 
 "Oh, I am glad to hear it," said Melbury, dryly. 
 
 A pause ensued, during which the inquiring faces and 
 whity-brown clothes of Melbury's companions appeared in 
 the doorway. 
 
 "Then, baint you coming home with us?" he asked. 
 
 "I — I think not," said Grace, blushing. 
 
 "H'm — very well — ^you are your own mistress," he re- 
 turned in tones which seemed to assert otherwise. "Good- 
 night," and Melbury retreated toward the door. 
 
 "Don't be angry, father," she said, following him a few 
 steps. "I have done it for the best." 
 
 "I am not angry, though it is true I have been a little mis- 
 led in this. However, good-night; I must get home along." 
 
 He left the hotel not without relief, for to be under the 
 eyes of strangers while he conversed with his lost child had 
 embarrassed him much. His search party too had looked 
 awkward there, having rushed to the task of investigation — 
 some in their shirt sleeves, others in their leather aprons, and 
 all much stained — ^just as they had come from their work of 
 barking, and not in their Sherton marketing attire; while 
 Creedle, with his ropes and grapnels and air of impending 
 tragedy, had added melancholy to gawkiness. 
 
 "Now, neighbors," said Melbury, on joining them, "as it 
 is getting late we'll leg it home as fast as we can. I ought to 
 tell you that there has been some mistake — some arrange- 
 ment entered into between Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I 
 didn't quite understand — an important practice in the Mid- 
 land Counties has come to him, which made it necessary for 
 her to join him to-night — so she says. That's all it was — 
 and I'm sorry I dragged you out." 
 
 "Well," said the hollow-turner, "here we are six mile from 
 home, and night-time, and not a hoss or four-footed creature 
 to our name. I say, we'll have a mossel and a drap o' sum- 
 mat to strengthen our nerves afore we vamp all the way 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 351 
 
 back again. My throat's as dry as a kex. What d'ye say 
 so's?" 
 
 They all concurred in the need for this course, and pro- 
 ceeded to the antique and lampless back street in which 
 the red curtain of the Three Tuns was the only radiant ob- 
 ject. As soon as they had stumbled down into the room Mel- 
 bury ordered them to be served, when they made themselves 
 comfortable by the long table, and stretched out their legs 
 upon the herring-boned sand of the floor. Melbury himself, 
 restless as usual, walked to the door while he waited for them, 
 and looked up and down the street. 
 
 "I'd gie her a good shaking if she were my maid, pre- 
 tending to go out into the garden, and lead folk a twelve- 
 mile traipse that have got to get up at five o'clock to-mor- 
 row," said a bark-ripper, who, not working regularly for 
 Melbury, could afiford to indulge in strong opinions. 
 
 "I don't speak so warm as that," said the hollow-turner; 
 "but if 'tis right for couples to make a country talk about 
 their separating, and excite the neighbors, and then make 
 fools of 'em like this, why, I haven't stood upon one leg for 
 five-and-twenty year." 
 
 All his listeners knew that when he alluded to his foot- 
 lathe in these enigmatic terms the speaker meant to be im- 
 pressive; and Creedle chimed in with, "Ah, young women 
 do wax wanton in these days ! Why couldn't she ha' bode 
 with her father, and been faithful." Poor Creedle was think- 
 ing of his old employer. 
 
 "But this deceiving of folks is nothing unusual in matri- 
 mony," said Farmer Bawtree. "I knowed a man and wife 
 ■^faith, I don't mind owning, as there's no strangers here, 
 that the pair were my own relations— they'd be at it that hot 
 one hour that you'd hear the poker, and the tongs, and the 
 bellows, and the warming-pan flee across the house with the 
 movements of their vengeance ; and the next hour you'd hear 
 'em singing 'The Spotted Cow' together as peaceable as two 
 holy twins ; yes, and very good voices they had, and would 
 strike in like professional ballet-singers to one another's sup- 
 port in the high notes." 
 
 "And I knowed a woman and the husband o' her went 
 away for four-and-twenty year," said the bark-ripper. "And 
 one night he come home when she was sitting by the fire, 
 and thereupon he sat down himself on the other side of the 
 
352 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 chimney-corner. 'Well,' says she, 'have ye got any news?' 
 'Don't know as 1 1 have,' says he; 'have you?' 'No,' say's 
 she,' except that my daughter by my second husband was 
 married last month, which was a year after I was made a 
 widow by him.' 'Oh! Anything else?' he says, 'No,' says 
 she. And there they sat, one on each side of that chimney- 
 corner, and were found by the neighbors sound asleep in 
 their chairs, not having known what to talk about at all." 
 
 "Well, I don't care who the man is," said John Upjohn, 
 "they required a good deal to talk about, and that's true. 
 It won't be the same with these." 
 
 "No. He is such a projick, you see. And she is a won- 
 derful scholar, too." 
 
 "Ah, what women do know nowadays !" observed the hol- 
 low-turner. "You can't deceive 'em as you could in my time." 
 
