"And from me too, then. For my blood is no better than theirs."
He looked at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, indeed, a
startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be
standing there beside him as his wife, if his sentiments were as he had
said. In their travels together she had ranged so unerringly at his
level in ideas, tastes, and habits that he had almost forgotten how his
heart had played havoc with his principles in taking her to him.
"Ah YOU--you are refined and educated into something quite different,"
he said, self-assuringly.
"I don't quite like to think that," she murmured with soft regret. "And
I think you underestimate Giles Winterborne. Remember, I was brought
up with him till I was sent away to school, so I cannot be radically
different. At any rate, I don't feel so. That is, no doubt, my fault,
and a great blemish in me. But I hope you will put up with it, Edgar."
Fitzpiers said that he would endeavor to do so; and as it was now
getting on for dusk, they prepared to perform the last stage of their
journey, so as to arrive at Hintock before it grew very late.
In less than half an hour they started, the cider-makers in the yard
having ceased their labors and gone away, so that the only sounds
audible there now were the trickling of the juice from the tightly
screwed press, and the buzz of a single wasp, which had drunk itself so
tipsy that it was unconscious of nightfall. Grace was very cheerful at
the thought of being soon in her sylvan home, but Fitzpiers sat beside
her almost silent. An indescribable oppressiveness had overtaken him
with the near approach of the journey's end and the realities of life
that lay there.
"You don't say a word, Edgar," she observed. "Aren't you glad to get
back? I am."
"You have friends here. I have none."
"But my friends are yours."
"Oh yes--in that sense."
The conversation languished, and they drew near the end of Hintock
Lane. It had been decided that they should, at least for a time, take
up their abode in her father's roomy house, one wing of which was quite
at their service, being almost disused by the Melburys. Workmen had
been painting, papering, and whitewashing this set of rooms in the
wedded pair's absence; and so scrupulous had been the timber-dealer
that there should occur no hitch or disappointment on their arrival,
that not the smallest detail remained undone. To make it all complete a
ground-floor room had been fitted up as a surgery, with an independent
outer door, to which Fitzpiers's brass plate was screwed--for mere
ornament, such a sign being quite superfluous where everybody knew the
latitude and longitude of his neighbors for miles round.