Melbury sat with his hands resting on the familiar knobbed 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 travelled with him like an envelope. Through this
vision the incidents 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?"
"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 staircase, 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 timber. 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," said Melbury.
"How very nice! It must be so charming to work in the woods just now!"
She was too careless to affect an interest in an extraneous person's
affairs so consummately as to deceive in the manner of the perfect
social machine. Hence her words "very nice," "so charming," were
uttered with a perfunctoriness that made them sound absurdly unreal.
"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
speaking 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."