 "What they knowed then was not small," said Upjohn. 
 "Always a good deal more than the men. Why, when I 
 went courting my wife that is now, the skillfulness that she 
 would show in keeping me on her pretty side as she walked 
 was beyond all belief. Perhaps you've noticed that she's 
 got a pfetty side to her face as well as a plain one." 
 
 "I can't say I've noticed it particularly much," said the 
 hollow-turner, blandly. 
 
 "Well," continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, "she has. 
 All women under the sun be prettier one side than t'other. 
 And, as I was saying, the pains she would take to make me 
 walk on the pretty side were unending. I warrant that 
 whether we were going with the sun or against the sun, up- 
 hill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was 
 always toward the hedge, and that dimple toward me. There 
 was I, to© simple to see her wheelings and turnings; and 
 she so artful, though two years younger, that she could lead 
 me with a cotton thread, like a blind ram, for that was in 
 the third climate of our courtship. No; I don't think the 
 women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise." 
 
 "How many climates may there be in courtship, Mr. Up- 
 john?" inquired a youth — son of one of the bark-rippers. 
 
 "Five — ^from the coolest to the hottest — leastwise there 
 was five in mine." 
 
 "Can ye give us the chronicle of 'em, Mr. Upiohn?" 
 
 "Yes — I could. I could certainly. But 'tis quite unneces- 
 
THE WOODLANDERS. 3S3 
 
 sary. They'll come to ye by natur, young man, too soon for 
 your good." 
 
 "At present Mrs. Fitzpiers can lead the doctor as your 
 mis'ess could lead you," the hollow-turner remarked. "She's 
 got him quite tame. But how long 'twill last I can't say. 
 I happened to be setting a wire on the top of my garden 
 one night when he met her on the other side of the hedge; 
 and the way she queened it, and fenced, and kept that poor 
 fellow at a distance was enough to freeze yer blood. I should 
 never have supposed it of such a girl." 
 
 Melbury now returned to the room, and the men having 
 declared themselves refreshed, they all started on the home- 
 ward journey, which was by no means cheerless under the 
 rays of the high moon. Having to walk the whole distance 
 they came by a footpath rather shorter than the highway, 
 though difficult except to those who knew the country well. 
 This brought them by way of Great Hintock; and passing 
 the churchyard they observed as they talked a motionless 
 figure standing by the gate. 
 
 "I think it was Marty South," said the hollow-turner, 
 parenthetically. 
 
 "I think 'twas; 'a was always a lonely maid," said Up- 
 john. And they passed on homeward, and thought of the 
 matter no more. 
 
 It was Marty, as they had. supposed. That evening had 
 been the partictilar one of the week on which Grace and 
 herself had been accustomed to privately deposit flowers 
 on Giles' grave, and this was the first occasion since his 
 death eight months earlier on which Grace had failed to 
 keep her appointment. Marty had waited in the road just 
 outside Little Hintock, where her fellow-pilgrim had been 
 wont to join her, till she was weary; and at last, thinking 
 that Grace had missed her and gone on alone, she followed 
 the way to Great Hintock, but saw no Grace in front of her. 
 It got later, and Marty continued her walk till she reached 
 the churchyard gate; but still no Grace. Yet her sense of 
 comradeship would not allow her to go on to the grave 
 alone, and still thinking the delay had been unavoidable, 
 she stood there with her little basket of flowers in her 
 clasped hands, and her feet chilled by the damp ground, till 
 more than two hours had passed. She then heard the foot- 
 steps of Melbury's men, who presently passed on their re- 
 as 
 
354 THE WOODLANDERS. 
 
 turn from the search. In the silence of the night Maily 
 could not help hearing fragments of their conversation from 
 which she acquired a general idea of what had occurred, and 
 where Mrs. Fitzpiers then was. 
 
 Immediately they had dropped down the hill she entered 
 the churchyard, gomg to a secluded corner behind the 
 bushes, where rose the unadorned stone that marked the last 
 bed of Giles Winterborne. As this solitary and silent girl 
 stood there in the moonlight, a straight, slim figure, clothed 
 in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so unde- 
 veloped as to be scarcely perceptible, and the marks of pov- 
 erty and toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sub- 
 limity at points, and looked almost like a being who had re- 
 jected with indifference the altitude of sex for the loftier 
 quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and 
 cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and herself had 
 laid there the previous week, and put her fresh ones in their 
 place. 
 
 "Now, my own, own love," she whispered, "you are mine, 
 and on'y mine; for she has forgotten 'ee at last, although 
 for her you died. But I — whenever I get up I'll think of 'ee, 
 and whenever I lie down I'll think of 'ee. Whenever I plant 
 the young larches I'll think that none can plant as you 
 planted; and whenever I split a gad, and whenever I turn 
 the cider-wring, I'll say none could do it like you. If ever 
 I forget your name let me forget home and heaven. But, 
 no, no, my love, I never can forget 'ee ; for you was a good 
 man, and did good things !" 
 
 THE END. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4750.W89 1899 
 
 The woodlanders, a romanceby Thomas Hardy 
 
 3 1924 012 106 088