The Woodlanders

"True," murmured old Timothy. "From the soul of his foot to the crown

of his head there was no blemish in him."

"Or leastwise you might ha' been a-wownded into tatters a'most, and no

doctor to jine your few limbs together within seven mile!"

While this grim address was proceeding, Fitzpiers had dismounted, and

taking Grace's arm walked stiffly in-doors with her. Melbury stood

staring at the horse, which, in addition to being very weary, was

spattered with mud. There was no mud to speak of about the Hintocks

just now--only in the clammy hollows of the vale beyond Owlscombe, the

stiff soil of which retained moisture for weeks after the uplands were

dry. While they were rubbing down the mare, Melbury's mind coupled

with the foreign quality of the mud the name he had heard unconsciously

muttered by the surgeon when Grace took his hand--"Felice." Who was

Felice? Why, Mrs. Charmond; and she, as he knew, was staying at

Middleton.

Melbury had indeed pounced upon the image that filled Fitzpiers's

half-awakened soul--wherein there had been a picture of a recent

interview on a lawn with a capriciously passionate woman who had begged

him not to come again in tones whose vibration incited him to disobey.

"What are you doing here? Why do you pursue me? Another belongs to you.

If they were to see you they would seize you as a thief!" And she had

turbulently admitted to his wringing questions that her visit to

Middleton had been undertaken less because of the invalid relative than

in shamefaced fear of her own weakness if she remained near his home.

A triumph then it was to Fitzpiers, poor and hampered as he had become,

to recognize his real conquest of this beauty, delayed so many years.

His was the selfish passion of Congreve's Millamont, to whom love's

supreme delight lay in "that heart which others bleed for, bleed for

me."

When the horse had been attended to Melbury stood uneasily here and

there about his premises; he was rudely disturbed in the comfortable

views which had lately possessed him on his domestic concerns. It is

true that he had for some days discerned that Grace more and more

sought his company, preferred supervising his kitchen and bakehouse

with her step-mother to occupying herself with the lighter details of

her own apartments. She seemed no longer able to find in her own

hearth an adequate focus for her life, and hence, like a weak queen-bee

after leading off to an independent home, had hovered again into the

parent hive. But he had not construed these and other incidents of the

kind till now.