The Woodlanders

At times, however, the words about his having spoiled his

opportunities, repeated to him as those of Mrs. Charmond, haunted him

like a handwriting on the wall. Then his manner would become suddenly

abstracted. At one moment he would mentally put an indignant query why

Mrs. Charmond or any other woman should make it her business to have

opinions about his opportunities; at another he thought that he could

hardly be angry with her for taking an interest in the doctor of her

own parish. Then he would drink a glass of grog and so get rid of the

misgiving. These hitches and quaffings were soon perceived by Grace as

well as by her father; and hence both of them were much relieved when

the first of the guests to discover that the hour was growing late rose

and declared that he must think of moving homeward. At the words

Melbury rose as alertly as if lifted by a spring, and in ten minutes

they were gone.

"Now, Grace," said her husband as soon as he found himself alone with

her in their private apartments, "we've had a very pleasant evening,

and everybody has been very kind. But we must come to an understanding

about our way of living here. If we continue in these rooms there must

be no mixing in with your people below. I can't stand it, and that's

the truth."

She had been sadly surprised at the suddenness of his distaste for

those old-fashioned woodland forms of life which in his courtship he

had professed to regard with so much interest. But she assented in a

moment.

"We must be simply your father's tenants," he continued, "and our

goings and comings must be as independent as if we lived elsewhere."

"Certainly, Edgar--I quite see that it must be so."

"But you joined in with all those people in my absence, without knowing

whether I should approve or disapprove. When I came I couldn't help

myself at all."

She, sighing: "Yes--I see I ought to have waited; though they came

unexpectedly, and I thought I had acted for the best."

Thus the discussion ended, and the next day Fitzpiers went on his old

rounds as usual. But it was easy for so super-subtle an eye as his to

discern, or to think he discerned, that he was no longer regarded as an

extrinsic, unfathomed gentleman of limitless potentiality, scientific

and social; but as Mr. Melbury's compeer, and therefore in a degree

only one of themselves. The Hintock woodlandlers held with all the

strength of inherited conviction to the aristocratic principle, and as

soon as they had discovered that Fitzpiers was one of the old Buckbury

Fitzpierses they had accorded to him for nothing a touching of

hat-brims, promptness of service, and deference of approach, which

Melbury had to do without, though he paid for it over and over. But

now, having proved a traitor to his own cause by this marriage,

Fitzpiers was believed in no more as a superior hedged by his own

divinity; while as doctor he began to be rated no higher than old

Jones, whom they had so long despised.