The Woodlanders

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 homeliness no longer offended her acquired tastes;

his comparative want of so-called culture did not now jar on her

intellect; his country dress even pleased her eye; his exterior

roughness fascinated her. Having discovered by marriage how much that

was humanly not great could 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, devotion, for her only existed in their purity now in the

breasts of unvarnished men; and here was one who had manifested them

towards her from his youth up.

There was, further, that never-ceasing pity in her soul for Giles as a

man whom she had wronged--a man who had been unfortunate in his worldly

transactions; while, not without a touch of sublimity, he had, like

Horatio, 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, speaking with the sarcasm

of pitiful affection.

"Oh no--not especially. He has a great many patients to see this

afternoon."

Melbury came quite close. "Grace, what's the use of talking like that,

when you know--Here, come down and walk with me out in the garden,

child."

He unfastened the door in the ivy-laced wall, and waited. This

apparent indifference alarmed him. He would far rather that she had

rushed in all the fire of jealousy to Hintock House, regardless of

conventionality, confronted and attacked Felice Charmond unguibus et

rostro, and accused her even in exaggerated shape of stealing away her

husband. Such a storm might have cleared the air.

She emerged in a minute or two, and they went inside together. "You

know as well as I do," he resumed, "that there is something threatening

mischief to your life; and yet you pretend you do not. Do you suppose I

don't see the trouble in your face every day? I am very sure that this

quietude is wrong conduct in you. You should look more into matters."